"God forbid that we should ever be so miserable as to sink into a Republic.” 6 One of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, perhaps the most gifted of them all, regretted that the United States could not become a monarchy. Van Buren saw in Hamilton a monarchist, 7 certainly a conviction well grounded in facts 8 in view of Hamilton’s speeches at the Federal Convention in 1787 and 1788 in New York. And Francis Lieber very rightly pointed out that the Declaration of Independence is not really an antimonarchical document. 9 The sentence, “A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people” merely condemns George III but, at the same time, voices great respect for the royal office. The average American today would be surprised to hear the term “ruler of a free people” in which he sees a contradictio in adjecto. But in formulations like these we perceive a few aspects of Jefferson’s highly contradictory character and mind. He does stand near the mainstream of American leftist thought and deserved Hamilton’s severe strictures. 10 But then he was also the man who, in a letter to Mann Page, spoke about the “swinish multitudes.” 11 And Gouverneur Morris, on the extreme right, wrote to Nathanael Green in 1781, “I will go farther, I have no hope that our Union can subsist except in the form of an absolute monarchy.”

Of the American founders, Alexander Hamil-

ton was a monarchist. Likewise, the Governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Morris, had

strong monarchist leanings. George Washington expressed his profound distaste of

democracy in a letter of September 30,1798, to James McHenry. John Adams was

convinced that every society grows aristocrats as inevitably as a field of corn will

grow some large ears and some small. In a letter to John Taylor he insisted, like Plato

and Aristotle, that democracy would ultimately evolve into despotism, and in a

letter to Jefferson he declared that "democracy will envy all, contend with all, en-

deavor to pull down all, and when by chance it happens to get the upper hand for a

short time, it will be revengeful, bloody and cruel." James Madison, in a letter to

Jared Parks, complained of the difficulty "of protecting the rights of property

against the spirit of democracy." And even Thomas Jefferson, probably the most

"democratic" of the Founders, confessed in a letter to John Adams that he consid-

ered

the natural aristocracy .. . as the most precious gift of nature, for the

instruction, the trusts and governments of society. And indeed, it would

have been inconsistent in creation to have formed men for the social state,

and not have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns

of society. May we not even say that that form of government is best, which

provides most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the

offices of government?

Characterizing the general attitude of the founders, then, the most appropriate pro-

nouncement is that of John Randolph of Roanoke: "I am an aristocrat: I love liberty, I

hate equality."