Five-minute digest
A Disquisition on Government
Summary
A Disquisition on Government is John C. Calhoun's general theory of constitutional government, completed in 1849 in the last year of his life and published in 1851 by his editor Richard K. Crallé as the first part of volume one of his Works. It was meant as the theoretical introduction to a companion study, A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, which the library text omits. The Disquisition has no chapters; it moves in one continuous argument from human nature to the histories of Rome and Britain. The library text is an OCR scan of the 1851 printing, with many scanning errors. Calhoun begins with man's constitution. Human beings are social by nature, but each feels what affects himself more strongly than what affects others. Society is therefore necessary to human existence, and government is necessary to keep society from conflict. Yet the same self-preference moves those who govern, so government itself must be restrained by a constitution. The first step is the right of suffrage, which makes rulers answerable to the ruled. Suffrage alone, however, only transfers power to the majority. Because the burdens and benefits of taxation and public spending never fall equally, a community divides into interests, and the larger interest can use the government against the smaller, so that citizens become in effect tax-payers and tax-consumers. The remedy is what Calhoun calls the concurrent majority. Instead of counting heads across the whole community (the numerical majority), government should take the sense of each major interest or section through its own organ and require their agreement, giving each a negative on the others. A negative power, he argues, is what makes a constitution; without it the numerical majority is as absolute as a monarch. Governments of the concurrent majority are preserved by compromise, absolute governments by force. To the objection that such a system is impracticable, he answers with Poland's diet, the confederacy of the Six Nations, and above all the jury, where the need for unanimity leads twelve strangers to agree. Calhoun then distinguishes liberty from protection. Liberty, he says, must be proportioned to a people's intelligence and virtue; it is a reward to be earned, and when the two conflict, protection of the community takes precedence. He rejects the view that all men are born free and equal, calling the state of nature a hypothesis, and argues that inequality of condition spurs progress while equality before the law is essential. He closes with Rome, where the tribunes gave the plebeians a negative on the patricians, and Britain, where King, Lords and Commons must concur, as historical models of the concurrent principle.
Top Lessons
A majority can also govern absolutely
Calhoun's central warning is that elections alone do not make a government limited. If the greater number can do whatever it wishes, the lesser interests have no defence, and majority rule becomes as absolute as the rule of one man. A constitution must give each interest some means of protecting itself.
The negative power makes a constitution
For Calhoun the essence of constitutional government is the power to stop action. If each great interest must consent, government can act only on measures all can accept. He calls this the concurrent majority and argues that it turns politics from conquest into compromise.
Liberty and protection must be weighed
Calhoun holds that protection of the community is the first end of government and that liberty must be suited to a people's condition. He rejects the theory that all men are born free and equal in a state of nature. This part of his argument stood close to the defence of the Southern social order he led in the Senate.
Human nature sets the problem of politics
The Disquisition starts not from rights but from a picture of human nature: social yet self-preferring. Government is needed because of selfishness, and limits on government are needed for the same reason. Every later step follows from this starting point.
Verified Quotes
“It follows, then, that man is so constituted, that government is necessary to the existence of society, and society to his existence, and the perfection of his faculties.”
“takes the sense of each, through its majority or appropriate organ, and the united sense of all, as the sense of the entire community.”
“constitution implies limitation or restriction”
“This principle, in constitutional governments, is compromise”
“it is found, in practice, not only to succeed, but to be the safest, the wisest and the best that human ingenuity has ever devised.”
“A reward more appropriate than liberty could not be conferred on the deserving”
“But to go further, and make equality of condition essential to liberty, would be to destroy both liberty and progress.”
Medical Lens
A treatise on constitutional theory with no medical subject matter.