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John Adams's Machiavellian Moment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

C. Bradley Thompson
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Extract

John Adams was unique among the Founding Fathers in that he actually read and took seriously Machiavelli's ideas. In his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States, Adams quoted extensively from Machiavelli and he openly acknowledged an intellectual debt to the Florentine statesman. Adams praised Machiavelli for having been “the first” to have “revived the ancient politics” and he insisted that the “world” was much indebted to Machiavelli for “the revival of reason in matters of government.” What could Adams have meant by these extraordinary statements? The following article examines the Machiavellian ideas and principles Adams incorporated into his political thought as well as those that he rejected. Drawing upon evidence found in an unpublished fragment, Part one argues that the political epistemology that Adams employed in the Defence can be traced to Machiavelli's new modes and orders. Part two presents Adams's critique of Machiavelli's constitutionalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , Summer 1995 , pp. 389 - 417
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1995

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References

The author wishes to thank Brendan McConville, Peter Schramm, Sidney Taylor and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

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20. See Ibid. 4: 294–96, 435–45; John Adams to Samuel Adams, 18 October 1790, 6: 415.

21. Ibid., 5: 95 (Italics added).

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25. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, in The Prince and the Discourses, chap. 15.

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29. Ibid., 2. Introduction.

30. “Wise men say, and not without reason, that whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who have been, and ever will be, animated by the same passions, and thus they must necessarily have the same results” (Discourses, 3. xliiiGoogle Scholar).

31. On the development of the historical sciences as a part of the empirical study of politics, see Becker, Carl, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932)Google Scholar; Cassirer, Ernst, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951)Google Scholar; Davis, Herbert, “The Augustan Conception of History,” in Reason and Imagination: Studies in the History of Ideas, 1600–1800, ed. Mazzeo, J. A. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 213–29Google Scholar; Nadel, George H., “Philosophy of History Before Historicism,” in The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy, ed. Bunge, Mario (New York: Free Press, 1964), pp. 445–70Google Scholar; Stromberg, R. N., “History in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Ideas 12 (1951): 295–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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35. That Adams was greatly influenced by Bolingbroke can be little doubted. In his Autobiography Adams mentions that when he went to Worcester in 1756 to begin teaching Latin at the local public school, he carried with him “Lord Bolingbroke's Study and Use of History, and his Patriot King.” The young Adams then lent his volumes to his teacher, James Putnam, who “was so well pleased with them he Added Bolingbrokes Works to his List, which gave men an Opportunity of reading the Posthumous Works of that Writer in five Volumes. Mr. Burke once asked, who ever read him through? I can answer that I read him through, before the Year 1758 and that I have read him through at least twice since that time” (Adams, , Diary and Autobiography, 3: 264Google Scholar). Adams's Diary is full of references to Bolingbroke (See Adams, , Diary, 1:11,12, 35, 36, 38, 40, 73,176, 200; 2: 386; 3: 272Google Scholar). See also, Adams, to Jefferson, , 25 12 1813, AdamsJefferson Letters, 2: 410.Google Scholar The influence is unmistakable.

36. Bolingbroke, , “Letters on the Study and Use of History,” 2: 229–30.Google Scholar See Iacuzzi, Alfred, John Adams, Scholar (New York: S. F. Vanni, 1952), p. 150.Google Scholar

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39. Ibid., pp. 228–29; Paynter, John E., “The Ethics of John Adams: Prolegomenon to a Science of Politics” (Ph.D dissertation, University of Chicago, 1974), pp. 97–101.Google Scholar

40. Adams, , Works, 5: 11.Google Scholar

41. Given this methodological standard—the heavy emphasis on experience and history as opposed to rationalism and philosophy—some may wonder why Adams would quote in the Defence so approvingly from Plato's Republic. The vast bulk of Adams's quotations from Plato are drawn from the eighth and ninth books. It is here that Plato describes the rise and fall of all pure forms of government into their corrupt forms. What impressed Adams was not Plato's unique, non-cyclical theory of regime change, but rather his account of the reasons, the underlying causes of this change: “Plato has given us the most accurate detail of the natural vicissitudes of manners and principles, the usual progress of the passions in society, and revolutions of governments into one another” (Adams, , Works, 4: 448Google Scholar).

42. Adams, , Works, 6: 365; 5:11.Google Scholar

43. John Adams to Rev. De Walter, October, 1797, Adams Papers, Reel 119; Adams to Francis Adrian Vanderkemp, 20 April 1812, Adams Papers, Reel 118.

44. Adams, , Works, 4: 559.Google Scholar

45. Ibid., 6: 3–4.

46. Ibid., 6: 4; 4: 559.

47. Ibid., 5: 5,11, 9–10,5.

48. Ibid., 5: 11,19.

49. Ibid., 5: 66, 39–40,44. See also Discourses, 2. Introduction.

50. Adams, , Works, 5: 29–30, 42–45, 48.Google Scholar

51. Ibid., 5: 29,45.

52. Ibid., 5:17–18, 26,18.

53. Ibid., 5: 29–30, 48–49. Adams's interpretation of the Florentine Histories should be read in the light of what Machiavelli says in the Discourses of the cause and effect relationship between the Roman constitution and that city's good laws, good education, and good examples. See Discourses on Liny, 1. iv.Google Scholar

54. Adams, , Works, 5: 66, 82.Google Scholar

55. Ibid., 4: 284.

56. Ibid., 5: 90.

57. Ibid., 5: 45,44.

58. Ibid., 5: 67–68.

59. See, for instance, Discourses, 1. xlixGoogle Scholar: “The progress of the Roman republic demonstrates how difficult it is in the constitution of a republic to provide necessary laws for the maintenance of liberty.”

60. Adams, , Works, 5: 89.Google Scholar

61. See Discourses, 3. i, xxii, xxx.Google ScholarCf. Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1958), pp. 44, 165, 167, 247–52.Google Scholar

62. Adams, , Works, 4: 298, 587.Google Scholar

63. Ibid., 4: 384–85. Adams was quoting from Swift's A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles and Commons of Athens and Rome.

64. Cf. Discourses, 1. ixGoogle Scholar and Adams, , Works, 4: 291–94.Google Scholar

65. Cf. Discourses, 1. xlix and 3. xxxix.Google Scholar

66. At one point in The Prince, Machiavelli even suggests that human nature might be conquered by a new kind of ruler: “And in examining their life and deeds it will be seen that they owed nothing to fortune but the opportunity which gave them matter to be shaped into what form they thought fit; and without that opportunity their powers would have been wasted, and without their powers the opportunity would have come in vain…. These opportunities, therefore, gave these men their chance, and their own great qualities enabled them to profit by them, so as to ennoble their country and augment its fortunes” (The Prince, chap. 6).

67. One possible source for Adams's critique of Machiavelli's political science and his emphasis on the notion of a constitutional founding is James Harrington. In his Oceana, Harrington attempted to construct a “perfect and (for ought that in human prudence can be forseen) an immortal Commonwealth.” Harrington, James, The Commonwealth of Oceana and A System of Politics ed. Pocock, J. G. A. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See Rahe, , Republics Ancient and Modern, pp. 409–40.Google Scholar