"New" Democracy, or Democracy as We See it Today

If there is one thing almost everyone takes for granted these days, it is that America at the time the Constitution was written was much less democratic than today, and that our story has overall been one of the growth of democracy.  First Presidential electors stopped using their own judgment in choosing a candidate and began pledging to certain party.  Next, they began to be chosen by the people directly instead of by state legislatures.  The right to vote became broader, as first property, then racial barriers were removed, then the vote was extended to women, and finally the voting age was lowered to 18.  Senators came to be elected by the people directly instead of by state legislatures.  At the state level, more and more offices became elective (Attorney General, Board of Education, numerous other executive officers, judges, etc.) and initiative, referendum and recall were instituted.  A few people may remember the invention of the secret ballot and Supreme Court requirements that both houses of state legislatures by apportioned by population as part of the general growth of democracy.

Yet what we have witnessed is not so much the growth of democracy as the growth of one definition of democracy that is familiar to us today.  If our system is much more democratic in many ways that it was in 1787, in other ways is it less democratic.  If our history has been the history of the rise of one form of democracy, it is also the history of the decline of another form.  But it is the growth of what I call new democracy, not the decline of old democracy, that people notice these days and we mistake the changing definition of democracy for a rise in democracy.*

But how, one may ask, could governments be more democratic in 1878 than they are now?  Slavery was legal (as we have seen) in all states but Massachusetts.  Women were excluded from the vote, and even among white men most states put property restrictions on who could vote.  Still more state put property and religious restrictions on who could hold office.  In most states, the governor was elected by the state legislature instead of by the people directly.  And, not as well remembered, but still significant, most states slanted representation to favor the eastern parts of the state (where the dominant elites, whether planters or merchants) lived, and to deny western farmers their fair share of representation.  Many states had an upper house of their legislature based on wealth instead of population.  Where is the democracy here?

So far as slavery goes, it clearly violates any principle of democracy, old or new and constituted an intolerable blemish on the system.  Contemporaries admitted as much.  But the other criticisms of the system at the time the Constitution was drafted simply reflect our own viewpoints of what democracy is, viewpoints not necessarily shared in 1787.

Our definition of democracy

Probably the best single defining slogan of new democracy is “one man, one vote.”  This slogan implies two things: that everyone should vote and that everyone’s vote should carry equal weight.  This slogan, and the criticisms mentioned above, indicate some of the other elements we consider essential to today’s definition of democracy.

Universal suffrage:  It is considered basic to our definition of democracy that every citizen who is of age should have the vote.  Some people would make an exception for convicted felons, but other than that any restriction on who can vote is assumed to be an intolerable violation of democratic principles, because anyone who is affected by a government should have a voice in it.  The principle of universal suffrage is pushed further in programs such as motor voter laws (laws allowing people to register to vote when they register their cars) or other laws to facilitate voting.

Direct popular elections:  In today’s ideology, it is assumed that more direct elections equals more democracy.  (Hence the criticism of the original Constitution for having a Electoral College and having Senators elected by state legislatures instead of by the people directly).  Direct popular election of both houses of the legislature and the chief executive is the minimum we would consider safe for democracy.  Many states have taken the principle further, with election of the Attorney General, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Board of Education and numerous other executive officials, a well as state judges.  Counties often take this principle to the point of absurdity and have elective positions such as assessor, surveyor, coroner and county clerk.  Many states and localities take the principle of direct elections further still and have the people vote directly on laws and policies.  On the state level, this may take the form of the referendum, in which the legislature passes a proposed constitutional amendment and then refers it to the people for their approval, or the initiative, in which citizens circulate positions to place a proposed law on the ballot to be enacted or rejected by a popular vote.  On the local level, it can take the form of a local option (a state law in which each county is allowed to vote on whether or not it wants to allow something), a vote on a local issue, or, especially a tax or bond election, on whether to pass a certain local tax or issue of bonds.  Incidentally, certain property tax elections violate the general theory of universal suffrage by restricting the vote to property owners, on the theory that non-property owners are not affected by a property tax.  This principle can be pushed too far, as ballots get loaded with so many candidates and laws that most people cannot keep them all straight.

Representation by population:  This is what most people mean when they say “one man [person], one vote.”  They mean that each election district should have an equal number of inhabitants.  This requires periodic reapportionment of all districts with each ten-year census to insure equal representation.  And “all districts” means Congressional districts, both houses of all state legislatures, any other state officials elected from districts, and districts electing city councilors and county commissioners.  Ensuring equal population often means electoral districts that cut across political divisions such as county and city lines.   Periodic reapportionment can also lead to the practice of “gerrymandering” (named after Convention member Elbridge Gerry) as district boundaries are manipulated to affect political outcomes.

No privileges based on wealth:  This may seem repetitious of the other new democratic principles, but it needs to be emphasized.  It is partly included in the principle of universal suffrage because property restrictions on the vote are repugnant to new democracy.  It is partly included in the concept of representation by population, because the practice, common in 1787, of having representation in at least one house based on property is also repugnant to new democracy.  It is also opposed to the practice, used in almost all states when the Constitution was adopted, of placing property restrictions on office holding.

But opposition to privileges based on wealth goes beyond these things.  Obviously, money talks and no one can prevent money from talking, but new democracy believes that money should not talk.  This was not the general assumption when the Constitution was adopted; it was generally assumed that since government was instituted at least partly to protect property, money should talk.  Giving a rich man extra votes in proportion to his wealth, everyone agreed, would be monstrous, but for a rich man to influence his neighbors was widely accepted.  Madison was not condemning a defect when he said:**

If the law allows an opulent citizen but a single vote in the choice of his representative, the respect and consequence which he derives from his fortunate situation very frequently guide to votes of other to the objects of his choice; and through this imperceptible channel the rights of property are conveyed into the public representation.

He was simply explaining normal, perfectly acceptable facts of life.  Today’s practice of the secret ballot was adopted to prevent the intimidation of voters by their employers or other people with economic power over them.  And, of course, all today’s proposals for campaign finance reform are intended, in one way or another, to prevent money from talking.

Evaluating the delegates on new democracy 

Although new democracy was (for the most part) new at the time of the Constitutional Convention, most of the issues involved did exist at the time, and many were debated.  The most obvious new democracy issues raised at the Convention are direct popular election of House, Senate and President.  Another major issue is the qualifications for office, meaning not only property qualification but qualifications in age and citizenship as well.  Qualification to vote is another important issue that deserves some comment.  There were two basic positions on the qualification to vote.  The new democratic position was that whoever was qualified to vote for the lower house of the legislature in each state should be allowed to vote for the United States House of Representatives.  The less democratic-minded favored additional federal restrictions on the vote that would be uniform throughout the country.  No one proposed a federal expansion in the right to vote, and no one, with one surprising exception, even seems to have thought of such a thing.

            I anticipated these issues from the beginning.  There were a few other new democracy issues that I did not anticipate when reading the Convention notes.  One was whether representation would be by population or by wealth, which has been addressed above.  Another was whether to require reapportionment of the house on regular intervals, or to leave it to the discretion of Congress.  A final new democratic issue, closely related to the issue of reapportionment, was whether to admit the Western (i.e., west of the Appalachians) on an equal basis or whether to guaranty the Atlantic states a majority of representatives in all cases.

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*Here I must acknowledge my debt to Gary Wills in A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government, Copyright 1999 by Simon & Schuster as the first description I have read of the working of old democracy and explaining how it can be a thoroughly democratic system.

**It should be noted, though, that he was proposing a hypothetical defense of slave representation.

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.

Economics: The neo-Anti-Federalist's Strongest Case

The neo-Anti-Federalist viewpoint is at least partly correct. It is right that Massachusetts farmers were being crushed by taxes and debts, and right that the Framers of the Constitution had no sympathy for Shays’ Rebellion or the legitimate grievances that caused it. But, as we shall see later in this paper, people saw democracy in different terms in 1787 than they do today and the parts of the Constitution today’s neo-Anti-Federalists criticize as undemocratic are entirely different from the ones the original Anti-Federalist criticized. They also miss the only truly aristocratic portion of the Constitution, which none of the Framers seriously challenged.  Article I, Section 10, Clause 1: “No state shall . . . emit Bills of Credit, make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in payment of Debts [or] pass any . . . Law impairing Obligation of Contracts.”

 It is understandable that they should miss the significance of this passage because most people these days do not know what it means. A bill of credit is an IOU by the government promising to pay the holder at some date in the future. As these IOU’s are often used by the holders to buy and sell, they become “paper money.” During the Revolution, both the United States government and the states financed the war largely by writing IOU’s and more IOU’s and IOU’s paid with IOU’s, all of which led to serious inflation. (Soldiers expressed their contempt for the IOU’s issued by the Continental Congress in the phrase “Ain’t worth a Continental.”) At the end of the war, Congress stopped issuing IOU’s and attempted to return the country to a system of gold and silver coins. Severe inflation gave way to an equally devastating deflation. On top of that, Britain, previously America’s leading trade partner, stopped importing American products and closed ports throughout the British Empire to American ships. The United States was unable to retaliate because the Continental Congress had no power over foreign trade. If one state tried to retaliate against British imports, they would simply switch importing through another states. Except for France, our eternally patient ally, other countries were unwilling to enter into trade agreements with a country that had no power to enforce them. U.S. exports and shipping income languished, while imports continued to drain gold and silver from the country, further aggravating the deflation. However, states were able to effectively retaliate against trade restrictions in at least one instance – they frequently retaliated against each other (which was forbidden by the Articles of Confederation) and were busy at work strangling domestic trade. 

Deflation is particularly oppressive to debtors because their cash incomes fall, even as their debts remain unchanged. Even if the debtor’s property is seized and sold, it is likely to sell at a deflated price that does not cover the full debt. Adding to the crushing weight of private debt were crushing taxes to pay for public debt. Each state had war debt of its own to pay off, and since the federal government had no independent power of taxation, its own debts had to be paid by quotas to the states. States with major ports could raise the amounts relatively painlessly by taxing their foreign trade, which meant taxing their neighbors’ trade without representation. States without major ports, and Massachusetts, which was dominated by merchants who resisted taxes on trade, were forced either to default on their payments or to tax their citizens at rates that were unbearable under the existing deflationary conditions. All this led to pressure for the states to issue paper money (bills of credit) again and re-ignite inflation, or to allow payment of taxes or debts in some other form than gold and silver, or to pass debt relief legislation. It was these measures that Article I, Section 10, Paragraph 1 was intended to measure, and all members of the Convention agreed in deploring paper money and debt relief.

 This is important and needs to be said; it does indicate a lack of sympathy for the financial hardships ordinary people were experiencing and a tendency to side with creditors. What Convention members considered an attempt to defraud creditors was merely an attempt to avoid financial ruin.

 On the other hand, inflationary and debt relief measures threatened to wreck systems of credit and ruin prospects of a commercial revival, and in the end it was really a commercial revival that was needed. The original purpose of the Convention was not to permit federal intervention in future rebellions, but to give the central government authority to tax and regulate foreign trade. Regulation of foreign trade would force concessions for foreign countries and allow American exports and shipping to revive. Taxation of foreign trade would allow the federal governments to pay its debts (and, many people hoped, state debts as well) relatively painlessly. Allowing the central government to regulate trade among the states would allow it to stop them from strangling each other’s trade.

 In short, many of the economic problems that led to pressure for inflationary and debt relief measures were, in fact, caused by the weakness of the central government. And the adoption of the Constitution did actually lead to the anticipated economic revival and relieve pressure on debtors. This, too, is important and needs to be said. It means that the Constitution and its Framers were not as unsympathetic to debtors as Article I, Section 10, Paragraph 1 may suggest on the surface.

"Neo-Federalist' and "Neo-Anti-Federalist" Perspectives on the Constitution and Democracy

At the time the Constitution was adopted, there was intense controversy between the Federalists who favored ratification and the Anti-Federalists who opposed.  Anti-Federalists attacked the Constitution as overcentralized, undemocratic and an attempt to impose an aristocracy.  That perspective has not entirely disappeared to this day.

These days there may roughly be said to be two perspectives on the adoption of the Constitution, that I would call Federalist (or perhaps neo-Federalist) and neo-Anti-Federalist; neo, because the arguments today’s neo-Anti-Federalists use to damn the original Constitution as undemocratic are not the same ones the original Anti-Federalists used.

Thes neo-Federalist viewpoint goes somewhat as follows:  The government under the Articles of Confederation was hopelessly weak and did not give the central government the power necessary to fully function.  Recognizing the need for a stronger government, a Convention was called that drew up a new Constitution.  Despite the need for a stronger government, the Framers who drew up the Constitution recognized that an unrestrained government was dangerous.  Therefore, they took appropriate precautions to restrain the government, adopting the separation of powers (legislative, executive and judicial) and a system of checks and balances to prevent an abuse of power.  The full details of the system of checks and balances are often shown in a diagram or flow chart to indicate how each branch of government can restrain the abuses of any other.

The neo-Anti-Federalist viewpoint takes a dimmer view of the process.  It begins with Shays’ Rebellion, a popular uprising by Massachusetts farmers, relentlessly squeezed by oppressive taxes and debts, facing eviction, loss of all their property (including tools and furniture) and potentially indefinite imprisonment for debt. When repeated appeals to the Massachusetts government for relief went unheard, the desperate farmers rebelled and were crushed by the Massachusetts government.  (The federal government had no authority to intervene).  It was this incident that alarmed the ruling classes and convinced them of the need for stronger central government that could suppress such rebellions in the future.  The Convention was therefore a meeting of conservative members of the ruling classes seeking to shore up their power against a growing threat of true democracy.  Their basic distrust of the common people is evidenced in three undemocratic provisions in the original form of the Constitution:

            (1)        The President is not elected by the people directly but by the Electoral College, whose members were originally elected by state legislatures instead of the people directly and were expected to use their own judgment instead of being pledged to particular candidates. 

            (2)        Under the original version of the Constitution, Senators were not elected by the people directly, but by the state legislatures (changed to the people with the Seventeenth Amendment).

            (3)        Although the House of Representatives was the only branch of the federal government elected by the people directly, they were not elected on the basis of universal suffrage, but existing state restrictions on who could vote were retained.

When I was in school, we were taught essentially a combination of these two views.  The government under the Articles of Confederation, it is acknowledged, was hopelessly weak.  After describing that weakness in some detail, my school books then switched to Shays’ Rebellion and said that the primary motive in calling the Convention was to give the federal government authority to intervene and suppress future such rebellions.  The books described the delegates both as fearing too strong a central government and therefore instituting checks and balances (carefully diagramed) and as fearing the people and therefore instituting the aristocratic features of the Electoral College, election of Senators by state legislatures, and state restrictions on the vote.  In the debate on ratification, Federalists tend to be portrayed as aristocrats and Anti-Federalists as democrats.  The adoption of the Constitution is portrayed as our national fall from grace.  But the story of our redemption follows, as the Anti-Federalists were able to pressure the Federalists into adopting a Bill of Rights (something not included in the Constitution as originally adopted) and so we were saved from an aristocracy.

Ultimately, the attempt to combine these two viewpoints makes no sense.  If the Constitution was truly aristocratic because of the Electoral College, state election of Senators and state restrictions on the vote, the Bill of Rights should not make it democratic because it does not alter any of these features.  At best, it simply transforms our Constitution from an absolute aristocracy to a limited aristocracy.

My goal in the succeeding blog posts is to set aside the neo- view points and try to understand the Constitution as it might have looked in the 18th Century.  But to do so I must begin by conceding at least one point to the neo-Anti-Federalist.  That will be addressed in my next post.

The Constitution and Democracy: Truth and Half-Truth

And now for probably the most controversial topic of all: The Constitution and the issue of democracy.  I will begin by addressing a common misconception about the Founding Fathers (or, more accurately, the founding generation) held by admirers and detractors alike -- that they saw democracy as a thing to be dreaded and favored a republic instead.  This view is held by their detractors, as evidence that they were elitist, and by admirers, who think our championship of democracy today is a mistake (and who like a snappy comeback when someone  links democracy with views they dislike).

This view is not so much false as oversimplified and half-true.  It assumes that in the 18th Century the terms "republic" and "democracy" had generally accepted meanings that everyone agreed on, and that confusion in terms is a recent phenomenon.  But such abstract concepts were as ill-defined in the 18th Century as they are today. The best known distinction is probably from Madison in Federalist 14, in which he comments that the forms are often confounded (i.e., many of his contemporaries did not make a clear distinction between them), but that the difference was "in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents."  He further makes clear that representation was not unknown in the democracies of ancient times.  And he emphatically states that the distinction between a democracy and and republic is not the presence of representation, but the absence of direct popular participation:

[I]t is clear that the principle of representation was neither unknown to the ancients nor wholly overlooked in their political constitutions. The true distinction between these and the American governments, lies IN THE TOTAL EXCLUSION OF THE PEOPLE, IN THEIR COLLECTIVE CAPACITY, from any share in the LATTER, and not in the TOTAL EXCLUSION OF THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE from the administration of the FORMER.

Yet at the same time, he considered both democracy and republic to be forms of "popular government."  And he favored "popular government," regarding any "aristocratic or monarchial innovations" as incompatible with a republic.

So, is that the distinction between a republic and a democracy, as understood in the 18th Century? Not exactly.  That is the difference as Madison understood them.  Not everyone agreed.  John Adams, for instance, (alas, cannot find link) defined a republic as any form of government with a separation of powers into executive, legislative and judicial.  Thus he believed that an aristocracy or even limited monarchy (including contemporary England) could be a "republic."  He defined democracy as concentration of all power into a single legislative body, a system he regarded as dangerously unstable.  (Latter day parliamentary governments have proven him wrong).

And, as Madison complained in Federalist 14, plenty of people at the time used the terms interchangeably.  Consider John Lansing, who, like Madison, kept notes at the Convention (though less detailed, and he was absent much of the time).  Madison quotes Hamilton as saying, "As to the Executive, it seemed to be admitted that no good one could be established on Republican principles." Lansing, by contrast, quotes him as saying, "It is admitted that you cannot have a good executive upon a democratic plan."  Which did he actually say?  Since no one back then could pull out a cell phone and record his exact words, we will never know.  But it is significant that the terms were closely enough linked that Madison could use one and Lansing the other.

Finally, as noted before, the strongest ideological influence on the Framers was Baron de Montesquieu, who first set forth the theory that the foundation of liberty is the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers.  Montesquieu divided government into three types, a monarchy, in which a single ruler governs by law; a despotism in which a single ruler governs arbitrarily; and a republic, in which some or all of the citizens rule.  He further sub-divided republics into direct and representative (i.e., the citizens govern directly versus through elected representatives) and democratic and aristocratic (i.e., by the citizens at large, or by a narrow group).  Montesquieu regarded freedom as compatible with monarchy or aristocracy, but not with despotism.  Many of the Founders agreed that liberty was compatible with aristocracy.  But none (not even Hamilton) wanted an aristocracy here.  By Montesquieu's taxonomy, there was an overwhelming consensus in favor of a democratic, representative republic.  To favor anything else was to place oneself outside of all respectable discourse.

Unfortunately, "democratic, representative republic," although the most accurate description of what the Founders wanted, is too long and awkward to use most of the time.  "Democratic republic," though not as bad as "people's republic," has been misused by Communists often enough to give it unfortunate associations that, of course, would be completely anachronistic in 1787.  "Popular government" is a fair approximation, but even that is clunky compared to democracy.  So I will go ahead and use democracy as a synonym for "popular government" or "democratic, representative republic," and damn the purists.