The Romantic Revolution in Taste entailed a radical revision of the category of art and a toppling of the traditional hierarchy of the senses. In the wake of the French Revolution, Parisian gastronomers emerged as necessary adjuncts to the phenomenon of the restaurant, guiding the public in the formerly exclusive practice of food connoisseurship and applying the aesthetic art of judgment to products of culinary artistry. This chapter examines the response of British literary writers and critics to the cultural upheaval the age of gastronomy represented. It surveys the different “schools” of thought that emerged at this time – in the language of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, the Leg of Mutton School, the Cookery School, the Soda-Water School – in addition to the more well-known Cockney and Lake Schools – and considers the role of William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, John Keats, William Kitchiner, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy and Mary Shelley, and Lord Byron in the Romantic Revolution in taste.

In the winter of 1791–92, James Madison compiled a set of reading notes that scholars long assumed were meant to support the “party press” essays he soon published in the National Gazette, the new Republican newspaper edited by his college friend, the poet Philip Freneau. But as Colleen Sheehan has argued, Madison also conceived these “Notes on Government” for a more ambitious project: to draft a treatise on republican government that would apply the lessons of the American experience to problems that had long fascinated political theorists. The table of contents that opens the notebook indicates the outlines of the argument. The treatise, alas, remained unwritten – a reminder of the fact that Madison preferred to do his best political writing for himself, rather than the reading public. Alexander Hamilton, his co-author as Publius, felt fewer inhibitions and proved a more spirited polemicist. Had Madison gone back to Virginia in the fall of 1787, to aid in the ratification struggle in his native state, rather than returning to the Continental Congress, his twenty-nine contributions to The Federalist would never have appeared. Without Federalist 10 and 51 and a few other essays to guide our thinking, the modern concept of a “Madisonian constitution” might never have formed. Who knows: had Hamilton written nearly all of The Federalist, with a little assistance from John Jay, we might have been stuck with a “Hamiltonian constitution” all along.

Judging from the title that Publius gave his collection of essays, the label that defenders of the proposed Constitution took for themselves, and the label that became attached to their opponents, federalism seems to have been the central issue in the debate over the proposed Constitution. Yet the labels themselves are often the source of confusion when speaking of the debate over its ratification. One form the confusion takes is the puzzlement that derives from the fact that the Constitution’s opponents, the Anti-Federalists, are usually characterized as a group who sought a more federal constitution than the nationalist-leaning document the so-called Federalists were sponsoring. It might seem that the parties were strangely mislabeled, a feeling shared not only by many modern readers, but by some of the participants in the debate themselves. So Melancton Smith, a leading Anti-Federalist, was reported to have said in the New York Ratifying Convention, in reply to a speech by a leading Federalist: “He hoped the gentleman would be complaisant enough to exchange names with those who disliked the Constitution, as it appeared … that they were Federalists, and those who advocated it Anti-Federalists.” The confusion over names was certainly a natural one, but the names that have stuck were not so inappropriate or so much a usurpation as critics like Smith averred. All the parties to the debate, even Anti-Federalists like the Federal Farmer, thought by many to be Smith, agreed that a federal system had two major components: member states and a “federal head” or general government for the whole. Since a federal system was normally contrasted with a unitary or consolidated system like France, the federal system was thought to be the one with decentralized authority, that is, with more authority in the member states relative to the greater authority in the general or central government of a unitary system. Thus, one could plausibly be labeled a federalist if one were in favor of greater authority in the member units relative to the federal head (as the Anti-Federalists were). But one could just as well be a federalist for favoring the strengthening of the federal head or central government (as the Federalists did). Given the circumstances of the debate over the Constitution, its advocates even had a somewhat stronger claim to the label, despite the understandable ambiguities. The pro-Constitution forces came before the country with a proposal to strengthen the federal head and thus were in this sense Federalists.

Conventional accounts of The Federalist tend to overlook a critical and uncontroversial fact about the Constitution: the principal function it assigned the proposed new government was the conduct of the Union’s foreign affairs. By neglecting this simple point, readers too often miss the forest for the trees. The central task of The Federalist was not to offer a general blueprint for republican government but rather to demonstrate the depth of the Confederation’s failures in foreign affairs and to explain why the new federal government would govern more effectively in that realm without imperiling the republican commitments of the Revolution. This insight in turn reveals another: Even when The Federalist focuses on other, very different themes – whether in analyzing the general principles of federalism or the separation of powers, the importance of energy in the executive or independence in the judiciary, or the deficiencies of popular assemblies – foreign affairs remains its ultimate subject. These explorations were so many arguments to demonstrate that the federal government would neither repeat the Confederation’s foreign affairs blunders, nor pose a threat to the states and the republican principles upon which they were founded.

A common perception of the arguments in The Federalist may be stated as follows. In designing the Constitution, the framers were motivated by reason. Their task was to limit the influence of interest and passion, and perhaps enhance the role of reason, in the future political agents whose choices the Constitution would guide and constrain. In a more compact version, to paraphrase Friedrich Hayek, the American Constitution – like constitutions quite generally – was a tie imposed by Peter when sober on Peter when drunk.

The American civic canon holds that the Constitution creates three branches of government that are both separate and “equal.” Publius’s essays on Congress cast serious doubt on this supposition, at least with respect to the extent of each branch’s influence on the workings of the national regime. It is no mistake that both the Constitution and The Federalist treat Congress as the first branch of government. It is “justly regarded” as such, Louis Fisher says, primarily because of the appropriations power elucidated in Federalist 58. The Federalist understands Congress, George W. Carey writes, “to be the heart of the proposed system.” Even the doubts and concerns that Publius expresses about Congress reflect regard for its authority. Federalist 51, for example, acknowledges that the legislature “necessarily predominates” (Fed. 51, 350) in a republic, but it also seeks a remedy for the “inconveniency” this poses to the separation of powers. Institutionally, Congress has the power both to constitute and discipline the other branches, which have no comparable authority over it. Even when defending executive energy, Publius describes it as secondary to legislative deliberation. The centrality of the legislative branch is demonstrable not only institutionally but also theoretically, for it is here that Publius places his greatest hopes for solving one of his most fundamental problems: the reconciliation of a government with sufficient authority and energy on the one hand, with the preservation of both public and personal liberty, on the other – a concern that Hamilton and Madison respectively expressed in Federalist 1 and 37.

Aristotle conceived of politics as the master science, encompassing both the most practical political concerns and the highest human purpose: the quest for human happiness through the life well-lived. In light of this classical perspective that recognized both the limitations on political life and the nobility of its highest achievements, the renowned scholar Martin Diamond once provocatively asked: How would Aristotle rate America? Diamond’s query was not merely an academic exercise, but was intended to prompt his fellow citizens to raise the profoundest of political concerns: Is my country worthy of my allegiance? And am I, as a citizen and human being, worthy of my country – of what it stands for, what it aspires to be?

In April 1787 James Madison composed for his own use a memorandum entitled “Vices of the Political System of the United States.” He did so in preparation for a convention, slated to meet within a few weeks in Philadelphia, which had been called – in part at his urging – for the purpose of proposing amendments to the instrument linking the various American states.

In late May 1788, with The Federalist’s essays on Congress and the executive now completed, Alexander Hamilton turned finally to Article III and the judiciary. His six essays on the judiciary, Federalist 78–83, had only a limited effect on ratification. No newspaper outside New York reprinted them, and they appeared very late in the ratification process – after eight states had ratified. But, if these essays had little immediate impact – essentially limited to the ratification debates in New York and, perhaps, Virginia – they were a stunning intellectual achievement. Modern scholars have made Madison’s political and constitutional theory the great story of the Federalist, and Federalist 10, in particular, has long been “in the center of constitutional debate.” But careful study of essays 78–83 reveals that Hamilton had an innovative and consequential vision of the law and the judicial role that deserves at least as much attention as Madison’s contributions.

The wisdom of The Federalist brings the politics of liberalism to a height it had not reached before and was not to keep. To sustain this lofty claim, I shall first briefly compare its political science – the form of its wisdom – both backward to its sources in liberalism and republicanism and forward to its unwitting heir, the political science of today. The Federalist made liberalism popular and republicanism viable, on the one hand refashioning Locke and Montesquieu to accommodate the American “republican genius” (Fed. 66, 448; also Fed. 37, 234; Fed. 70, 471) and on the other, giving lessons in prudence to naïve republicans in thrall to utopian theory and unable to learn from sad experience. Looking forward, we shall see that our political science repeats the formula we have from Publius (apparent author of The Federalist), as it criticizes formal theory and then proceeds to recreate a formal theory of its own. But our political science does this unconsciously and incompletely, so that it loses the capacity to give advice. To recover the wisdom of The Federalist – still available to us – I shall examine its reform of the republican form and try to show how we can recover its sage and subtle advice. To follow Publius will require a study of the use and abuse of forms in politics.

A particular understanding of James Madison’s constitutional thinking now dominates American scholarship, especially in law. According to this view, Madison was frightened of popular politics and deeply suspicious of majority rule. Having witnessed politics in the states during the critical years just after the Revolution – more, having experienced state government firsthand during an exasperating three-year stint in the Virginia Assembly – Madison had come to see democracy as the problem, particularly as it was practiced in the popularly elected state legislatures. Yet rather than give in to despair, as some of his contemporaries were wont to do, Madison set out to find an answer. And he succeeded brilliantly, shepherding in a new national constitution while helping to create what Gordon Wood has called a fresh “American Science of Politics” – the theoretical framework of which he spelled out in his writings as Publius.

On October 22, 1787, five days before the appearance of the first Federalist paper, John and Sarah Jay hosted a dinner party in New York City whose guests included Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Hamilton had recently returned from Albany, where he had pled before the state supreme court, while Madison was attending the moribund Continental Congress. John Jay’s hosting duties represented the social side of his official role as secretary for foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation, but on this occasion his guests were all men of affairs, and politics could hardly be avoided in the charged atmosphere created by the recently proposed Constitution. While it is tempting to picture Jay, Hamilton, and Madison – the future Publius – finalizing their plans over Madeira and rum punch, the secrecy of the project makes it unlikely that it was openly discussed.

How does Publius’s treatment of politics in The Federalist measure up as “political science”? On one hand, the purpose of the essays was more polemical than scientific. The Federalist sought to persuade New Yorkers to adopt the proposed Constitution rather than to evaluate it from an entirely dispassionate stance. Yet Publius’s rhetorical method necessarily required predictions about the ways in which the new institutions would work. The Federalist necessarily made use of positive (empirically based) political science to ground normative political arguments to defend the novel constitutional scheme.

For well over a century, the authorship of the individual essays of The Federalist was a matter of great uncertainty. The initial source of this uncertainty simply reflected the conventional practices of eighteenth-century political writing, when most polemical pieces, especially those appearing in newspapers, were published pseudonymously. When Alexander Hamilton, the instigator and chief author of The Federalist, chose Publius as the penname, he was paying homage to Valerius Publius Publicola, the sixth-century BCE aristocrat who was a chief founder of the Roman republic. His two co-authors, James Madison and John Jay, would have welcomed his choice. Madison in particular would have saluted Publius’s distinguished republican credentials. A major part of Madison’s preparations for the Federal Convention of 1787 involved his comparative study of “ancient and modern confederacies” and his thorough assessment of the failings of popular government recorded in his famous memorandum on the “Vices of the Political System of the United States.” Madison returned to that project shortly after the Convention adjourned on September 17, 1787. Within the next few years, he developed an even more ambitious plan – apparently never fulfilled – consulting writings either from antiquity or about it to provide the framework for a study of modern republican government.

Alexander Hamilton’s essays in The Federalist on the need for an energetic central government have long stood in the shadow of James Madison’s essays on interest-group conflicts, the structure of government, the perils of majority rule, and the protection of minority rights. This privileging of Madison over Hamilton in the interpretation of both The Federalist and, by extension, the founding began more than a century ago, when Charles Beard presented Federalist 10 as the essence of Federalist political philosophy. In his Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, Beard even claimed that his own view of the Constitution as the outcome of clashing economic interest groups, ultimately rooted in “the various and unequal distribution of property,” was “based upon the political science of James Madison.” The central thrust of Madison’s intervention, The Federalist, and the Constitution, Beard said, was to promote material gain by providing greater safeguards for private property rights.