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V. Constituting the People
- University of Virginia Press
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114 culture and liberty in the age of the american revolution The argument should be reversed; it was precisely the imaginary, ceremonial inclusion that became a prime instrument of agency for those not yet admitted to full ownership of freedom. It undermined (symbolically, to be sure, but all communication is symbolic) the defining paradigm of order and helped open the door to future admittance of the excluded. It delivered this message regardless of the fact that one of the intentions behind patriotic rituals was to a≈rm the political dominance of the gentry, and that many were explicitly designed as didactic measures to that e√ect. Social and political distinctions were indeed conspicuously present in them; for instance, invited participants included only those who were expected to share the elitemade interpretation of events being commemorated, while the Loyalists and the unsure were explicitly barred. But the rituals were also indisputably attractive for ordinary people, for whom participation implied agency and social worth. It gave them political standing by signaling that they belonged to a circle of insiders identified with a progressive cause. Contrary to the view of history as being grounded in incompatible class antagonisms, patriotic rituals a≈rmed both the authority of the ruling elites and allowed for a growing inclusion and engagement of the non-elites.∂∏ Their participation ensured that certain liberty-related concepts would spread widely across the social space and be absorbed into the cultural fabric. One such concept was that Americans as a nation were collectively free; another, that, in contrast to European monarchies, everyone had a stake in the new republic. V. Constituting the People That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them. —George Mason, Virginia Bill of Rights, 1776 Throughout the revolution, a struggle to attach names to events was an integral component of the political conflict. For instance, if London’s policy of taxation could successfully be labeled as a case of ‘‘slavery,’’ the contest for the meaning of reality would tilt toward the Americans. the revolution 115 Revolutionaries had to fight with England for a free government, insisted Samuel Adams in1775, because there was nothing ‘‘so much to be dreaded by Mankind as Slavery.’’∂π If the ‘‘revolution’’ were instead to be referred to as ‘‘rebellion,’’ a London-made label, its persuasive edge would tilt toward England . Representations could attack, mediate, or defuse tensions. One such cultural device produced by the era was the invention of a sovereign ‘‘people.’’ It was an extraordinary instrument through which Enlightenment idealism was fused with political practice. Combined with the accompanying substitution of the voice of those in power for the voice of the people, it both helped prolong a traditionally ranked society, and undermine it. Its echoes reverberated through the American, the French, and the Bolshevik Revolutions, and it is widely used to this day on the American political scene. Who exactly were ‘‘the people’’ for the Revolutionary leaders? The answer is far from simple, and must begin with the realization that the Revolution’s leaders viewed the representations and the reality of ‘‘the people’’ as two di√erent, but parallel entities. The rhetorical ‘‘people’’ were a unified, homogeneous body, possessors of collective wisdom, and carriers of natural rights (symbolic oneness and homogeneity were crucial if the elite were to be able to speak ‘‘in their name’’). The empirical ‘‘people’’ were stratified into unequal classes, with the majority viewed as unqualified for certain liberties and for self-governing, and at times possessing the characteristics of a ‘‘mob’’ rather than those of responsible citizens. We intuitively tend to see this as a paradox, but doing so prevents us from fully understanding the logic of this culturalcum -political mechanism. The idealized people, created as the essential anchor of the whole Revolutionary creed of liberty, could play this role successfully only if a clear distinction was made between them and the common populace. The rulers could not speak for the ‘‘common herd,’’ but they could speak for ‘‘the people.’’ The abstract people held the ultimate power, while the empirical populace had to be constantly constrained—needless to say, in the name of the people’s liberty. What may appear today as contradictory, in fact made the whole design functional. Absent a hereditary monarchy as a legitimizer of government, it was only through this symbolic representation of a judicious people, unified in their equal...