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A constitution against parties: Madisonian pluralism and the Anti-party tradition*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Richard Hofstadter
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THAT POLITICAL PARTIES DID NOT HOLD A RESPECTABLE PLACE IN 18th-century American political theory was a reflection of the low place they were believed to hold in practice. Wherever the Americans looked, whether to the politics of Georgian England, their own provincial capitals or the republics of the historical past, they thought they saw in parties only a distracting and divisive force representing the claims of unbridled, seKsh, special interests. I do not intend here to try to penetrate the thickets of 18th-century politics either in England or in the American provinces. We long ago learned not to identify the Whigs and Tories of the 18th century with the highly developed British political parties of modern times, and not to imagine that England had a well-developed two-party system at the close of the 18th century or even during the first two decades of the 19th. Modern parties have grown up in response to (and in turn have helped to stimulate) the development of large electorates, and their institutional structures are in good measure an outgrowth of the efforts necessary to connect the parliamentary party and the mass party. The modern party is, in this respect, the disciplined product of regular party competition in the forum of public opinion. It also deals with legislative issues, over which the established parties differ.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1969 , pp. 345 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1969

References

1 Cf. Richard Pares: ‘In the eighteenth century Cabinets existed to govern rather than to legislate, and parties to sustain government rather than legislation;…when a minister legislated, even on important matters, he often did so as an individual, not only technically but politically. It did not often happen that a patty’s programme consisted of legislation, or that the merits of a legislative proposal were, in any sense, put before the electorate.’King George III and the Politicians, 1953, p. 195. Cf. Plumb, J. H., Sir Robert Walpole: The Making of a Statesman, 1956, pp. 250–1.Google Scholar

2 Pares, King George III, p. 191; cf. pp. 182–207. The fluctuations and gradual growth of opposition and party politics are traced in Archibald S. Foord, His Majesty’s Opposition, 1714–1830, 1964.

3 Hamilton citing Necker to the Federal Convention, Max Farrand., ed., Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, 1911, I, p. 288.

4 Ver Steeg, Clarence, The Formative Years, 1607–1763, 1964, p. 273.Google Scholar

5 Richard P. McCormick, Experiment in Independence, p. 79; see Chapter IV of this work for an excellent account of political machinery in the 1780s. Carl L. Becker, in his History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760–1776 (1909), considered that parties, not very clearly defined, came into being in the 1760s, but concedes that before that date New York was still in the thrall of ‘aristocratic methods of political management’. See pp. 11–18.

6 The Federalist, ed. by B. F. Wright, 1961, pp. 353–4. On the party struggle before 1776, see Theodore Thayer, Pennsylvania Politics and the Growth of Democracy, 1740–1776, 1953.

7 See Sydnor, C. S., Gentlemen Freeholders, 1952, esp. pp. 106–8, 115, 120–1.Google Scholar On the nature and significance of deferential society, see the brilliant essay by Pole, J. R., ‘Historians and the Problem of Early American Democracy’, American Historical Review, 67, 1962, pp. 626–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the transition from the politics of deference to those of public opinion and party debate in England and America, see Lloyd Irving Rudolph, ‘The Meaning of Party’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1956.

8 Greene, Jack P., The Quest for Power, 1963, pp. 29–30;Google Scholar see also David Alan Williams, ‘Political Alignments in Colonial Virginia, 1698–1750’, unpublished doctoral dissertation Northwestern University, 1959, and Tate, Thad W., ‘The Coming of the Revolution in Virginia: Britain’s Challenge to Virginia’s Ruling Class’, William and Mary Quarterly, 19, 1962, pp. 339–40, 343.Google Scholar

9 Farrand, Records, I, p. 578; The Federalist (No. 48), p. 343. On the theme of power and liberty, see Bernard Bailyn., The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, 1967, and on the late acceptance of parties in formal political theory, Austin Ranney, ‘The Reception of Political Parties into American Political Science’, South-Western Social Science Quarterly, 32, 1951, pp. 183–91.

10 Farrand, Records, I, 421; Elliot, Jonathan., Debates in the Several State Conventions, II, 1888, p. 285.Google Scholar Cf. Madison in Number 51, where he argues that one should so contrive ‘the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places’. Again, the way to avoid excessive legislative predominance is ‘to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit’. Federalist, pp. 355, 357.

11 See her ‘Introduction’ to her documentary anthology, The Antifederalists, 1966, ex; cf. lv, lxxxv, xciii—xciv; see also her essay, ‘Men of Little Faith: the Antifederalists on the Nature of Representative Government’, William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, XII, 1955, p. 40; cf. pp. 13, 36.

12 For a full account of this movement, see Carl Bridenbaugh., Mitre and Sceptre, 1962.

13 Ibid., pp. 306n, 52.

14 For this alliance see Mead, Sidney E., ‘American Protestantism during the Revolutionary Epoch’, Church History, 12, 1953, pp. 279–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 The Independent Reflector, ed. by Milton Klein., 1963, pp. 146, 148. On the significance of this controversy, see Klein’s Introduction, and Hofstadter, Richard. and Metzger, Walter P., The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States, 1955, pp. 187–91.Google Scholar

16 Independent Reflector, pp, 184, 195, 213: italics added.

17 A discourse on the Christian Union, 1761, 53, 95, 96–97; cf. Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre, Chapter I.

18 Papers, ed. by W. T. Hutchinson and W. M. E. Rachal, I, 1962, pp. 101–6, 107, 111–13, 159, 170 ff.; Irving Brant, James Madison: The Virginia Revolutionist, 1941, pp. 65–77, 85, 128–30, 243 ff.

19 Elliot, , Debates, III, p. 330;Google Scholar see also Madison, , Writings, Hunt, ed., II, p. 185; V, p. 176.Google Scholar

20 The Federalist, p. 358, italics added; cf. Farrand, Records, I, pp. 134–6 for his speech in the Convention of 1787; and Writings, V, pp. 123–9 for his speech in the Virginian Convention.

21 For the text, see The Federalist, pp. 129–36. The composition of this remarkable essay had gone on for some period of time. The basic analysis had been stated and restated in letters and in his ‘Observations’ of April 1787. See Writings, II, pp. 273, 346–7, 366–9; V, pp. 28–32. It is important also, on this theme, to read The Federalist, Numbers 14, 37, 47, 48, 50 and 51.

22 For example: ‘…and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail’. The Federalist, No. 10, p. 132. See, on this, the useful textual comparisons made by Dietze, Gottfried in The Federalist: A Classic on Federalism and Free Government, 1960, p. 119 Google Scholarn.; Dietze also points out (p. 106) that Hamilton and Jay used the terms in the same way; cf. B. F. Wright in his edition of The Federalist, p. 33.

23 Note that where Burke had defined party as based on principles aiming to advance the common interest, Madison defines it as based on passions or interests that threaten the general welfare.

24 Cf. Hume, Essays, I, 99: But a republican and free government would be an obvious absurdity, if the particular checks and controls, provided by the constitution, had really no influence, and made it not the interest, even of bad men, to act for the public good.

25 In The Federalist, Number Nine, Hamilton had tackled the same problem by trying to show that even Montesquieu had seen the confederation of republics as an answer to the problem of size.

26 See Dahl, Robert A., A Preface to Democratic Theory, 1956, pp. 27–9,Google Scholarand more generally, Chapter I, ‘Madisonian Democracy’.

27 Mason, Alpheus T., ‘The Federalist - A Split Personality’, American Historical Review, 57, 1952, pp. 625–43,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. pp. 636 ff.

28 The American Commonwealth, 3rd ed., 1897, 1, p. 6; II, pp. 3, 4.

29 Forrest McDonald, We the People, 1958, Chapter II. On Delaware, however, see Munroe, John A., Federalist Delaware, 1954, pp. 97–109,Google Scholar who finds two basic factions here also.