Commentary on Andrew Eliot’s Election Sermon
There’s a new resource up here at American Reformer: Andrew Eliot’s 1765 election day sermon. Comparatively, Eliot’s sermon is short and highly readable, and it presents a window into the religious and political expectations of New Englanders just prior to the war for independence. The historically interested and casual laymen alike will be interested in Eliot’s discourse. Albeit Eliot leans toward popular sovereignty, he demonstrates that it can be held in tandem, if in tension, with appreciation for monarchy. Read the brief introduction to the sermon for general background and context. Per usual, some highlights and brief commentary on a few themes in the sermon follows below.
Constitutions and Fundamental Law
“It is necessary they [i.e., rulers] should have a particular acquaintance with the constitution of the country they are called to govern. Reason we say dictates that there should be government; and the voice of reason is the voice of God.” “[C]onstitutions are a sort of fundamental laws, which cannot be violated without the greatest danger to a community.” Later Eliot adds, citing Romans 13, “submit yourselves to every human constitution for the Lord’s sake.” This applies to rulers and the ruled. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, “fundamental law” is a difficult early modern concept to nail down, but it certainly means no less than constitutional expectations, especially as to governmental form.
Constitutions, good constitutions, should be tailored to a people, a time, and a place. This is partly the reason why they should be considered fundamental law, especially if they, being well thought and well applied, are reasonable and conducive to a people’s good. The very thing that makes constitutions good can also cause them to expire, and, thereby, make change necessary.
“Perhaps the same constitution is not best for all societies, or for the same society at all times.” Hence, a key caveat from Eliot regarding the default respect for constitutional arrangements:
“I will not say, that they who are in government may not propose an alteration in the constitution, when they see manifest inconveniences; every member of the state may do this; and there may be extraordinary cases wherein it may be necessary to deviate from common rules; in such cases the safety of the people is to be preferred to every other consideration. But no wise ruler would desire a general power of dispensing with the laws; nor is it possible to proceed with too much caution in making any great alteration in the civil constitution of a state; especially when it has been long established, and the wisdom of ages has been employed to confirm it.”
This is true statesmanship Eliot is calling for. Fundamental law, preexisting constitutional structures should be respected and only cautiously tinkered with. Hence,
“where the constitution is tolerably good, it is generally the wisdom of those in power, to maintain a sacred regard to it themselves; and to endeavor that it may not be violated by others. This is their safety, and very often the safety of those they govern. When a humor of changing once begins, no mortal can tell where it will end.”
But the entire point of such arrangements is, or should be, the safety, good, and prosperity of the people to whom it applies as a mechanism for governance—all good governance must exist for these purposes. A true statesman, then, is not eager for change for its own sake, nor wanton innovation. Yet, the good of the people is paramount. To the extent that preexisting structures do not serve that end they can and should be dispensed with. This is ends-based governance as opposed to the procedural, means-based variety. Too many Americans instinctively appeal to and are pacified by the latter.
Religion and Virtue
“Rulers cannot come up to the character of the text, unless they are men of religion and virtue.” If they are not godly then the very skills and competencies that make men good rulers will degenerate into “cunning” and exploitation, pursuit of private interest over the common good. The temptation is simply too great for men of skill given such vast means. To be clear, by religion Eliot means Christianity. By virtue, he means true piety. Eliot genuinely thinks that a Christian is simply more capable of good and magnanimous rule.
“[The] Christian temper… will more than anything help us to distinguish between right and wrong; when private interests and private views are removed… When rulers have such a happy disposition, they will study the true interest of those they govern, which is the way to understand it; they will watch against a little party spirit and every selfish sinister view.”
And again, “When the love and fear of God reign in the heart, men will rise to nobler heights, and to more distinguished acts of virtue, than from any other motive. When they consider the whole community as brethren, they will naturally seek the common good.”
Of course, prudence, frugality, temperance, and industry are all qualities becoming of a good ruler. A non-Chrisitan may, on occasion, possess those virtues, but without true religion conditioning their expression, it is less likely just rule will result.
On “Superior Spirits”
After covering the ideal qualities of a good ruler, Eliot offers some realist commentary. In this “imperfect state” no one will embody them comprehensively or perfectly. The quest for the exemplar ruler is a fools errand.
That said, there are men who are more capable than others. Eliot clearly believes in some sort of natural hierarchy. Some men possess “a larger proportion of understanding and integrity.” They are “superior spirits, men who are born to guide, to instruct, and to preserve; their abilities and their virtues denote that they were formed for the public good.”
It’s what God made them for, and they are dutybound to serve their country. This is not the same as selfish pursuit of dignified station to which one does not actually belong. Indeed, we should reward and promote good, capable, great-souled men rather than castigating their good ambition, otherwise the vacancies created by our demotion of great men will be filled by evil and inept men who are fueled by selfish ambition. “[A] people who have any regard to their own safety, will endeavor to find out merit wherever it is hid, and to confer their honors on those who know how to improve them.”
Now, this will shock some readers. Many of them will dismiss Eliot as captive to his own context and moment in history (i.e., 1765 British colonial America). But consider the merits of the argument.
“So far indeed, as government is by the constitution hereditary, a people are obliged to submit to the disposals of providence, and to pay homage to the lawful heir, whether his abilities are great or small: And in large communities, the advantage of hereditary monarchy is generally sufficient to balance every inconvenience; and where it is not, it is in their own power to do themselves justice, as they have generally done sooner or later. Witness among other instances, the glorious revolution in Britain, to which noble exertion of national virtue, we owe the preservation of our liberty, and the present happy establishment of the house of Hanover.
When a people immediately appoint their own rulers, they are to the last degree infatuated, if they fix on those, who are not capable of seeing with their own eyes, but are obliged to move by the direction of others, or who get into power to gratify their vanity, their luxury, or their avarice; and it requires no spirit of prophecy to foresee, that a community who are so lost to public virtue, are nigh to destruction. A people may be deceived, they may be betrayed, by men in whom they put confidence. But they deserve to be abandoned by providence, if they trust their interest with men, whom they know to be either weak or wicked.”
Two things here: 1) there is a certain providentialism present in a formally and explicitly monarchical polity on the part of the people that would be difficult to replicate in an environment where they perceive themselves to be exercising more direct political agency. Even if we think of someone who is fed up with the system today in the western world and has decided that most of their “agency” is a mirage intended to induce compliance, they are still angry about it. In their minds, because of their conditioning and expectations, it is not the way it’s supposed to be. But in a hereditary monarchy, citizens were never supposed to have a direct and immediate say in the rule of the kingdom anyway, at least not as to the personnel at Whitehall. 2) Where people do ostensibly enjoy more direct participation, they may become overly “infatuated,” and even overly critical, but more likely, their involvement will express their own vanity. All that is bad for public virtue on balance. Simply put, suffrage, participation is not an unalloyed good. As Jonathan Todd, who preached the election sermon in Connecticut about twenty years prior to Eliot’s sermon, put it, one tyrant is better than a thousand tyrants.
Resistance
All that said, “passive obedience” or unqualified, absolute non-resistance is not tenable to Eliot. Opposition to authority is justified when those in authority act “contrary to the design of their institution, and are bent to ruin the society, which it is their duty to defend and promote.”
In other words, “The end for which God has placed men in authority is, that they may promote the public happiness: When they improve their power to contrary purposes, when they endeavor to subvert the constitution, and to enslave a free people, they are no longer the ministers of God; they do not act by his authority.”
This is a substantive, ends-based analysis. If government is conceived as teleological rather than proceduralist then such substantive assessment can be performed. If not, then who’s to say? Under a rational and anthropologically self-conscious conception of governance, “When ruler are wise and good, opposition is an high crime.” When they are bad, as described above, then the moral calculous changes. The default is obedience, not a wanton and perennially rebellious posture.
How do we know when the operative threshold has been crossed? “People are generally capable of knowing when they are well used. Public happiness is easily felt… When a people perceive, that they who have power in their hands still treat them as brethren, as partaking of the same common nature, and as having a right to their liberty and property; they will have a reciprocal affection to their rulers.” Good rulers not only rule well and for the common good, but are likewise sensitive to public perception and mood for this very reason. When a government indicates their indifference to public feeling, one can assume, at best, irrationality, and at worst, nefarious goings on. Of course, simple inconveniences do not justify disobedience; imperfect rulers do not license rebellion.
The assessment must consider the health and longevity of the polity itself, its structure and people. (For more on these topics, see David Henreckson’s excellent, The Immortal Commonwealth.)
Colonial Government
For sheerly historical purposes, consider Eliot’s description of Massachusetts colonial government at the time:
“The form of government in this province is a little model of the British constitution. Our commander in chief, who represents the King, is not elected by ourselves. We do not complain of this as an infringement of our liberties, it rather frees us from many inconveniencies, which would attend frequent popular elections. Especially may we esteem it a privilege, while we have a Gentleman at our head, who so well understands our civil constitution, and who, we persuade ourselves, sincerely aims at the happiness of the people he is appointed to govern.”
The rest of the sermon praises the home government and mother country. Already, at the time, resentment would have been swelling. But we have no textual reason to read Eliot as being disingenuous. He is consistent throughout his address in highlighting the “inconveniences” of “popular elections.” There are always tradeoffs between political models. Surely, we can understand that given the cyclical fervor corresponding to campaign season in our own polity.
What we should notice, however, is some of Eliot’s normative commentary from earlier in the sermon. He describes Israel as operating like a “convention of the states” and thereby, if not bestowing then confirming monarchical appointment on both David and Saul. Eliot then briskly enters discussion about the character and piety of a good ruler, but the import of his early comments was probably obvious to his audience.
Image Credit: King John of England obliged to sign the Great charter, or Magna Carta, at Runnymede, 1215, engraving.
One of the problems with traditionalists, and Cline is a traditionalist, is that they are the other side of the coin of narcissists. Whereas a narcissist believes that those in the present time have everything to teach and nothing to learn from those in the past, traditionalists believe that their favorites from the past have everything to teach and nothing to learn from those living in the present. BTW, here I am adapting a statement made b y Martin Luther King Jr. when he spoke against the Vietnam War.
And so it is best to lean on people from all time periods knowing that there is no one, outside of Christ, who is omniscient. And thus there are no theories or ideologies that are omniscient. And so what should we make of Elliot’s sermon?
First, we need to be careful about favoring a government that aims to provide for the common good. For too many times in history, we have seen tyrants take charge of a government claiming that they are there to provide for the common good. And thus to oppose them is to oppose the people. Vlad Lenin is a case in point as was Hitler, Stalin, Trump, and so forth. Not all on that list ruled with the same degree of tyranny, but they all claimed that to oppose them is to be the enemy of the people.
Second, we should note what George Carlin said about politicians. He stated that they are a reflection of the voters. So that people who are selfish and ignorant will elect leaders like themselves. And so just as art reflects life, so elected leaders reflect the people who elected them provided that a the elections were fair.
And speaking of elected officials being a reflection of the voters, what does it say about us Christians when we vote for Christian officials because we believe that, in almost every case, they are superior to candidates who are unbelievers? Does it say that we believe that we Christians are superior to unbelievers in society? If so, perhaps we should read Luke 18:9-14; Romans 2-3, and James 2:10-13; 3:1-2a.
Third, we should note the timing of Elliot’s sermon with regard to the writing of The Constitution. His sermon was delivered before the Constitution was written. This is an important point because of the Establishment Clause that is part of the 1st Amendment.
Fourth, we should note what Thomas Jefferson said in his 1801 Inaugural Address. He stated that, in a democracy, though the will of the majority should rule, that if the will of the majority does not respect the equal status and rights of the minority, then the will of the majority will be practicing oppression. And that must be avoided. Of course, he found all of that easier to say than to practice. Anyway, in other words, our pursuit for self-interest and happiness should be tempered by our respect for the equality of others. This is an important principle of democracy that produces virtue in its people when it is carried out. But it also provides a litmus test for whether a government and its nation is a practicing democracy.
Fifth, we need to pay attention to what Jeff Halper wrote in his book ‘An Israeli In Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel.’ He wrote the following in distinguishing a democracy from an ethnocracy:
‘An ethnocracy is the opposite of a democracy, although it might incorporate some elements of democracy such as universal citizenship and elections. It arises when one particular group—the Jews in Israel, the Russians in Russia, the Protestants in pre-1972 Northern Ireland, the whites in apartheid South Africa, the Shi’ite Muslims of Iran, the Malay of Malaysia and, if they had their way, the white Christian fundamentalist in the US—seizes control of the government and the armed forces in order to enforce a regime of exclusive privilege over other groups in what is in fact a multi-ethic or multi-religious society. Ethnocracy, or ethno-nationalism, privileges ethnos over demos. whereby one’s ethnic affiliation, be it defined by race, descent, religion, language or national origin, takes precedence over citizenship in determining to whom a country actually “belongs.” Israel is referred to explicitly by its political leaders as a “Jewish Democracy.”’
With the other pandemic being authoritarianism, what we see in our nation, and in the world, today is a choice between Democracy with equality or authoritarianism with inequality. After all, ‘things ain’t what they used to be’ in 1765. We now have a pluralistic society due to the multiple cultures that have emerged from a population that is multi-ethnic and multi-religious. But unfortunately for us religiously conservative Christians, we have a penchant for authoritarianism. And so anytime that there are those who claim to be or are advertised as being the Superior Spirits about which Cline wrote, we need to ask the following question posed by a voice from a time much later than the people whom Cline cites, but that probably still predates Cline: ‘Are they friendly spirits?’