John Francis Mercer: A Very Strange Delegate

Though a minor participant in the Convention, John Francis Mercer is an interesting example of extreme cynicism, exceeding Gouverneur Morris.  He did not arrive until August 6, long after most of the important decisions had been made.  He opposed popular election of the House, saying “The people can not know & judge of the character of the Candidates.  The worst possible choices will be made.”  He was open to popular election of the House if the people had “guidance,” such have having candidates nominated by state legislatures.  If this seems undemocratic to us, contemporaries would be even more shocked by his comments on ineligibility to office:

It is a first principle in political science, that wherever the rights of property are secured, an aristocracy will grow out of it. Elective Governments also necessarily become aristocratic, because the rulers being few can & will draw emoluments for themselves from the many. The Governments of America will become aristocracies. They are so already. The public measures are calculated for the benefit of the Governors, not of the people. The people are dissatisfied & complain. They change their rulers, and the public measures are changed, but it is only a change of one scheme of emolument to the rulers, for another. The people gain nothing by it, but an addition of instability & uncertainty to their other evils. -- Goverm’ts can only be maintained by force or influence. The Executive has not force, deprive him of influence by rendering the members of the Legislature ineligible to Executive offices, and he will become a mere phantom of authority. The aristocratic part will not even let him in for a share of the plunder. . . . Nothing else can protect the people agst those speculating Legislatures which are now plundering them throughout the U. States.*

John Francis Mercer

Yet Mercer ended up opposing the Constitution as an intolerable threat to liberty.  He was even the only member of the Convention to declare himself in favor of paper money, the position of a radical populist! 

And quite contrary to most radical populists of his day, Mercer favored executive over legislative power in general.  This was less because of enthusiasm for the executive than fear of the legislature. He favored giving the Supreme Court in addition to the President a veto on acts of Congress, giving the executive the sole power of making treaties, and having the executive, not the legislature, appoint a treasurer.  All in all, Mercer’s views were too eccentric to be of much significance.

The incongruity between Mercer’s cynicism about aristocracy and his radical populism on paper money led me to do more research on his opinions.  His Anti-Federalist Writings allow us a clearer insight into his views, which are very strange, indeed.  He was apparently a rare dissenter from the overwhelming consensus in favor of a democratic representative republic.  Central to Mercer’s ideology was a deep hatred of elective, representative legislatures, which are, of course, the very foundation of our system of government.  To overcome the evils of representative government required an executive for life, exempt from impeachment, and a Senate for life.  However, he opposed the British system, regarding these offices as despotic if they ever became hereditary.  This clearly places him on the side of mixed government.  On the other hand, he favored the old democratic practice of binding legislators by strict instructions and recalling anyone who did not obey.

His ideal system of government was direct democracy on the Swiss model, a system everyone agreed was impossible on a scale so large as the United States.  To get around the difficulty Mercer proposed breaking the United States into sub-jurisdictions small enough to rule by direct democracy.  When laws were needed on a national level, he proposed limiting the legislature to suggesting a law and submitting it to referendum (with the vote limited to free holders).**  It is not entirely clear whether Mercer actually considered such a system feasible.  (He himself called it an “illusion”).   Mercer is interesting, not so much for meeting any of the categories of delegates, as for expressing ideas far outside of the mainstream.

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*To this the horrified old democrat Elbridge Gerry said that if we were to have a government of plunder, we might as well stick to a single despot so there would be only one plunder.  Many people today, I suspect, would sadly nod along.

**The term referendum had not been coined at the time, of course, but what he described is immistakable;

But the laws which pass the legislature before they become binding, should be referred to the different counties and cities — printed reasons drawn by committees, might if necessary, accompany each, together with an annual estimate of public wants and a detail of the expenditures of the former sums granted. Let these laws then be submitted to the free deliberation of the freeholders of the counties and cities — the numbers of the yeas and nays be taken on each by the presiding magistrate, and transmitted to the executive, who may then upon comparing the returns from the several counties and corporations, declare what laws are the will of the people. On the appearance of any sudden danger the two houses or indeed a majority of one house, might invest the Executive with that authority, exigency might require for the safety of the republic, until remedy should be provided by law.