MDMD ch 40-related book review

[Doug Millison]

http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=172051016215005

Douglass G. Adair. The Intellectual Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy:
Republicanism, the Class Struggle, and the Virtuous Farmer. Edited by Mark
Yellin. New York and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2000. xxvi + 185 pp.
Foreword, introduction, notes, bibliography, index. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN
0-7391-0125-0; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 0-7391-0125-0.

"[,,,] Adair concluded, however, that the Constitution was a compromise
between aristocrats and democrats. According to him, "the separation of the
Senate and the House which had always been the traditional guard of
liberty, also served after a little thought to satisfy those of the Fathers
who were so torn between the respective merits of the few and the many.
Archaic elements lifted from the ancient 'mixed governments' were woven
into the very structure of the new state" (pp. 118-19). Thus, the new
Constitution, a "bundle of compromises," represented a theoretical truce
between those promoting different classes within the regime (p. 119), and
the compromise was made possible by a flexible Virginia Plan and the
creative theorizing of its author, James Madison. [...] Had Adair
recognized the theoretical insights of Madison's political science,
especially the advances made by the Founder's analysis of federations, he
might have had cause to reconsider his own thesis of class division. He
might have placed greater emphasis on the influence of Montesquieu at the
Founding. And finally, he might have arrived at a fuller definition of
Jeffersonian Democracy. "