American Republicanism pp 217-246 | Cite as
American Republicanism
Abstract
One salient and often inescapable source of a word’s meaning is its history. The English word ‘republican’ descends from the Latin res publica, meaning the Roman state as it existed between the expulsion of the kings in 509 BC and the imposition of caesars, princes and emperors half a millennium later. English revolutionaries adopted ‘republic’ (and its English synonym ‘commonwealth’) to describe the state they hoped to establish when they ousted and executed their own monarch in the seventeenth century.3 This first English republic foundered in Cromwell’s dictatorship and the eventual return of the Stuart kings, but it remained a vivid memory for civic-minded Englishmen and Americans.4
Keywords
Public Good Common Good United States Constitution American Constitution American RevolutionPreview
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Notes
- 6.Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, 2 vols (Boston, 1805, repr. Indianapolis, Ind., 1988), at 601.Google Scholar
- 47.George Washington, ‘The First Inaugural Speech’, in George Washington: A Collection, ed. W. B. Allen (Indianapolis, Ind., 1988), 460, 462.Google Scholar
- 57.On ‘virtue’, see also Ann F. Withington, Toward a More Perfect Union: Virtue and the Formation of the American Republics (New York and Oxford, 1991).Google Scholar
- 71.Adams, Defence, I:365–71. Cf. Benjamin Rush, Observations on the Government of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1777), 20: ‘It is one thing to understand the principles, and another thing to understand theforms of government. The former are simple; the latter are difficult and complicated. There is the same difference between principles and forms in all other sciences. Who understood the principles of mechanics and optics better than Sir Issac Newton? And yet Sir Issac could not for the life of him have made a watch or microscope. Mr. Locke is an oracle as to the principles, Harrington and Montesquieu are oracles as to the forms of government.’Google Scholar