Among historians there is an argument going on which involves how much influence did John Locke have on the writers of our constitution and on those who ratified the basic law. This is of particular concern to this blog due to the fact that a good deal of my overall presentation is based on the claim that our political culture evolved more from a traditional federalism rather than the ideas of Locke and his theory of natural rights. For those who are new to this blog, what I have shared has been the argument that our political culture held predominantly a view of government and politics that emphasizes a collective bias which holds that we, as citizens, are in a partnership in this polity. Some historians call this general set of ideas and ideals civic humanism.
Civic humanism is central to the collective nature of traditional federalism. I have defined federalism not so much as a fancy term for states’ rights or the argument that our politics should basically revolve around state issues. That definition extols state government as that government, at least as compared to the central government in Washington, as being closer to the people, more knowledgeable of their problems and concerns. It is also the level of government, through the structures of city and county jurisdictions, in which the average person with limited political assets can have a meaningful say and even have influence. While my use of the term incorporates a lot of this bias, it is more concerned with the notion that federalism is about viewing the body politic as just that: an organic association in which its component entities are highly interrelated and codependent. By entities I mean you and I and all of our fellow citizens either individually or in groups. This whole structure is defined and justified by a “sacred,” albeit secular, agreement; one in which the parties, so agreeing, are consenting to the provisions of either a covenant or a compact. The word federalism is derived from the Latin word for covenant, foedius.[1] But not all historians agree with this level of commitment on the part of the founders. The question revolves around how much influence John Locke had at the time of Constitutional Convention in 1787.
Why Locke? This will be more fully addressed in my next posting, but here I want to just point out that Locke was the first to theorize – i.e., set down a coherent argument – on the ideas and notions that became the liberal or natural rights view. What this view has become is not what it was initially. Back in the late 1600s when he wrote, the impetus was to begin representing the political and cultural aims of the merchant and budding industrial interests class which was becoming more influential due to its growing successes. Holding its interests at bay were the entrenched landed (country) interests of the nobility. A country which particularly was experiencing in its politics the tensions among these groups was England. There, the upstart entrepreneurs were fighting many of the established privileges the nobility enjoyed including the inherited positions in Parliament. It was in Britain that we have a more immediate effect of Locke’s writings. He also had an influence on this side of the Atlantic, but it would be more subdued and slower to gain traction. I will save for the next postings some of the language this clash expressed as the upstarts undermined the legitimacy of this advantaged class.
In this posting, I want to merely set the stage. I want to remind you why I believe that the founders fell more heavily on the side of republicanism, the governmental system supported by federalists, than on the side of individualism, the side bolstered by the writings of Locke. While the Constitutional Convention was a definite step away from a purer federalism, it was still well ensconced in its penumbra of ideas. Let me share the historian’s, Forrest McDonald, account of this argument:
It is a grave mistake, however, to assume from this [the influence of natural rights thinking] that the Framers (or even the court-party nationalists [those who questioned the civic minded motivations of people] or even Hamilton) cynically abandoned the whole notion of virtue in the republic and opted to substitute crass self-interest in its stead. Several historians have made that assumption, and at least one has gone so far as to pronounce the judgment that the very tradition of civic humanism, of men finding their highest fulfillment in service to the public, thereby was brought to an end. To commit that mistake is to fail to understand … crucial aspects of the concept that men are driven by their passion. [This includes] a variety of passions, and many of these – love of fame, of glory, of country, for example – are noble.[2]
One source of possible confusion is that there was a movement at the time of the Convention that can be associated with both federalism and natural rights. Among those historians that support the stronger influence by Locke and those who took up the natural rights argument is this recognition that with our constitutional development was the origins of a constitutionalism being a way to stem the power of lawmaking bodies, be it Parliament, Congress, or any state legislature.
This central idea was what galvanized what we consider our version, as opposed to that of the British, of radicalism. This radicalism refers to the passion some approached this new found sense of entitlement of liberty and individual integrity. In the political mix of the time were those who took up this radical advocacy. This had some effect in Britain, but it was in the US that it took on legal status. We incorporated the concern and adopted; it has become a basic constitutional attribute today. This initiative became legally established with the ratification of the Bill of Rights – the first ten amendments to our constitution – and the exertion of the Supreme Court especially under the leadership of John Marshall. Even then, it took the courts until the twentieth century to apply this power of the Constitution in any institutional way. To put this newer concern in context, a more important aim of the founders was to define structurally what it meant to have the people rule through representation and majority rule.[3] But as for limiting lawmaking bodies, keeping them from abusing rights and liberties, this concern obviously promotes the individual, the notion that we are born with those powers that government has no authority to disregard or trample. One can easily see how adopting legal protections from abusive laws which undermine individual prerogatives stems from Lockean ideas. But, one can also see, with just a little more effort, how it also promotes basic ideals of federalism and republicanism.
Let me explain. Central to the notion of federalism, one of its basic values, is equality. This sense of equality has an inclusive quality to it; we are all equal in this common, organic whole of a society. Laws that favor one group over others, as laws often do, pose, at least potentially, very real threats to the egalitarian character of a polity. And this is of importance today with the obscene skewing of income and wealth our nation is currently experiencing. I would argue that above the founders’ concerns for any emerging class of business people was the more fundamental appreciation they had for the organic nature of a polity and the parallel concerns for health of that polity to that of an organic being like themselves. This concern, it was understood, was negatively affected by abusive laws. Let us take in John Adams’ central views on constitutions as reported by the historian, Bernard Bailyn:
So John Adams wrote that a political constitution is like “the constitution of the human body”; “certain contextures of the nerves, fibres, and muscles, or certain qualities of the blood and juices” some of which “may properly be called stamina vitae, or essentials and fundamentals of the constitution; parts without which life itself cannot be preserved a moment.”[4]
I know, I know, he was not at the Constitutional Convention, but his writings had a good deal of influence on those who met in Philadelphia in 1787. He was one of them in spirit and a leader of the Revolution and of the nation (our second president). There are other quotes I could add, but that is not my intent here. What I do want to stress is that while the delegates at the Convention had to deal with very practical concerns of the day, they foresaw a national government structured, acting, and functioning within the parameters of federalist values and what we have come to call civic humanism. So, what then is the place we should attribute to Locke and natural rights principles? That is the topic of my next posting.
[1] So the constitutional scholar, Daniel J. Elazar, informs us.
[2] McDonald, F. (1992). The power of ideas in the convention. In K. L. Hall (Ed.) Major problems in American constitutional history, Volume I: The colonial era through reconstruction (pp. 160-169). Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company. Quotation on pp. 162-163.
[3] Reflecting this, for example, was the evolution of how we choose our presidents – we still have the Electoral College.
[4] Bailyn, B. (1992). The birth of republican constitutionalism. In K. L. Hall (Ed.) Major problems in American constitutional history, Volume I: The colonial era through reconstruction (pp. 91-97). Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Company. Quotation on p. 91.
