From Liberty to Liberality: The Transformation of the Pennsylvania Legislature, 1776–1820 (review)

Abstract

From Liberty to Liberality: The Transformation of Pennsylvania Legislature, 1776-1820. By Antony Joseph. (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2012. Pp. 220. Cloth $65.00.)Reviewed by Joseph S. FosterAnthony Joseph challenges early American historians with a new perspective on period which Americans went from Revolution to nascent stages of American capitalism. He rejects contention that capitalism guided Americans toward developing public good through pursuit of private interest; rather, he espouses idea of a generous, rational, broadminded, and moderate set of principles that had their foundation birth of 1776, and that influenced Americans to harmonize the interests of private individuals to produce good of all (6).Joseph traces traditional historiographical interpretations of late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, beginning with Louis Hartz, who depicted a middling class that pursued its own interests after war without interference from state. This view was challenged by later historians, who suggested emergence of a Revolutionary era republicanism that was profoundly communal and state-conscious. That latter paradigm valued protection of individual from tyranny as its supreme responsibility. Joseph writes, however, that historians agree that was eased out of its place American political culture and replaced with an emerging classical that stressed an individualistic, market-driven society where state and national legislatures became arenas for clashing interests. That particular school of thought, however, had competition from historians who posited that classical liberalism, which emphasized individualism, private property, and natural rights existing independent of any government, was always driving force behind early American political and social development. That would link Revolutionary era and early National period to such eighteenth-century thinkers as Adam Smith and to early nineteenth-century Jeffersonians. Joseph finally focuses on Gordon Wood, one of architects of republican synthesis, and argues that Wood drops word liberalism his latest work and instead describes post-war order as a democratic middle class, which takes interpretation full circle back to Hartz.For Joseph, however, entire debate has missed point as historians mistakenly conflated essence of classical with American liberalism, latter having found its partial origins liberality, itself a body of thought and behavior that emerged from republicanism, but which is distinct from that idea. Liberality, he contends, is a classical virtue that emphasizes a rational generosity that avoids extravagance and parsimony, that comprehends an issue in its full sweep, and that is open to a broad range of possibilities. Its opposites are parochialism and narrow mindedness (5-6). The argument is subtle, as he hinges his thesis on way which Americans perceived their role development of their political economy. The theory of classical liberalism, according to Joseph, was not widespread until after American Civil War, and thus was not operating principle for early nineteenth-century Americans; rather, they perceived that their behavior reflected an emerging sense of a perception that borrowed republican sense of economy and suspicion of any institution's ability to become abusive its powers, and combined it with a growing willingness to have government use its authority to fund private citizens their individual pursuits, which, turn, promoted public good.To substantiate his argument, Joseph examines changing nature of Pennsylvania state legislature from 1776 to 1820, a period which that institution, born fire of republicanism, gradually transformed itself into an entity that found liberality as its central denning core. …