396 Chapter XVI
sufficiency, and the liberty which meant the virtual absence of centralized govern-
ment; and that the opposite party, the Federalists, were the party of change in
terms of the American scene, however much they sympathized with conservatism
in Europe, because they wanted to develop banking, credit, reliable currency, com-
mercial investment, and domestic and foreign trade, and also to build up a more
powerful and centralized national government, all of which were newer in America
than in Western Europe. In Europe, in France, Switzerland, Holland, and Italy, the
democratic movement always sought a unitary, homogeneous, and juridically cen-
tralized republic. This was because in Europe the aristocratic interests were strongly
rooted in the historic localisms of manor and town. In America the democratic
movement was suspicious of centralized, homogeneous, or unitary government,
and strongly insistent on local liberties and state rights. This was because a demo-
cratic outlook in America had been rooted locally from the beginning among yeo-
man farmers, and those larger Southern farmers and slaveowners who functioned
as gentry. In Europe a democratic movement required a strong central government
to overcome adversaries. In America a democratic movement could be content to
leave well enough alone. In Europe the term “federalism,” which became current in
several countries in the 1790’s, signified decentralization and fragmentation of
power. It was viewed by democrats as a cloak for social reaction, behind which local
privileged interest might take refuge. In America Federalism meant the concentra-
tion and unification of public power; democrats feared that it might be despotic,
but it was certainly less reactionary than “federalism” in Europe.
The paradoxes in the American relation to Europe will be among the topics
pursued in the following pages.
Shades of Doctrine
By 1792 there were five recognizable shades in the spectrum of opinion generated
by the Revolution. They had an existence of their own apart from the categories of
people who might adopt them. The same person during the decade might change
his hue.
At the extreme Right was the idea that the good society was what had existed
before 1789. In this view everything that had happened since June of that year
should be undone. It was positively desirable to have a society of legal estates, with
an acknowledged hierarchy of unequal or dissimilar rights, an honoring of the
aristocratic virtues, corporate and concrete liberties (or privileges) for particular
groups, a monarch surrounded by worthy advisers but not responsible to them, and
a form of government and authority closely related to one specific church. French
members of the school have been recently described in a work by Paul Beik.^13 The
Savoyard Joseph de Maistre was one of the principal theorists. Edmund Burke was
the most eloquent philosopher of this school; he had developed his ideas in op-
13 Paul Beik, The French Revolution Seen from the Right. Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society, new ser. XLVI, Part 1 (Philadelphia, 1956).