276 Chapter XI
expected to create a new system of government to supersede that of the past. No
one supposed that government must be constructed and authorized by a single act,
in a constitutional document written by a constituent convention deemed to speak
with the authority of the people itself.
The democratic movement in each of these cases failed. The parliamentary
classes in the two British islands prevented any broadening of the representation,
and the Anglican interest in England prevented the equalization of political
rights for Dissenters. Orange and aristocratic partisans in the United Provinces
put down the Dutch democrats; by the same operation, the Dutch Reformed
Church prevented the admission of Catholics and of minority Protestants to
public affairs. In Belgium the estates party crushed the democrats before being
itself overthrown by the Austrian restoration. At Geneva the patricians of the
governing councils staged a triumphant counterrevolution. The general concep-
tion of an “aristocratic resurgence,” which we shall soon apply to events in eastern
Europe and France, can reasonably be applied to England, Ireland, Holland, Bel-
gium, and Geneva in the 1780’s.
Whether it should also be applied to America is a question. Condorcet and oth-
ers in France detected a kind of aristocratic resurgence in the American federal
constitution of 1787. Strongly disapproving of this constitution, Condorcet wrote
to Franklin in July 1788 (and Franklin may have agreed) that “an aristocratic spirit
seeks to introduce itself among you.”^72 When the famous Pennsylvania constitu-
tion of 1776 came to an end in 1790 this belief was reinforced. Various American
schools of historians have in effect agreed with Condorcet. My own view is that,
while a new upper class was undoubtedly growing up in the United States, it was
clearly more dynamic, more oriented to the future, more receptive to change, and
less hostile to popular representation than the governing classes in Europe, even,
or perhaps one should say especially, those in European republics. What I have
said on the United States constitution, or the political ideas of John Adams, or the
use by Belgian conservatives of the American Articles of Confederation, is enough
to suggest doubt that what happened in America, with the adoption of the new
constitution, reflected any aristocratic resurgence significantly comparable to that
of Europe.^73 The Philadelphia convention, in the boldness of its actions and prin-
ciples, outdistanced not only the European conservatives but even the European
democrats, if by the latter one means Henry Flood, Alderman Sawbridge,
Ondaatje, Vonck, or the Genevese Burghers, or even the French Constituent As-
sembly of 1789–1791, which of course could make no provision for an elected ex-
ecutive, and surrounded the popular choice of deputies with many intricate
safeguards.
The aristocratic party, except in England, showed a strong tendency to depend
on foreign aid. The Geneva patricians three times during the century, and for the
last time in 1782, called on the guarantor powers, over democratic protest, to settle
internal Genevese problems. In Holland the Orange party depended wholly on
England and Prussia. The Dutch in 1787 even had their Flight to Varennes and
72 Works of Benjamin Franklin (N.Y., 1904), XI, 434–35.
73 See above, 171–74, 205–7, 265.