The Strange Quest for An American Conservatism

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

E-ISSN: 1748-6858|17|3|359-376

ISSN: 0034-6705

Source: Review of Politics, Vol.17, Iss.3, 1955-07, pp. : 359-376

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Abstract

The body of the Federalists [even] were always, and yet are, essentially democratic in their political notions … willing to hazard the experiment of an … almost unqualified proportion of democracy…. The Federal Constitution was as good, or very nearly as good, as our country could bear; … Our materials for government were all democratic; and whatever the hazard of their combination may be, our Solons and Lycurgeses in the convention had no alternative, nothing to consider, but how to combine them…. We should have succeeded worse if we had trusted our metaphysics more. Experience must be our physician, though his medicines may kill.