James Monroe: The People the Sovereigns. Cumberland: James River Press, 1987.
Originally published in the New York City Tribune, October 26, 1988.
“Other republics have failed,” James Monroe writes. Their governments were defective; their societies could not sustain liberty. “Do like causes exist here?” Occasionally, there is justice in accident; Monroe never finished the book he started in 1830, in answer to that question.
“The last voice of the Revolutionary generation,” as Russell Kirk calls Monroe in a graceful introduction, may have fallen silent too soon, but what we still can hear means more than any random hundred books on the American founding published by political ‘scientists’ in our generation, and more than any thousand speeches by the strutting popinjays who style themselves ‘public servants’ or ‘journalists.’ An experienced, thoughtful statesman who personally witnessed not only the American but the French revolution, Monroe understands the theory and practice of republicanism, its prospects and dangers.
Monroe loves political liberty with a fervor most Americans now associate mostly with recent refugees from tyranny. In effect, he was one, having served in the Revolutionary War against the British Empire during one of its especially rigorous attempts at centralizing power in London. “Our Revolution forms the most important epoch in the history of mankind,” for “it has introduced a system of new governments better calculated to secure to the people the blessings of liberty, and under circumstances more favorable to success, than any which the world ever knew before.” The regime of liberty “promises to promote… essentially the happiness of mankind,” hitherto made miserable by tyrannies of the one, the few, and the many.
“In treating of government, we must treat of man.” Monroe understands human nature as James Madison did: good enough to deserve liberty, bad enough to abuse it if men’s passions are not channeled by sound institutions and by protected property rights, not restrained by the enlightened intellect and morality that cultivate a spirit of independence. Both good government and a civilized society are indispensable to republican regimes.
A well-ordered republic entrusts sovereignty to the people, government to their elected representatives. Monroe argues strongly that popular sovereignty must remain distinct and complementary. Regimes that give direct governmental powers to the people as a whole—’participatory democracy,’ as the old New Left called it—result in “every species of abuse” and the “certain overthrow” of the government and of popular sovereignty itself.
Conversely, a government that does not separate executive, legislative, and judicial powers will abuse popular sovereignty and return the people to despotism. This holds even for an elected body in which all powers are concentrated; “the result, if not so prompt, will, nevertheless, be equally fatal.” In a rare instance of naivete and absence of foresight, Monroe anticipates no judicial usurpation, fearing only the legislative and executive branches. In The Federalist, Publius calls the judiciary “the least dangerous branch,” and Monroe carries the thought a bit too far.
Monroe served as the American representative to France in the aftermath of Robespierre’s reign of terror. “The government was in effect united with the sovereignty in the people, and all power, legislative, executive, and judicial, concentrated in them.” The moderates who followed Robespierre might have succeeded, had not the military leaders who defended the French Republic from foreign attack won uncritical popular approbation. Napoleon rose, and the Republic fell, a victim to its lack of separation between popular sovereignty and government on the one hand, and separation of governmental powers on the other.
Monroe carefully contrasts the American republic with the ancient mixed regimes, also called republics—part monarchic, part aristocratic, part democratic—described by Aristotle, and also with the modern mixed regimes prescribed by Locke and Montesquieu. He faults Aristotle for failing to show how civic virtue can find institutional expression; virtue alone he regards as a “visionary basis” for government. Aristotle’s own attention to ruling forms or institutions more than suggests that he know that; his greater emphasis on virtue may instead reflect the prevalence of poleis or city-states in his part of the ancient world—small places where citizens knew one another and could keep an eye on their neighbors. Modern states are too big for so much of that. They still need virtues to survive, but they can depend upon them less.
He applauds Locke and Montesquieu for their basic principles, and for their clear understanding of the separation of powers, but finds little merit in their enthusiasm for the mixed regime of Great Britain. Monroe prefers a government republican in all its branches, contending that elements antagonistic in principle finally will not cohere. Faction ruins ‘mixed’ regimes.
Civic education nearly disappeared from American high schools in the 1960s. Faced with civic illiteracy, the interest of educators has renewed. Written in the plain language of the 1830s, The People the Sovereigns would likely befuddle today’s students and most of their teachers. Nonetheless, an intelligent summary of its contents, written in a style easily understandable now, would serve as an excellent primer in American government—far superior to the drivel distributed in recent years to teachers and students alike ignorant of the purposes and principles of American republicanism.
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