Deference, Republicanism, and the Emergence of Popular Politics in Eighteenth-Century America

Abstract

HE eighteenth-century poet James Thomson, in a panegyric to England's glory, identified the three essential virtues in the classical republican prescription for public liberty: independent life; / Integrity in office; and o'er all / Supreme, a for the commonweal.' Americans agreed that the passion for the commonweal that Thomson exalted was closely tied to the idea of disinterested public service. As a Boston publicist noted, truly virtuous representatives were disinterested men, who could have no interest of their own to seek, men who employ their whole time for the public good; then there would be but one interest, the good of the people at large.2 For virtually all the political leaders of mid-eighteenth-century America-from Pinckneys in South Carolina to Randolphs in Virginia to Adamses and Hutchinsons in Massachusetts-the message was the same: the difference between rightful, virtuous rulers and unworthy parvenus was the ability to subordinate private interest to the common good. United in venerating the ideal, Americans faced the problem of how best to identify and certify men who had a rightful claim to the public trust. Although the mechanisms for selecting public officials were shifting from hereditary right to some form of popular election, the personal criteria deemed necessary-property, education, lineage-were more resistant to change. Persistence of traditional attitudes toward political authority was reflected, we are told, in a deferential ethic, a belief among the ordinary citizens of colonial America that they were obliged to exhibit,