[A] licentious people is not going to sustain republican government. ~Robert P. GeorgeRepublicanism is not the phantom of a deluded imagination: on the contrary, that under no form of government, will laws be better supported — liberty and property better secured — or happiness be more effectually dispensed to mankind. ~George Washington
Arepublic is a form ofgovernment in which affairs of state are a "public matter" (Latin:res publica), not the private concern of the rulers, in which public offices are consequently appointed orelected rather than privately accommodated (i.e., throughinheritance ordivine mandate). Inmodern times, the common definition of a republic is a government which excludes amonarch.
[A] licentious people is not going to sustain republican government. We've got to make sure that republican government, government not only of the people as all government is but by and for the people doesn't perish from theEarth. If we lose it here, it's not as if it's going to be restarted somewhere else.
"Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?" "A Republic, if you can keep it."
Response attributed toBenjamin Franklin at the close of theConstitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation, in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one ofMaryland's delegates to the Convention. McHenry's notes were first published inThe American Historical Review, vol. 11 (1906), and the anecdote on p. 618 reads: "A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it." When McHenry's notes were included inThe Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand, vol. 3, appendix A, p. 85 (1911, reprinted 1934), a footnote stated that the date this anecdote was written is uncertain. As noted in this library of congress post on the topic. This quote is probably false. "Although this story recorded by James McHenry (1753–1816), a delegate from Maryland, is probably fictitious, people wondered just what kind of government was called for in the new constitution."http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/creating-the-united-states/convention-and-ratification.html#obj8
The Republic needed to be passed through chastening, purifying fires ofadversity andsuffering: so these came and did their work and the verdure of a new nationallife springs greenly, luxuriantly, from their ashes.
Horace Greeley,Greeley on Lincoln, ed. Joel Benton, p. 78–79 (1893).
You and your descendants have to ascertain whether this great mass will hold together under the forms of a republic, and thedespoticreality ofuniversal suffrage; whetherstate rights will hold out againstcentralisation, without separation, whether centralisation will get the better, without actual or disguised monarchy; whether shiftingcorruption is better than a permanentbureaucracy; and aspopulation thickens in your greatcities, and the pressure of what is felt, the gaunt spectre of pauperism will stalk among you, andcommunism andsocialism will claim to be heard.
But everydifference ofopinion is not a difference ofprinciple. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all republicans—we arefederalists.
Thomas Jefferson, inaugural address (March 4, 1801); in Andrew A. Lipscomb, ed.,The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1904), vol. 3, p. 319.
In truth, the abuses of monarchy had so much filled all the space of political contemplation, that we imagined everything republican which was not monarchy. We had not yet penetrated to the mother principle, that "governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it." Hence, our first constitutions had really no leading principles in them. Butexperience andreflection have but more and more confirmed me in the particular importance of the equal representation then proposed.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kercheval (July 12, 1816); in Paul L. Ford, ed.,The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1899), vol. 10, p. 37.
Democracy, republics: What do these words signify? What have they changed in the world? Have men become better, more loyal, kinder? Are the people happier?All goes on as before, as always. Illusions, illusions. Besides, one should consider the interest of a nation before subverting it with words. Democracy is necessary in some cases and We believe some African peoples might adopt it. But in other cases it is harmful, a mistake.
Alexis de Tocqueville,Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence, vol. 1, part 1, chapter 8, p. 123 (1969). Originally published in 1835–1840.
Just as people areborn, live atime, anddie bydiseases orold age, in the same way republics are formed, flower a few centuries, and persih finally by the audacity of acitizen, or by theweapons of their enemies. All has their period; allempires, and largest monarchies even, have only so much time: the republics feel continually that this time will arrive, and they look at any too-powerful family as the carriers of a disease which will give them the blow of death.
A republic is, in essence, what a monarchy is not. That, in short, is the argument, based on a very long history of states called republics, and thinkers called republicans, who learned from each other. A republic is a state that has many rulers, instead of one, most of them independently elected rather than appointed. A republic is a state where most of the public business must perforce be publicly aired, since these many magistrates naturally differ about that business and thus cannot conduct it without robust argument. Though it is still said in our civic pedagogy that a republic is something called a "representativedemocracy," many of history's republicans have not been representative, and many have been far from democratic, including some which were undemocratic precisely by virtue of being representative. What all republics have been is polyarchal, ruled by thepluribus instead of theuno.
William Everdell,The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
Republicanism is not the phantom of a deludedimagination: on the contrary, that under no form of government, willlaws be better supported —liberty andproperty better secured — orhappiness be more effectually dispensed to mankind.
Republicanism did not die away. They remain to temper the scramble for privatewealth and happiness and they continue to underlie for many of our ideals and aspirations: for our belief inequality and our dislike of pretension andprivilege; our deep yearning forindividualautonomy andfreedom from all ties of dependency; our periodichopes, expressed, for example, in the election ofmilitary heroes and in the mugwump andprogressive movements, that some political leaders might rise aboveparties and become truly disinterested umpires and deliberative representatives; our long-held conviction thatfarming is morally healthier and freer of selfishmarketplace concerns than other activities; our preoccupation with the fragility of the republic and its liability to corruption; and, finally, our remarkableobsession with our own national virtue-an obsession that still bewilders the rest of the world.
