Men of Little Faith: The Anti-Federalists on the Nature of Representative Government Author(s): Cecelia M. Kenyon Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Jan., 1955), pp. 3-43 Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1923094 . Accessed: 08/03/2014 08:03 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The William and Mary Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.63.184.195 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014 08:03:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Men of Little Faith: The Anti-Federalistson the Nature of RepresentativeGovernment CeceliaM. Kenyon* O NE of the gravestdefects of the late CharlesBeard's economic interpretationof the Constitutionis the limited perspectiveit has encouragedin thosewho have acceptedit, and the blockto fruitful investigationof the ideas and institutionsof the RevolutionaryAge to which it has been conducive.Like many theoriesinfluential in both the determinationand the interpretationof historicalevents, Beard'sthesis and its implicationswere nevercarefully analyzed either by himselfor his followers.As a result,its impacton the studyof Americanhistory produced certaineffects not anticipated,which Beardhimself must surelyhave re- grettcd.Ile economicinterpretation employed by him somewhattenta- tively as a tool for analysisand researchquickly became a methodological stereotypeand led to a stereotypicalappreciation of the Constitutionand of the historicalcontext in which it was created. Beard'sfailure-perhaps it was deliberaterefusal-to subjecthis thesis to rigorousanalysis or to define it with precisionmakes it impossibleto label him a clear-cut,thorough-going economic determinist. His position was alwaysambiguous and ambivalent,and in his lateryears he explicitly repudiatedany monistic theoryof causation.'Nevertheless, the thrustof An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution and the effectsof its thesis * Miss Kenyon is a member of the Departmentof Governmentat Smith College. 1 A critical and definitive study of Beard as an historian has not yet been done. Interesting commentarieson the ambiguity to be found in Beard's thesis are Max Lerner's"Charles A. Beard,"in his Ideas Are Weapons (New York, 1939), pp. I6I- I62, and Richard Hofstadtcr's "CharlesBeard and the Constitution,"in Charles A. Beard: An Appraisal,edited by Howard K. Beale (University of Kentucky Press, 1954). Hofstadter also cites the different attitudes toward the Constitution and its framersreflected in the Beards' The Rise of American Civilization (i927) and their Basic History of the United States (i944). Beale's essay in the same collection, "CharlesBeard: Historian," recounts in broad terms the shifts in Beard's historio- graphical thought throughout his career. It is with the Beard of the earlier period that this essay is concerned, for this was the period of his most influential works. This content downloaded from 129.63.184.195 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014 08:03:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 4 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY as applied have frequentlybeen those of simple and uncriticalcommit- ment to a theoryof economicdeterminism. Of theseeffects, the most significanthas beena disinclinationto explore the theoreticalfoundations of the Constitution.In the chapterentitled "The Constitutionas an EconomicDocument," Beard presented the struc- tureof the government,particularly the systemof separationof powersand checks and balances,as the institutionalmeans chosen by the Founding Fathersto protecttheir property rights against invasion by democraticma- jorities.'This interpretation,or variationsof it, has been widely accepted, though it has been frequentlychallenged both directlyand indirectly.8Its tendencyis to disposeof the institutionalthought of the men who framed the Constitutionas ideologicalresponse to economicinterest. The present essayoffers yet anotherchallenge to this position,not by furtherexamina- tion of the Constitutionor its authors,but by analysisof the Anti-Federalist positionof I787-1788. 2Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (New York, 1913), Ch. VI, especially pp. 154-i64 See also the succinct statement in The Economic Basis of Politics (New York, 1922), pp. 66-67: "Under the circumstances the framers of the Constitution relied, not upon direct economic qualification, but upon checks and balances to secure the rights of property-particularly personal property-against the assaults of the farmers and the proletariat."In Charles and Mary Beard's The Rise of American Civilization (New York, 1927), the theme is continued: "Almost unanimous was the opinion that democracy was a dangerous thing, to be restrained, not encouraged, by the Constitution, to be given as little voice as possible in the new system, to be hamperedby checks and balances."(p. 3i5; cf. p. 326.) It was this position which the Bcards had apparentlyabandoned by the 1940's. The attitude of The Republic (x942), and of The Basic History (i944), is one of appreciationof the authorsof the Constitution,not condemnation. 8 In x936 Maurice Blinkoff published a study of the influenceof Beard on Ameri- can historiographyand came to the conclusion that authors of college history text- books had adopted Beard'sviews "with virtual unanimity."The Influence of Charles A. Beard upon American Historiography,University of Buffalo Studies, XII (May, 1936), p. 36. I have not conducted a comprehensivesurvey, but it seems to me that Blinkoff'sconclusions would probablynot be accuratefor today. For challenges to the Beard position, the reader may consult the survey of re- views of An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution cited in Blinkoff, as well as some of the selections in the Amherst Problems in American Civilization series; Earl Latham, editor, The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (Boston, 1949), though this collection is, in the opinion of the author, biased in favor of the Beard interpretation.See also B. F. Wright, "The Origin of Separation of Powers in America,"Economica, May, 1933; and "The Federaliston the Nature of Political Man," Ethics, Vol. LIX, No. 2, Part II (January, 1949); and Douglass Adair, "The Tenth Federalist Revisited," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, Vol. VIII (January,195i). This content downloaded from 129.63.184.195 on Sat, 8 Mar 2014 08:03:02 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MEN OF LITrLE FAITH 5 Perhapsbecause theirs was the losing side, the politicalthought of the Anti-Federalistshas receivedmuch less attentionthan that of the Founding Fathers.Since they fought the adoption of a Constitutionwhich they thought to be aristocraticin origin and intent, and which by Beardian criteriawas inherentlyanti-democratic in structure,there has been some tendencyto characterizethem as spokesmenof eighteenth-centurydemoc- racy. But their theory of republicangovernment has never been closely analyzed,nor have the areasof agreementand disagreementbetween them and the Federalistsbeen carefullydefined. It is the purposeof this essay to explorethese topics.A very large proportionof the peoplein 1787-1788 were Anti-Federalists,and a knowledge of their ideas and attitudesis essentialto an understandingof Americanpolitical thought in the forma- tive yearsof the republic. Implicitin this purposeis the thesisthat the ideologicalcontext of the Constitutionwas as importantin determiningits form as were the eco- nomic interestsand motivationsof its framers,and that the failure of Beardand his followersto examinethis contexthas renderedtheir inter- pretationof the Constitutionand its origin necessarilypartial and un- realistic. Beard'sconclusions rested on two assumptionsor arguments.One was that the framersof the Constitutionwere motivatedby theirclass and per- haps their personaleconomic interests; a great deal of evidence,drawn from more or less contemporaryrecords, was presentedto supportthis partof the thesis.A secondassumption was that the systemof separation of powersand checksand balanceswritten into the Constitutionwas un- democratic.In making this secondassumption Beard was moreinfluenced by the ideas of the Populistand Progressivemovements of his own time, I think,than by a studyof the politicalbeliefs current in 1787.He was pre- occupiedin 1913 with his period'sinterest in reformingthe structureof the nationalgovernment to make it more democratic,which by his standards meant more responsibleto simple majority rule. Thus he judged an eighteenth-centuryframe of governmentby'a twentieth-centurypolitical doctrine.The effect was to suggest by implicationthat the men who in 1787-1788thought the Constitutionaristocratic and antagonisticto popular governmentthought so for the samereasons as Beard.4The evidenceshows 4There is no doubt at all that many of the Anti-Federalistsdid regard the Con- stitution as dangerous and aristocratic,and its framers and supporterslikewise. They were acutely