#thefoundingfortunes

[notanotherbookreview]

Tom Shachtman

"Tariffs, taxes on the wealthy, the national debt, regional disparities, keeping manufacturing on these shores, our leaders’ private vs. public interests—these were issues present at the birth of this country that retain startling relevance in today’s world."

THE FOUNDING FORTUNES invites comparisons between those wealthy Americans who financed the long Revolution and set up a new nation with no banking system and war debt. 

[notanotherbookreview]

Alfred Gallatin and Hamilton bust. 

About Pendulum swings in government from THE FOUNDING FORTUNES by Tom Shachtman Published 1/20/20 St. Martin’s Press "There comes a moment in every pendulum's arc when it slows to a halt before reversing direction and heading toward the apogee. In the spring of 1794, events signaling such a change in direction included Hamilton's resignation; his acknowledgment that the country no longer needed to keep the debt intact to stay united; Gallatin's persuading of the Federalist-controlled House to withhold funding for certain operations until it received adequate assurances on their financial impact; and his instituting of regular Ways and Means Committee oversight of executive branch financial actions. The old direction toward the benefit of the already wealthy was replaced by a new one whose aim was voiced in a toast given at a young men's Republican Society in New York:"Less respect to the consuming speculator, who wallows in luxury, than to the productive mechanic, who struggles with indigence." Hamilton bust and Gallatin

[notanotherbookreview]

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LUXURY and other problems with democracy; John Adams and Madison cautioned the framers, “A free people are the most addicted to luxury of any.” (Luxuries, imported carrriages, silk, gold jewelry...)

Pub 1/20/20 St.Martin’s Press-Macmillan

[notanotherbookreview]

Problems with democracy; Adams and Madison cautioned the framers before the constitutional convention...

“In his opus (A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States) (John) Adams addressed head-on a subject to whichthe framers only alluded, Adams insisting that it was inherent in a democracy and had to be guarded against: “A free people are the most addicted to luxury of any.” It was part and parcel of the promise of America, where people who had very little always had the possibility of gaining more:

‘In a country like America, where the means and opportunities for luxury are so easy and so plenty, it would be madness not to expect (luxury), be prepared for it, and provide against the dangers of it in the constitution....Luxury, to certain degrees of excess, is an evil....The evil lies in human nature; and that must be restrained by a mixed form of government, which is the best in the world to manage luxury.’

The prevention of luxury’s overinfluence was a prime reason for what Adams called the “tripleheaded balance,” the apportioning of governing powers among legislative, executive, and judicial branches in such a manner that each branch acted as a check on the worst urges of the others, and in the legislature, the balancing of a house that drew its members from the poorer ranks of society with a senate that drew its members from those who possessed much more property and education. “If we will not adopt that,” Adams warned, “we must suffer the punishment of our termity.” 

(Madison) identified and even more basic problem.

“If the multiplicity and mutability of (state) laws prove a want of wisdom, their injustice betrays a defect still more alarming; more alarming not merely because it is a greater evil in itself, but because it brings more into question the fundamental principle of republican Government, that the majority who rule in such governments, are the safest Guardians both of public Good and of private rights. (Society would always be composed of groups holding opposite views., “creditors or debtors-Rich or poor-husbandmen, merchants or manufacturers-members of different religious sects-followers of different political leaders-inhabitants of different districts-owners of different kinds of property. In a democracy the only way to prevent domination of one group was to configure a government to encompass all.”)