Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:17:22.817Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

America's Machiavellian: Gouverneur Morris at the Constitutional Convention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2017

John Patrick Coby
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

While generally a steady ally of James Madison and the nationalists, Gouverneur Morris, delegate from Pennsylvania, worked from a different conception of republican politics. Morris's republicanism was more old than new, relying on the divided sovereignty of a mixed regime to protect the rights of citizens and minorities. This conception, it is argued here, bears the stamp of Machiavelli, especially regarding the relationship of the classes and the role of the executive. Like Machiavelli—but unlike Madison—Morris wanted to underscore society's class divisions, organizing the representatives of rich and poor into two distinct, and hostile, chambers of the legislature. And like Machiavelli, whose “civil prince” was the champion of the people, Morris's executive was to be the “guardian of the people” and the “guardian of liberty.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 79 , Issue 4: Dennis WM Moran: In Appreciation and Gratitude , Fall 2017 , pp. 621 - 648
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The new science of politics, according to Federalist, No. 51, acknowledges the sovereignty of the people (“fountain of authority”), while requiring that it operate through constitutional structures that afford protection for minority rights. The old science of politics divides sovereignty across the social orders of a mixed regime, protecting minority rights by incorporating “a will in the community independent of the majority.” (See Wood, Gordon, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 [New York: Norton, 1969], 554.Google Scholar) Machiavelli embraces the mixed regime (Discourses on Livy 1.2.2–5) and for that reason is regarded as an old republican. In other respects, he is new, if not himself the progenitor of the new science (see Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli [Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958], 61, 83, 232 Google Scholar): for example, he encourages acquisition (Prince 3) in opposition to the classical/Christian tradition that encourages moderation. But even here, more old than new is Machiavelli, insofar as acquisition for him depends on war and conquest, whereas for his modern disciples (e.g., Montesquieu), it depends on commerce and industry. (See Coby, J. Patrick, Machiavelli's Romans: Liberty and Greatness in the “Discourses on Livy” [Lantham, MD: Lexington Books, 1999], 146, 277–84Google Scholar; and Coby, J. Patrick, “Machiavelli's Philanthropy,” History of Political Thought 20 [1999]: 618–26Google Scholar. In these works I argue, in partial disagreement with Strauss, Mansfield, Harvey [e.g., Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders: A Study of the “Discourses on Livy” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Machiavelli's Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)Google Scholar], and some others that Machiavelli is an ancient more than he is a modern, urging adoption of Roman modes of governance and conquest; and that his originality—his “new modes and orders” and his “path as yet untrodden by anyone” [D.1.Preface.1]—consists mainly of reforms of Rome's constitution toward the end of better controlling and energizing executive power, in the first instance; and, in the second, of a propagandistic use of history and a writing style designed to teach the art of prudence [Machiavelli's Romans, 195–223].) I do not mean to suggest that Morris rejected the institutions of the new science; I only suggest that he questioned their sufficiency in safeguarding liberty.

2 By a vote of 6–5, the Convention on June 11 approved “some equitable ratio of representation”—i.e., suffrage proportionate to population—for the upper house; and on June 19, by a vote of 7–3–1, the Convention adopted the revised Virginia Plan, which made representation for the upper house proportional (Resolution 8). Votes taken on June 11 (7–3–1), June 19 (7–3–1), and June 29 (6–4–1) applied proportionality to the lower house.

3 William Pierce of Georgia wrote brief character sketches of the Convention delegates. These are found in volume 3 of Farrand, Max, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, rev. ed., 4 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966, 1987), 87–97 Google Scholar. Volumes 1 and 2 of Farrand contain the notes taken by Convention delegates (excluding those taken by John Lansing, in the fourth-volume supplement edited by James Hutson). Citations of Convention debates are identified by date, volume, and page number (e.g., May 31, 1:48) and are kept in the text. References to volume 3, which contains Convention-related materials, like the Pierce sketches, show the editor's name and the book's title, volume number, and page number (e.g., Farrand, Federal Convention, 3:106) and are placed in the footnotes. Misspellings of proper names are corrected; otherwise original spellings are retained. Original punctuation is also retained, except in cases where it interferes with comprehension. Full words usually replace abbreviations.

4 Adams's book was listed in the Library's catalogue of 1807, which had absorbed and replaced the catalogue of 1789 (http://librarycompany.org/about/history.htm). Luther Martin of Maryland once referenced Adams's Defence during the debates (June 27, 1:439), and Madison spoke of it in a June 6 letter to Jefferson, (The Papers of James Madison, ed. Rutland, Robert et al. [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977], 10:29)Google Scholar. The editor of the Works of John Adams, Adams's grandson Charles Francis Adams, stated that the edition printed in Philadelphia “was much circulated in the convention” (Boston: Little, Brown, 1850–56), 4:276. That point was partly confirmed by John Adams's friend Cotton Tufts, who informed Adams in June that his book “came to America at a very critical moment just before the meeting of the grand convention at Philadelphia for revising and amending the confederation, when the subject of your book will naturally be much talked of and attended to by many of the greatest statesmen from all parts of the United States” (quoted by Smith, Page, John Adams [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962], 2:698–99Google Scholar). Benjamin Rush was among the statesmen favorably impressed, reporting in a letter to Richard Price that “Mr. Adams's book has diffused such excellent principles among us, that there is little doubt of our adopting a vigorous and compounded federal legislature” (Farrand, Federal Convention, 3:33).

5 J. Adams, Works, 4:290–91, 444–45; 5:185–87.

6 Ibid., 4:397.

7 Thompson, C. Bradley, “John Adams’ Machiavellian Moment,” Review of Politics 57 (Summer 1995): 389–417 Google Scholar.

8 Hamilton is counted a disciple despite the presence of only two Machiavelli citations in his works, both of them negative ( Walling, Karl, “Was Alexander Hamilton a Machiavellian Statesman?,” Review of Politics 57 [Summer 1995]: 419–47Google Scholar); while Jefferson is counted a disciple on the strength of one citation, also negative ( Rahe, Paul A., “Thomas Jefferson's Machiavellian Political Science,” Review of Politics 57 [Summer 1995]: 449–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Claiming for Jefferson an indebtedness to Machiavelli, Rahe says, “one does not have to cite an author or, for that matter, even peruse his works to absorb something of his doctrine and to come under his sway”; and, “Machiavelli exercised a species of intellectual hegemony over republican thought in the eighteenth century exceeded by none but John Locke” (450–51). John Lamberton Harper, who develops the parallels between Hamiltonian and Machiavellian foreign policy, says, “only the frank and feisty Adams admitted to having learned from Machiavelli” ( American Machiavellian: Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of U.S. Foreign Policy [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004], 5 Google Scholar.

9 Whether Morris ever read, much less absorbed and consciously utilized, Machiavelli cannot be conclusively established. His home in Westchester County, New York, called Morrisania, contained some four thousand volumes, far exceeding (says one biographer) the family libraries of all the Founders combined. In the estimation of contemporary Ezra Stiles, the library at Morrisania was second only to that of Harvard College. Very possibly, but not for certain, works by Machiavelli were a part of the collection. The contents were never inventoried, and during the British occupation, the books were dispersed, stolen, or destroyed ( Adams, William Howard, Gouverneur Morris: An Independent Life [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003], 11–12, 75–76 Google Scholar; Kirschke, James J., Gouverneur Morris: Author, Statesman, and Man of the World [New York: Thomas Dunn Books, 2005], 10 Google Scholar). It can, however, be established that for all the years that Morris lived in Philadelphia, he had ready access to Machiavelli, because a two-volume Works of Nicolas Machiavel, plus a separate edition of Machiavelli's History of Florence, were listed in the 1770 catalogue of the Library Company of Philadelphia and so included in its holdings (http://librarycompany.org/about/history.htm). Morris (to my knowledge) did not cite Machiavelli in any of his writings, public or private, but then Morris cited rather few authors, and the ones he did cite were generally poets and playwrights. Montesquieu he cited, and Roman history he referenced, including, late in life, a comparison of Roman religion and Christianity ( To Secure the Blessings of Liberty: Selected Writings of Gouverneur Morris, ed. Barlow, J. Jackson [Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2012], 647–48Google Scholar), a prominent theme in the Discourses (e.g., 2.2.2). But the fact remains that the case for Machiavellian influence is circumstantial. Readers who require more should then suppose this article to be exploring an uncanny similarity in the thinking of Morris and Machiavelli that goes to explain why Morris was not the same sort of nationalist as Madison. Readers less uncomfortable with circumstantial evidence might further suppose, with me, that Morris was actually drawing on Machiavelli, applying the Florentine's mixed-regime reasoning to the constitutional problems encountered at the Convention, especially the true nature and right organization of the legislative and executive powers. Of course, to suggest that Machiavelli was a background, intellectual source for Morris is not to deny that foreground, experiential influences were also at work, such as Morris's time in New York politics, in the Continental Congress, and in the offices of Robert Morris.

10 Miller, Melanie Randolph, An Incautious Man: The Life of Gouverneur Morris (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2008)Google Scholar. Morris is the subject of this and of ten previous biographies: Sparks, Jared, The Life of Gouverneur Morris, with Selections from His Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers, 3 vols. (Boston: Gray & Bowen, 1832)Google Scholar; Roosevelt, Theodore, Gouverneur Morris (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1888)Google Scholar; Walther, Daniel, Gouverneur Morris: Witness of Two Revolutions (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1934)Google Scholar; Swiggett, Howard, The Extraordinary Mr. Morris (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952)Google Scholar; Mintz, Max M., Gouverneur Morris and the American Revolution (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Kline, Mary-Jo, Gouverneur Morris and the New Nation, 1775–1778 (New York: Arno, 1978)Google Scholar; W. H. Adams, Gouverneur Morris: An Independent Life; Brookhiser, Richard, Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution (New York: Free Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Kirschke, Gouverneur Morris: Author, Statesman; and Miller, Melanie Randolph, Envoy to the Terror: Gouverneur Morris and the French Revolution (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2005)Google Scholar. But however often and well-told his life story, the political thought of Morris has received relatively little scholarly attention: one article ( Robinson, Donald L., “Gouverneur Morris and the Design of the American Presidency,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 17 [1987]: 319–28Google Scholar); one book chapter ( Nedelsky, Jennifer, Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990]Google Scholar, chap. 3); several pages of another book chapter ( Tarcov, Nathan, “The Social Theory of the Founders,” in Confronting the Constitution, ed. Bloom, Allan [Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1990]Google Scholar); an unpublished doctoral dissertation (Arthur P. Kaufman, “The Constitutional Views of Gouverneur Morris” [PhD diss., Georgetown University, 1992]); and an online essay (Forrest McDonald, “The Political Thought of Gouverneur Morris,” theimaginativeconservative.org [2013]). One of the biographies listed above devotes a chapter to Morris's role in writing the Constitution (Kirschke, Gouverneur Morris, chap. 5).

11 Unicameralism was in fact the preference of a number of delegates. Those who spoke for it were Benjamin Franklin (May 31, 1:48), William Paterson (June 16, 1:251), Oliver Ellsworth (June 16, 1:255), John Lansing (June 20, 1:336), Luther Martin (June 20, 1:340; June 27, 1:439), and Roger Sherman (June 20, 1:341, 343).

12 Pinckney did favor a senate, but he gave no reason why; nor did he in the June 25 speech say much about its organization. His plan of government, placed before the Convention on May 29, supplied a few details. The Pinckney Plan is a complicated affair: see Farrand, Federal Convention, 2:134–37; 3:106–23, 427–28, 595–609.

13 Hamilton, Alexander, Jay, John, and Madison, James, The Federalist (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2001)Google Scholar.

14 Lance Banning minimizes the importance of ambition checking ambition in Madison's thought ( The Sacred Fire Of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995], 368 Google Scholar).

15 J. Adams, Works, 4:397.

16 Ibid., 4:291.

17 Quotations of Machiavelli's works are from Discourses on Livy, trans. Mansfield, Harvey C. and Tarcov, Nathan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)Google Scholar; The Prince, trans. Mansfield, Harvey C., 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)Google Scholar; and Florentine Histories, trans. Banfield, Laura F. and Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

18 Livy, Titus, Ab urbe conditia, trans. Foster, B. O., vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1922), 4.9Google Scholar.

19 Morris uttered similar sentiments in a letter to Washington dated October 30, 1787: “men must be treated as men, and not as machines, much less as philosophers, and least of all things as reasonable creatures, seeing that in effect they reason not to direct, but to excuse, their conduct” (Sparks, Life of Gouverneur Morris, 1:290).

20 This was the plebeian council, or concilium plebis, the origins of which are obscure. Its decisions, called plebiscites, applied only to the plebs, until 287 BC, when, with passage of the Hortensian law, the plebeian council was folded into the tribal assembly, or comitia tributa. See Fritz, Kurt von, The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), 236–38Google Scholar; Nicolet, Claude, The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 224–25, 228Google Scholar.

21 Morris applied his analysis of class division and the legislative power to French politics, when two years later he was in Paris witnessing the demise of the Estates General: “Suppose all distinctions gone, and one body of representatives appointed for this great kingdom, on whom will the choice fall? … Will not the rich and the great be chosen? … Is it not most wise to put all these enemies in one body together, and not suffer them to elude the vigilance of observation, by dressing in the popular garb? Why suffer the wolves, (if wolves they be) to occupy the place, which should be reserved for the shepherd?” (Selected Writings of Gouverneur Morris, ed. Barlow, 235).

22 Nedlesky, Private Property, 80.

23 Kaufman, “Constitutional Views of Gouverneur Morris,” 335.

24 In a letter to Robert R. Livingston dated October 10, 1802, Morris described universal suffrage as an aristocratic feature of American government, notwithstanding its democratic form (Sparks, Life of Gouverneur Morris, 3:172).

25 Robinson, “Gouverneur Morris and the American Presidency,” 324.

26 Commercial society produces complexity, disparities of wealth, and community-wide avariciousness incompatible with democracy, which requires simplicity, equality, and frugality (D.1.55; Nedelsky, Private Property, 88).

27 In the Florentine Histories, Machiavelli praises the Roman nobility for extending governing opportunities to the plebs in a manner that encouraged them to imitate the martial qualities of the nobles; and he blames the Florentine populace for withholding governing opportunities from the nobles unless they conducted themselves in a manner similar to the people (3.1).

28 Selected Writings of Gouverneur Morris, 237.

29 Nedelsky, Private Property, 80–81.

30 Tarcov, “Social Theory of the Founders,” 177.

31 Morris attributed such far-seeing stewardship to the British king, whose tenure was hereditary (July 20, 2:68; July 21, 2:76).

32 Machiavelli includes co-optation among the techniques of indirect rule practiced by the Roman senate (D.3.11.1).

33 The guard of freedom shifts in Machiavelli from the Spartan nobles to the Spartan kings. Likewise in Morris, the guard shifted from aristocratic senators (maybe) to the president.

34 Kaufman, “Constitutional Views of Gouverneur Morris,” 338, 351, 357.

35 Kaufman is of a different mind, describing violent despotism as majority tyranny (ibid., 333). Nedelsky attributes the rise of both violent aristocracy and violent despotism to the misguided participation of the public (Private Property, 87). Perhaps though it would be better to say that majority tyranny and misguided populism correspond to Machiavelli's licentious democracy coming to power in Morris's agrarian society.

36 The liberty outcome associated with civil principality is not to be confused with the political liberty of a republic, presented in Discourses 1.4.1. For the classes in Prince 9 are, after all, vying with each other to surrender their political liberty to a prince in exchange for protection and vengeance.

37 Morris may not have wanted the people taking a too-active role in politics. In short essays dating to the Revolutionary period, titled (sometimes) Political Enquiries, Morris made clear his preference for civil liberty, the individual's right to be left alone, over political liberty, the collective's right to rule. In fact, Morris spoke quite disparagingly of political liberty: “A Nation of Politicians, neglecting their own Business for that of the State, would be the most weak miserable and contemptible Nation on Earth” (Selected Writings of Gouverneur Morris, 7). Morris certainly did not neglect his own business: on four separate occasions, when important affairs of state were pending, Morris excused himself for a time, or altogether, often to attend to his private concerns (Kirschke, Gouverneur Morris: Author, Statesman, 54–55, 69, 167, 200; also, W. H. Adams, Gouverneur Morris: An Independent Life, 123–24). McDonald associates civil liberty with commerce, and political liberty with legislative action; and he connects them both to Morris's suspicion of the legislature and his promotion of the executive (“Political Thought of Gouverneur Morris,” 3). An excellent analysis of the Political Enquiries is provided by Kaufman (“Constitutional Views of Gouverneur Morris,” 39–79).

38 Best, Judith A., “Legislative Tyranny and the Liberation of the Executive: A View from the Founding,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 17 (Fall 1987): 705 Google Scholar.

39 For another example of bad law, see “An American,” Letters on Public Finance for the Pennsylvania Packet, March 4, 1780, in Selected Writings of Gouverneur Morris, 124–30.

40 Nedelsky, Private Property, 90–93.

41 Machiavelli is conspicuous in promoting the idea that the people are a competent judge of character (D.1.47; 1.58.3).

42 Morris's flirtation with a monarch-like president had a counterpart in Machiavelli, many of whose republican leaders are described as monarch-like rulers (e.g., founders, reformers, captains). Further confusing matters, or conflating regime types, Machiavelli uses the phrase “prince of a republic” (D.1.18.4). See Morris's comments on the French constitution of 1791 (Selected Writings of Gouverneur Morris, 270).

43 Woody Holton speculates that Morris supported popular election and a two-year, renewable term of office because, in an extensive country, a successful president would be reelected indefinitely, making the term in effect a lifetime appointment ( Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution [New York: Hill and Wang, 2007], 203–4Google Scholar).

44 Madison's statement in Federalist, No. 51, that “the interests of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place,” looks again like a borrowing from Morris. Hereditary succession is the logical conclusion of this idea.

45 See Dickinson's Letters of Fabius, especially Letter 8 (in Sheehan, Colleen and McDowell, Gary L., eds., Friends of the Constitution: Writings of the “Other” Federalists, 1787–1788 [Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998], 91–97 Google Scholar).

46 Kaufmann, “Constitutional Views of Gouverneur Morris,” 392.

47 The centuriate assembly, or comitia centuriata, was where consuls and other high magistrates were elected. The senate nominated candidates. All citizens voted, but collected in “centuries” that skewed results toward the wealthy (see von Fritz, Mixed Constitution, 196, 235–36; Nicolet, World of the Citizen, 219–24). American equivalents would be the electoral college (in lieu of direct popular election), its electors chosen by state legislatures (or the mode of choosing determined by the same), and the national legislature as the elector of last resort; also, election of representatives in extended electoral districts, including at-large, state-wide elections—these matters of detail determined by state legislatures but under supervision of the national legislature. Morris generally supported such tempering devices, if only as compromises. By contrast, the election of a dictator was by the consuls themselves, because recourse to a dictator necessarily implied some deficiency in the performance of the consuls, whose loss of authority would seem less shameful if given by them freely rather than taken from them by others (D.1.34.4).

48 Votes taken on June 2, July 17, July 24, July 26, and August 24 affirmed the Virginia Plan mode of electing the president. Shlomo Slonim attributes the enduring attractiveness of the plan to the advantages it conferred on small and southern states alike; and the carryover of these same advantages into the electoral college, plus that institution's neat balancing of national and confederal elements, is how he explains the final abandonment of the Virginia Plan mode (“The Electoral College at Philadelphia: The Evolution of an Ad Hoc Congress for the Selection of a President,” Journal of American History 73 [June 1986]: 55–56 Google Scholar; see also Mintz, Gouverneur Morris and the American Revolution, 195; Best, “Legislative Tyranny,” 707).

49 Jack N. Rakove remarks that Morris went further than other delegates in conceiving of the executive as the embodiment of “a coherent national interest” ( Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution [New York: Knopf, 1996], 266 Google Scholar).

50 See Klarman, Michael J., The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 218–26Google Scholar.

51 It perhaps bears repeating that the many similarities tying Morris and Machiavelli together do not add up to certain proof that Morris actually read Machiavelli, much less that Morris was making conscious, if unattributed, use of Machiavelli's writings while speaking at the Convention. It could rather be that Morris instinctively thought as Machiavelli thought and gravitated toward Machiavelli's orbit without ever realizing it.

52 Mansfield discerns a lessening of political involvement in Machiavelli's representation of the Roman plebs, whose reputed removal from the center of party competition Mansfield calls the “impartial regime.” The impartial regime reorients politics toward acquisition and distribution and away from claims of justice, inherently partial; and it reduces the public's role to that of an electorate. Mansfield regards the impartial regime as Machiavelli's chief constitutional innovation, an improvement on the mixed regime of the ancients (Machiavelli's Virtue, 115–16). I differ with Mansfield on this point especially (Machiavelli's Romans, 204–7).

53 “The principles, which caused and which justify the present revolution, will cause and justify as many more, as time and circumstances may furnish occasion for. The question then resolves itself into this: shall we be bounded by a wilderness, or a rival nation? Reason says the former, and bids us pursue the path which leads to it. The blind avarice of dominion may propel us into another road, but it leads to ruin” (Sparks, Life of Gouverneur Morris, 1:225). See also Morris's letter of November 25, 1803, to Henry W. Livingston (Farrand, Federal Convention, 3:401); Selected Writings of Gouverneur Morris, 351; and Swiggett, Extraordinary Mr. Morris, 120–21.

54 Brookhiser, Gentleman Revolutionary, 28.

55 The case for discretion rests on two assumptions: that human judgment, operating in the present, is wiser than rules enacted in the past; and that human beings, unrestrained by rules, are trustworthy. Morris did not generally share these assumptions (e.g., Farrand, Federal Convention, 3:418; Selected Writings of Gouverneur Morris, 429), but he championed discretion nonetheless. Either Morris was being incoherent, as Madison implied, or Morris was executing a complicated rhetorical strategy risky to his reputation (like Junius Brutus simulating craziness in order to topple the Tarquins and institute a republic! [D.3.2]). Possibly it was some of both; possibly his declarations of idealism and his youth-like impetuosity were also some of both.

56 On July 5, the Committee on Senate Suffrage presented its multipart compromise, the primary provisions of which called for proportional representation of persons in the lower house, set at 1 representative per 40,000 inhabitants, and equal representation of states in the upper house. To the first provision, Morris offered two objections: that as “property was the main object of Society… it ought to be one measure of the influence due to those who were to be affected by the Government”; and that “the rule of representation ought to be so fixed as to secure to the Atlantic States a prevalence in the National Councils” (1:533). Morris's own position, offered the next day, was that the legislature should be free “to provide for changes in the relative importance of the States, and for the case of new States” (July 6, 1:540). Relative importance would allow wealth as well as numbers to be taken into account. Numbers could be known with exactitude once a census was conducted, and several delegates from the South, expecting population increases in their states, insisted that the census be mandatory. Wealth, by contrast, could only be surmised. If it were to factor in reapportionment, approximate judgments would have to suffice. Morris fought the census tenaciously, appearing foolish to some colleagues (and many readers), because mixed-regime theory required that the social orders be empowered to defend themselves (Sparks, Life of Gouverneur Morris, 2:247; 3:336). “Property ought to have its weight, but not all the weight,” he stated (July 10, 1:567). Likewise, Lockean theory enshrined the importance of property, which Morris put ahead of life and liberty (July 5, 1:533). In the end, Wilson settled the matter, arguing that wealth correlated with population and that the representation of population would accomplish the representation of wealth (July 13, 1:605–6).

57 Machiavelli explains the discriminations practiced against late-arriving Venetians in very nearly the same terms (D.1.6.1).

58 Roosevelt confirms Morris's prophecy, claiming that the War of 1812 was caused by the South and the West, while most of the war's cost was borne by the East (Gouverneur Morris, 148). See also Mintz, Gouverneur Morris and the American Revolution, 187.

59 Kaufman accounts for Morris's opposition to western expansion mainly in light of Morris's opposition to slavery (“Constitutional Views of Gouverneur Morris,” 392, 404–29).

60 Some years later, in a letter to Henry W. Livingston (December 4, 1803), Morris reflected on the success of his substitute proposal and of his discrimination strategy practiced at the Convention: “In wording the third section of the fourth Article [of the Constitution], I went as far as circumstances would permit to establish the exclusion [of new states from territories not possessed at the time of Constitution]. Candor obliges me to add my belief that had it been more pointedly expressed, a strong opposition would have been made” (Farrand, Federal Convention, 3:404).

61 See Amar, Akhil Reed, America's Constitution: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2006), 274–75Google Scholar; Kirschke, Gouverneur Morris: Author, Statesman, 194. Might legislative discretion include suspension of the 1 per 40,000 apportionment requirement (changed to 1 per 30,000)? Possibly, since this requirement was once challenged, at the time of the Missouri Compromise, by some northerners who wanted the three-fifths counting of slaves denied to new, western states (Farrand, Federal Convention, 3:430; Klarman, Framers’ Coup, 277).

62 Letter to Jared Sparks, April 8, 1831 (Farrand, Federal Convention, 3:499); also Morris's letter to Timothy Pickering, December 22, 1814 (Farrand, Federal Convention, 3:420).