For the Symposium on Michael Klarman, The Framers' Coup: The Making of the the States Constitution.
The delegates assembled at the Philadelphia convention inwards May of 1787 generally agreed alongside the assessment of Governor Edmund Randolph of Virginia when he introduced the programme that would conk the convention’s working outline (the “Virginia Plan,” generally written past times James Madison): “Our primary danger arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions,” as well as none of the province constitutions had “provided sufficient checks against the democracy.”
Much of the Framers’ disdain for republic derived from their hostility to the populist economical policies that a bulk of states had enacted inwards the mid-1780s inwards reply to a severe economical contraction—principally, newspaper coin laws as well as debtor relief legislation. The Framers overwhelmingly regarded such laws every bit craven capitulations past times overly responsive province legislatures to the illegitimate demands of lazy as well as dissolute farmers. Such legislation was “wicked as well as fraudulent”; it “corrupted the morals of the people”; as well as it enabled “idle spendthrifts [and] dissipating drones of the community” to alive “upon the effort of their neighbors’ brows.”
Governor William Livingston of New Bailiwick of Jersey (who afterward represented his province at the Philadelphia convention) responded to demands for debt as well as taxation relief past times pillorying the “lazy, lounging, lubberly” fellows who sat unopen to drinking, “working perhaps but ii days inwards the calendar week as well as receiving for that operate double the payoff [they] earn as well as spending the balance of [their] fourth dimension inwards squandering those . . . non-earnings inwards riot as well as debauch,” as well as yet dared to complain “when the collector calls for his taxation of the hardness of the times.” The farmer who protested that he could non pay taxes was “a human whose iii daughters are nether the dependent acre of a French dancing original when they ought every ane of them to hold out at the spinning wheel,” as well as spell they should hold out “dressed inwards decent homespun, every bit were their frugal grandmothers, instantly send one-half of their father’s crop upon their backs.” (Think Mitt Romney as well as the “47 percentage . . . who are dependent on government, who believe that they are victims, . . . who pay no income taxation . . . [and] should conduct maintain personal responsibleness . . . for their lives.”)
Elite statesmen of the 1780s blamed taxation as well as debt relief legislation on overly democratic province constitutions. Charles Lee of Virginia told George Washington that unless province legislatures could hold out reconstructed to brand them “more powerful as well as independent of the people, earth debts as well as fifty-fifty individual debts volition inwards my watch hold out extinguished past times [them].” Reflecting on province relief measures, William Grayson (also of Virginia) concluded that “however fantabulous democratical governments may hold out inwards some respects, the payment of coin as well as the preservation of earth organized faith are non amid their proficient qualifications.”
At to the lowest degree every bit alarming to the Framers were events inwards Massachusetts, where the legislature’s refusal to render taxation or debt relief to farmers provoked Shays’s Rebellion, during which armed protestors unopen downwards civil courts inwards several counties inwards 1786–87. The nation’s propertied elite were fifty-fifty to a greater extent than distressed when, after an regular army raised past times eastern Massachusetts creditors had forcibly suppressed the rebellion, the Shaysites sought (as ane of their critics observed) to win “the same objects past times legislation, which their to a greater extent than man brethren terminal wintertime would conduct maintain procured past times arms.”
An incredulous Madison reported, “We empathize that the discontents inwards Massachusetts which lately produced an appeal to the sword are instantly producing a lawsuit of strength inwards the acre of electioneering,” as well as if they could “muster sufficient numbers, their wicked measures are to hold out sheltered nether the forms of the constitution.” After the insurgent relief seekers scored victories inwards gubernatorial as well as legislative contests inwards the jump of 1787, Madison told James Monroe that the Massachusetts election had “shifted the legislative ability into the hands of the discontented party, as well as it is much feared that a grievous abuse of it volition characterize the novel administration.”
Governor John Hancock, propelled into purpose past times that discontent, promptly pardoned most of the insurgents, including Daniel Shays. The novel legislature dramatically reduced taxes as well as repealed an before police delineate punishing insurgents alongside disfranchisement as well as exclusion from office. Washington’s individual secretary, Tobias Lear, asked General Benjamin Lincoln, who had led the regular army that suppressed the rebellion: “What frenzy tin forcefulness out conduct maintain seized upon the people of your province [Massachusetts] to cause them to aim at an institution of those principles past times law, which, but a few days ago, they were opposing past times arms?” Lear feared that unless “some measures are pointed out as well as adopted to give safety to property,” the the States was verging “fast towards a hollo for which may . . . involve us inwards a civil state of war alongside all its terrible consequences.”
Shays’s Rebellion played a critical role inwards the creation of the Constitution. Investigating the rebellion for the Confederation Congress, Secretary at War Henry Knox wrote to George Washington, “The commotions of Massachusetts conduct maintain wrought prodigious changes inwards the minds of men inwards that province respecting the powers of government. Everybody says they must hold out strengthened as well as that unless this shall hold out effected, at that topographic point is no safety for freedom or property.” Virginia congressional delegate Henry Lee wrote Washington, “The catamenia seems to hold out fast approaching when the people of these the States must create upward one's heed to constitute a permanent capable authorities or submit to the horrors of anarchy as well as licentiousness,” every bit “[w]eak as well as feeble governments are non adequate to resist such high handed offenses.”
Rufus King, a Massachusetts delegate to the Philadelphia convention, announced that Shays’s Rebellion had taught him that “the non bad trunk of the people are without virtue as well as are non governed past times whatever internal restraints of conscience.” He was hence reconsidering his prior advocacy of “government gratis every bit air,” which had been based on the false belief that his “countrymen were virtuous, enlightened, as well as governed past times a feel of correct as well as wrong.” It was Shays’s Rebellion that led Massachusetts delegate Elbridge Gerry to declare to the Philadelphia convention that the people of New England had “the wildest ideas of authorities inwards the world,” as well as Alexander Hamilton to banking concern notation “the amazing violence as well as turbulence of the democratic spirit.”
Because the Framers blamed relief legislation on “democratic licentiousness,” they designed the federal authorities to hold out insulated from the populist politics that had produced such measures inwards the states. Thus, they opted for enormous districts for congressional representatives—the Constitution provides for sixty-five members for the get House, compared, for example, to over iii hundred representatives inwards the lower identify of the Massachusetts legislature—and for indirect elections as well as lengthy damage inwards purpose for both senators as well as presidents. The United States of America Senate was expressly designed to hold out “the aristocratic part of our government,” to “represent the wealth of the country,” as well as to acquit “as strong a likeness to the British House of Lords every bit possible.” The Framers also rejected, for federal legislators, instruction, recall, as well as mandatory rotation inwards office. In addition, they created a powerful executive armed alongside a veto ability that could hold out used to block whatever populist economical measures that powerfulness somehow sneak through a legislature designed to mash them. To the extent that the Framers were thinking almost judicial review at all, they generally conceived of it every bit some other potential cheque on such relief legislation.
As I was working on The Framers’ Coup (from roughly the summertime of 2012 through Jan of 2016), I found troubling the extent of the Framers’ elitist disdain for populist politics. While Virginian Henry Lee complained to Washington that “the malcontents” (the Shaysites) had every bit “their object . . . the abolition of debts [and] the partition of property,” the debtor farmers genuinely had strong arguments for the relief programs they demanded inwards the mid-1780s. In a fourth dimension of severe economical distress, they were beingness forced to pay heavy as well as regressive taxes inwards scarce difficult currency inwards lodge to pay off authorities securities that had been scooped upward (sometimes from them) at a fraction of par value past times speculators who instantly stood to brand a fiscal killing. Relief measures had been necessary, according to ane opponent of the Constitution’s ratification inwards North Carolina “to salvage vast numbers of people from ruin.” That perspective was ane for which most of the delegates to the Philadelphia convention had piffling sympathy.
Political developments since I finished the book, however, conduct maintain cast a to a greater extent than favorable low-cal upon the Framers’ deeply skeptical watch of populist politics. The Framers worried non alone that the People would redistribute wealth if left unchecked but also that they were exactly also ignorant as well as vulnerable to deception to practise responsible influence upon their government. At the Philadelphia convention, Virginia delegate George Mason declared that “it would hold out every bit unnatural to bring upward the alternative of a proper grapheme for primary magistrate [i.e., the president] to the people, every bit it would hold out to bring upward a lawsuit of colors to a blind man.” The People could non perhaps possess “the requisite capacity to approximate of the respective pretensions of the candidates.” (Incidentally, some other line of the Framers alongside regard to presidential selection was, every bit Madison stated inwards Philadelphia, that “[m]inisters of unusual powers” would seek to influence the selection of the president. Pierce Butler of South Carolina seconded Madison’s concern, noting that the ii non bad evils to hold out avoided inwards selecting the primary executive were “cabal at dwelling as well as influence from abroad.”)
Elbridge Gerry, who had been peculiarly shaken past times Shays’s Rebellion, opposed fifty-fifty straight election of congressional representatives on the grounds that the People were “the dupes of pretended patriots” as well as were “daily misled into the most baneful measures as well as opinions past times the faux reports circulated past times designing men.” George Mason told the convention that the primary evils of republican authorities were “the bulk oppressing the minority, as well as the mischievous influence of demagogues.”
[Part Two of this Essay appears tomorrow]
Michael J. Klarman is Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Harvard Law School as well as writer of The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the the States Constitution (Oxford University Press 2016).
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