II

After European intellectuals of the eighteenth century became aware of what was happening in America, they provoked a controversial interchange which was one of the ostensible motives stirring Taylor to write. As they awoke to the fact that America was a laboratory of ideas which might be extremely useful to them, there was much discussion of the true nature of government, of rights and privileges and of the measure and distribution of power. The variety of new governments now being set up in America perhaps might work out some of these problems.

Various philosophers studied and wrote about the work in America. Abbé Raynal published a Philosophical and Political History of European Settlements and Commercein the Two Indies (1770 and many subsequent editions) wherein he sought to show how horribly Europeans were interfering in a society which had great possibilities. Others like Chastellux, Mably and Brissot de Warville either read about the New World or visited it and then made their thoughts the texts for published admonitions to Europe to take note. Statesmen, like Turgot, studied American achievement to gain light on the problems of European statecraft.

The philosophers and humanitarians were examining everything American with peculiar zeal and their research was encouraging. These observant Europeans were finding the New World a place of superior virtue, despite heartless European cruelty and exploitation. Here dwelt ‘the noble savage’, the American Indian who was imparting some of his rugged strength and social understanding to the white race coming to his shores.

Work had been going on in this laboratory for nearly a century and a half, particularly in the thirteen British colonies on the North American mainland. These colonies on the Atlantic shore had a most favourable environment for social advance in the stimulating climate of the north temperate zone. Economically they were likewise fortunate, for moderate effort would yield an adequate living with a surplus as a spur to wealth-getting. But the most favouring circumstances for institutional achievement were political. The situation in the homeland and in the colonies combined to make possible superior institutions.

The colonies had been planted at a time when Great Britain was at a stage of energetic dxpansion. The exploits of the Elizabethan Age were followed by the Puritan Revolution, and Englishmen seemingly were on their mettle. Some of that energy was turned to colonial founding. Religious zealots, sturdy adventurers and wealth-hungry enterprisers saw in America the place for their hearts’ desires. They came across the seas to a wilderness which demanded resourcefulness or death; they had the requisite resourcefulness.

From their religious, economic and political heritage in England they drew their institutional patterns and then adjusted them as new frontier experiences prescribed. They created governments which were composites of the religious congregation and synod, the stock company, and the British government under which they had been reared. They adopted the doctrines of the Puritan and the Glorious Revolutions and grew more and more independent in their practice of self-government.

In the years following 1689 the colonial bodies politic were called upon to exercise their powers of government at the same time they participated in a series of general European wars which tested them and taught them both their own competence and the uncertain quality of the strength and efficiency of the mother country. The British Government appeared to the colonials as neglectful, inept at management and, through many of its military and political agents, supercilious, disagreeable and insuking. By the time the Seven Years War came to its end in 1763, the thirteen colonies had come of age, though the British Government, like many parents, seemed unable to grasp the implications of the fact.

The powers of self-government, and the freedom to exercise them, by this time had been so long enjoyed that they led to another political experiment. They had come to be accepted as matters of the colonists’ rightful prerogative. When the home government, at the close of an exhausting war, strove to balance the budget and reorganize the empire administratively, the colonials resisted. Throughout the colonies, certain politicos feared interference with their controls, merchants were worried about taxes and loss of profits and property, and citizens in general saw curtailment of rights and liberties which had become precious to them.

The British Government of that day was lacking in understanding and was befuddled by the peculiarly complicated politics played by the Old Whigs, the Bloomsbury Gang and the King’s Friends. Also, the various ministries of the 1760’s had to operate in a period of demoralization such as often follows wars. Many people were at loose ends in an economic depression; gnd colonial governments, like the British ministry, were confronted with unbalanced budgets and heavy taxes.

Apprehension, accident, bad administration, use of military force, rising indignation, clever propaganda and leadership, plus the great separation in time and space between London and the colonies all made their contribution. The result was that a series of energetic colonial groups led by persons who had gained political experience in running the various legislatures and. local governments became active in protesting against the ‘tyranny’ and ‘unconstitutional’ taxation which their spokesmen so eloquently described. The efforts of the home government to cope with them were inept and futile, no statesman arose with sufficient wisdom to meet the situation and the result was a Declaration of Independence backed by military force. The language of these protests and of the Declaration as it was drafted by Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Sherman and their associates was that of the political philosophers of this and the preceding centuries. The natural rights theory, the concept of a government of law, the necessity of popular consent to acts of rulers, and the right of revolution, all were beautifully phrased.

The philosophical world, particularly in Paris, looked on with , keen interest and a widespread approval. This favourable attention was not lessened by French resentment at their own recent defeat and by a desire to see the British power weakened by dissension and secession. American emissaries, particularly Franklin, were received in France with enthusiasm, supplies and money were provided and enthusiasts for the cause of liberty enlisted. Here was an opportunity for those who believed in the new theories of social and political progress to have a hand in the laboratory experiment, and young zealots like Lafayette, and also some canny adventurers, threw in their lot with the colonists. Statesmen and politicians watched successive events transpire and at an opportune moment the French Government, playing power politics, recognized the colonies as a republic and implemented a military alliance. Philosophical enthusiasm and power polidcs were tightly tangled in a pattern which can be explained according to the predilections of him who seeks to interpret it.

The laboratory technicians were constantly at work during this War for Independence and their product was extensive. Besides the Declaration of Independence they must prepare fourteen other statements to carry out their will and at the same time to’ enlighten a candid world’. Each colony must write its social contract or constitution, and some of them were elaborate. They must proclaim and safeguard liberty; they must anticipate and destroy possible tyrannies. So they exalted the legislatures which were the representatives of the people, and sharply curbed the executives. Further, the representatives of the thirteen republics must create a confederation, must make a reality of the idea of a United States of America. They drafted the Articles of Confederation, a contract for the perpetual union of the thirteen sovereign republics.

The writing of these documents illustrated difficulties which have been present from the beginning of international co-operation. One difficulty was the lack of acquaintance among the leaders of the various colonies. The delegates to the ‘Continental Congress’, which began meeting in 1774, were like delegates to other conferences and congresses before and since. Most of them had never met, they came from communities which had grown up independently and which had different habits and customs. The men from New England represented a tradition of religious, economic and other cultural attitudes and activities quite different from those of the southern colonies. These strangers had to learn to trust each other enough to make mutual concessions.

Another difficulty, and one noted particularly by some European observers, especially Turgot, was the creation of authority. From the meeting of the first Continental Congress there had been a concern about power. The ex-colonials were enthusiastic about rights and liberties and suspicious of power, of possible tyrants. Who was to have power and could anyone be trusted with it? From the beginning it was agreed that as little authority as possible should be permitted and the disposition of that little was dominated by political expediency.

All this dread of power worked to produce a rather naive and unrealistic concept of the problem of confederation. The authors of the Articles assumed that, if they continued their Congress of emissaries without establishing any executive authority, a system of committees could manage foreign affairs and the armed forces, just as they had during the War for Independence, and that most other functions of government could be left to the states. Furthermore they assumed that the states would contribute quotas of funds on request, and therefore they gave the Confederation no levy power. Furthermore they permitted no changes in fundamental law save by a unanimous vote of the states; on all matters each state had one vote, regardless of the size of its population, just as though they were nations in a diplomatic conference.

It was not long before certain weaknesses in this confederation became apparent. The states, absorbed in their own problems, failed to give the financial support requested and quarrelled among themselves. The new confederacy was flouted abroad by other powers, its borders were harassed by unfriendly neighbours —Spanish and French as well as British—in league with the Indian tribes; and within, there were alarming signs of civil disorder endangering life and property. Some of the friends of the experiment, at home and abroad, began to be gravely concerned. Within the Confederation men like Washington, Hamilton, Madison and Wilson, and observers abroad like Turgot, saw that a vital cause of the trouble was the failure to endow the Confederation with power. Jealousy and the naive disregard for the need of power had not safeguarded liberty so much as they had produced weakness.

Confronted by the problem, certain of the American leaders went about the task of creating power in true eighteenth-century fashion. They secured authorization of a special ‘constitutional convention’ to study the situation and to produce a plan. They were ‘rational men of virtue’ and they would apply the techniques of the Enlightenment. Several delegates to the conference made elaborate preparations. They conducted intensive research in the works of the historians and philosophers and made digests of the experiences of all governments, particularly federations. They refreshed themselves in Montesquieu, and their discussions within and without the convention hall centred round this research. They worked out an eighteenth-century rationalization of fact and theory and produced a well-conceived logical document for themselves and their posterity.

This document was more the product of Anglo-American experience, and less of research and reason, than its authors probably realized, a generalization which should be axiomatic in political science. The British Government and those of the colonies had, generally speaking, three branches: executive, legislative and judicial; the legislative branch was generally bicameral. As this form had been blessed by Montesquieu, it was a natural choice. The resulting Constitution not only supplied the needed power, by creating an executive and granting more functions to the legislative branch, but it provided also a neat system of checks and balances to prevent that power from becoming absolute.

The confederation concept was modified, in the light of unhappy recent experience and of the study of other such experiments. Counsels were divided. Some persons, despite experience and research, wanted to continue the loose federation idea. Others advocated a strong, centralized, national republic. The result was a compromise; a federal system in which the states surrendered more power than some of their leaders thought safe, while the advocates of national strength had to be content with a division of power which they thought weakening.

Form and function were easier to derive than the solution of the question of participation. Who was to be responsible for the operation of the system? The new document spoke in the name of the people, ‘We, the people’, but it was apparent that those of the people who were to have the responsibility were limited in number. Neither the judiciary nor the executive branch could be chosen by popular vote. The judges were to be appointed and the executive, in line with the theory of the founders, was to be chosen by a special college of experts elected for the purpose. The upper house of the legislative arm—the Senate—was to be selected by the legislatures of the states. Only the lower house of that branch was to come directly from the people and the ‘people’ in each instance were only those to whom the several states entrusted the franchise. This privilege varied; the lower houses of the state legislatures were generally chosen by male voters who usually must own property or pay taxes. In some cases the upper houses were designed to represent more substantial dements in the state population. The new federal constitution, like some of the state constitutions, was designed to ensure a stable government in which people of property should have the greater responsibility. The Constitution may be described as a counter-revolutionary document, proposed for the purpose of stabilizing the forces let loose during the achievement of independence. Some of the most conspicuous leaders of the Revolution had no part in it and a few opposed it.

This document was duly presented to the state legislatures which had commissioned the authors of it. They arranged for its ratification though in some instances over great opposition, particularly by those who feared that it had given sufficient power to the new federal government to create a new tyranny. No popular vote was ever taken, so it can never be known whether it was favoured by a voting majority of the people. It was acquiesced in by those who were not fully convinced and even by those who opposed it most vigorously.