Thinking About the Constitution

THINKINGABOUTTHE CONSTITUTION Forrest McDonald. Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985. xiii + 359 pp. Morton White. Philosophy, The Federalist, and the Constitution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. xi + 273 pp. Roger L. Emerson These two quite different studies of the intellectual background to the U.S. Constitution have many things in common. Both books continue stories begun elsewhere-in McDonald's We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (1958) and E Pluribus Unum: The Formation of the American Republic, 1776-1790 (1979) and in White's The Philosophy of the American Revolution (1958). Both are still wrestling with Charles A. Beard's Economic Interpretation of the Constitution. For McDonald, this involves showing that he is not really a "neo-Beardian" (vii) but fully aware of an "intellectual dimension" and "the passion for fame among the founders" which Beard overlooked and which Douglas Adair had once taxed the author with ignoring (ix). White is concerned to show that Beard missed the philosophy of The Federalist's pseudonymous author "Publius" and that of the founders, because it is implicit in the practical work which produced both the Constitution and its brilliant defense. For White, this philosophy is essentially that of the Declaration of Independence, which he earlier showed to derive principally from Locke and Hume. He sums this up in Chapters 12 and 13, and in the latter challenges Gordon Wood's claim that "the whole intellectual world of 1776 had become unraveled by 1787" (208). McDonald's sketch of the philosophical background includes much more than Locke and Hume but it is far less precise and analytical. McDonald also prefers to talk about ''ideology'' rather than ''philosophy.'' White shows little interest in a climate of opinion or in beliefs which go beyond somewhat technical concerns. And we seldom find him presenting arguments about the Constitution or its 228 Roger L. Emerson makers which go back to their varied self-interests, the needs of the thirteen federating states whose interests they were obligated to uphold in the Convention, or even to the experiences of Madison, Hamilton and Jay in the generation prior to 1787. White's analyses of the arguments offered in The Federalist are meant to shed light upon the framing of the Constitution, but he rarely, if ever, admits that the essays of Publius had advanced beyond the political theorizing of David Hume and some of his contemporaries. McDonald, who thinks they drew more heavily on Montesquieu (26), contends the founding fathers "created a new form of government, unprecedented under the sun'' (275) which was somewhat at odds with what both Madison and Hamilton had argued for during the convention" (276). White would, no doubt, say that a variety of arrangements ("political technology'') could be supported by the philosophy he is expounding but McDonald's point seems to be closer to what Gordon Wood had in mind. Both men are critical of other historians. White has arguments with Adair, Beard, R.A. Dahl, Theodore Draper, Adrienne Koch, C. Noble Stockton, Gary Wills and Wood, most of whom come off rather better in McDonald's book. The latter takes aim at "the work of the ideological school" led, he thinks, by J.G.A. Pocock and Bernard Bailyn. Their work he finds "ultimately unsatisfying" becaU.~f:t.' '..it fails to dis!inguish among the several kinds of republicanism that were espoused by various Americans, which by and large reflected regionally different social and economic norms" (viii). White has clearly studied these works, thanks Bailyn in his preface, and writes little that seems incompatible with Pocock's comments on eighteenth-century Scottish or American social thought and philosophy . Both White and McDonald tend to find, as Wills has, that the Scots philosophes were rather more influential in America than had been seen before C. I960. Finally, there is no reason to think that McDonald would not assent to many claims which White makes about the views. of Publius which may well have applied to others in 1787. Among these are the substantive claims which White makes about Publius's views on human nature, metaphysics and methods of inquiry in philosophy and...