Seemingly Strange Contradictions in the Delegates' Views

One thing at least that Anti-Federalists abd neo-Anti-Federalists agree on is that the Constitution was both overcentralized and undemocratic. Anti-Federalists assumed that any increase in centralization was inherently oppressive.   Neo-Anti-Federalists are not quite so direct, but seem to tend to agree.  I will therefore admit that I began evaluating the delegates’ positions with an ax to grind; my intention was to establish the hypothesis, “There was no significant correlation between a delegate’s position on centralization and his position on democracy.” 

But things were not so simple.  It was not just that there was no significant correlation between a delegate’s position on centralization and his position on democracy.  Delegates often seemed quite inconsistent in their views on democracy as well. Where, for instance, does one place Elbridge Gerry who considered direct elections even to the House of Representatives as the people are “daily misled into the most baneful measures,” yet continually invoked public opinion and ultimately refused to sign the Constitution as an intolerable threat to liberty.  What of Alexander Hamilton, who actually admitted that he opposed republican government, yet expressed such fine democratic sentiments as these:

 [A]s States are a collection of individual men which ought we to respect most, the rights of the people composing them, or of the artificial beings resulting from the composition.  Nothing could be more absurd than to sacrifice the former to the latter.  It has been sd that if the smaller States renounce their equality , the renounce at the same time their liberty. . . . The State of Delaware having only 40,000 souls will lose power if she has 1/10 only the votes allowed to Pa having 400,000: but will the people of Del: be less free, if each citizen has an equal vote with each citizen of Pa. [emphasis in original].

Why did George Mason, one of the most democratic delegate present twice propose property restrictions on office holders and liken popular election of the President to “refer[ring] a trial of colours to a blind man,” while Gouverneur Morris, easily the least democratic of the delegates, opposed Mason’s property restrictions and favored popular election of  the President?

If all this confuses you, consider yourself in good company.  Many professional historians share the confusion.  Consider Roger Sherman (Connecticut) and George Mason, along with the rest of the Virginia delegation.  Sherman wanted the House of Representatives to be elected by the state legislatures because, “The people . . . immediately should have as little to do as may be about the Government.  They want information and are constantly liable to be misled.”  Mason favored popular election because, “It was to be the grand depository of the democratic principle of the Gov’t. . . . It ought to know & sympathize with every part of the community.”  Yet Sherman favored one-year terms for the House and short terms for the Senate on the grounds that, “Gov’t is instituted for those who live under it.  It ought therefore to be so constituted as not to be dangerous to their liberties.  The more permanency it has the worse if it be a bad Gov’t.  Frequent elections are necessary to preserve the good behavior of rulers.”  Mason, on the other hand, favored a long term for the Senate, presumably agreeing with his fellow Virginian Edmund Randolph, “The object of this 2^nd branch is to controul the democratic branch of the Nat’l Legislature.”

Historian Catherine Drinker Bowen, author of Miracle at Philadelphia sees a simple lesson here; Mason trusted the common people and Sherman did not.  To our old friend David Hackett Fischer, author of Albion's Seed,  the lesson is equally clear; the Virginians were trying to create an oligarchy of country gentlemen shielded from the public by long terms while Sherman, a New England democrat, opposed them.  Historian Edmund Morgan dismisses Sherman’s views as too contradictory to even attempt to explain. 

But these seeming contradictions can be explained, I believe, if one sees the controversy as not only over the degree of democracy in the new Constitution (although that was certainly an issue at the Convention) as on the definition of democracy to be used.  More in my next post.