Surely the hardest won achievement in history has been a decent system of government. The republic is an ancient invention, but in the long run, republics have not had a high survival rate. It is not that complex to point out, that the American republic may have been exposed to certain dangerous diseases. Perhaps it can avoid catching them, or at least manage not to die of them. Ultimately, we should not make the mistake of assuming that democracies are immortal. Governments do change, and as we all know, not always for the better: countries do sometimes vanish from the map…
—“The Tempest,” by Thomas Cole (American, 19th Century), ca. 1826. Oil on panel, 18 3/4 x 26 inches. Purchase with bequest of Clarissa Hale Poteat. —click image for source…
…It is one of the revealing curiosities of history that the founders of the American Republic were none too sanguine about the viability of republican government. Some of them feared that the new republic might fall under the sway of a despot raised to power by the ignorant masses; other, that it might be subverted by an oligarchy of the privileged. These were, and still are, deeply considered and honorable, though contradictory views. The citizens who hold one or the other might, in fact, be thought of as constituting the two real and enduring parties in any republic, whatever the official views of the official political parties might be.
Gilbert Stuart—The Skater (Portrait of William Grant), 1782
oil on canvas, 245.5 x 147.4 cm (96 1/4 x 58 in.)
Andrew W. Mellon Collection—WIKI
In the unending debate between these groups, those who fear mob-inspired despotism have always enjoyed one powerful intellectual advantage, for the history of classical antiquity bears out- indeed, has done much to inspire- their fear. In ancient Greece and republican Rome it was emphatically and repeatedly the patrician class that defended republican institutions and the mob, through its chosen tyrant, that subverted them. Republican Cato and imperious Caesar define the classic confrontation, but dozens of lesser Cato’s and lesser Caesars had played similar roles before them in Greek city-states.
Yet there is another notable chapter in the annals of republics that tells a different tale, a tale in which the destroyers are not the mob but the privileged…( to be continued)…
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