I was challenged by several people last week regarding the connection between the Republican structures of government in ancient Rome and the Enlightenment Principles that were both instrumental in the Founding of The American Republic. As alluded to below our founding was unique because it not only incorporated the political philosophies of Ancient Greece and Rome, but also the Biblical—and this is key, rules for governance that were very much a part of the American contribution to Enlightenment political philosophy.
Below you will find an expression of my thoughts that I found in Hillsdale College Lecture on the Roman Republic. These two letters between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams at the end of their lives demonstrates their insight regarding the differences in our own Founding Principles and the Laws of the Roman Republic which in the end lead to its’ demise.
The Founders, however, did not idealize Rome. While Rome’s history provided important examples of virtue, its model of republican government required improvement. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams of December 10, 1819, wondered “what was that government which the virtues of Cicero were so zealous to restore, & the ambitions of Caesar to subvert? I do not say to restore it, because they never had it. . . . [S]steeped in corruption vice and venality as the whole nation was, what could even Cicero, Cato, Brutus have done? They had no ideas of government themselves but of their degenerate Senate, nor the people of liberty, but of the factious opposition of their tribunes.” o
On December 21, John Adams replied that he “never could discover that they possessed much Virtue, or real Liberty—there Patricians were in general griping Usurers and Tyrannical Creditors in all ages—Pride, Strength and Courage were all the Virtues that composed their National Characters.” America does not need to suffer the same fate as Rome because America is based on principles that were not found in Rome—that all men are created equal and endowed by God with inalienable natural rights.” The principles of the Declaration of Independence were foreign the Roman Republic.
Classical Republicanism had no God for a moral or political predicate. All men were not created equal. The confluence of the ideas of Athens and Rome, Jerusalem, The Enlightenment—The Natural and Biblical Laws first exposed by church Fathers like Aquinas and then by the Enlightenments Fathers—Jefferson in my opinion is on the first team in that group, was what ultimately was memorialized in our Founding Documents.
The difference between The American and Roman Republics was that we were Founded by Christian people with a Christian moral predicate. Call it “Devine Providence” or God, being a believer or non-believer the history of our experiment speaks for itself.
We can continue to learn and be informed by the lessons of Classical Republicanism—or not.
