Republican Virtue In the eighteenth century there was a special understanding of disinterested republican virtue, the virtue of patriots who scorned corruption and championed the general good. In Britain it was represented by a “Country party,” whose members detested Walpole and were avid readers of Cato’s Letters and of Bolingbroke, and who stood in opposition to a “Court party” that was more comfortable with corruption. In France, republican virtue found its most striking expression in the paintings of Jefferson’s friend Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), where it reached repellant heights.
...more
