Democracy: Our Most English Constitution

The American Revolution didn’t miss the chaos of the French Revolution by much. (Revolutions are frightening things. It’s like lighting a fire on a dry, windy day; you don’t really have an idea where the sparks are going to blow.)
Tories (pro-British) and Whigs (pro-revolution) slaughtered each other. If you envied a man his land, there was a revolutionary committee you could turn him in to. He was likely to be driven out of his home just on your word and left to starve in the winter. The farm was yours.
The Sons of Liberty were created by Sam Adams—a devious revolutionary who would have felt comfortable sharing a drink with the likes of Mussolini, Lenin or Ho Chi Minh—to make trouble for the British. At one time they had to be restrained from burning down Benjamin Franklin’s house—simply because he was rich.
The men who led the revolution were aware of how close they had come. The first government they established (under the Articles of Confederation) was practically no government at all. It couldn’t raise revenues, it had no military, and there was no executive to DO things.
Three years after the British pulled out things had reached a point of near chaos. A constitutional convention was called for in Annapolis, Md., in 1786. Not enough states sent delegates for there to be a quorum. Everybody went home.
The next winter, a Massachusetts farmer did us a huge favor by scaring the wits out everybody. A chap named Shays could not pay his taxes. He had lots of company. So he led a bunch of farmers, attacked and took over the government armory at Springfield.
Nothing, no one, reacted. There really was no government to react. When they called a constitutional convention in Philadelphia, May 1787, twelve states sent delegations.
They were actually only authorized to beef up the Articles of Confederation. But they went into secret session and decided to create an entirely new government—one that had teeth and staying power. Their state governments back home were a bit shocked, but by 1791, all thirteen states had ratified it.
I shall skip over the brilliant work they did in finding compromises that kept societies as different as Massachusetts and South Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia under the same roof. What they did for democracy is what matters in this discussion.
One) they recognized that EFFICIENT government is the enemy of democracy. So they made the federal government as inefficient as possible while allowing it enough latitude to actually govern. They divided up government power into three different branches and made sure no one could invoke tyrannical power without being checked by another.
They made sure that the two houses of the legislative branch could not immediately and rashly agree on a dangerous course of action. They especially limited the power of the executive, being aware that a determined “king” can often find his way around Parliamentary/Congressional checks.
(I must say here that the “two-thirds of a man” clause as it applies to slaves does not in the least refer to the slave’s worth as a human being. It was merely a recognition that a freeman, working for his own benefit is more efficient than a slave laborer who has nothing to look forward to. Thus the output of a slave was deemed to be about two thirds that of a free laborer.
This was used as a tool to protect smaller, northern states (with few slaves) from being dominated in the House of Representatives by southern states with larger overall populations—as many as half of which consisted of non-voting slaves.)
The Constitution required a census and reapportionment of House seats every ten years to avoid the creation of the “Rotten Boroughs” so prevalent in England after centuries of no reapportionment whatsoever. Ancient feudal manors—with a population of one hundred souls often had their own member in Parliament; cities that had sprung up where ancient forests once stood often had none.
There is a good deal of technical detail on the duties and limitations of the various branches. There is not a single word about “rights” and “liberties”. There is the overall assumption by men who were born free Englishmen, heirs to John Locke, Henry VIII, Walpole, Crecy and the Magna Carta—who knew of the excesses of an unrestrained Protectorate or of an Absolutist Stuart, that if you get the limitations, the restraints, the mechanics of government right, liberty will follow.
It did. Within two years of its operation as the governing document of the United States, the states agreed to add ten amendments—modeled on the English Bill of Rights—to the federal constitution.
But the document itself is about “restraint”, “duty” and “responsibility”—the pillars on which democracy must stand. The writers had seen the excesses of the Sons of Liberty; they had seen Shays Rebellion. They were about to see the horrors of the French Revolution.
They fundamentally did not trust the citizenry to be restrained, dutiful and responsible. The President and Vice President would be selected by a college of citizens chosen to do that job. To this day no American voter has ever voted for the Chief Executive.
The Upper House (Lords, or Senate) would be selected by state legislators until 1913. Judges and Justices would be picked by the Executive and ratified by the Upper House. War could only be declared or paid for by the Congress. The executive would lead it but he must come back annually to the Congress for funds to wage it.
Only members of the Lower House (Representatives, or Commons) could be voted for by the populace. Tax bills could only originate here—in the “people’s house”.
Jefferson was safely out of the country—ambassador to France. He was not at the convention; he had very little input. The constitution passed the convention, with all of its conflicting interests; it was ratified by all of the states. It has been the guiding light of the most stable democracy in the world for over two centuries.
Find another group of fifty-five men, many with narrow interests, all representing states that were not yet used to the notion of being one nation, who have ever done a finer job. Nearly a millenium of British history and experience had gone into its making.
Let’s look, one last time, at developments in democracy.