A republic when men are 'desperately wicked'

A republic when men are 'desperately wicked'

Joshua Charles notes people in power rarely exercise self-denial


Thomas Paine, in “Common Sense,” expressed it this way: “Let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter [a constitution]. Let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God [the Bible]. Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING.” For the Founders, a republic founded upon such principles was their answer to the age-old question of “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force,” as Alexander Hamilton phrased it in the Federalist Papers. As Adams had asked, “Can authority be more amiable and respectable when it descends from accidents or institutions established in remote antiquity than when it springs fresh from the hearts and judgments of an honest and enlightened people?” For the Founders, the answer was a firm no.

Thus, a “republic” is defined as a form of government founded on the virtue of the people in which the people delegate their power to elected representatives who legislate and enforce laws for the common good. These laws must apply equally to all citizens, including those in government.

Because a republic is based on the virtue of the people, it is by nature the offspring of the people and has only those powers that the people have sovereignty delegated to it. It is dependent upon the idea that the people can govern themselves, and are thus capable, and have the right to construct and deconstruct their government in whatever way they deem the most conducive to the common good. John Locke phrased it this way: “But if a long train of abuses, prevarications, and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see wither they are going, tis not to be wondered that they should then rouse themselves and endeavor to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected.”

The Declaration of Independence contains a phrase that is striking in its resemblance: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” During the tumultuous final days of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Empire under the virtual rule of a single man (at that time, Julius Caesar), Cicero emphasized the same principle of the accountability of rulers, writing that “political leaders must be left in no doubt how far the limits of their authority extend. And the citizens, too, must be made fully aware of the extent of their obligations to obey the functionaries in question.”



This was particularly true in the American conception of government, in which those who governed the people were supposed to be not only limited in their authority, but directly accountable to the people for their conduct and actions. Adams explained: “They [the people] have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees for the people … the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys, and trustees.”

George Washington expressed a similar sentiment as commander in chief. Even when he had been delegated broad, nearly unlimited powers by Congress to win the war, he still conducted himself as one ultimately accountable to the public. This fiduciary responsibility to the people made even a man of his high stature humble before those who had delegated such powers to him: “As I have no other view than to promote the public good … I would not desire in the least degree to suppress a free spirit of enquiry into any part of my conduct,” he once wrote, later adding, “My heart tells me it has been my unremitted aim to do the best circumstances would permit. Yet I may have been very often mistaken in my judgment of the means, and may, in many instances, deserve the imputation of error.”

Thomas Jefferson, likewise, expressed his conviction that “while in public service especially, I thought the public entitled to frankness, and intimately to know whom they employed.” And yet, there is a glaring problem: How could a government made up of fallen men govern fallen men in such a way as to maintain their liberty? After all, Madison observed that “the essence of government is power, and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” History had shown very few examples of men exercising self-denial when in possession of power. Adams commented:

To expect self-denial from men when they have a majority in their favor and consequently power to gratify themselves is to disbelieve all history and universal experience; it is to disbelieve Revelation and the Word of God [the Bible], which informs us the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked [Jeremiah 17:9]. There have been examples of self-denial and will be again, but such exalted virtue never yet existed in any large body of men and lasted long … There is no man so blind as not to see that to talk of founding a government upon a supposition that nations and great bodies of men, left to themselves, will practice a course of self-denial is either to babble like a new-born infant or to deceive like an unprincipled imposter.

Joshua Charles

Joseph F Barber
For God and the Constitution - Freedom or Death
Fortis always awake and ready Faithful

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