What the Anti-Federalists were For

What the Anti-Federalists were For 

Jon D. Schaff, Northern State University 

 

The great scholar of Anti-Federalist thought, Herbert Storing, summed up the Anti-Federalists in three basic points. All three pertain to what we might call the small republic argument. The basic Anti-Federalist position was that free government—a republic dedicated to liberty—can only exist on a relatively small scale. In holding this view, the Anti-Federalists were in good company. This view was the general consensus of political thought before modern times and was the view of the French Enlightenment thinker Baron de Montesquieu, who highly influenced the American Founders. The basic argument was that when a political community gets too big, both geographically and in population, it becomes too diverse. The danger was that various kinds of people and ways of life spread over a large area could only be held together by some kind of strong, authoritarian government. Free government can only be successful on a relatively small scale. For the Anti-Federalists, the American states were an example of this small republic.

The first reason for the Anti-Federalist defense of the small republic is that only in the small republic can we get the voluntary attachment that free government needs to be successful. Any regime needs the people to be attached to their government; they need to feel in some sense that this government is theirs and demands their obedience to the rule of law. Throughout history in most countries, the typical way of getting people attached to the government was by some kind of threat, probably the threat of violence or coercion. The point of the sword is a great way to gain obedience. But a free government dedicated to liberty naturally demands that this attachment be voluntary, i.e., uncoerced. We are unlikely to feel attached to a government that is physically distant from us and made up of people from distant places with a way of life we do not understand. This is the problem with the large republic. But when government is close to us, we can easily access it, and it is made up of people we might personally know. Even in our day of automobiles and airplanes, only a relatively small number of Americans have ever been to Washington, DC, while far more people have been to their state’s capital. This close proximity of state capitals bolsters the notion that the government is actually ours.

Further, only in the small republic can we get responsible government, government that is responsive to our interests. Today, the typical member of the House of Representatives represents about 750,000 people. Most U.S. Senators represent millions of people. When our national representatives debate matters such as health care, taxes, or war, what are the chances that they know your opinion? Do your representative or senators even know you exist? On the other hand, our state representatives and local officials might be our neighbors, go to our church, or have kids at our school. They know who we are. If we want to talk with them about political matters, they are easily accessible. They are also more likely to be like us. While national representatives tend to be highly educated and wealthy and come from professional occupations such as the law, state representatives and city council members are more likely to come from other socioeconomic backgrounds. As Anti-Federalist Melancton Smith put it, representation is best when it comes from “the middling sort,” neither the wealthy elite nor the very poor. Again, this is more likely to occur in the small republic.

Finally, only the small republic can develop the right kind of citizen necessary for healthy, free government. In a democracy we are citizens, not subjects. A king has subjects. As the name suggests, a subject is passive, literally “subjected” to monarchical authority. But democratic citizenship is active. A citizen, Aristotle teaches us, is someone who governs and is governed in return. Citizens are not just governed; they also take part in governing. This requires certain virtues or habits. Citizens must have the habit of participating in government, educating themselves about public matters, and attending meetings or political gatherings. Being a good citizen entails much more than simply voting. But in the large republic, the matters at issue are often too big and complex for us to understand. The debates occur far from us, involving discussion by people we don’t know and who don’t know us. It is easy to conclude our opinions don’t matter, thus we tune out. In political science we speak of “political efficacy:” the feeling that our political actions have an effect. In the large republic, most citizens, if they can be called that, have low feelings of efficacy because government is too big, too distant, and too complex. By contrast, in the small republic, our local meetings are easy to get to and our local officials easy to speak to. That encourages us in the habits of vigilant citizenship. It is much easier to understand local issues. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted, when the government proposes putting a road across your property, you are very interested in what the government is doing and likely to get involved. In other words, local issues are more likely to have a direct impact on our lives, giving us incentive to be active citizens.

In sum, the Anti-Federalists were critical of the large republic imagined by the Federalists and the strong central government they proposed. It had the likely effect of becoming a government of elites, separating the people from their government, and weakening the virtues of democratic self-government necessary for a healthy republic. We witness this in modern America where a constant complaint is that our politicians are out of touch, do not understand us, and run a government we cannot comprehend. The Anti-Federalists would argue that this is a predictable outcome of centralization of power. Given the name, we tend to focus on what the Anti-Federalists were against. But what were the Anti-Federalists for? A government that is local, personal, and human. This is a government fit for a democratic, free people.