Beard vs. Roche

1

• Beard vs. Roche

2
Framing the Constitution Charles A. Beard

• Beard suggests that the Constitution was nothing
  more than the work of an economic elite that was
  seeking to preserve its property.
• This elite, according to Beard, consisted of
  landholders, creditors, merchants, public
  bondholders, and wealthy lawyers. Beard
  demonstrated that many of the delegates to the
  convention fell into one of these categories.

3
Goal to Limit Popular Majorities

• According to Beards thesis, as the delegates
  met, the primary concern of most of them was to
  limit the power of popular majorities and thus
  protect their own property interests.
• To Beard, the anti-majoritarian attributes that
  he felt existed in the Constitution were a
  reflection of the less numerous creditor class
  attempting to protect itself against incursions
  by the majority.

4
Constitution Protects Property

• Specific provisions as well were put into the
  Constitution with a view toward protecting
  property, such as the clause prohibiting states
  from impairing contracts, coining money, or
  emitting bills of credit.
• Control over money was placed in the hands of the
  national government, and in Article VI of the
  Constitution it was provided that the new
  government was to guarantee all debts that had
  been incurred by the national government under
  the Articles of Confederation.

5
Beard v. Roche

• Ironically, Beard, like Roche, was attempting to
  dispel the prevailing notions of his time that
  the Constitution had been formulated by
  philosopher kings whose wisdom could not be
  challenged.
• But while Roche postulates a loosely knit
  practical political elite, Beard suggests the
  existence of a cohesive and even conspiratorial
  economic elite.
• The limitation on majority rule was an essential
  component of this economic conspiracy.

6
Evidence Does Not Support Beard

• Beards thesis was startling at the time it was
  published in 1913. As it came under close
  examination, it was revealed that the evidence
  simply did not support Beard's hypothesis.
• Key leaders of the convention, including Madison,
  were not substantial property owners. Several
  important opponents to ratification of the
  Constitution were the very members of the
  economic elite that Beard said conspired to
  thrust the Constitution upon an unknowing public.

7
The Founding FathersA Reform Caucus in Action

• John P. Roche suggests that the framing of the
  Constitution was essentially a democratic process
  involving the reconciliation of a variety of
  state, political, and economic interests

8
Framers Were Politicians

• Roche writes "Perhaps the time has come, to
  borrow Walton Hamilton's fine phrase, to raise
  the framers from immortality to mortality, to
  give them credit for their magnificent
  demonstration of the art of democratic politics.
  The point must be reemphasized they made history
  and did it within the limits of consensus."

9
Constitutional Convention

• Roche writes that "the Philadelphia Convention
  was not a College of Cardinals or a council of
  Platonic guardians working in a manipulative,
  pre-democratic framework
• it was a nationalist reform caucus that had to
  operate with great delicacy and skill in a
  political cosmos full of enemies to achieve one
  definitive goal, popular approbation.

10
The Framers as a Political Elite

• Roche recognizes that the framers, collectively,
  were an elite, but he is careful to point out
  that they were a political elite dedicated for
  the most part to establishing an effective and at
  the same time controlled national government that
  would be able to overcome the weaknesses of the
  Articles of Confederation.

11
Framers Were Not a Conspiratorial Economic Elite

• The framers were not, says Roche, a cohesive
  elite dedicated to a particular set of political
  or economic assumptions beyond the simple need to
  create a national government that would be
  capable of reconciling disparate state interests.
• Roche contrasts with Beard who viewed the Framers
  an economic elite out to protect their personal
  property.

12
Roche on The Constitutionalists

• When the Constitutionalists went forth to subvert
  the Confederation, they utilized the mechanisms
  of political legitimacy. And the roadblocks which
  confronted them were formidable. At the same
  time, they were endowed with certain potent
  political assets.
• The history of the United States from 1786 to
  1790 was largely one of a masterful employment of
  political expertise by the Constitutionalists as
  against bumbling, erratic behavior by the
  opponents of reform. Effectively, the
  Constitutionalists had to induce the states, by
  democratic techniques of coercion, to emasculate
  themselves

13
Constitutionalists Persuasion

• The great achievement of the Constitutionalists
  was their ultimate success in convincing the
  elected representatives of a majority of the
  white male population that change was imperative.
• A small group of political leaders with a
  Continental vision and essentially a
  consciousness of the United State, international
  impotence, provided the matrix of the movement.

14
Constitutionalist's Assets

• Their great assets were
• the presence in their caucus of the one authentic
  American "father figure," George Washington,
  whose prestige was enormous
• the energy and talent of their leadership (in
  which one must include the towering intellectuals
  of the time, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,
  despite their absence abroad),
• and their communications "network," which was far
  superior to anything on the opposition side

15
Conclusion

• John Roche's article on the framing of the
  Constitution was written as an attack upon a
  variety of views that suggested the Constitution
  was not so much a practical political document as
  an expression of elitist views based upon
  political philosophy and economic interests
  Charles Beard.