Cato V, Part III: Safe Democratical Principles

The actual text of the essay published in the New-York Journal on November 22^nd, 1787, now known by the title of Cato V, encompassed but a scant seven paragraphs, totaling scarcely more than seventeen hundred words from start to finish. It was addressed, “To the Citizens of the State of New York,” much as the rival Federalist Papers had been and would be, and was signed, simply, “Cato.” Its subject, as stated by the author – whom we have acknowledged was likely to have been Governor George Clinton of New York – was meant to be a continuation of certain of the thoughts expressed in the preceding entry and which seemed to change after no more than a paragraph or two upon any particular train of ideas. At first the pseudonymous scribe expressed alarm at the “inexplicitness” of the proposed constitution, then shifted to a discussion of the manners of the American people, and then began to ruminate on the inadequacy of biennial elections and the importance of adequately representing diverse and numerous populations. And then he was finished. Seventeen hundred words, in and out, please and thank you. Such a brief thing, so succinct in tone and humble in presentation, might fairly be thought to contain scarce little of consequence to the debate of which it was a part. Other Anti-Federalists wrote longer pieces, made more and varied references to great philosophers and statesmen. But for all of Cato V’s brevity, or its author’s seeming tendency to touch upon a bevy of topics in quick succession, there was – and is – much to consider contained therein. The eponymous Cato may not have had a great deal to say at a stretch, but he had an evident knack for saying it well and incisively.

Consider, to that end, Clinton’s assertion in the fourth paragraph of Cato V that the terms of election for the House of Representatives described in the proposed constitution represented a dangerous departure, “From the safe democratical principles [.]” The text in question, located in Article I, Section 2, stated specifically that, “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States [.]” While this made Representatives the elected officer of the proposed national government with the shortest term in office – Senators were to be elected every six years, the President every four – Clinton was nevertheless adamant that annual elections would have been preferable. He was far from alone in either adhering to or expressing this sentiment, of course. A number of his fellow Anti-Federalists had made or would make similar declarations. A letter published under the pseudonym “Agippa” in the Massachusetts Gazette on February 5^th, 1788, for example, asserted that, “The constitution lately proposed for the United States be received only upon the following conditions, [that] the president shall be chosen annually and shall serve but one year, and shall be chosen successively from the different states, changing every year…” This preference was echoed – albeit not as forcefully – in an essay published two months later on April 9^th, 1788 in the Hampshire Gazette and signed by Consider Arms, Malichi Maynard, and Samuel Field. “Although we think it More agreeable to the principles of republicanism, that elections should be annual,” it read, “Yet as the elections in our own state government are so, we did not view it so dangerous to the liberties of the people, that we should have rejected the constitution merely on account of the biennial elections of the representatives [.]”

While Agrippa did not attempt to explain why it was that yearly elections appeared to them to be necessary – nor did Arms, Maynard, and Field identify why they thought they were preferable – at least one of their colleagues went so far as to provide a basic justification in a speech he delivered during the Virginia Ratifying Convention. William Grayson (1740-1790) speaking on June 18^th, 1788, said of the four year term granted to the President that, “This quadrennial power cannot be justified by ancient history. There is hardly an instance where a republic trusted its executive so long with much power; nor is it warranted by modern republics. The delegation of power is, in most of them, only for one year.” There was something to this, to be sure. Under the unwritten constitution of the Roman Republic – to which many an 18^th century devotee of republicanism looked for inspiration – Tribunes, Quaestors, Aediles, Praetors, Consuls, and Censors were all subject to one year terms in office. Combined with strict age requirements and time-sensitive restrictions on reelection to the same office, the intention of such institutional limitations was essentially to diffuse authority as widely as possible within the relevant socio-economic communities so as to prevent entrenchment, corruption, and the subversion of the republican form of government.

None of this succeeded in averting the eventual collapse of the Roman Republic amidst a rising tide of venality and radical populism, of course. But that didn’t stop European Enlightenment-era scholars and political theorists from attaching a great deal of importance to figures like Cato the Younger (95-46 BC) and Cicero (106-43 BC) – opponents both of political corruption and the rise of populist strongmen like Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) – and to concepts like term limits in service of their efforts to promote the reform of existing models of government and the creation of entirely new ones. Grayson’s offhand declaration that, “There is hardly an instance where a republic trusted its executive so long with much power [,]” would seem to speak to the degree to which this had become an almost entirely unspoken assumption among a certain cohort of the late 18^th century Anglo-American scholarly elite. Having, as a class, internalized the notion that term limits were good – and that annual term limits were best of all – Gayson didn’t even have to mention Rome in particular or the history of republican antiquity in general for his point to have been sufficiently communicated. Agippa, and Arms, Maynard and Field arguably accomplished much the same with even less specific language.   
    

            For his part, however, Clinton as Cato seemed not to find comfort in such shorthand. Rather than refer to the customary Roman example as justification enough for his assertion that annual elections were preferable to the biennial vote for Representatives described by the proposed constitution, he explained in relative depth how it was that a yearly term served to benefit a given society, making reference all the while to political theory of a far more recent vintage than that of the Roman Republic. Specifically, in paragraphs five and six of Cato V, Clinton cited both the French philosopher Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) and the English statesman and political theorist Algernon Sidney (1623-1683) in support of his belief that yearly elections form an essential part of the intrinsic advantage enjoyed by democratic government. “A well digested democracy,” he thus explained,

Affords to many the opportunity to be advanced to the supreme command, and the honors they thereby enjoy fill them with a desire of rendering themselves worthy of them; hence this desire becomes part of their education, is matured in manhood, and produces an ardent affection for their country, and it is the opinion of the great Sidney, and Montesquieu that this is in a great measure produced by annual election of magistrates.

It was Clinton’s conviction, it seemed, that annual elections were desirable not simply because they formed a part of the legacy of antiquity which 18^th century devotees of republicanism had collectively decided to seize upon. Rather, as he declared in the cited text of Cato V, he believed that the yearly selection of magistrates served to nourish a spirit of public service and contributed to the necessary education of those who would seek to fulfill the role of statesman.

Montesquieu did say something to that effect himself, lest it be thought that Clinton tossed off his name solely to appear as though he was as conversant as his Federalist opponents in the finer points of contemporary French political philosophy. Like James Madison in Federalist No. 47, Clinton was referring to Montesquieu’s 1748 treatise entitled The Spirit of the Laws, the significance of which was deeply felt by some of the most prominent theorists among the Founding Generation. In Clinton’s case, though he did not cite them directly, he appeared to be referring to Book III, Chapter III, or Book IV, Chapter V, or quite possibly to both. In the text of the former, entitled “Of the Principle of Democracy,” Montesquieu affirmed that, whereas the principles upon which monarchy and despotism functioned – being two of the three types of government he identified – were honor and fear, respectively, that which democracy similarly embodied was the principle of virtue. The reason for this was simple enough, and eminently practical. “In a monarchy,” he explained,

Where he who commands the execution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is less need of virtue than in a popular government, where the person intrusted with the execution of the laws, is sensible of his being subject himself to their direction.

While he did not say so explicitly, the implication of Montesquieu’s claim that people who make laws in a democracy are sensitive of being subject to them would seem to be that democratic lawmakers are drawn from among the population at large. Their power, therefore, is temporary; from among the citizenry they are drawn to do their service and back into the citizenry they must eventually dissolve. It thus behooves them to behave in a virtuous manner, lest they suffer the consequences in the long-term of whatever gains they believed they could make in the short-term.

Granting that this evaluation of the necessity of virtue in democratic governments might appear somewhat simplistic, Montesquieu did explain further on in The Spirit of the Laws that such a trait did not come naturally to mankind, that it’s absence would most definitely present an obstacle to the creation of stable democratic government, and that some form of moral education was likely needed to inculcate the habits of virtue in future generations. “It is in a republican government that the whole power of education is required,” he explained accordingly in Book IV, Chapter V (“Of Education in a Republican Government”);

The fear of despotic governments rises naturally of itself amidst threats and punishments; the honor of monarchies is favoured by the passions, and favours them in its turn: but virtue is a self-renunciation which is always arduous and painful. This virtue may be defined, the love of the laws and of our country. As this love requires a constant preference of public to private interest, it is the source of all the particular virtues; for they are nothing more than this very preference itself. This love is peculiar to democracies. In these alone the government is intruded to private citizens. Now government is like every thing else: to preserve it, we must love it.

Though Montesquieu went on to explain in the text of The Spirit of the Laws that the requisite education could take a number of different forms – referring along the way to examples ranging from ancient Sparta to contemporary Paraguay – he did not include annual elections as among the methods he believed were most likely to encourage a democratic people towards an instinct for virtue. While one may accordingly be given to wonder just what it was the author of Cato V was referring to when he declared that “the great Montesquieu” agreed that “an ardent affection for their country” could be produced in a people via the mechanism of “annual election of magistrates,” the answer might conceivably be traced to the subtext of what Montesquieu was attempting to explain rather than to the text itself.  

            Recall, as cited above, that Montesquieu believed virtue to be the essential element of democratic government, and that he furthermore conceived of virtue as to some extent springing naturally from the relationship which was bound to exist in a democratic state between the lawmakers and the law. Legislators being drawn from the people at large, they could none of them seek to enact of piece of legislation for their own short-term gain which they would not eventually be forced to obey. Despite having been raised to a position of power, and being free to use that power as they saw fit, they must eventually return to the bosom of the people over which they but recently bore sway. The implication of this arrangement, though Montesquieu did not say so specifically, would nonetheless appear to be that the shorter the period a given citizen exercises legislative authority, the more likely they are to behave in a virtuous manner. Being six years in power, say, a person might think it possible to accrue such protections as to effectively avoid the consequences of whatever self-serving acts they committed while in office. Being one year in office, however, that same person might believe it comparatively impossible to erect such barriers or collect such resources as would shield them from the authority which they had themselves but recently served to augment. And as this principle would appear likely to promote virtuous action on the part of those who might otherwise behave selfishly, in time it might also reasonably begin to condition people that behaving selflessly when granted access to a significant public trust was entirely natural and expected.

True, as Montesquieu explicitly affirmed, education as to the necessity of virtue would almost certainly need to begin much sooner than the point at which an individual is likely to find themselves elevated to an office in government – “The surest way of instilling it into children, is for parents to set them an example [,]” he explained. And it also bears noting that the author of The Spirit of the Laws made no mention in the relevant sections of the role which annual elections might play in producing the “ardent affection for their county” which Clinton as Cato avowed that he had. This is likely why Clinton chose not to quote from Montesquieu directly – there simply wasn’t anything in the explicit text which would have aided him in making the case that he wanted to make. That being said, it wasn’t as though Montesquieu’s stated reasoning was completely at odds with the claim that Clinton made in the cited section of Cato V. Montesquieu did say, if not directly, that public service in a democracy made people more conscious of the kinds of laws they were passing and of the manner in which they exercised power. And he also said that virtue was something that needed to be taught because it wasn’t a trait that came naturally to human beings. It would thus seem like a fairly natural extension of these ideas for Clinton to then affirm that creating more opportunities for citizens in a republic to engage in public service would aid in their necessary education by making as many of them aware as possible that virtue was the only sensible course of behavior. Montesquieu, it bears repeating, did not say exactly that at any point within the text of The Spirit of the Laws. But he said enough that could have conceivably inspired such a claim that Clinton’s invocation of his name in Cato V cannot be considered wholly without basis. It was a stretch, to be sure, but not an unjustifiable one.

As to why Clinton felt the need to cite Montesquieu at all, there is very likely more than one potential answer. As noted above, Charlies-Louis de Secondat declared in The Spirit of the Laws that the essential principle upon which republican government was based was that of virtue. Monarchies, he said, were based on the notion of honor – that is to say, rewards for service – and despotisms were based on fear – that is to say, fear of power – but republics required their citizens to maintain an ardent belief in the principle that service to the greater good at the expense of the individual was its own reward. It was not an easy course, he admitted – “Virtue is a self-renunciation which is always arduous and painful” – but it was a necessary one for republican government to function. By explicitly expressing his agreement with Montesquieu – though perhaps not with any specific quotation – Clinton may have hoped to project the image of alignment between the case he was attempting to make and this general philosophical principle. In essence, if Montesquieu believed in the importance of virtue, and Clinton agreed with Montesquieu, then Clinton must also have believed the same. It helped, of course, that Montesquieu also avowed that the republican form of government could only function as intended on a small scale, and that the larger a state became the more difficult it would be for a republic to stay republican. Clinton as Cato had every reason to project his agreement with this principle as well, being the governor of a relatively small state whose authority was tacitly being threatened by plans to more thoroughly incorporate it into a large one. James Madison, writing in Federalist No. 10, had actively defied Montesquieu – whose ideas he otherwise favorably invoked – by affirming that an “extensive republic” was in actual fact possible so long as its government was properly organized. By rhetorically placing himself next to Montesquieu, Clinton may therefore also have intended to take one of his opponents to task. Whereas Madison claimed to revere Montesquieu while disregarding one of the fundamental principles he espoused, Clinton remained comparatively true to his ideas, conceivably strengthening his case as a result.

Clinton’s invocation in Cato V of the writings of 17^th century English political theorist Algernon Sidney appeared somewhat less nakedly rhetorical than that which he directed at the aforementioned Baron de Montesquieu. Whereas the French philosophe was named without being quoted, Sidney’s words found their way into the final text of Clinton’s essay in direct support of his avowed belief in the efficacy of annual elections. “If annual elections were to exist in this government,” the sixth paragraph of Cato V accordingly began, “And learning and information to become more prevalent, you never will want man to execute whatever you could design [.]” In support of this assertion, Clinton cited two passages from Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government (1698), a treatise which was used in evidence against the latter during the treason trial in 1683 that ultimately resulted in his execution. The first, taken from the section entitled, “That is the Best Government, Which Best Provides for War,” declared, “That a well governed state is as fruitful to all good purposes as the seven headed serpent is said to have been in evil; when one head is cut off, many rise up in the place of it.” By and large, this would seem to align with what Clinton had affirmed in the previous paragraph of Cato V. Much as with Montesquieu’s stated belief in the paramount importance of education to the cultivation and maintenance of republican virtue, Sidney avowed that republics were particularly stable because authority therein rested on many shoulders rather than on those of some narrow elite. The reason that this was possible, Clinton helpfully asserted, was that access to the levers of power within a republic was more widely available than in any other form of government, thus diffusing both responsibility and knowledge across a comparatively wide percentage of the general population. A state thus organized could accordingly avoid vesting power in an insular cabal or a ruling dynasty whose members were bound to place their interests ahead of the public good. If one magistrate in a republic proved ill-tempered or ill-suited, there were a great many more who could take their place. Annual elections would naturally facilitate this outcome better than biennial elections by providing more opportunities for the public to replace such officers as had acted against their wishes and by more widely disseminating administrative experience as a greater number of individuals rotated through office.

    

The second passage which Clinton cited, taken from the section of Discourses Concerning Government entitled, “Men Living Under Popular or Mix’d Governments, Are More Careful of the Public Good, Than in Absolute Monarchies,” seemed to expand on this same idea by stating that, “Free cities by frequent elections of magistrates became nurseries of great and able men, every man endeavoring to excel others, that he might be advanced to the honor he had no other title to, than what might arise from his merit, or reputation.” Sidney – and Clinton by association – thus brought to bear upon the balance of interests within a republic the additional concept of incentive. Republics, he avowed, essentially harnessed individual ambition for the purpose of furthering the public good by offering people who sought honor and prestige the opportunity to attain them both in service of their fellow man. Though this is arguably something of a paradox – people seeking to fulfill their selfish ambitions by acting selflessly – it is nevertheless also a fairly sensible proposition. In a republic, as Sidney indicated, anyone – within certain reasonable limits – could gain the power to legislate or to carry out the execution of the laws provided they could secure the trust and approbation of their fellow citizens. Those best suited to exercise such responsibilities, as it happened, were arguably among the least likely to seek them. Possessed of virtue and inclined towards self-sacrifice, such individuals would naturally be disinclined to pursue power for its own sake. Meanwhile, those least suited – because of their ambition, their selfishness, or their delusions of superiority – would be the most likely to aspire to the highest possible public authority. A republican society might try all it liked to cultivate virtue in the individual – as Montesquieu believed was eminently necessary – but there were still bound to be people for whom self-aggrandizement came more naturally than self-abnegation.

Fortunately – or so Sidney affirmed – republicanism embodied its own solution to this very problem. If the only way to attain the highest offices in a republic was to win the public’s trust, and if there were always going to be people in a republic who sought after the highest offices, then the obvious result was bound to be the gradual internalization by these ambitious office-seekers of the habits and attitudes of honesty and self-sacrifice. Some of them might attempt to wear honesty as a mask, of course, while simultaneously conspiring to greater heights of power and prestige. But between the constant scrutiny of their constituents and the constant threat of losing reelection, such a performance would have to become nearly unceasing. A particularly determined individual might attempt shoulder this burden all the same, playing at selflessness in their every public action and remark while pursuing their own ambitions in the privacy of their own council. But why bother? Why go to the trouble of keeping up such an elaborate ruse when sincerely embracing the path or virtue would likely bring about the same result? If pretending to be honest would net the same outcome as actually being honest, why bother pretending? This, Sidney affirmed, was the essential bargain which the republican form of government offered to its inhabitants. Prestige could be theirs, and honor, and the adulation of their fellow citizens. All they had to do was to behave in such a way as to deserve these things. All they had to do was be virtuous. Some, again, would resist the logic of this trade, self-abnegation being – as Montesquieu put it – an arduous and painful course of behavior. But in time, in Clinton’s own words, the desire on the part of certain individuals, “To be advanced to the supreme command […] becomes part of their education, is matured in manhood, and produces an ardent affection for their country [.]” Ambition, in short, would be made to negate itself.

Annual elections, of course, would play a central role in this process by offering more frequent opportunities for the elevation of individuals to offices of public trust and by serving as a constant check on said individual’s behavior. In essence, the more elections that were held, the more people would believe they had a chance of attaining high office, and the more they would cultivate the attitudes and behaviors which they believed would get them there. To be sure, this could hardly be said to represent an infallible principle of republican political philosophy. As the intervening centuries have shown, virtue is not necessarily the primary characteristic which an individual aspiring to office in a republic must demonstrate in order to reliably secure election. Indeed, the rise of formal partisanship and the influence of radical populism have arguably succeeded in ensuring that strict adherence to a narrow policy platform or the use of manipulative rhetoric can both be counted on to produce support among a given group of constituents far more effectively than a display of honesty or integrity. That being said, Clinton’s invocation of Sidney in the text of Cato V nonetheless represents a very early attempt to apply in practice what up to that point in Anglo-American history had remained an untested theory.

Algernon Sidney, recall, was always more of a philosopher than a statesman whose writings on the nature and necessity of republicanism never came particularly close to being implemented within his lifetime. Indeed, it was his dedication to seeing them implemented – and his consequent opposition to monarchy and connection with one anti-monarchist association in particular – that arguably resulted in his trial, conviction, and execution for treason. Yet here was George Clinton, writing over a century later under the name of Cato, attempting to utilize some of the principles laid down by Sidney to secure the alteration of a proposed republican government that was just on the cusp of being sanctioned and enacted. Naturally, he had no more idea in the 1780s whether said principles would play out as intended than Sidney had had one hundred years prior and an ocean away. But compared to a number of his fellow Anti-Federalists, Clinton could at least offer a rationale for demanding annual elections that went deeper than, “Because the Romans did it.” As he claimed to understand it – and has Sidney had figured previously – republics were possessed of the unusual ability of being able to produce one of the key elements they required to survive. Virtue, as previously defined by the Montesquieu, was that essential element, and elections were the means by which a republic could seek to promote it. The more often they were held, the more people would seek to use them to gain access to the levers of power. And as the price for elevation to the seat of this power was an outward and continual adherence to the ideals of honesty and self-sacrifice, ambition would actively be converted into virtue. Annual elections would arguably draw this process out to its logical conclusion by focusing constant attention on officeholders and their behavior and by in time serving to embed the habits of virtue in the core of the relevant society’s political culture. As mentioned above, this can hardly be said to represent a flawless conception of the fundamental power dynamics that exist within a republic. Nevertheless, George Clinton would seem to deserve no small amount of credit for at least understanding at such an early and uncertain point in the history of modern republicanism that certain questions yet remained as to the sustainability of that form of government, and for attempting to offer some manner of response.