How do you build a nation of free men?
The Americans rebelled against England because their revered freedoms and rights as outlined in the Magna Carta were being oppressed. The great Common Law that guaranteed their equality was being denied. They had no voice in the Parliament that was supposed to protect those rights. Their leader, an absolute monarch, had discarded their laws and was ruling them by fiat.
The colonists or their ancestors had braved the stormy Atlantic Ocean in order to start a new, freer, life than they had enjoyed in Europe; they had not been disappointed and they had flourished. They had experimented with many types of governance in their diverse colonies and had, for the most part, opted for personal self-sufficiency augmented with representative city and colonial governments. Those governments had been operating successfully by the time of the Revolution in most of the colonies for 150 years. But the Crown and the Parliament were treating them as chattels, children.
Thomas Jefferson described their plight most eloquently in the call to action expounded in the Declaration of Independence. After the Declaration, the war was joined, the battles fought and the war eventually won. History! After the war, the several colonies returned to business as normal: shipping and fishing in the north, cotton in the south, expansion everywhere and commerce and trade all around. They were sovereign little countries bound to each other by the Articles of Confederation, a loose national government that required the unanimous consent of all to act. Under the Articles there was no provision for taxes to the national treasury, no navy, no army and no power to regulate commerce. In actuality, the national government had to ask (even beg) the States for money and, under the Articles, they were obligated to provide it. The pleas were seldom answered in any substantial amount. Some States would charge another duties for imported goods, which accounted for much acrimony. There was lots of dissention — things didn’t work very well at all. Seeing the problems, a few men, among others, James Madison in consultation with Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, decided that something had to be done. Delegates to a failed meeting in Annapolis, Maryland in summer of 1786 called for a larger meeting of all the states to convene in Philadelphia in May of 1787 to amend and strengthen the Articles. Once convened, the delegates decided, with Madison in the lead, that instead of patching up the Articles, to submit an entirely new Constitution.
Virginia, which was then the most populous state, sent a delegation headed by James Madison and its governor, Edmund Randolph. These two men had a plan, the “Virginia Plan,” which they presented at the beginning of the convention. It visualized a three-part national government, an executive, consisting of a single leader, a legislative branch, consisting of upper and lower houses, and a judicial arm, consisting of a “Supreme Court.” Their plan called for the direct election of the officers of all three branches by the general public. Seems reasonable to us nowadays, but I suspect that you could have heard a pin drop … for apparently not all the delegates agreed. We shall now probe the mists to see how the American republic came about.
You will recall that in the first installment of “Solving It” that it was mentioned that the men attending this convention were very cognizant of the history of governments. The delegates, indeed most thinkers to this day, were very fearful democracy, because of its abysmal historical reputation.
In the previous discussion, it was made clear that Sparta, the republic, had resoundingly defeated Athens, the democracy, in the Peloponnesian war. What was not discussed was that Athens was many times the size of Sparta.
The Spartans, a militaristic society, had, centuries previously, because of their small size and in order to prevail in a very hostile world, organized their society into a proto-republic, with a Senate, the “Gerousia” the governing body. A look at the society gives us a look at how their system worked. A Spartan male was inducted into their army at the age of 7 years. So, by the time he became an elector at the age of 30, he had been in the army for 23 years. Further, he could not hold office until he had attained the age of 60 years. Why? Since it was a warrior society, you couldn’t vote until you were a proven warrior. If one were to survive 23 years of perpetual war to become eligible to be an elector, he would have a pretty good idea of what was good or bad for the country. How much more experienced was a Senator, a member of the Gerousia, who had to be at least 60 years old? The two kings could be any age, but they, other than being war leaders, had the status of Senators. The Gerousia, including the kings, was overseen by the elected exemplars of the nation, the Ephors. The Gerousia was elected for life, the kings served for life, but the Ephors served only once in their lifetime, for one year. Weird, huh? The ancients, other than Athens, also distrusted democracy, most particularly the Demagogues. They knew from experience that if a king were not somehow checked, he would invariably become an autocrat, or worse. So a king in Sparta, being a hereditary descendent of Hercules, was exalted, as was his due, and given duties becoming his station. However, he was a Senator, and as such subject to the discipline of the Ephors. It was a beautiful solution that venerated his station, but an equally ingenuous check to his power. The other members of the Gerousia, being old warriors with at least 53 years of experience in the society probably needed no check to their ambitions greater than the Ephors, for old age and imminent death probably supplied sufficient check to their ambitions. In the case of the Ephors, the Spartan system checked their ambitions by strictly limiting the duration of their term. The Spartan Republic, by our standards, although it was the only ancient society to venerate womanhood, was quite barbaric. Yet these ancients understood the fundamentals of good government. First, it was representative, which should have meant that the best of society ascended to leadership. Second, it had, in the view of its citizens, an enlightened electorate. Third, the power of the leaders was always checked by others. Fourth, because of nature of the army, the electorate was spawned from a common source; the electors were essentially a band of brothers. Because of these attributes, Sparta for centuries had no demagogues decrying and slandering others and had no despots.
The Romans subsequently observed and then adopted many of the attributes of the Spartan Republic. The Roman Republic elected two Consuls for one year to run the government, and did this for over a thousand years. Their bureaucracy had many layers of short-term elective responsibility. Among other things, the Tribunes, the representatives of the people, could veto the actions of the Senate.
And the Athenian democracy? Athens was by far the largest city in ancient Greece, with a possible population of 100,000 or more souls. In ancient Athens, then as now, the center of downtown was a huge amphitheater full of temples, gardens, fountains, small parks, shops — large and small, and magnificent sculpture and architecture, called the Agora. The Agora was pleasantly shaded on the south side by the cliffs of the sky city, the Acropolis, which was topped by its incomparable Parthenon, the monument to the city’s patron goddess, Athena. All the economic and civil life of the community revolved around the Agora. It was the place of learning where Socrates taught Plato, who in turn was teacher to Aristotle. It was where a person would go to see the merchants and dignitaries of foreign nations — the place to find out what was happening in the world outside of town. It was the ancient version of the modern coffee klatch. Over a long period of time it became the place where the populace would gather in formal meetings to discuss the future of the nation. Solon and his successors formulated a system where governmental action would be proposed to the assembled populace, the “demos,” and the course of action to be followed would be determined by a majority vote of those assembled. With a few exceptions, any natural born Athenian could vote at these meetings. Although It was considered a solemn civic duty for qualified citizens to participate, in practice, it was not always enthusiastically done. As a matter of fact, it was considered inappropriate to conduct business unless there were 6,000 voters assembled. In the early years, the assembly was closed to further participation after the 6,000 had entered the meeting. In later years, money was paid to encourage this quorum. Ostensibly, anyone could propose an action and speak to it, but if your proposal failed in its aims, the assembly could and often did hold you personally responsible, and prescribed penalties for the damages, sometimes at a high price. In practice, few people had the will or foresight combined with the rhetorical skills and powerful voice needed to effectively address the assembly. There is an ancient anecdote about the Athenian orator, Demosthenes, honing his skills for this purpose by filling his mouth with pebbles and then speaking above the roar of the surf at the beach.