Or, what is a Republic?
Everyone knows the anecdote. At the conclusion of the constitutional convention in 1787, according to James McHenry, one Mrs. Elizabeth Powel of Philadelphia accosted an aged, gout-ridden Benjamin Franklin. Inquiring into the result of the proceedings she asked, “What have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” Poor Richard famously replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
What is a republic, anyway? To Mrs. Powel, it was clearly distinguishable from monarchy, its opposite even. It referred to a particular form of government. Franklin had just finished his final address to the convention which, given his ill health, James Wilson had to read for him. In the speech, now somewhat humorously accompanied by Scottish burr, was a recitation of Polybius. The new nation was not immune to regime cycles—a law of history—and it would end in despotism if the people ever failed to maintain requisite virtue. Indeed, the only solution—and there must be a solution—to a licentious people is the strong, chastising hand of despotism. In the fuller conversation with Powel, Franklin predicted that the executive would steadily develop into a full monarchy and that the republic would not be kept “Because the people, on tasting the dish, are always disposed to eat more of it than does them good.” (Hamilton’s anxieties were more prescient, to be sure.) In other words, Poor Richard was not very confident in his fellow Americans. He was not a believer in American exceptionalism. That is, that the new nation would be exempted from the laws of history or nature.
To be clear, Franklin liked the constitution as adopted, but like Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, and others he doubted its longevity. Questioning the potency and endurance of the constitutional order is maybe more American than apple pie. The first apple pie recipe was not published in America until 1796 after all. Perhaps, for Franklin, “republic” did refer to government form—he never used the word in his speech—but it clearly entailed more than mere constitutional structure and procedure.
In his Thoughts on Government, John Adams said that the only good government is republican. A republic is “an Empire of Laws, and not of men.” The best form of government, “that particular arrangement of the powers of society,” is that which is “contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the laws.” Whatever form of government, of which there is an “inexhaustible variety,” does this “is the best of Republics.” If you read the rest, republic has something to do with representation and deliberation in lawmaking and then strict, impartial fealty to resultant laws. There is something both qualitative and quantitative in play.
By this point, Adams has already decried the maxim that whatever government governs best is the best, but his conclusion is not far from that same maxim given certain caveats. Indeed, even the British constitution contains republican aspects or traits, as Edward Montagu clearly also thought. The result of the type of government Adams envisions is a brave, virtuous, and industrious people—we might say, the Protestant ideal. In other words, the whole point of the type of constitution he advocates is production of a certain kind of citizen. Government is supposed to cultivate something, a certain kind of people. Here again we are met with something that exceeds form. We will return to this later. Confusion remains. Adams does not condemn monarchy but he clearly, like Mrs. Powel, distinguishes between his aspirations for colonial governments and European kingdoms.
We return to the question: What exactly is a republic?
Republic, Republic
The influence of antiquity on the founding generation is well established. So, we should begin there. What did republic mean classically? It short, it referred to a mood, orientation, or aspiration rather than a form of government.
“The classical republican outlook,” relates Paul Rahe, “was not an ideology blindly dictating partisan preferences; it was a way of thinking about human association that left ample room for an even demanded the exercise of political prudence.” Accordingly, as James Hankins points out, the Italian humanists, mining antiquity for lost insights, “did not conceive of their task in legal-constitutional terms.” They wanted to meet “modern degeneration” with “ancient flourishing.” The res publica was the res populi. It was not a formal constitutional apparatus. A republic, a true commonwealth, was a regime—any regime—that pursued the good of the people, that was virtuous. Only an awareness of the common good, and its elevation above the private good, facilitates a republic, something Adams emphasized to Mercy Warren. A king could meet this qualitative standard as well as a senate. Indeed, for classical republican meritocracy, the best should rule the rest and, therefore, there could be a best (singular).
The confusion for us, instructs Hankins, is modern anachronism. “Republic” has been given an “exclusivist” meaning, one introduced largely by Machiavelli and reproduced by Rousseau, wherein populism supplies legitimacy and hereditary monarchy (or any other non-elected form) is necessarily excluded. By contrast, respublica was applied to a variety of government forms in the premodern period including kingships and even oligarchies. It was a form-neutral designation. The turn—or a turn—in modern political thought was the exclusion of non-elective forms from the republican label and limiting the same to (ideally) elective mixed regimes.
Hankins notes that this development introduced ideological fixation on forms in the early modern period—the search for perfect regime—whereas classically all forms were taken as natural fact varying according to circumstance and peoples. The distinguishing mark between good and bad governments was not constitutional but moral. Did rulers rule for the whole or only part of the political community? Public or private interests? That was the question. Hankins dubs this outlook “circumstantialism” or “constitutional relativism.”
The Roman ideal was a community of shared law, custom, and religion, with a government ruling on behalf of the Roman interest, but not a populist share in government. A change in form of government, which Rome experienced, did not end the republic. The rule of princeps was not per se an inauguration of that end. What determined the analysis of one observer to the next was whether said rule was noxious to Roman prosperity and virtue, not the monarchical principle. The greater threat was always faction, and for many, Caesar (and then Octavian) put an end to faction, restored Roman liberties, and introduced new prosperity.
It was not until the second half of the fifteenth century that a rift was placed between respublica and monarchy, perhaps, argues Hankins, due to poor Latin interpretations of Aristotle. Prior thereto, good governments were those with good rulers, not ideal regimes. It is not fair to say that the question of virtue departed but merely that it no longer superseded questions of form.
Yet, we see even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a retention of the earlier aspects of respublica. Non-arbitrary rule for the public good is still held up as essential to a republic, but so too is a virtuous citizenry. The mixed regime, free from hereditary monarchy, was the ideal, to be sure, for most of the founding generation. But the preconditions for this ideal form are acknowledged: an ideal people. The form is not an antidote to perennial problems nor cyclical downfalls of regimes. Virtuous rulers and virtuous people alone animate an enduring political community. Good institutions, however beautifully and proportionally constructed, were worthless without good men. Political society does not run on autopilot.
To Each His Own
Even if the American founders had lapsed into Machiavellian bifurcation of monarchy and republic, and were therefore “modern,” they had not abandoned the moralist and pragmatist position preserved by classicists like Milton, and they emphasized the differential principle: Personnel is policy. The big question is “what sort of men” you have. Properly, the remit and intensity of its activity then corresponds to the need of the people; their relative virtue will determine how much instruction and direction is required.
Some constitutions are more suited to a particular people than others but all can be evaluated on a moral basis per the behavior of the rulers and the condition of the citizenry. This classical understanding was retained. As Milton had put it, “the same form of government is not suited to every people nor is it at all times suited to any given people but to this one now and to that one at another time as the virtue and industry of the citizens waxes and wanes.” This is a moralist position, or what Paul Rahe calls “the classical republican principle differential moral and political rationality.”
As Milton said, a “free commonwealth” is fit for “virtuous and industrious nations” that abound with prudent men. A monarchy, on the other hand, is “fittest to curb degenerate, corrupt, idle, proud, luxurious people.” Again, it is a question of particular need, not universal good and bad form of government. Montesquieu similarly held that the laws of a people must be fitted to their temperament, time, and need.
This lesson has been inescapably impressed upon Americans over the past several decades by the deleterious effects of so-called nation building abroad. Afghanistan, we might all agree, is not fit for the present mode and means of American governance. But has it occurred to those who insist on a “return” to the founders’ constitution that Americans are not fit for that? Return enthusiasm is just a kind of anachronistic progressivism, where the full consummation of the eschaton is always and ever just outside our reach.
It is well and good, pious even, to love the idea of the founding regime, but to think their thoughts after them, blind fandom for that particular regime—constitutional order—cannot constrain our imaginations nor puff up our hopes. Indeed, that regime as it truly was, was dismantled some time ago. More devasting, however, is the radical change in personnel. That is, the people governing and the people governed.
Matter and Form
Like much language at the founding, “republic” is used variously, sometimes importing the classical meaning, other times the modern one. Yet, the two remained related, as we have said, and the function of form was loaded with more classical import than is commonly recognized.
The founders did want a form of government ancient and fitting to their people. As Carl Richard recounts, Tacitus’ Germania proved for Anglo-Americans that the original Anglo-Saxon constitution, before Norman corruption, had been republican, viz., it featured an elected king and a parliament and nonfeudal property right. Free land tenure and elective monarchs were the essential ingredients of “republicanism.” Jefferson was particularly enthusiastic about this project of classical pastoralism and Saxon government led by a natural aristocracy. The first biographer of Samuel Adams—his great-grandson—found unsurprisingly discovered this ideal in New England. This may have been an historically fit form for Americans, but, again, requisite virtue—maybe the virtue of their ancestors, maybe that of Roman antiquity—was indispensable. Not all people could handle what they envisioned.
Moreover, the founders had become convinced, rightly or wrongly, that certain constitutional models were more conducive to virtue than others, at least for the right people. These things are interrelated. The republican form was most conducive to virtue, but this was for nought if the people were licentious.
Adams preferred the republic form—the kind Article IV would guarantee to the states, and the Anglo-Saxon, New England kind that even Jefferson was forced to admire. For him, form shaped the matter. Monarchies created ostentatious, frivolous people. Republics inculcated different manners. It demanded virtue. But there was a problem that Adams admitted he had no solution for.
“Virtue and Simplicity of Manners, are indispensably necessary in a Republic, among all orders and Degrees of Men. But there is So much Rascallity, so much Venality and Corruption, so much Avarice and Ambition, such a Rage for Profit and Commerce among all Ranks and Degrees of Men even in America, that I sometimes doubt whether there is public Virtue enough to support a Republic. There are two Vices most detestably predominant in every Part of America that I have yet seen, which are as incompatible with the Spirit of a Commonwealth as Light is with Darkness, I mean Servility and Flattery. A genuine Republican can no more fawn and cringe than he can domineer. Shew me the American who can not do all. I know two or Three I think, and very few more.
However, it is the Part of a great Politician to make the Character of his People; to extinguish among them, the Follies and Vices that he sees, and to create in them the Virtues and Abilities which he sees wanting. I wish I was sure that America has one such Politician, but I fear she has not.”
In the end, it was rulers, not inanimate forms, who could lead people to virtue. The great fear of Adams was that she lacked kings, or as Carlyle called them, able-men. Have we improved on the eighteenth century? Are we more virtuous? Do we have more able men than Adams discovered?
Roma Eterna
It is well and good, pious even, to love the idea of the founding regime, but to think their thoughts after them, blind fandom for that particular regime—constitutional order—that admiration cannot constrain our imaginations nor puff up our hopes. That regime form as it truly was, was dismantled some time ago. More devasting, however, is the radical change in personnel, the loss of virtuous, able men. That is, the people governing and the people governed.
Were the founders assigned their same task today, their product would be radically different. It is a point of virtue, in fact, to admit this. We are lesser men, certainly lesser statesmen. Less read, less experienced, less moral, and less religious—less virtuous—and therefore ill-prepared for, incapable of, populating the founding regime.
This could all change, but we must change the right things. The solution is not found in tweaking the government algorithm. It is not a question of what words are on the pages in the National Archives. It’s deeper; it’s the fact that we think of government in formulaic terms that is the problem, or a manifestation of the problem. Procedure and structure are entirely secondary and derivative.
The founders themselves were entirely uncertain about what they had drawn up; politics is the art of navigating infinite variables and choosing from infinite options. It can never be perfect. For those particular people, it very nearly approached perfection. But the founders were too good of statesmen to not recognize that alteration of the raw material, so to speak, would make their plan ill-suited to governance.
And perhaps they had missed the mark in the first place. Jefferson’s now hated suggestion that each generation should rewrite the constitution was, perhaps, not aspirational so much as realist. Hamilton set about subtle reforms immediately because he didn’t expect the parchment proposal to last. Adams was equally depressing in his assessment. And all of this came after the debates from which innumerable options might have emerged for good reason. The result was practical. What was moral, universal, permanent about the whole thing was the shared conviction that a republican spirit, virtue was needed to make any of the proposals work. Work for what? For the good of the people, for their happiness, for their moral attainment. It was their judgment that their people were, perhaps, uniquely virtuous. We should confirm that judgment in retrospect, all things considered. But this does not provide for an eternal regime.
Liberty, rights, independence, privileges, immunities, all these are worth understanding and remembering as we now enter the 250th year of the Declaration. Most needed, however, is a renewed understanding of virtue. We can think warm thoughts about the grievances of Jefferson and the structure of Morris but chirping about “republican” matter–checks and balances, separation of powers, or our multiplicity of liberties– is foolhardy absent a republican soul. To appreciate the founders, we must appreciate what they appreciated, major on what they majored on, think their thoughts, and not robotically recite schoolboy punchlines. If we lack republican virtue, then, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, and all the rest would be the first to admit that we deserve, in fact need, a much heavier hand to restrain and direct us. Such is the cycle of peoples, civilizations, and regimes. Such is the need and purpose of government.
The real question for us as we move toward 2026 in two months’ time is whether we are the right people for the founding regime and whether appropriate conditions, a deserving people, can be replicated. You cannot return to the eighteenth-century order without eighteenth-century personnel. And that is not meant to be a comforting thought. It is the political wisdom of the founders not their particular prescriptions that we most need today. The latter is bound by circumstance, the former is not. The latter was unique to them, the former was perennial. And this is how they saw it whatever advances in political science they may or may not have made.
The least we can do is maintain a semblance of filial piety, recognizing greatness where and when it existed. That is the first step that the favorite historian of the founders, Plutarch, would have us take. It was the piety and virtue of the Romans that marked its superiority, according to the historian. It was not the ancients who were weird for introducing religion to their people, “but rather that the moderns are foolish and take great risks in rejecting them.”
It was the “spirit” of ancient republics more than their measures and means that invigorated the founders and that we, in our own late-stage republic, if it can be called that, should grasp after. More than their words, Americans need to discover their spirit, just as (to paraphrase Samuel Adams), they had discovered the spirit of Rome and Sparta.
Image: Franklin in London (1767), David Martin. Wikimedia Commons.
