First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

by Thomas E. Ricks

But for the Revolutionary generation, virtue was the essential element of public life. Back then, it actually was masculine. It meant putting the common good before one’s own interests. Virtue, writes the historian Joyce Appleby, was the “lynchpin” of public life—that is, the fastener that held together the structure.

To be virtuous was to be a public man with a reputation for selflessness. Washington likely never read the definition by Montesquieu, the eighteenth-century French political philosopher, of “virtue” as “the love of the laws and of our country,” but many of his peers did.

Jefferson would remain devoted to Epicurean thought for the remainder of his life. He summarized that belief system thusly: Happiness the aim of life. Virtue the foundation of happiness Utility the test of virtue . . . Virtue consists in Prudence Temperance Fortitude Justice90

Sir Isaiah Berlin, the twentieth-century British philosopher, concluded that Montesquieu’s impact remains all around us, pervasive yet often unseen, in the form of modern liberal democracy. Three hundred years ago, Berlin wrote, the French philosophe advocated constitutionalism, the preservation of civil liberties, the abolition of slavery; gradualism, moderation, peace, internationalism, social and economic progress with due respect to national and local tradition. He believed in justice and the rule of law; defended freedom of opinion and association; detested all forms of extremism and fanaticism; put his faith in the balance of power and the division of authority as a weapon against despotic rule by individuals or groups or majorities; and approved of social equality, but not to the point at which it threatened individual liberty; and of liberty, but not to the point where it threatened to disrupt orderly government.6

One of Jefferson’s favorite ancient authors was Tacitus, the Roman chronicler. “Tacitus I consider as the first writer in the world without a single exception,” he once wrote.

Where in Locke property is the basis of social division into classes, Jefferson’s formulation marginalized the principle of social class. The landless could no longer be regarded as either so marginal or so subordinate as in Locke. Where Locke nurtured a negative conception of liberty, centered on protection of property, for Jeffersonians liberty was a positive, developmental concept to be upheld and advanced by the state and its agencies.18

All in all, Jefferson had carried off an extraordinary feat, relaying a lifetime of classical learning about liberty and rights but employing strong, straightforward prose that could be read aloud on street corners and in taverns and understood by all who listened. He had not just explained to the people the reasons for revolt, but created a document of lasting philosophical and literary merit that still resonates today as we try to understand and direct our country.

Montesquieu made a striking observation: “At the birth of societies, the leaders of republics create the institutions; thereafter, it is the institutions that form the leaders of republics.”

Hamilton again argued for distance from the classical world: Neither the manners nor the genius of Rome are suited to the republic or age we live in. All her maxims and habits were military, her government was constituted for war. Ours is unfit for it, and our situation still less than our constitution, invites us to emulate the conduct of Rome, or to attempt a display of unprofitable heroism.8

In his history of the rise of Rome, Polybius attributes the power of the city in part to its culture of loyalty and virtue, but also to the mixture of powers within the Republic. He saw the consuls bringing an element of monarchy and the Senate an aspect of aristocracy, but the people also holding power in the form of tribunes who could veto acts of the consuls and Senate. “The best constitution,” he wrote, is “that which partakes of all these three elements.” This view deeply influenced Adams and many other Americans of the Revolutionary generation.

Not only was the structure of the United States flawed, but so was the classical conception behind it, he argued. The time had come to accept that “all civilized societies are divided into different interests and factions, as they happen to be creditors or debtors—Rich or poor—husbandmen, merchants or manufacturers—members of different religious sects—followers of different political leaders—inhabitants of different districts—owners of different kinds of property &c &c.”44 But if “different interests and factions” were inevitable, then faction would have to be accepted and interest would have to be seen not as sinful but as natural.

Madison

The purpose of a national government, he began, was not just to deal with foreign powers and settle interstate disputes, but also to ensure “the security of private rights, and the steady dispensation of Justice.” And that led directly to the question of how to balance competing interests. “In Greece & Rome the rich & poor, the creditors & debtors, as well as the patricians & plebeians alternately oppressed each other with equal unmercifulness.” The solution, he concluded, was to go against the views of Montesquieu and create a large national republic: “The only remedy is to enlarge the sphere, & thereby divide the community into so great a number of interests & parties.”

Madison

Madison led the charge for a much stronger national system of government. On June 19, he argued that weakness at the core had been the fatal flaw of the Amphictyonic League, opening the way for intervention first by the rulers of Persia, and then, fatally, by Philip of Macedon. He returned to the point two days later, stating that “all the examples of other confederacies prove the greater tendency in such systems to anarchy than to tyranny.”

As early as 1775, Hamilton had mused in a letter that “it is not safe to trust to the virtue of any people.”48 At the Constitutional Convention, he had elaborated on that thought: “We must take man as we find him,” he had argued. “A reliance on pure patriotism has been the source of many of our errors.”

In the world of the Federalist Papers, the pillar of “virtue” has fallen.50 When Madison does write about virtue, it often is not to invoke it but to emphasize that it is a finite resource in humans. For example, in an aside in Federalist 53 he refers to “the period within which human virtue can bear the temptations of power.” He is not saying that humans are wicked and have no virtue, just that virtue alone is insufficient. In other words, “a nation of philosophers is as little to be expected as the philosophical race of kings wished for by Plato.”

In making checks and balances the heart of the American system, Madison also was borrowing a bit from Montesquieu, who wrote that, “Constant experience shows us, that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it. . . . To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things, power should be a check to power.”

He warned again of foreign subversion, citing the intervention of Philip of Macedon. “By his intrigues and bribes he won over to his interests the popular leaders of several cities; by their influence and votes, gained admission into the Amphyctionic council; and by his arts and his arms, made himself master of the confederacy.” The lesson of this history, he concluded, is that “it emphatically illustrates the tendency of federal bodies, rather to anarchy among the members than to tyranny in the head.”

In Federalist 51, he emphasized again how checks and balances were necessary to offset self-interest. “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. . . . It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to controul the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” He concluded the thought with one of his more memorable observations: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”71

Hamilton long had been growing impatient with classical analogies and models. In Federalist 6, for example, Daniel Shays was as much on Hamilton’s mind as the Greco-Roman world was. He was dismissive of both. Of the latter, he wrote, “Sparta was little better than a well regulated camp; and Rome was never sated of carnage and conquest.”74