"Wealth, like suffrage, must be
considerably distributed, to sustain a democratic republic; and hence, whatever
draws a considerable proportion of either into a few hands, will destroy it. As
power follows wealth, the majority must have wealth or lose power." (1)
----John Taylor, "An Inquiry
into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States" (1814)
“English legal
historian M.J.C. Vile views Taylor as "in some ways the most impressive
political theorist that America has produced." [2] Historian Clyde N. Wilson
describes Taylor as "the systematic philosopher of Jeffersonian
democracy,"[3] and as "representing 'both a conservative allegiance
to local community and inherited ways and a radical-populist suspicion of
capitalism, ‘progress,’ government and routine logrolling politics.'"[4]
According to historian Adam L. Tate, Taylor was "an agrarian who 'viewed
happiness as possession of family, farm, and leisure,' had no great love for
organized religion, social hierarchy, and other such traditional institutions."[5]
"Taylor took solid liberal ground in holding that men were a mixture of
good and evil. Self-interest was the only real constant in human action. . . .
. Indeed, while other thinkers, from Thomas Jefferson to Federalist John Adams,
agonized over the need for a virtuous citizenry, Taylor took the view that 'the
principles of a society may be virtuous, though the individuals composing it
are vicious.'" [6] Taylor's solution to the effects of factionalism was to
"remove the base from under the stock jobbers, the banks, the paper money
party, the tariff-supported manufacturers, and so on; destroy the system of
patronage by which the executive has corrupted the legislature; bring down the
usurped authority of the Supreme Court." [7] "The more a nation
depends for its liberty on the qualities of individuals, the less likely it is
to retain it. By expecting publick good from private virtue, we expose
ourselves to publick evils from private vices." [8] (9)
Described as at the ‘intersection of
republicanism and classical liberalism’ Taylor stands as a precursor in a line
of political thought that defending the sovereignty of the several states would
lead inexorably to the philosophies of John C. Calhoun and the politics of interposition, nullification and
secession. His defense of slavery would
likewise anticipate the works of Edmund Ruffin and George Fitzhugh, laying the
intellectual justification for the antebellum south’s ‘peculiar institution’.
Why, then, would Professor Reich light
upon what are now the obscure writings of an early 19th century
politician and political philosopher, and an early apologist for the ‘lost
cause’, in order to make a point about contemporary American politics?
I can’t speak for the professor but I
would suggest it is precisely because Taylor (a relative of a future United
States President Zachery Taylor) represents not only significant views held by
many of our founding fathers, but because he represents a significant part of
the American Political Tradition influencing our politics today. I am referring here to the strain of
classical liberalism that today would be called libertarian, emphasizing local
control, state’s rights, and limited government. But note here how, in an early formulation of
what would become libertarian conservatism, one finds clearly evident
‘populist’ economic formulations that would lead Taylor to oppose like
Jefferson, the economic policies of the Federalist Alexander Hamilton. The
distrust of banking in general and central banks in particular has a long
history in this country as Taylor’s writings suggest. He was not alone. From Jefferson to Jackson to the “Greenback”
party and William Jennings Bryan’s excoriation of the ‘cross of gold’ (referring
to the Gold Standard); to FDR’s struggles with Wall Street and the Banking
industry; to many on the political ‘right’ today who advocate the abolition of
the Federal Reserve banking system; Americans from the first have consistently
exhibited a great unease with the centralization of economic power.
Today we can easily dismiss Taylor’s
views on race and slavery, as we can dismiss his view that state sovereignty
trumps all. The Civil War changed all
that. But like Richard Henry Lee, James
Madison, Thomas Jefferson and others Taylor reminds us that many, if not most,
of those who wrote and ratified the founding documents of this nation were
deeply distrustful of concentrations of economic power. They held these views not because they were
against ‘free markets’ but because they knew that there is a relationship
between economic and political power; that one inexorably produces the other,
and that rule by oligopoly would mean an end to the democratic experiment. Indeed it was precisely to wrest control from
the oligarchs that the citizens of Athens rebelled and established a Democracy,
demonstrating as they did not only the reasons and justification for the
citizens to seize control but that Democracy and a redistribution of wealth
have, from the beginning gone hand-in-hand.
To defend Democracy or, in our case, a republican form of government,
one must inevitably confront the questions concerning the distribution of
wealth in society. It is comforting here
to re-confirm, the thesis of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in his “The Age of
Jackson”, that the founding fathers were not only suspicious of combinations
and cartels but advocated and worked to regulate, or outright prevent, their
formation.
I have previously written about this,
expressing precisely these points. (10)
That what differentiates a true republican government from a so-called “Banana
Republic” is the existence of a healthy, powerful and indeed controlling middle
class; and that, therefore, it necessarily follows that to wage war upon the
middle class is to wage war upon the republic itself. Taylor understood this, as did Jefferson,
Lee, Madison and Adams. Modern
conservatives do not.
_______
2.Joseph R. Stromberg, Country Ideology,
Republicanism, and Libertarianism: The Thought of John Taylor of Caroline, The
Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol VI, No. 1, 35 (Winter 1982) (citing M.J.C.
Vile, Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers, 167 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press 1967)).
3. Wilson, Clyde (2011-11-03) A Little Rebellion,
Chronicles
4. Hales, Dylan (2008-12-01) Left Turn
Ahead, The American Conservative
5. McCarthy, Daniel (2005-08-01) Liberty
and Order in the Slave Society, The American Conservative
6. Stromberg, pp. 39-40.
7. Id. at 41 (quoting Grant McConnell,
"John Taylor and the Democratic Tradition," Western Political
Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 1, 27 (March 1951)).
8. Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum
75 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press 1985) (quoting Taylor).
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_of_Caroline.
10. http://wandererandshadow.blogspot.com/2008/01/january-13-2008-banana-republic.html
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