In which we see how a standard, textbook, tenth grade civics class history of Anglo-American political philosophy gets a lot more interesting once you realize “the Enlightenment” was wrong, and liberal democrats are the bad guys.

Table of Contents

Oh, good. It’s John Locke (image). I think we’ve heard enough from you to last ten thousand years.

The more people who have access to the ballot, the better the country will be. New York Times

The question of improper political influence over government decision-making… L.A. Times

The latter-day Whig or progressive assessment of popular government reduces to two propositions: that (1) “democracy” is both an ethical necessity and the ideal organizational structure for any country-sized corporation; whereas (2) actual public policy decisions should be made by experts — scholars, that is, who will no doubt be Whigs — as opposed to whichever scoundrels happened to win the last election, let alone by the whims of 51 percent of some huge, confused mob; these garnished with the all-purpose Whig meta-proposition that (a) contradiction notwithstanding, these two claims are beyond dispute (typically by appeal to the current date); with the obvious corollary that (b) anyone who insists on disputing them must be stupid, crazy, or downright evil. In short: “democracy” good, “politics” bad, shut up and don’t ask questions. We’ll call it the democratic double valence.

“The more people who have access to the ballot, the better the country will be.” And there the editorial ends: no evidence is necessary, and none is provided. “The question of improper political influence over government decision-making is at the heart of the controversy.” The improper influence of who now? Over what now? Who, if not the elected representatives of the people, is supposed to be making government decisions?

Associations differ between “democracy”…

… and “politics”…

… even though “you don’t have one without the other” (images).

Here we see proposition (1) in action, courtesy of the New York Times (2008):

In a vast, high-ceilinged tent, Ali al-Rashed sounded an anguished note as he delivered the first speech of his campaign for Parliament. “Kuwait used to be No. 1 in the economy, in politics, in sports, in culture, in everything,” he said, his voice floating out in the warm evening air to hundreds of potential voters seated on white damask-lined chairs. “What happened?” It is a question many people are asking as this tiny, oil-rich nation of 2.6 million people approaches its latest round of elections. And the unlikely answer being whispered around, both here and in neighboring countries on the Persian Gulf: too much democracy. In a region where autocracy is the rule, Kuwait is a remarkable exception, with a powerful and truculent elected Parliament that sets the emir’s salary and is the nation’s sole source of legislation. Women gained the right to vote and run for office two years ago, and a popular movement won further electoral changes. Despite those gains, Kuwait has been overshadowed by its dynamic neighbors — Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar — where economies are booming under absolute monarchies.

Meanwhile, in Kuwait City’s “financial district”…

(image)

But do tell us more about these marvelous votes you got in exchange.

It is unlikely that many Kuwaitis would be willing to trade their political rights and freedoms for more economic opportunity. But the notion that democracy is somehow holding Kuwait back is common. “It’s true, the friction in our politics delays things,” said Kamel Harami, an oil analyst. “The sheik of Abu Dhabi can say, ‘Go build this,’ and it’s done. He doesn’t have me, the press, the TV stations, the Parliament, getting in his way. But what people need to understand is that democracy isn’t the problem; it’s that democracy isn’t being used correctly.” […] “There are people who want to say, ‘Look at democracy, look at what it causes,’” said Nawaf al-Mutairi, a business student. “But we know democracy is our last hope. The problem is just that democracy is incremental.”

You know, this Kuwaiti train of thought seems strangely familiar…

In each country it is for [democracy] and the people there to transform it by their own efforts, and in that way the whole world will be transformed step by step into a [democratic] world. Will the [democratic] world be good? We all know it will be. […] It will of course be the best, the most beautiful and the most advanced society in human history. Who can deny that such a society is good?

Who indeed. Rights and freedoms!

[Democracy] will defiantly win final victory by relying on the [international community] and the masses of the exploited and oppressed people and by using [Enlightenment values] to guide the revolutionary struggle of the masses and propel society towards the great goal of [democracy]. The reason is that the historical laws of social development make the progress of human society towards [democracy] inevitable.

You see? We’re being progressive, like President Obama, “somebody who is no doubt progressive,” or Comrade Stalin, “Leader of Progressive Mankind.”

But on the other hand, we must also understand that the cause of [democracy] is the most arduous undertaking in all history; that only through protracted, bitter and torturous struggle will we be able to defeat all the exploiting classes; and that for a long time after our victory we shall patiently have to carry out social and economic, ideological and cultural transformation.

One might almost say that “democracy in the office and the factory” (not to mention the grain field) “is a preparation for democracy in society at large.”

Since the [democratic] cause is so great and arduous an undertaking, some people who seek social progress are still sceptical and not convinced that [democracy] can be realized. They do not believe that under the leadership of the [United Nations] the human race can develop and transform itself into a [democratic] mankind of the highest quality and that all the difficulties in the process of revolution and construction can be overcome.

Ah, thank you, President Shaoqi, that clears things up considerably. That, by the way, was How to Be a Good Communist (1939) with surprisingly few edits. We must work harder, Comrades! Ignore the lying Trotskyite wreckers. We know democracy is our last, best hope. Now get out there and punch some kulaks in the throat!

Proposition (2), on the other hand, is well illustrated by — well, actually, the New York Times will do just fine here, too (2008):

Last month, Wisconsin voters did something that is routine in the United States but virtually unknown in the rest of the world: They elected a judge. […] “To the rest of the world,” Hans A. Linde, a justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, since retired, said at a 1988 symposium on judicial selection, “American adherence to judicial elections is as incomprehensible as our rejection of the metric system.” Sandra Day O’Connor, the former Supreme Court justice, has condemned the practice of electing judges. “No other nation in the world does that,” she said at a conference on judicial independence at Fordham Law School in April, “because they realize you’re not going to get fair and impartial judges that way.” […] There is reason to think, though, that the idea of popular control of the government associated with President Andrew Jackson is an illusion when it comes to judges. Some political scientists say voters do not have anything near enough information to make sensible choices, in part because most judicial races rarely receive news coverage. When voters do have information, these experts say, it is often from sensational or misleading television advertisements. “You don’t get popular control out of this,” said Steven E. Schier, a professor of political science at Carleton College in Minnesota. “When you vote with no information, you get the illusion of control. The overwhelming norm is no to low information.” […] In an interview, Justice Butler — a graduate of the University of Wisconsin law school who served for 12 years as a judge in Milwaukee courts — said the past few months had tested his commitment to elections. “My position historically has been that there is something to be said for the public to be selecting people who are going to be making decisions about their futures,” Justice Butler said. “But people ought to be looking at judges’ ability to analyze and interpret the law, their legal training, their experience level and, most importantly, their impartiality,” he continued. “They should not be making decisions based on ads filled with lies, deception, falsehood and race-baiting. The system is broken, and that robs the public of their right to be informed.”

You know what? Some of these arguments seem strangely familiar, too. I’m quite sure I’ve heard it said before that “voters do not have anything near enough information to make sensible choices,” and that “when voters do have information, it is often from sensational or misleading advertisements” —

There is nothing more uncertain than the People; their Opinions are as variable and sudden as Tempests; there is neither Truth nor Judgment in them; they are not led by Wisdom to judg of any thing, but by Violence and Rashness; nor put they any Difference between things True and False. After the manner of Cattel, they follow the Herd that goes before; they have a Custom always to favour the Worst and Weakest; they are most prone to Suspitions, and use to Condemn men for Guilty upon any false Suggestion; they are apt to believe all News, especially if it be sorrowful; and like Fame, they make it more in the Believing; when there is no Author, they fear those Evils which themselves have seigned; they are most desirous of New Stirrs and Changes, and are Enemies to Quiet and Rest; Whatsoever is Giddy or Head-strong, they account Man-like and Couragious; but whatsoever is Modest or Provident, seems sluggish; each Man hath a Care of his Particular, and thinks basely of the Common Good; they look upon Approaching Mischiefs as they do upon Thunder, only every Man wisheth it may not touch his own Person; it is the Nature of them, they must Serve basely, or Domineer proudly; for they know no Mean.

— or words to that effect. Come to think of it, I’m sure Justice Butler wasn’t the first to point out that “the system is broken” and won’t produce experienced, impartial judges —

If any man think these Disorders in Popular States were but Casual, or such as might happen under any kind of Government, he must know, that such Mischiefs are unavoidable, and of necessity do follow all Democratical Regiments; and the Reason is given, because the Nature of all People is, to desire Liberty without Restraint, which cannot be but where the Wicked bear Rule; and if the People should be so indiscreet, as to advance Vertuous Men, they lose their Power: for that, Good Men would favour none but the Good, which are always the fewer in Number; and the Wicked and Vicious (which is still the Greatest Part of the People) should be excluded from all Preferment, and in the end, by little and little, Wise Men should seize upon the State, and take it from the People.

— or indeed experienced, impartial anything. No, I’m afraid those lines are not from the New York Times, but from Patriarcha: The Natural Power of Kings by Sir Robert Filmer, a defense of divine-right monarchy published in 1680 (more on which later).

How have we still not caught up to Filmer? How are we still so muddled and befuddled by democratic nursery rhymes? Human rights, equality, diversity — all the little noises people make with their mouths when they want you to stop thinking about the most effective and responsible way to organize the operation of a country and just cast your stupid vote and pay your damn taxes. “Democracy! For rights and freedoms!” Yes, I’ve heard. And Brawndo’s got what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes.

“What is Democracy,” Thomas Carlyle wonders (1855); “this huge inevitable Product of the Destinies, which is everywhere the portion of our Europe in these latter days?”

There lies the question for us. Whence comes it, this universal big black Democracy; whither tends it; what is the meaning of it? A meaning it must have, or it would not be here. If we can find the right meaning of it, we may, wisely submitting or wisely resisting and controlling, still hope to live in the midst of it; if we cannot find the right meaning, if we find only the wrong or no meaning in it, to live will not be possible! The whole social wisdom of the Present Time is summoned, in the name of the Giver of Wisdom, to make clear to itself, and lay deeply to heart with an eye to strenuous valiant practice and effort, what the meaning of this universal revolt of the European populations, which calls itself Democracy, and decides to continue permanent, may be. Certainly it is a drama full of action, event fast following event; in which curiosity finds endless scope, and there are interests at stake, enough to rivet the attention of all men, simple and wise. Whereat the idle multitude lift up their voices, gratulating, celebrating sky-high; in rhyme and prose announcement, more than plentiful, that now the New Era, and long-expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity has come. Glorious and immortal people, sublime French citizens, heroic barricades; triumph of civil and religious liberty — O Heaven! one of the inevitablest private miseries, to an earnest man in such circumstances, is this multitudinous efflux of oratory and psalmody, from the universal foolish human throat; drowning for the moment all reflection whatsoever, except the sorrowful one that you are fallen in an evil, heavy-laden, long-eared age, and must resignedly bear your part in the same.

Oh yes, Carlyle knows all about barriers falling before true Lightworkers as they pass on historic journeys, the oceans receding and our whole planet healing to a chorus of Yes we can! (vote for the candidate with right colour skin) and We are the ones! (unlike all the ones before, and all the ones to follow): the people’s election, for the right sort of people (“take that, Fox News”) — and no, my friends, the drama isn’t nearly over.

Shall we, then, resignedly bear our part in this evil, heavy-laden age? Or shall we make a ruckus? I say ruckus. Tonight, we too will wonder, not for the first time, “What is Democracy?” — searching, in particular, for the roots of the double valence, in the often rocky relationship between democracy and the intellectuals.

But they’ve probably been deceived, so actually whoever knows the General Will should rule (image)

Our survey begins with the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and his concept of the “general will,” which he introduced in his highly influential Social Contract: Principles of Political Right (1762):

If then we discard from the social compact what is not of its essence, we shall find that it reduces itself to the following terms — “Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.”

So what is a “general will”? Rousseau does not bother to define it, but he does tell us several amazing things about it. For one thing, it doesn’t represent the will of any given citizen, but it must be something really good, because any citizen who refuses to obey it is hurting everyone else in society:

In fact, each individual, as a man, may have a particular will contrary or dissimilar to the general will which he has as a citizen. His particular interest may speak to him quite differently from the common interest: his absolute and naturally independent existence may make him look upon what he owes to the common cause as a gratuitous contribution, the loss of which will do less harm to others than the payment of it is burdensome to himself; and, regarding the moral person which constitutes the State as a persona ficta, because not a man, he may wish to enjoy the rights of citizenship without being ready to fulfil the duties of a subject. The continuance of such an injustice could not but prove the undoing of the body politic. In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence. In this lies the key to the working of the political machine; this alone legitimises civil undertakings, which, without it, would be absurd, tyrannical, and liable to the most frightful abuses.

The general will is also not what the people say it is, because they can’t be trusted:

It follows from what has gone before that the general will is always right and tends to the public advantage; but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people are always equally correct. Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.

It would seem to follow that whoever can divine the “general will” — presumably by philosophizing of some sort, as it was by philosophizing that Rousseau concocted it in the first place — is entitled to rule with absolute power. If anyone disagrees with him, indeed even if everyone disagrees with him, why, they’ve probably been deceived somehow, and must be compelled to obey! For their own good, of course.

Rousseau follows up with an “essential” prescription for a one-party state:

If, when the people, being furnished with adequate information, held its deliberations, the citizens had no communication one with another, the grand total of the small differences would always give the general will, and the decision would always be good. But when factions arise, and partial associations are formed at the expense of the great association, the will of each of these associations becomes general in relation to its members, while it remains particular in relation to the State: it may then be said that there are no longer as many votes as there are men, but only as many as there are associations. […] It is therefore essential, if the general will is to be able to express itself, that there should be no partial society within the State, and that each citizen should think only his own thoughts. […] These precautions are the only ones that can guarantee that the general will shall be always enlightened, and that the people shall in no way deceive itself.

“Forced to be free.” The “injustice” of “independent existence.” “The general will is always right,” but “the people is often deceived,” and we must not allow it to “deceive itself.” I think you see where this is going. Sir Henry Sumner Maine (1822–1888) certainly did; from his essential Popular Government (1885):

From this origin sprang the People (with a capital P), the Sovereign People, the People the sole source of all legitimate power. From this came the subordination of Governments, not merely to electorates but to a vaguely defined multitude outside them, or to the still vaguer mastership of floating opinion. Hence began the limitation of legitimacy in governments to governments which approximate to democracy. A vastly more formidable conception bequeathed to us by Rousseau is that of the omnipotent democratic State rooted in natural right; the State which has at its absolute disposal everything which individual men value, their property, their persons, and their independence, the State which is bound to respect neither precedent nor prescription; the State which may make laws for its subjects ordaining what they shall drink or eat, and in what way they shall spend their earnings; the State which can confiscate all the land of the community, and which, if the effect on human motives is what it may be expected to be, may force us to labour on it when the older incentives to toil have disappeared. Nevertheless this political speculation, of which the remote and indirect consequences press us on all sides, is of all speculations the most baseless. The natural condition from which it starts is a simple figment of the imagination.

What “natural condition” is that? In a word: the Noble Savage.

Rousseau’s ideas about a “general will” were based on his beliefs about human nature, set out in his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1754):

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” […] So many writers have hastily concluded that man is naturally cruel, and requires civil institutions to make him more mild; whereas nothing is more gentle than man in his primitive state, as he is placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes, and the fatal ingenuity of civilised man. Equally confined by instinct and reason to the sole care of guarding himself against the mischiefs which threaten him, he is restrained by natural compassion from doing any injury to others, and is not led to do such a thing even in return for injuries received. For, according to the axiom of the wise Locke, There can be no injury, where there is no property. […] Though men had become less patient, and their natural compassion had already suffered some diminution, this period of expansion of the human faculties, keeping a just mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of our egoism, must have been the happiest and most stable of epochs. The more we reflect on it, the more we shall find that this state was the least subject to revolutions, and altogether the very best man could experience; so that he can have departed from it only through some fatal accident, which, for the public good, should never have happened. The example of savages, most of whom have been found in this state, seems to prove that men were meant to remain in it, that it is the real youth of the world, and that all subsequent advances have been apparently so many steps towards the perfection of the individual, but in reality towards the decrepitude of the species.

Maine says of this:

The Contrat Social, which sets forth the political theory on which I am engaged, appears at first sight to give an historical account of the emergence of mankind from a State of Nature. But whether it is meant that mankind did emerge in this way, whether the writer believes that only a happily circumstanced part of the human race had this experience, or whether he thinks that Nature, a beneficent legislatress, intended all men to have it, but that her objects were defeated, it is quite impossible to say with any confidence. The language of Rousseau sometimes suggests that he meant his picture of early social transformations to be regarded as imaginary; but nevertheless the account given of them is so precise, detailed, and logically built up, that it is quite inconceivable its author should not have intended it to express realities. […] I have myself no doubt that very much of the influence of Rousseau over the men of his own generation, and of the next, arose from the belief widely spread among them that his account of natural and of early political society was literally true.

The question is, how does Rousseau’s natural history stack up next to those other, “hastier” writers? First among the writers Rousseau had in mind was the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) for his great work Leviathan: The Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651):

Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war, as is of every man, against every man. For WAR, consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of time, is to be considered in the nature of war; as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather, lieth not in a shower or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE. Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Well, as Hunter Thompson once almost put it: “We’ve learned a lot about human nature since then.” Who has the right of it? Are we, in our “primitive state,” “restrained by natural compassion from doing any injury to others,” as Rousseau claimed, or do we “live without security” in “continual fear, and danger of violent death”?

Steven Pinker is blunt but judicious in The Blank Slate (2003):

It is the doctrine of the Noble Savage that has been most mercilessly debunked by the new evolutionary thinking. […] In the past two decades anthropologists have gathered data on life and death in pre-state societies rather than accepting the warm and fuzzy stereotypes. What did they find? In a nutshell: Hobbes was right, Rousseau was wrong. To begin with, the stories of tribe out there somewhere who have never heard of violence turn out to be urban legends. Margaret Mead’s descriptions of peace-loving New Guineans and sexually nonchalant Samoans were based on perfunctory research and turned out to be almost perversely wrong. As the anthropologist Derek Freeman later documented, Samoans may beat or kill their daughters if they are not virgins on their wedding night, a young man who cannot woo a virgin may rape one to extort her into eloping, and the family of a cuckolded husband may attack and kill the adulterer.

Even a Mead apologist, who accuses Freeman of “smearing” her, must concede that “Mead downplayed some of the uglier aspects of Samoan sexuality — including violent rape and physical punishment bestowed on those who violated sexual norms.” Furthermore, the fact that “many in the American Anthropological Association (AAA) rose to defend Mead against Freeman… probably has something to do with the relative popularity in leftist anthropology of Mead’s story — more about the happy importance of nurture” than the “unhappy persistence of nature” (my emphasis).

In 2013, Mead’s supposedly peaceful Papua New Guinea, which is actually “rife with violence, in part due to its tribal culture,” reinstated the death penalty after “a spate of horrific crimes against women,” including an American bird researcher raped by nine armed men; two elderly women tortured for three days and beheaded on suspicion of sorcery; and “a young mother stripped naked, doused with petrol and burned alive” for the same reason. “Witch burning, torture and sorcery are still frighteningly common in Papua New Guinea,” according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The beheadings continue.

Pinker goes on:

The !Kung San of the Kalahari Desert had been described by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas as “the harmless people” in a book with that title. But as soon as anthropologists camped out long enough to accumulate data, they discovered that the !Kung San have a murder rate higher than that of American inner cities. They learned as well that a group of the San had recently avenged a murder by sneaking into the killer’s group and executing every man, woman, and child as they slept. But at least the !Kung San exist. In the early 1970s the New York Times Magazine reported the discovery of the “gentle Tasaday” of the Philippine rainforest, a people with no words for conflict, violence, or weapons. The Tasaday turned out to be local farmers dressed in leaves for a photo opportunity so that cronies of Ferdinand Marcos could set aside their “homeland” as a preserve and enjoy exclusive mineral and logging rights. […] Moreover, Keeley and others have noted that native peoples are dead serious when they carry out warfare. Many of them make weapons as damaging as their technology permits, exterminate their enemies when they can get away with it, and enhance the experience by torturing captives, cutting off trophies, and feasting on enemy flesh.

Not exactly what Rousseau had in mind when he wrote: “The example of savages, most of whom have been found in this state, seems to prove that men were meant to remain in it.” Interestingly, Maine had a pretty good handle on the facts in 1885:

So far as any research into the nature of primitive human society has any bearing on so mere a dream, all inquiry has dissipated it. The process by which Rousseau supposes communities of men to have been formed, or by which at all events he wishes us to assume that they were formed, is again a chimera. No general assertion as to the way in which human societies grew up is safe, but perhaps the safest of all is that none of them were formed in the way imagined by Rousseau.

And yet the Noble Savage flourishes, even in the sciences; Maine again:

The fact is that political theories are endowed with the faculty possessed by the hero of the Border-ballad. When their legs are smitten off they fight upon their stumps. They produce a host of words, and of ideas associated with those words, which remain active and combatant after the parent speculation is mutilated or dead. Their posthumous influence often extends a good way beyond the domain of politics.

All right, so where did Rousseau get his ideas about human nature, if not from actual humans or actual nature? His Discourse cites “the axiom of the wise Locke”:

There can be no injury, where there is no property.

That would be the English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), dangling at the center of his web of so-called “Enlightenment.” We tracked his “axiom” to ‘Morality Capable of Demonstration’ in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689; my emphasis):

I doubt not but from self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences, as incontestable as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out to any one that will apply himself with the same indifferency and attention to the one, as he does to the other of these sciences. The relation of other modes may certainly be perceived, as well as those of number and extension: and I cannot see why they should not also be capable of demonstration, if due methods were thought on to examine or pursue their agreement or disagreement. Where there is no property, there is no injustice, is a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid: for the idea of property being a right to any thing; and the idea to which the name injustice is given, being the invasion or violation of that right; it is evident, that these ideas, being thus established, and these names annexed to them, I can as certainly know this proposition to be true, as that a triangle has three angles equal to two right ones.

Locke is playing games with definitions: in the most charitable interpretation of his argument, rights are considered to be a form of property, and injustice means to violate a right. “Where there is no property,” it follows that no one has any rights, which makes it impossible to violate any rights, so “there is no injustice.” Sure, your grandmother was just kidnapped and eaten by a howling cannibal biker gang, but seeing as she didn’t legally own the right not to be turned into grandmother stew, Locke doesn’t understand why you persist in calling it an “injustice.” (A less charitable interpretation is that all property is considered to be a form of right, and injustice means to violate a property right — not any other kind of right. This also leads directly to grandmother stew. The least charitable interpretation is that the whole thing makes no sense.)

Compare Hobbes, four decades earlier, taking the same basic idea but developing it in an altogether more insightful fashion towards a real, sensible moral conclusion:

To this war of every man, against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice, and injustice are none of the faculties neither of the body, nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses, and passions. They are qualities, that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man’s, that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it. And thus much for the ill condition, which man by mere nature is actually placed in; though with a possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the passions, partly in his reason. The passions that incline men to peace, are fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreement.

Locke’s train of thought gets no further than Hobbes’ first sentence; Locke doesn’t even bother to mention that where there is no property, there is not only no injustice, but also no justice. And by calling it a moral argument, that “the measures of right and wrong might be made out,” Locke all but guarantees that someone is going to misinterpret his tautology to mean that if no one owns any stuff, everyone will be nice to one another. Rousseau: “Nothing can be more gentle than man in his primitive state. For, according to the axiom of the wise Locke…” Fail. You fail at reading comprehension, Rousseau. (By the way, it’s not even an axiom. You can’t prove an axiom. Double fail.)

I am not the first person to have noticed this. George Berkeley is counted among the great British Empiricists, along with Locke and (the truly great) David Hume. Here is Berkeley’s take on ‘Morality capable of demonstration’ (circa 1705):

To demonstrate morality it seems one need only make a dictionary of words and see which included which. At least, this is the greatest part and bulk of the work. Locke’s instances of demonstration in morality are, according to his own rule, trifling propositions.

Similarly, Richard Foster Jones (Stanford English) in The Seventeenth Century: Studies in the History of English Thought and Literature from Bacon to Pope (1951):

It is perhaps instructive to observe how Locke here lapses, not only into a trifling proposition, but into a monstrous definition which defies common sense and “constant experience.” […]

(“A monstrous definition” refers to the less charitable interpretation above.)

Such abuses of deductive reasoning vitiate the whole mass of ethical and political speculation left us by the geometrical spirit of the eighteenth century. They are the enthusiasms of a mathematical faith that would leap over all difficulties, that felt itself strong enough to move mountains.

In the same Essay, Locke invents a key bit of Whig doctrine: the Blank Slate.

I know it is a received doctrine, that men have native ideas, and original characters, stamped upon their minds, in their very first being. This opinion I have, at large, examined already; […] Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience; in all that our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself.

Locke establishes his claim in what we now recognize as typical Locke fashion. (Skim.)

First, it is evident, that all children and idiots have not the least apprehension or thought of them; and the want of that is enough to destroy that universal assent, which must needs be the necessary concomitant of all innate truths: it seeming to me near a contradiction, to say, that there are truths imprinted on the soul, which it perceives or understands not; imprinting, if it signify any thing, being nothing else, but the making certain truths to be perceived. For to imprint any thing on the mind, without the mind’s perceiving it, seems to me hardly intelligible. If therefore children and idiots have souls, have minds, with those impressions upon them, they must unavoidably perceive them, and necessarily know and assent to these truths: which since they do not, it is evident that there are no such impressions. For if they are not notions naturally imprinted, how can they be innate? and if they are notions imprinted, how can they be unknown? To say a notion is imprinted on the mind, and yet at the same time to say, that the mind is ignorant of it, and never yet took notice of it, is to make this impression nothing. No proposition can be said to be in the mind, which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of. For if any one may, then, by the same reason, all propositions that are true, and the mind is capable of ever assenting to, may be said to be in the mind, and to be imprinted: since, if any one can be said to be in the mind, which it never yet knew, it must be only, because it is capable of knowing it, and so the mind is of all truths it ever shall know. Nay, thus truths may be imprinted on the mind, which it never did, nor ever shall know: for a man may live long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths, which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty. So that if the capacity of knowing, be the natural impression contended for, all the truths a man ever comes to know, will, by this account, be every one of them innate; and this great point will amount to no more, but only to a very improper way of speaking; which, whilst it pretends to assert the contrary, says nothing different from those, who deny innate principles.

No, he isn’t finished. On and on he goes, generating quite a lot of words and not a lot of sense. (And the charge of an “improper way of speaking” is a bit rich, coming from the author of ‘Morality capable of demonstration.’)

Ultimately, Locke’s philosophy fails because it hinges on an impossibly accurate and precise correspondence between words and things. He defines certain terms, thereby translating things into words; he reasons exhaustively with those words; finally, he translates the words back into things — which all sounds fine, except the natural-language correspondence between words (like “injustice”) and things (like grandmother stew) is never perfectly accurate or precise, so it has no chance at all of holding up under the terrible corrosive rigour of pure logic, which explodes the smallest of contradictions into infinite nonsense.

Politically speaking, though, the greater fault here is that nowhere in his interminable Essay does Locke explain whether or not “character” includes ability, cognitive or otherwise. Generations of Whigs have assumed, much to the detriment of science and education (not to mention immigration policy), that it does; in other words, all nurture, no nature. It should but probably doesn’t go without saying that this is not true.

But that’s not even what Locke was arguing — though again he seems to be making it as difficult as possible to discern the actual, trivial nature of his proposition; in this case, that babies don’t know very much. One would have to peruse Locke’s Conduct of the Understanding (1706), published only after his death:

There is, it is visible, great variety in men’s understandings, and their natural constitutions put so wide a difference between some men, in this respect, that art and industry would never be able to master; and their very natures seem to want a foundation to raise on it that which other men easily attain unto. — Amongst men of equal education there is great inequality of parts.

So there, at last, you have it: “their natural constitutions; their very natures.” And yet today, to choose just one example, visitors to How Stuff Works will learn:

Humans’ minds, according to Locke, are shaped solely by experience and education, rather than innate feelings and preordained character traits.

Now, Rousseau may or may not have understood The Conduct of the Understanding, but he must have perused the second of Locke’s Two Treatises of Civil Government (1690). Indeed, the latter book “furnished the Whig creed for the whole century before the French Revolution” (Graham, 1899). From Chapter 2:

To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.

Compare Hobbes’ “natural condition of mankind”:

There be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man’s, that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it.

Which sounds more like the “state all men are naturally in”? Locke continues:

But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s. Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another. And that all men may be restrained from invading others rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of nature be observed, which willeth the peace and preservation of all mankind, the execution of the law of nature is, in that state, put into every man’s hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree, as may hinder its violation: for the law of nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world, be in vain, if there were no body that in the state of nature had a power to execute that law, and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders. And if any one in the state of nature may punish another for any evil he has done, every one may do so: for in that state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a right to do.

That all sounds real nice, but I thought this was supposed to be the “state all men are naturally in.” Now Locke says that in this “state of nature,” “no one ought to harm another”; they “may not take away, or impair the life of another”; everyone is “bound to preserve himself”; and “he has not liberty to destroy so much as any creature in his possession,” because the “law of nature,” which is “reason,” “obliges every one.”

Is Locke describing the actual state of nature (with its trees, ferns, polecats, etc.), as Rousseau evidently believed; a hypothetical, ideal state of nature; or Locke’s idea of good local government? This recalls Maine’s take on Rousseau’s natural history:

Whether it is meant that mankind did emerge in this way, whether the writer believes that only a happily circumstanced part of the human race had this experience, or whether he thinks that Nature, a beneficent legislatress, intended all men to have it, but that her objects were defeated, it is quite impossible to say with any confidence.

Polecat says: “I am in the state of nature” (image)

Ultimately, the question is: what does “natural” mean, if not — well, natural? Maybe “the wise Locke” can enlighten us. Go ahead, Locke.

It is often asked as a mighty objection, where are, or ever were there any men in such a state of nature? To which it may suffice as an answer at present, that since all princes and rulers of independent governments all through the world, are in a state of nature, it is plain the world never was, nor ever will be, without numbers of men in that state. I have named all governors of independent communities, whether they are, or are not, in league with others: for it is not every compact that puts an end to the state of nature between men, but only this one of agreeing together mutually to enter into one community, and make one body politic; other promises, and compacts, men may make one with another, and yet still be in the state of nature. The promises and bargains for truck, etc. between the two men in the desert island, mentioned by Garcilasso de la Vega, in his history of Peru; or between a Swiss and an Indian, in the woods of America, are binding to them, though they are perfectly in a state of nature, in reference to one another: for truth and keeping of faith belongs to men, as men, and not as members of society. To those that say, there were never any men in the state of nature, […] I moreover affirm, that all men are naturally in that state, and remain so, till by their own consents they make themselves members of some politic society; and I doubt not in the sequel of this discourse, to make it very clear.

Oh, of course, two men on a desert island — assuming, that is, neither one of them “impairs the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods” of the other! Because that would violate “reason,” the “law of nature,” and they would no longer be in that “state all men are naturally in,” for the sequel states:

And here we have the plain difference between the state of nature and the state of war, which however some men have confounded, are as far distant, as a state of peace, good will, mutual assistance and preservation, and a state of enmity, malice, violence and mutual destruction, are one from another. Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature. But force, or a declared design of force, upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war. […] Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man’s person, makes a state of war, both where there is, and is not, a common judge. […] To avoid this state of war (wherein there is no appeal but to heaven, and wherein every the least difference is apt to end, where there is no authority to decide between the contenders) is one great reason of men’s putting themselves into society, and quitting the state of nature.

Oh, I see: after redefining the word “naturally,” all men are “naturally” in a state of “nature,” which we define to be a state of peace, freedom and equality, governed by “the law of nature,” which we define to be reason. We know this because as soon as anyone does anything bad, we are by definition no longer in a state of “nature,” but a state of “war.” That can happen at any time, so we should probably leave the state of “nature” as quickly as possible. Anyway, we’ve shown that all men “naturally” have a right (whatever that means) to freedom and equality (whatever those are), which, let’s face it, makes for a great sound bite — as long as you don’t stop and think about it.

So deep (image)

Notice that, once again, Locke’s argument relies for its validity on strange definitions of words, and for its relevance on our own (or Rousseau’s own) intuitive definitions of the same words. Look, here’s his argument again, with a different word in place of “nature”: All men are hopefully in a state of hope, which is a state of peace, freedom and equality. After all, as soon as someone does something mean to someone else, that’s no longer a state of hope, but a state of sadness. So hopefully all men have the right to freedom and equality, because otherwise I will be sad.

Maybe I’m just not getting it. Reader, I must confess, Locke’s “natural law” is about as clear to me as mud, and one has to wonder if it was not so for Rousseau as well (not to mention Hamilton, Madison and Jefferson). So try, if you like, to make sense of Locke’s theory of how a “civil society” forms (should form?):

Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom, and an uncontrouled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power, not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it. But because no political society can be, nor subsist, without having in itself the power to preserve the property, and in order thereunto, punish the offences of all those of that society; there, and there only is political society, where every one of the members hath quitted this natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law established by it. And thus all private judgment of every particular member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire, by settled standing rules, indifferent, and the same to all parties; and by men having authority from the community, for the execution of those rules, decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that society concerning any matter of right; and punishes those offences which any member hath committed against the society, with such penalties as the law has established: whereby it is easy to discern, who are, and who are not, in political society together. Those who are united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them, and punish offenders, are in civil society one with another: but those who have no such common people, I mean on earth, are still in the state of nature, each being, where there is no other, judge for himself, and executioner; which is, as I have before shewed it, the perfect state of nature.

From this, Locke derives majority rule, as in: whatever the majority says shall be the rule, a clear predecessor of Rousseau’s “general will” (which “is always right”).

Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any, that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left as they were in the liberty of the state of nature. When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest. For when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority: for that which acts any community, being only the consent of the individuals of it, and it being necessary to that which is one body to move one way; it is necessary the body should move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent of the majority: or else it is impossible it should act or continue one body, one community, which the consent of every individual that united into it, agreed that it should; and so every one is bound by that consent to be concluded by the majority. And therefore we see, that in assemblies, impowered to act by positive laws, where no number is set by that positive law which impowers them, the act of the majority passes for the act of the whole, and of course determines, as having, by the law of nature and reason, the power of the whole.

Make of this what you will; Rousseau did, with what consequences we shall see…

Locke wrote his first Treatise specifically to rebut the elegant defense of monarchy laid out by Sir Robert Filmer (c. 1588–1653) in his wonderful, sadly neglected Patriarcha: The Natural Power of Kings (1680). Filmer begins:

Since the time that School-Divinity began to flourish, there hath been a common Opinion maintained, as well by Divines, as by divers other learned Men, which affirms, Mankind is naturally endowed and born with Freedom from all Subjection, and at liberty to chose what Form of Government it please: And that the Power which any one Man hath over others, was at first bestowed according to the discretion of the Multitude. This Tenent was first hatched in the Schools, and hath been fostered by all succeeding Papists for good Divinity. The Divines also of the Reformed Churches have entertained it, and the common People every where tenderly embrace it, as being most plausible to Flesh and blood, for that it prodigally destributes a Portion of Liberty to the meanest of the Multitude, who magnifie Liberty, as if the height of Humane Felicity were only to be found in it, never remembring That the desire of Liberty was the first Cause of the Fall of Adam. But howsoever this Vulgar Opinion hath of late obtained a great Reputation, yet it is not to be found in the Ancient Fathers and Doctors of the Primitive Church: It contradicts the Doctrine and History of the Holy Scriptures, the constant Practice of all Ancient Monarchies, and the very Principles of the Law of Nature. It is hard to say whether it be more erroneous in Divinity, or dangerous in Policy.

Here, too, the laws of nature; here, too, the intellectuals (“School-Divinity”) against timeless tradition. But before going any further, Filmer cautions himself:

I am not to question, or quarrel at the Rights or Liberties of this or any other Nation, my task is chiefly to enquire from whom these first came, not to dispute what, or how many these are; but whether they were derived from the Laws of Natural Liberty, or from the Grace and bounty of Princes.

(Is good government a product of good rules or good rulers?)

My desire and Hope is, that the people of England may and do enjoy as ample Priviledges as any Nation under Heaven; the greatest Liberty in the World (if it be duly considered) is for a people to live under a Monarch. It is the Magna Charta of this Kingdom, all other shews or pretexts of Liberty, are but several degrees of Slavery, and a Liberty only to destroy Liberty.

So: why monarchy? Well, why parents? Why teachers? Why not beat the family dog?

If we compare the Natural Rights of a Father with those of a King, we find them all one, without any difference at all but only in the Latitude or Extent of them: as the Father over one Family, so the King as Father over many Families extends his care to preserve, feed, cloth, instruct and defend the whole Commonwealth. His War, his Peace, his Courts of Justice, and all his Acts of Sovereignty tend only to preserve and distribute to every subordinate and inferiour Father, and to their Children, their Rights and Privileges; so that all the Duties of a King are summed up in an Universal Fatherly Care of his People.

It is in Chapter 2 that Filmer makes his formal case for monarchy:

Aristotle, in his Book of Politicks, when he comes to compare the several Kinds of Government, he is very reserved in discoursing what Form he thinks Best: he disputes subtilely to and fro of many Points, and Judiciously of many Errours, but concludes nothing himself. […] Yet in his Ethicks, he hath so much good Manners, as to confess in right down words, That Monarchy is the best Form of Government, and a Popular Estate the worst. And though he be not so free in his Politicks, yet the Necessity of Truth hath here and there extorted from him, that which amounts no less to the Dignity of Monarchy; he confesseth it to be First, the Natural, and the Divinest Form of Government; and that the Gods themselves did live under a Monarchy. What can a Heathen say more?

By the way, non-theists should have no trouble at all with this business of divine right. For “the will of God,” substitute Carlyle’s “Everlasting Laws of Nature.” Thus, according to divine right monarchy (Wik), “a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving the right to rule directly from [the Everlasting Laws of Nature]”; “only [the Eternal Law of things] can judge an unjust king”; “any attempt to depose the king or to restrict his powers runs contrary to [the eternal regulation of the Universe]”; and so on. This, not a bearded man in the clouds, is the essential meaning of divine right.

Indeed, the World for a long time knew no other sort of Government, but only Monarchy. The Best Order, the Greatest Strength, the Most Stability, and easiest Government, are to be found all in Monarchy, and in no other Form of Government. The New Platforms of Commonweals were first hatched in a Corner of the World, amongst a few Cities of Greece, which have been imitated by very few other places. Those very Cities were first, for many Years, governed by Kings, untill Wantonness, Ambition, or Faction of the People, made them attempt new kinds of Regiment; all which Mutations proved most Bloody and Miserable to the Authors of them; happy in nothing, but that they continued but a small time. […] If we will listen to the Judgment of those who should best know the Nature of Popular Government, we shall find no reason for good men to desire or choose it. Xenophon, that brave Scholar and Souldier disallowed the Athenian Common-weal, for that they followed that Form of Government wherein the Wicked are always in greatest Credit, and Vertuous men kept under. They expelled Aristides the Just; Themistocles died in Banishment; Meltiades in Prison; Phocion, the most virtuous and just man of his Age, though he had been chosen forty five times to be their General, yet he was put to Death with all his Friends, Kindred and Servants, by the Fury of the People, without Sentence, Accusation, or any Cause at All. Nor were the People of Rome much more favourable to their Worthies; they banished Rutilius, Metellus, Coriolanus, the Two Scipio’s and Tully: the worst men sped best; for as Xenophon saith of Athens, so Rome was a Sanctuary for all Turbulent, Discontented and Seditious Spirits. The Impunity of Wicked men was such, that upon pain of Death, it was forbidden all Magistrates to Condemn to Death, or Banish any Citizen, or to deprive him of his Liberty, or so much as to whip him for what Offence soever he had committed, either against the Gods or Men. The Athenians sold Justice as they did other Merchandise; which made Plato call a Popular Estate a Fair, where every thing is to be sold. The Officers when they entered upon their Charge, would brag, they went to a Golden Harvest. The Corruption of Rome was such, that Marius and Pompey durst carry Bushels of Silver into the Assemblies, to purchase the Voices of the People. Many Citizens under their Grave Gowns, came Armed into their Publick Meetings, as if they went to War. Often contrary Factions fell to Blows, sometimes with Stones, and sometimes with Swords; the Blood hath been suckt up in the Market Places with Spunges; the River Tiber hath been filled with the Dead Bodies of the Citizens, and the common Privies stuffed full with them.

Well, that could just be a coincidence, couldn’t it?

If any man think these Disorders in Popular States were but Casual, or such as might happen under any kind of Government, he must know, that such Mischiefs are unavoidable, and of necessity do follow all Democratical Regiments; and the Reason is given, because the Nature of all People is, to desire Liberty without Restraint, which cannot be but where the Wicked bear Rule; and if the People should be so indiscreet, as to advance Vertuous Men, they lose their Power: for that, Good Men would favour none but the Good, which are always the fewer in Number; and the Wicked and Vicious (which is still the Greatest Part of the People) should be excluded from all Preferment, and in the end, by little and little, Wise Men should seize upon the State, and take it from the People.

Here is a point of agreement with Rousseau, who wrote: “It may be added that there is no government so subject to civil wars and intestine agitations as democratic or popular government, because there is none which has so strong and continual a tendency to change to another form, or which demands more vigilance and courage for its maintenance as it is.” But Filmer’s overall take is quite different:

There is nothing more uncertain than the People; their Opinions are as variable and sudden as Tempests; there is neither Truth nor Judgment in them; they are not led by Wisdom to judg of any thing, but by Violence and Rashness; nor put they any Difference between things True and False. After the manner of Cattel, they follow the Herd that goes before; they have a Custom always to favour the Worst and Weakest; they are most prone to Suspitions, and use to Condemn men for Guilty upon any false Suggestion; they are apt to believe all News, especially if it be sorrowful; and like Fame, they make it more in the Believing; when there is no Author, they fear those Evils which themselves have seigned; they are most desirous of New Stirrs and Changes, and are Enemies to Quiet and Rest; Whatsoever is Giddy or Head-strong, they account Man-like and Couragious; but whatsoever is Modest or Provident, seems sluggish; each Man hath a Care of his Particular, and thinks basely of the Common Good; they look upon Approaching Mischiefs as they do upon Thunder, only every Man wisheth it may not touch his own Person; it is the Nature of them, they must Serve basely, or Domineer proudly; for they know no Mean. Thus do they paint to the Life this Beast with many Heads. Let me give you the Cypher of their Form of Government; As it is begot by Sedition, so it is nourished by Arms: It can never stand without Wars, either with an Enemy abroad, or with Friends at Home. The only Means to preserve it, is, to have some powerful Enemies near, who may serve instead of a King to Govern it, that so, though they have not a King amongst them, yet they may have as good as a King Over them: For the common Danger of an Enemy keeps them in better Unity, than the Laws they make themselves.

Rousseau has a question: “It will be said that the despot assures his subjects civil tranquillity. Granted; but what do they gain, if the wars his ambition brings down upon them, his insatiable avidity, and the vexatious conduct of his ministers press harder on them than their own dissensions would have done? What do they gain, if the very tranquillity they enjoy is one of their miseries? Tranquillity is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in?” Indeed, Sir Robert, what if the Queen should abuse Her subjects?

Many have exercised their Wits in parallelling the Inconveniencies of Regal and Popular Government; but if we will trust Experience before Speculations Philosophical, it cannot be denied, but this one Mischief of Sedition which necessarily waits upon all Popularity, weighs down all the Inconveniences that can be found in Monarchy, tho they were never so many. It is said, Skin for Skin, yea, all that a Man hath will he give for his Life; and a Man will give his Riches for the ransome of his Life. The way then to examine what proportion the mischiefs of Sedition and Tyranny have one to another, is to enquire in what kind of Government most Subjects have lost their Lives:

In other words, a body count.

Let Rome, which is magnified for her Popularity, and villisied for the Tyrannical Monsters the Emperours, furnish us with Examples. Consider whether the Cruelty of all the Tyrannical Emperours that ever ruled in this City, did ever spill a quarter of the Blood that was poured out in the last hundred Years of her glorious Commonwealth. The Murthers by Tyberius, Domitian, and Commodus, put all together, cannot match that Civil Tragedy which was acted in that one Sedition between Marius and Sylla, nay, even by Sylla’s part alone (not to mention the Acts of Marius) were fourscore and ten Senators put to Death, fifteen Consuls, two thousand and six hundred Gentlemen, and a hundred thousand others. This was the Heighth of the Roman Liberty; Any Man might be killed that would. A Favour not fit to be granted under a Royal Government.

Since 1680, this has changed not a bit. Do please compare the “Tyrant” King George III to Stalin — or, for that matter, Roosevelt and Churchill. There is simply no such thing as a “Victorian Holocaust” (anti-history notwithstanding).

Rousseau, as we know, had other ideas. Let us now consider the consequences.

I mean, my God, these whack-jobs tried to chop my head off! (image)

Democracy, it is often said, means power to the people. That much I will concede: power, great power, ladled out to people — not great people, of course; that would be the dreaded aristocracy. (The Greek for good government — but what did the Greeks know? “Plato, Aristotle, Socrates… morons!”) No, power to great numbers of people, though “large sections” of them are, as Mencken points out, “wholly devoid of sense.” All for the best: “the general will is always right,” says Rousseau, “and tends to the public advantage.” Huzzah! So, in this way, people by the millions, entire demographics, are promoted (by democracy) into political entities — a sort of entity which, we observe from a glance at the history books, runs the occasional risk of assassination. What the assassination of a demographic entails, we will now see.

Prise du palais des Tuileries (1793) by Jean Duplessis-Bertaux (image)

What, then, is this Thing called La Révolution, which, like an Angel of Death, hangs over France, noyading, fusillading, fighting, gun-boring, tanning human skins? La Révolution is but so many Alphabetic Letters; a thing nowhere to be laid hands on, to be clapt under lock and key: where is it? what is it? It is the Madness that dwells in the hearts of men. In this man it is, and in that man; as a rage or as a terror, it is in all men. Invisible, impalpable; and yet no black Azrael, with wings spread over half a continent, with sword sweeping from sea to sea, could be a truer Reality. Thomas Carlyle

One name from the multitude, whose will, it seems, is always right: Maximilien de Robespierre (Britannica, 1890).

Without the courage and wide tolerance which make a statesman, without the greatest qualities of an orator, without the belief in himself which marks a great man, nervous, timid, and suspicious, Robespierre yet believed in the doctrines of Rousseau with all his heart, and would have gone to death for them; and in the belief they would eventually succeed and regenerate France and mankind he was ready to work with unwearied patience. […] The character of Robespierre when looked upon simply in light of his actions and his authenticated speeches, and apart from the innumerable legends which have grown up about it, is not a difficult one to understand. A well-educated and young lawyer, he might have acquired a good provincial practice and lived a happy provincial life had it not been for the Revolution. Like thousands of other young Frenchmen, he had read the works of Rousseau and taken them as gospel. Just at the very time in life when this illusion had not been destroyed by the realities of life, and without the experience which might have taught the futility of idle dreams and theories, he was elected to the states-general. At Paris he was not understood till he met with audience of fellow-disciples of Rousseau at the Jacobin Club. His fanaticism won him supporters; his singularly sweet and sympathetic voice gained him hearers; and his upright life attracted the admiration of all. As matters approached nearer and nearer to the terrible crisis, he failed, except in the two instances of question of war and of the king’s trial, to show himself a statesman, for he had not the liberal views and practical instincts which made Mirabeau and Danton great men. His admission to the great committee gave him power, which he hoped to use for the establishment of his favourite theories, and for the same purpose he acquiesced in and even heightened the horrors of the Reign of Terror. It is here that the fatal mistake of allowing a theorist to have power appeared: Billaud-Varenne systematized the Terror because he believed it necessary for the safety of the country; Robespierre intensified it in order to carry out his own ideas and theories.

But the history of the French Revolution is familiar to all of us — or is it? We should probably make sure, lest the republicans wriggle off the hook. Maine:

Democracy is commonly described as having an inherent superiority over every other form of government. It is supposed to advance with an irresistible and preordained movement. It is thought to be full of the promise of blessings to mankind; yet if it fails to bring with it these blessings, or even proves to be prolific of the heaviest calamities, it is not held to deserve condemnation.

(He goes on, by the way, to characterize Robespierre, quite memorably, as “the homicidal pedant.”)

Much has been written on the mass insanity that seized France in 1789. I see no reason why we should settle for less than Carlyle’s own three-volume, 900-page French Revolution: A History (1837). “No one can hope to add anything to the philosophy of Mr. Carlyle’s wonderful book,” said Dickens, and if it was good enough for Dickens…

But I perceive that you are a busy bee, in no mood for three-volume anythings. D’accord: we skip ahead to Book V, Terror the Order of the Day. The scene is set:

Rushing Down We are now, therefore, got to that black precipitous Abyss; whither all things have long been tending; where, having now arrived on the giddy verge, they hurl down, in confused ruin; headlong, pellmell, down, down; — till Sansculottism have consummated itself; and in this wondrous French Revolution, as in a Doomsday, a World have been rapidly, if not born again, yet destroyed and engulfed. Terror has long been terrible: but to the actors themselves it has now become manifest that their appointed course is one of Terror; and they say, Be it so. “Que la Terreur soit à l’ordre du jour.” […]

Nantes and the Vendée in northwestern France (image)

Destruction The suspect may well tremble; but how much more the open rebels; — the Girondin Cities of the South! Revolutionary Army is gone forth, under Ronsin the Playwright; six thousand strong; in ‘red nightcap, in tricolor waistcoat, in black-shag trousers, black-shag spencer, with enormous moustachioes, enormous sabre, — in carmagnole complète;’ and has portable guillotines. Representative Carrier has got to Nantes, by the edge of blazing La Vendée, which Rossignol has literally set on fire: Carrier will try what captives you make, what accomplices they have, Royalist or Girondin: his guillotine goes always, va toujours; and his wool-capped ‘Company of Marat.’ Little children are guillotined, and aged men. Swift as the machine is, it will not serve; the Headsman and all his valets sink, worn down with work; declare that the human muscles can no more. Whereupon you must try fusillading; to which perhaps still frightfuler methods may succeed. […]

“Fusillading” — mass shootings — at Nantes (image)

What methods are those?

One begins to be sick of ‘death vomited in great floods.’ Nevertheless, hearest thou not, O Reader (for the sound reaches through centuries), in the dead December and January nights, over Nantes Town, — confused noises, as of musketry and tumult, as of rage and lamentation; mingling with the everlasting moan of the Loire waters there? Nantes Town is sunk in sleep; but Représentant Carrier is not sleeping, the wool-capped Company of Marat is not sleeping. Why unmoors that flatbottomed craft, that gabarre; about eleven at night; with Ninety Priests under hatches? They are going to Belle Isle? In the middle of the Loire stream, on signal given, the gabarre is scuttled; she sinks with all her cargo. ‘Sentence of Deportation,’ writes Carrier, ‘was executed vertically.’ The Ninety Priests, with their gabarre-coffin, lie deep! It is the first of the Noyades, what we may call Drownages, of Carrier; which have become famous forever.

“Noyading” — mass drownings — at Nantes (image)

Guillotining there was at Nantes, till the Headsman sank worn out: then fusillading ‘in the Plain of Saint-Mauve;’ little children fusilladed, and women with children at the breast; children and women, by the hundred and twenty; and by the five hundred, so hot is La Vendée: till the very Jacobins grew sick, and all but the Company of Marat cried, Hold! Wherefore now we have got Noyading; and on the 24th night of Frostarious year 2, which is 14th of December 1793, we have a second Noyade; consisting of ‘a Hundred and Thirty-eight persons.’ Or why waste a gabarre, sinking it with them? Fling them out; fling them out, with their hands tied: pour a continual hail of lead over all the space, till the last struggler of them be sunk! Unsound sleepers of Nantes, and the Sea-Villages thereabouts, hear the musketry amid the night-winds; wonder what the meaning of it is. And women were in that gabarre; whom the Red Nightcaps were stripping naked; who begged, in their agony, that their smocks might not be stript from them. And young children were thrown in, their mothers vainly pleading: “Wolflings,” answered the Company of Marat, “who would grow to be wolves.”

“Republican Marriage” at Nantes (image)

By degrees, daylight itself witnesses Noyades: women and men are tied together, feet and feet, hands and hands; and flung in: this they call Mariage Républicain, Republican Marriage. Cruel is the panther of the woods, the she-bear bereaved of her whelps: but there is in man a hatred crueler than that. Dumb, out of suffering now, as pale swoln corpses, the victims tumble confusedly seaward along the Loire stream; the tide rolling them back: clouds of ravens darken the River; wolves prowl on the shoal-places: Carrier writes, ‘Quel torrent révolutionnaire, What a torrent of Revolution!’ For the man is rabid; and the Time is rabid. These are the Noyades of Carrier; twenty-five by the tale, for what is done in darkness comes to be investigated in sunlight: not to be forgotten for centuries. — We will turn to another aspect of the Consummation of Sansculottism; leaving this as the blackest.

I cannot resist this cannibalistic aside:

One other thing, or rather two other things, we will still mention; and no more: The Blond Perukes; the Tannery at Meudon. Great talk is of these Perruques blondes: O Reader, they are made from the Heads of Guillotined women! The locks of a Duchess, in this way, may come to cover the scalp of a Cordwainer: her blond German Frankism his black Gaelic poll, if it be bald. Or they may be worn affectionately, as relics; rendering one suspect? Citizens use them, not without mockery; of a rather cannibal sort. Still deeper into one’s heart goes that Tannery at Meudon; not mentioned among the other miracles of tanning! ‘At Meudon,’ says Montgaillard with considerable calmness, ‘there was a Tannery of Human Skins; such of the Guillotined as seemed worth flaying: of which perfectly good wash-leather was made;’ for breeches, and other uses. The skin of the men, he remarks, was superior in toughness (consistance) and quality to shamoy; that of women was good for almost nothing, being so soft in texture! — History looking back over Cannibalism, through Purchas’s Pilgrims and all early and late Records, will perhaps find no terrestrial Cannibalism of a sort, on the whole, so detestable. It is a manufactured, soft-feeling, quietly elegant sort; a sort perfide! Alas then, is man’s civilisation only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever? Nature still makes him; and has an Infernal in her as well as a Celestial.

Massacre at Le Mans in December 1793 (image)

By the autumn of 1794, the Terror was over and Robespierre himself deservedly guillotined, but the Royalist revolt in the Vendée continued — for a time.

General Hoche has even succeeded in pacificating La Vendée. Rogue Rossignol and his ‘Infernal Columns’ have vanished: by firmness and justice, by sagacity and industry, General Hoche has done it. Taking ‘Movable Columns,’ not infernal; girdling-in the Country; pardoning the submissive, cutting down the resistive, limb after limb of the Revolt is brought under. La Rochejacquelin, last of our Nobles, fell in battle; Stofflet himself makes terms; Georges-Cadoudal is back to Brittany, among his Chouans: the frightful gangrene of La Vendée seems veritably extirpated. It has cost, as they reckon in round numbers, the lives of a Hundred Thousand fellow-mortals; with noyadings, conflagratings by infernal column, which defy arithmetic. This is the La Vendée War.

A fight involving women and children near a church in the Vendée (image)

If you couldn’t quite follow Carlyle’s narrative and are, for whatever reason, disinclined to read his entire French Revolution, here are two short histories of the War in the Vendée. Peruse, at your leisure, this piece in the New York Times (1989):

While Paris next month will exuberantly mark the fall of the Bastille and the proclamation of the rights of man, in the Vendee many other citizens will be in a somber mood when they remember a peasant uprising against the revolutionary authorities that provoked something resembling mass murder. The repression of the Vendee revolt, which is thought to have taken 300,000 to 600,000 lives, is more than a bloody historical footnote. Even more than the better-known Reign of Terror, the time of the guillotine in Paris, it suggests that the French Revolution contained the ideological germs of the kind of limitless brutality more usually associated with totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.

And this one by Sophie Masson (2004):

In early 1794, the Convention decided to exterminate the Vendéens, to the last man, woman and child. And they found plenty who were happy to carry out these orders. “Not one is to be left alive.” “Women are reproductive furrows who must be ploughed under.” “Only wolves must be left to roam that land.” “Fire, blood, death are needed to preserve liberty.” “Their instruments of fanaticism and superstition must be smashed.” These were some of the words the Convention used in speaking of Vendee. […] The ci-devant aristocrat Turreau de la Linières took command of what are known in Vendée as the douze colonnes infernales (the twelve columns of hell), which had specific orders both from his superiors and from himself to kill everyone and everything they saw. “Even if there should be patriots in Vendée,” Turreau himself said, “they must not spared. We can make no distinction. The entire province must be a cemetery.” And so it was. In the streets of Cholet, emblematic Vendéen city, by the end of 1793, wolves were about the only living things left, roaming freely and feeding on the piles of decomposing corpses. […] If the French Revolution was the first modern ideology, were the Vendée massacres the archetype of the modern genocides? And if that is so, what does it mean for the whole legacy of the Revolution?

Muskets blazing: even PBS wants in (image)

Of the various French Republics that have been tried, or that are still on trial, — of these also it is not needful to say any word. But there is one modern instance of Democracy nearly perfect, the Republic of the United States, which has actually subsisted for threescore years or more, with immense success as is affirmed; to which many still appeal, as to a sign of hope for all nations, and a ‘Model Republic.’ Is not America an instance in point? Why should not all Nations subsist and flourish on Democracy as America does?

So wrote Carlyle in the Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850). Surely the legacy of democratic revolution in general — if not, in particular, the French or Russian or Cuban or Chinese or Mexican — is redeemed by the American experiment! Well, no, says Carlyle:

Their Constitution, such as it may be, was made here, not there; went over with them from the Old Puritan English workshop, ready-made. Deduct what they carried with them from England ready-made, — their common English Language and that same Constitution, or rather elixir of constitutions, their inveterate and now, as it were inborn, reverence for the Constable’s Staff; two quite immense attainments which England had to spend much blood, and valiant sweat of brow and brain, for centuries long in achieving; — and what new elements of polity or nationhood, what noble new phasis of human arrangement, or social device worthy of Prometheus or of Epimetheus, yet comes to light in America? Cotton crops and Indian corn and dollars come to light; and half a world of untilled land, where populations that respect the constable can live, for the present, without Government: this comes to light; and the profound sorrow of all nobler hearts, here uttering itself as silent patient unspeakable ennui, there coming out as vague elegiac wailings, that there is still next to nothing more. ‘Anarchy plus a street constable:’ that also is anarchic to me, and other than quite lovely! I foresee too that, long before the waste lands are full, the very street-constable, on these poor terms, will have become impossible: without the waste lands, as here in our Europe, I do not see how he conld continue possible many weeks. Cease to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions. To men in their sleep there is nothing granted in this world: nothing, or as good as nothing, to men that sit idly caucusing and ballot-boxing on the graves of their heroic ancestors, saying, “It is well, it is well!” Corn and bacon are granted: not a very sublime boon, on such conditions; a boon moreover which, on such conditions, cannot last! — No: America too will have to strain its energies, in quite other fashion than this; to crack its sinews, and all but break its heart, as the rest of us have had to do, in thousand-fold wrestle with the Pythons and mud-demons, before it can become a habitation for the gods. America’s battle is yet to fight; and we, sorrowful though nothing doubting, will wish her strength for it. New Spiritual Pythons, plenty of them; enormous Megatherions, as ugly as were ever born of mud, loom huge and hideous out of the twilight Future on America; and she will have her own agony, and her own victory, but on other terms than she is yet quite aware of.

Oh, how right he was — but let us begin again, at the beginning.

When teaching small children the tale of the American Rebellion (Issue 4), it is very important to avoid any intrusion by reality, a well known source of Loyalist tricks and traps. Scholastic, “the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books,” is here to help, with ‘Give Me Liberty!’, suitable for rebels in grades six through eight:

Russell Freedman’s Give Me Liberty! The Story of the Declaration of Independence recounts the American colonists’ arduous journey to freedom in a richly detailed narrative, complete with prints and illustrations. Reading Freedman’s words, the reader is transported back in time and ready to join the fight for independence. Through the aid of Give Me Liberty!, students will learn about freedom and self expression, in the process they will learn about differing viewpoints. Before Reading Pass out a list of invented rules that infringe on the students’ personal rights and freedoms. Possible rules include: You may only write in blue ink. If you write in any other color, you will receive detention. The price of school lunch has been raised three dollars. You cannot wear jeans to school. Anyone wearing jeans will be suspended.

(“Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”)

As a recommended follow-up activity, we are to ask our students: “What did you learn about the pursuit of freedom? Why is independence important/not important?” Probing questions indeed. Freedom is cool, man. (And Brawndo’s got what plants crave.)

Better yet, pass out this list of slightly more historically accurate rules:

You may only write in blue ink. If you use your blue ink to poison the Principal’s Tea, you will receive detention. While in detention, write many long Treatises on popular government. Sharpen your bayonet. The price of school lunch has been raised three cents. Your Rights are being trampled! Loot the cafeteria! Dump the French fries in the Bay! Hang the Hall Monitor! Poison the Principal’s Tea!!! Due to a recent outbreak of poisoned tea, the Principal has posted a Tea Guard at each classroom. The mad Tyrant has gone too far! Clearly this infringes upon Several Rights. Negotiations would fail if we tried them, so why even Bother. Thus, we are left with no choice but to poison the Usurper’s Tea again.

Then have your students read Thomas Hutchinson’s Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia (1776):

The Last time I had the honour of being in your Lordships company, you observed that you was utterly at a loss to what facts many parts of the Declaration of Independence published by the Philadelphia Congress referred, and that you wished they had been more particularly mentioned, that you might better judge of the grievances, alleged as special causes of the separation of the Colonies from the other parts of the Empire. This hint from your Lordship induced me to attempt a few Strictures upon the Declaration. Upon my first reading it, I thought there would have been more policy in leaving the World altogether ignorant of the motives of the Rebellion, than in offering such false and frivolous reasons in support of it; and I flatter myself, that before I have finished this letter, your Lordship will be of the same mind.

For instance, I seem to remember Thomas Jefferson saying something about “swarms.” What was it, again? Oh, right: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.” Look out! Swarms! What do you say, Governor Hutchinson?

I know of no new offices erected in America in the present reign, except those of the Commissioners of the Customs and their dependents. Five Commissioners were appointed, and four Surveyors General dismissed; perhaps fifteen to twenty clerks and under officers were necessary for this board more than the Surveyors had occasion for before: Land and tide waiters, weighers, etc. were known officers before; the Surveyors used to increase or lessen the number as the King’s service required, and the Commissioners have done no more. Thirty or forty additional officers in the whole Continent, are the Swarms which eat out the substance of the boasted number of three millions of people.

As a follow-up activity, ask your students: “What did you learn about the essential role of mob violence in democratic revolutions? Also, when we break into the principal’s house tonight, should we murder his children first, or murder them later? Why is murdering the principal’s children in their beds important/not important to the pursuit of freedom?” Oh, did your civics teacher not mention that? I refer you to Peter Oliver’s Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View (1781), Chapter 3:

In this Year 1765, began the violent Outrages in Boston: and now the Effusions of Rancour from Mr. Otis’s Heart were brought into Action. It hath been said, that he had secured the Smugglers & their Connections, as his Clients. An Opportunity now offered for them to convince Government of their Influence: as Seizure had been made by breaking open a Store, agreeable to act of Parliament; it was contested in the supreme Court, where Mr. Hutchinson praesided. The Seizure was adjudged legal by the whole Court. This raised Resentment against the Judges, Mr. Hutchinson was the only Judge who resided in Boston, & he only, of the Judges, was the Victim; for in a short Time after, the Mob of Otis & his clients plundered Mr. Hutchinsons House of its full Contents, destroyed his Papers, unroofed his House, & sought his & his Children’s Lives, which were saved by Flight. One of the Rioters declared, the next morning, that the first Places which they looked into were the Beds, in Order to Murder the Children. All this was Joy to Mr. Otis, as also to some of the considerable Merchants who were smugglers, & personally active in the diabolical Scene. But a grave old Gentleman thought it more than diabolical; for upon viewing the Ruins, on the next Day, he made this Remark, vizt. “that if the Devil had been here the last Night, he would have gone back to his own Regions, ashamed of being outdone, & never more have set Foot upon the Earth.” If so, what Pity that he did not take an Evening Walk, at that unhappy Crisis; for he hath often since seen himself outdone at his own outdoings. The Mob, also, on the same Evening, broke into the Office of the Register of the Admiralty, & did considerable Damage there; but were prevented from an utter Destruction of it. They also sought after the Custom House Officers; but they secreted themselves — these are some of the blessed Effects of smuggling. And so abandoned from all Virtue were the Minds of the People of Boston, that when the Kings Attorny examined many of them, on Oath, who were Spectators of the Scene & knew the Actors, yet they exculpated them before a Grand Jury; & others, who were Men of Reputation, avoided giving any Evidence, thro’ Fear of the like Fate. Such was the Reign of Anarchy in Boston, & such the very awkward Situation in which every Friend to Government stood. Mr. Otis & his mirmydons, the Smugglers & the black Regiment, had instilled into the Canaille, that Mr. Hutchinson had promoted the Stamp Act; whereas, on the Contrary, he not only had drawn up the decent Memorial of the Massachusetts Assembly, but, previous to it, he had repeatedly wrote to his Friends in England to ward it off, by shewing the Inexpedience of it; & the Disadvantages that would accrue from it to the english Nation, but it was in vain to struggle against the Law of Otis, & the Gospel of his black Regiment. That worthy Man must be a Victim; Mr. Otis said so, & it was done. Such was the Frenzy of Anarchy, that every Man was jealous of his Neighbour, & seemed to wait for his Turn of Destruction.

“Mr. Otis” is James Otis, Jr., one of America’s lesser-known Founding Fathers. His catchphrase was “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” and he died from being struck by lightning. Why was the young Otis so fiercely Patriotic? Well, for a time he held a prestigious position as Advocate General of the Admiralty Court, which was about as un-Patriotic as you could get. (For example, the infamous Stamp Act fell within the Court’s jurisdiction.) Otis resigned, and took up the smugglers’ — I mean, the Patriots’ case against Writs of Assistance when the governor appointed Thomas Hutchinson Chief Justice of the Superior Court — instead of Otis’ father.

All right, so the American Revolution, like every other revolution, basically ran on mob violence, and the reasons for the revolution, set out in the Declaration of Independence, upon closer inspection, turn out to make no sense at all. Still, things must have settled down once the Patriots won their Revolutionary War and ratified the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union (1777). Right?

Well, not exactly. And while many people know that the Articles of Confederation were replaced by the Constitution (1787) just a few years later, not many know why. So let’s learn a little bit about the Continental Congress. Our source: senator and historian Albert J. Beveridge’s Life of John Marshall (1916–1919), Chapter 8:

There was, even while the patriots were fighting for our independence, a considerable part of the people who considered “all government as dissolved, and themselves in a state of absolute liberty, where they wish always to remain;” and they were strong enough in many places “to prevent any courts being opened, and to render every attempt to administer justice abortive.” Zealous bearers, these, of the torches of anarchy which Paine’s burning words had lighted. Was it not the favored of the earth that government protected? What did the poor and needy get from government except oppression and the privilege of dying for the boon? Was not government a fortress built around property? What need, therefore, had the lowly for its embattled walls? Here was excellent ammunition for the demagogue. A person of little ability and less character always could inflame a portion of the people when they could be assembled. It was not necessary for him to have property; indeed, that was a distinct disadvantage to the Jack Cades of the period. A lie traveled like a snake under the leaves and could not be overtaken; bad roads, scattered communities, long distances, and resultant isolation leadened and delayed the feet of truth. Nothing was too ridiculous for belief; nothing too absurd to be credited. […] Things, praiseworthy in themselves, were magnified into stupendous and impending menaces. Revolutionary officers formed “The Society of the Cincinnati” in order to keep in touch with one another, preserve the memories of their battles and their campfires, and to support the principles for which they had fought. Yet this patriotic and fraternal order was, shouted the patriots of peace, a plain attempt to establish an hereditary nobility on which a new tyranny was to be builded. Jefferson, in Paris, declared that “the day … will certainly come, when a single fibre of this institution will produce an hereditary aristocracy which will change the form of our governments [Articles of Confederation] from the best to the worst in the world.” […] Nor did this popular tendency to credit the most extraordinary tale, believe the most impossible and outrageous scandal, or accept the most impracticable and misshapen theory, end only in wholesome hatred of rank and distinction. Among large numbers there was the feeling that equality should be made real by a general division of property. Three years after peace had been established, Madison said he “strongly suspected” that many of the people contemplated “an abolition of debts public & private, and a new division of property.” And Jay thought that “a reluctance to taxes, an impatience of government, a rage for property, and little regard to the means of acquiring it, together with a desire for equality in all things, seem to actuate the mass of those who are uneasy in their circumstances.” The greed and covetousness of the people is also noted by all travelers. […] If there was not money enough, let the Government make more — what was a government for if not for that? And if government could not make good money, what was the good of government? Courts were fine examples of what government meant — they were always against the common people. Away with them! So ran the arguments and appeals of the demagogues and they found an answer in the breasts of the thoughtless, the ignorant, and the uneasy. This answer was broader than the demand for paper money, wider than the protest against particular laws and specific acts of administration. This answer also was, declared General Knox, “that the property of the United States … ought to be the common property of all. And he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and justice, and ought to be swept from off the face of the earth.” Knox was convinced that the discontented were “determined to annihilate all debts, public and private.” Ideas and purposes such as these swayed the sixteen thousand men who, in 1787, followed Daniel Shays in the popular uprising in Massachusetts against taxes, courts, and government itself. “The restlessness produced by the uneasy situation of individuals, connected with lax notions concerning public and private faith, and erroneous opinions which confound liberty with an exemption from legal control, produced … unlicensed conventions, which, afte