1. Parrington, Vernon Louis and Smith, James Allen, The Growth and Decadence of Constitutional Government (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1930), x.Google Scholar. (Smith is the author of this work; Parrington wrote the introduction. Hereafter, Parrington will be cited when I refer to the introduction and Smith will be cited for reference to the text.)

2. Ibid., xi–xii. Parrington, Vernon Louis, Main Currents in American Thought: The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America, vol. III (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc., 1930), xxvGoogle Scholar.

3. Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), 154Google Scholar.

4. There are several works which analyze both the practical political influence and the Jeffersonian heritage of this style of thought. On Smith, see Goldman, Eric F., “J. Allen Smith: The Reformer and His Dilemma,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly (07 1944): 195–212Google Scholar; Dean, Howard E., “J. Allen Smith: Jeffersonian Critic of the Federalist State,” American Political Science Review (12 1956): 1093–1104Google Scholar; McClintock, Thomas C., “J. Allen Smith: A Pacific Northwest Progressive,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly (04 1962): 49–59Google Scholar. On Parrington, see Utter, William T., “Vernon Louis Parrington,” in The Marcus W. Jernegan Essays in American Historiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937)Google Scholar; Hicks, Granville, “The Critical Principles of V. L. Parrington,” Science and Society (Fall 1939): 443–60Google Scholar; Hofstadter, Richard, “Parrington and the Jeffersonian Tradition,” Journal of the History of Ideas (10 1941): 391–400Google Scholar; Colwell, James L., “The Populist Image of Vernon Louis Parrington,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review (06 1962): 52–66Google Scholar; Skotheim, Robert Allen, American Intellectual Histories and Historians (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 124–48Google Scholar; Hofstadter, Richard, The Progressive Historians (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 349–436Google Scholar. On McMaster, see Goldman, Eric F., John Bach McMaster; American Historian (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1943)Google Scholar.

5. Parrington, Growth and Decadence, x. In fact, works by two American Socialist party organizers antedated Beard's book in initiating this “economic phase”; see Simons, A. M.Class Struggles in America (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1903)Google Scholar and Social Forces in American History (New York: Macmillan Co., 1911), 6–31 Also, Oneal, James, The Workers in American History (Terre Haute, 1910)Google Scholar. While these books were extremely successful with popular audiences, Goldman, Eric F., “The Origins of Beard's Economic Interpretation of the Constitution,” Journal of the History of Ideas (04 1952): 244Google Scholar, observes these works were “loftily dismissed” by academic scholars because they were so “blatantly Marxist.” Lerner, Max, Ideas Are Weapons: The History and Uses of Ideas (New York: Viking Press, 1939), 157Google Scholar, makes the same point. Other Marxist treatments of the constitutional struggle were Myers, Gustavus, History of the Supreme Court of the United States (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1912)Google Scholar; Calhoun, Arthur W., The Worker Looks at Government (Katonah, NY: Brookwood Labor College, 1927)Google Scholar; Bimba, Anton, History of the American Working Class (New York: Inter-national Publishers, 1936), v-60Google Scholar.

6. A much earlier effort to fuse Smith and Beard was undertaken by a prominent New York Socialist party state legislator; see Benson, Allan, Our Dishonest Constitution (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1914)Google Scholar. A little-known effort was Schuyler, Robert Livingston, The Constitution of the United States (New York: Macmillan Co., 1923)Google Scholar.

7. Hofstadter, Richard, “Charles Beard and the Constitution” in Beale, Howard K., ed., Charles A. Beard: An Appraisal (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1954), 81–88Google Scholar. For example, Markjacobsen, Jacob, The Development of American Political Thought (New York: The Century Co., 1932)Google Scholar; McConaughy, John, Who Rules America? A Century of Invisible Government (New York: Longman, Green and Co., 1934)Google Scholar; Hicks, John D., The Federal Union: History of the United Stales to 1865 (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1937)Google Scholar; East, Robert A., Business Enterprise in the American Revolutionary Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938)Google Scholar; Hacker, Louis M., The Triumph of American Capitalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940)Google Scholar.

8. Blinkoff, Maurice, The Influence of Charles A. Beard upon American Historiography, University of Buffalo Monographs in History, vol. XII (05 1936)Google Scholar For a summary of this evidence, see Brown, Robert E., Charles Beard and the Constitution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 5–23Google Scholar. The most significant and influential contemporary variant of this synthesis is Jensen, Merrill, The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Socio-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774–1781 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1948)Google Scholar; Jensen, Merrill, The New Nation: A History of the United States during the Confederation 1781–1789 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Jensen, Merrill, The Making of the American Constitution (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand and Co., 1964)Google Scholar.

9. See Wise, Gene, American Historical Explanations: A Strategy for Grounded Inquiry (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980)Google Scholar; for an analysis of the ongoing contest between progressive and counterprogressive approaches in American historiography. For example, Eidelberg, Paul, The Philosophy of the American Constitution: A Reinterpretation of the Intentions of the Founding Fathers (New York: Free Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Eidelberg, Paul, A Discourse on Statesmanship: The Design and Transformation of the American Polity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Brown, Robert E., Reinterpretation of the Formation of the American Constitution (Boston: Boston University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Bowen, Catherine Drinker, Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May to September 1787 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1966)Google Scholar; Storing, Herbert J., What the Antifederalists Were For (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

10. Beard, Charles A., An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Macmillan Co., 1935), viGoogle Scholar, xiii.

11. Goldman, “The Origins of Beard's Economic Interpretation,” 236–46; Max Lerner, “Charles Beard's Political Theory” in Beale, ed., Charles Beard, 25–45; Strout, Cushing, The Pragmatic Revolt in American History: Carl Becker and Charles Beard (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), 115Google Scholar; Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians, 75–80; Dennis L. Thompson, “Introduction to the 1972 Edition” in Smith and Parrington, Growth and Decadence, xviii; Skotheim, American Intellectual Histories, 87–109.

12. Even at their face value such dismissals seem facile and simple-minded when applied to an individual who had already declared that “interpretive schools seem always to originate in social antagonisms” and political “controversies,” Beard, Economic Interpretation, 4.

13. Beard, Charles A., “Review of The Spirit of American Government by J. Allen Smith,” Political Science Quarterly (03 1908): 136–37Google Scholar.

14. Letter to Robert LaFollette quoted in Nore, Ellen, Charles A. Beard: An Intellectual Biography (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983), 55Google Scholar.

15. Beard, Charles A., “Review of The New Freedom by Woodrow Wilson,” Political Science Quarterly 29 (09 1914): 506–7Google Scholar; Beard, Charles A., “Jefferson and the New Freedom,” New Republic (11 14, 1914): 18Google Scholar; Beard, Charles A., “Review of Property and Contract in Their Relation to the Distribution of Wealth by Robert T. Ely,” Political Science Quarterly (09 1915): 511Google Scholar; Beard, Charles A., “The Myth of Rugged American Individualism,” Harper's Monthly Magazine (12 1931): 19–22Google Scholar; Beard, Charles A., Jefferson, Corporations, and the Constitution (Washington, D. C.: National Home Library Foundation, 1936), 26–32Google Scholar. For extensive criticisms of Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, see Charles A. Beard, Contemporary American History, 1877–1913 (Washington, D.C.: Kennikat Press, reprint of 1914 edition), 254–377.

16. Beard, Charles A. and Beard, Mary R., America in Mid-Passage (New York: Macmillan Co., 1939), 673Google Scholar; Eric F. Goldman, “Charles Beard: An Impression” in Beale, ed., Charles A. Beard, 2.

17. The intellectual roots of Progressive political theory are found in the Populism of the 1890s. This continuity was sustained on a political level because “after 1900 Populism and Progressivism merge”—“a working coalition was forged between the old Bryan country and the new reform movement in the cities”, see Hofstadter, Age of Reform, 133. Nevertheless, Hofstadter observes two strains of thought among Progressives after 1900 as well. One strain was influenced chiefly by the Populist inheritance. The other, while Populist in character, was “mainly a product of urban life” concerned with “labor and social welfare, municipal reform, the interest of the consumer” (p. 133). Croly, Herbert, Progressive Democracy (New York: Macmillan Co., 1915), 11–20Google Scholar, notes that during the 1912 presidential campaign, the latter strain split into two “divergent economic interpretations” of American politics: Progressivism and social or industrial democracy. Depending upon their attitudes toward Roosevelt, the social democrats chose either to anchor the “left-wing” of the Progressive party (e. g., Croly) or the “right-wing” of the Socialist movement (e. g., Beard).

18. My concept of paradigms as historically real and identifiable frameworks of thought is taken from Pocock, J. G. A., Politics, Language and Time (New York: Atheneum Press, 1973), 3–41Google Scholar.

19. On the importance of political context and intention as components of explanation and understanding, see Skinner, Quentin, “Motives, Intentions, and the Interpretation of Texts,” New Literary History (Winter 1972): 393–408Google Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,” History and Theory 1 (1969): 3–53Google Scholar; Ashcraft, Richard, “On the Problem of Methodology and the Nature of Political Theory,” Political Theory (02 1975): 5–25Google Scholar; Ashcraft, Richard, “Political Theory and the Problem of Ideology,” Journal of Politics (08 1980): 687–705Google Scholar.

20. Parrington, Growth and Decadence, x.

21. McMaster, John Bach, With the Fathers: Studies in the History of the United States (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1897), 107–9Google Scholar. Likewise, Herbert Croly, Progressive Democracy, 5, comments in retrospect that “the time was not ripe either for a searching diagnosis or for effective remedial measures. Its dominant characteristic was that of resentment against individuals.”

22. Parrington, Growth and Decadence, ix. For example, Trickett, Dean William, “Judicial Dispensation from Congressional Statutes,” American Law Review (01 1907): 65–91Google Scholar; Boudin, Louis B., “Government by Judiciary,” Political Science Quarterly (06 1911): 238–70Google Scholar; Roe, Gilbert, “Our Judicial Oligarchy,” LaFolUtte's Weekly Magazine (06 24, 1911): 7–9Google Scholar; Clark, Walter, “Some Defects in the Constitution of the United States,” Congressional Record (07 31, 1911): 3374–77Google Scholar; Goodnow, Frank J., Social Reform and the Constitution (New York: Macmillan, 1911)Google Scholar; Myers, Gustavus, History of the Supreme Court of the United States (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1912)Google Scholar; Ransom, William L., Majority Rule and the Judiciary (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912)Google Scholar; Boudin, Louis B., Government by Judiciary, 2 vols. (New York: William Goodwin, Inc., 1932)Google Scholar.

23. Parrington, Growth and Decadence, ix–x; Croly, Progressive Democracy, 12.

24. Parrington, Main Currents, vol. Ill, p. xxv.

25. Parrington, Growth and Decadence, ix.

26. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 59; Parrington, Main Currents, vol. Ill, p. xxv; Goodnow, Frank J., Politics and Administration: A Study in Government (New York: Macmillan Co., 1900), 1–2Google Scholar.

27. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 57–58.

28. Ibid., 59–60; Goodnow, Politics and Administration, 1.

29. Fisher, Sydney George, True History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1902), 8Google Scholar. For example, Bancroft, George, History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1882)Google Scholar; Bryce, James, The American Commonwealth, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1888)Google Scholar; Curtis, George Ticknor, Constitutional History of the United States from the Declaration of Independence to the Close of the Civil War, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1889–1896)Google Scholar; Landon, Judson S., The Constitutional History and Government of the United States (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1889)Google Scholar; Cooley, T. M., Constitutional History of the United States (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1889)Google Scholar; Hart, Albert Bushnell, Formation of the Union, 1750–1829 (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1892)Google Scholar; Fiske, John, The Critical Period of American History, 1783–1789 (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1893)Google Scholar; Stevens, C. Ellis, Sources of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1894)Google Scholar; Thayer, James Bradley, Legal Essays (Boston: Boston Book Co., 1908)Google Scholar.

30. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 60.

31. McMaster, John Bach, History of the People of the United States (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1883), vol. I, p.2Google Scholar.

32. Parrington, Growth and Decadence, xi. Likewise, Warren, Charles, The Making of the Constitution (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1929), 747–48Google Scholar.

33. Cf. Contemporary revisionist scholarship along the same line includes Douglas, Elisha P., Rebels and Democrats (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955)Google Scholar; Foner, Philip S., Labor and the American Revolution (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Nash, Gary B., The Urban Crucible: Social Changes, Political Consciousness, and the Origin of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Longley, R. S., “Mob Activities in Revolutionary Massachusetts,” New England Quarterly (03 1933): 98–130Google Scholar; Morais, Herbert M., “Artisan Democracy and the American Revolution,” Science and Society (Summer 1942): 227–49Google Scholar; Lynd, Staughton, “The Mechanics in New York Politics, 1774–1778,” Labor History (Fall 1964): 224–46Google Scholar; Lemisch, Jesse, “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America,” William and Mary Quarterly (07 1968): 371–407Google Scholar; Maier, Pau-line, “The Charleston Mob and the Evolution of Popular Politics in Revolutionary South Carolina, 1765–1784,” Perspective in American History 4 (1970): 173–98Google Scholar; Olton, Charles S., “Philadelphia Mechanics in the First Decade of the American Revolution, 1765–1775,” Journal of American History (09 1972): 311–26Google Scholar.

34. The people were defined primarily as small farmers (both yeomanry and tenants), but also included small merchants, artisans, craftsmen, and tradesmen. Marxists such as Simons and Oneal added a Jacksonian twist to this concept by including laborers and seamen. Conceptually, these groups were all consolidated into a revolutionary “working class.”

35. Fisher, True History, 9.

36. Nevins, Allan, The American States during and after the Revolution, 1775–1789 (New York: Macmillan Co., 1924), 15–74Google Scholar. Cf. Woodburn, J. A., The Causes of the American Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1892)Google Scholar; Schlesinger, Arthur M., The Colonial Merchants and the Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1918)Google Scholar.

37. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 15. This goal included the desire of small merchants to break government-protected “monopolies” on trade, shipping, and commerce; of artisans to break protected manufacturing monopolies; and of small farmers to reopen western lands to settlement; see Woodburn and Schlesinger, cited in n. 36. More recent treatments of these questions are Abernathy, Thomas P., Western Lands and the American Revolution (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1937)Google Scholar; Virtue, George Olien, British Land Policy and the American Revolution (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1953)Google Scholar; Dickerson, Oliver Morton, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951)Google Scholar; Sosin, Jack M., Agents and Merchants: British Colonial Policy and the Origins of the American Revolution, 1763–1775 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965)Google ScholarErnst, Joseph A., Money and Politics in America, 1755–1775; A Study in the Currency Act of 1764 and the Political Economy of the Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

38. The intellectual origins of this doctrine were always identified with John Locke's political philosophy; see Nevins, The American States, 120–22; Parrington, Main Currents, vol. I, pp. 271–76; Smith, Growth and Decadence, 14; Croly, Progressive Democracy, 50–57; Merriam, Charles Edward, A History of American Political Theories (New York: Macmillan Co., 1903), pp. 38–95. Recent analyses of its historical social origins among the English political “radicals” of this era areGoogle ScholarWood, Neal, John Locke and Agrarian Capitalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar and Ashcraft, Richard, Revolutionary Politics and Locke's Two Treatises of Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

39. Nevins, The American States, 126–64. It was recognized that individual states did not equally conform to this model in all its details. Since there was an active contest between radical and conservative factions in the states, the degree of constitutional radicalism was contingent upon the strength and organization of radical forces in each particular state. North Carolina and Pennsylvania were usually identified as the two states most closely approximating this model. Maryland and New York were at least initially regarded as the two most conservative constitutions.

40. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 21, observes that in the revolutionary context of these radical democracies, popular sovereignty or “the consent of the governed meant more than the consent of the qualified voters.” Even when excluded from the franchise, “the majority were recognized as having rights which they could defend and enforce” directly”even against the state itself.” The operative guarantee of popular sovereignty was in the final analysis not the franchise, but the local militia. Since the people retained direct control of military force (and the states had no standing army), the people were always in a position to revoke their consent at will by overthrowing the government (Shay's Rebellion, for example). Therefore, elections were little more than a technical procedure for selecting government officials. They were not a measure of consent or legitimacy. Thus, most of the state constitutions would not qualify as “democratic” (much less radical) when judged by classical concepts of direct participatory democracy or liberal republicanism; see Pateman, Carole, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 1–44Google Scholar; MacPherson, C. B., The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).Google Scholar. However, the Populists especially were talking in terms of a populist democracy based on simple absolute “majority rule” in which elections were not the most important component; see Parrington, Main Currents, vol. I, pp. 278–79, and Spitz, Elaine, Majority Rule (Chatham: Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1984), 101–33Google Scholar, on the distinction between liberal and populist democracy.

41. Short sessions were supposed to facilitate office-holding by ordinary farmers. They could travel the short distance to a state capital and sit in the legislature from January to March after harvesting crops in the fall but before sowing new ones in the spring. Short terms were supposed to keep legislators close to the people and facilitate the circulation of office-holders, thereby preventing the development of an entrenched political class.

42. Smith, J. Allen, The Spirit of American Government (New York: Macmillan Co., 1907), 18–21Google Scholar; Smith, Growth and Decadence, 16–26; Nevins, The American States, 117–70.

43. Smith, Spirit, 22–25.

44. Religious liberty and disestablishment were often integral aspects of the alleged aristocratic/democratic conflict because of a widely perceived relationship between social position and religious domination. Episcopalian, orthodox (Old Side) Presbyterianism, and orthodox Congregationalism were perceived as formal, staid, hierarchical religions, with an elective affinity for gentlemen, planters, wealthy merchants, and educated professionals. Evangelical denominations such as Baptists, Methodists, New Light/Separate Congregationalists, and the New Side Presbyterians were perceived as more “democratic” in their organization, their offering of universal salvation and, therefore, in their elective affinity for the common and/or uneducated person; see Neibuhr, Helmut Richard, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1929)Google Scholar; Hofstadter, Richard, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), 56–90Google Scholar; Baltzell, E. Digby, “Religion and the Class Structure”in Lipset, Seymour Martin and Hofstadter, Richard, eds., Sociology and History: Methods (New York: Basic Books, 1968)Google Scholar.

45. Nevins, The American States, 420–69.

46. Parrington, Growth and Decadence, xi.

47. Ibid., xi; Nevins, The American States, 206–419. Students of Frederick Jackson Turner perceived closely related sectional or geographic divisions within the states. They suggested that local geographic conditions often led to sectional concentrations of economic groups or classes because of the limitations or advantages these conditions provided for specific kinds of economic activities (e. g., fishing, farming, etc.). Hence, in the South, electoral returns suggested a split between tidewater planters and inland savannah farmers; in New Jersey between northeastern Hudson patroons and southwestern small farmers; in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania between eastern urban merchant/financiers and western frontier farmer/debtors; see Libby, Orin Grant, The Geographical Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitution, 1787–1789 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1894)Google Scholar; Schaper, William A., “Sectionalism and Representation in South Carolina” inAnnual Report of the American Historical Association (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1901)Google Scholar; Ambler, Charles H., Sectionalism in Virginia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1910)Google Scholar.

48. Parrington, Growth and Decadence, xi.

49. McLaughlin, Andrew C., A Constitutional History of the United States (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1935), 137Google Scholar; McLaughlin, Andrew C., The Confederation arid the Constitution, 1783–1789 (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1905)Google Scholar; Fiske, The Critical Period, 134–86.

50. Nevins, The American States, 541–43. Cf. Ferguson, Elmer James, The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance, 1776–1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961)Google Scholar.

51. Nevins, The American States, 544–605.

52. Parrington, Growth and Decadence, xi.

53. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 79; Merriam, History of American Political Theories, 96–142.

54. Wilson, Woodrow, Division and Reunion, 1829–1889 (New York: Longman, Green, and Co., 1898), 12Google Scholar.

55. John D. Hicks, The Federal Union, 197.

56. Smith, Spirit, 27; Parrington, Growth and Decadence, xii.

57. McConaughy, Who Rules America?, 14–19.

58. Parrington, Main Currents, vol. I, p. 278.

59. Bancroft, History of the Formation of the Constitution, vol. I, pp. 6–7.

60. Curtis, History of the Origin, vol. I, pp. 371–90. A popularized rendition of this same thesis is found in Hill, David Jayne, “A Defense of the Constitution,” North American Review (03 1917): 389–97Google Scholar.

61. Straus, Oscar S., The Origin of the Republican Form of Government in the United States of America (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1885), viiiGoogle Scholar. Frequently, these visions of manifest destiny were accompanied by racialist disquisitions on the “political genius” bestowed by God on “the Anglo American race”; see Bryce, American Commonwealth, vol. I, p. 25; Stimson, Frederick J., The American Constitution (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914)Google Scholar. The classic work on the “Teutonic origins” of the U. S. Constitution is Burgess', John W.Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law, 2 vols. (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1902).Google Scholar. The theophany underpinning these views has been resurrected recently by Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia, who calls the Constitution a miracle. Bowen celebrates the writing of the Constitution with an “outmoded 0romanticism” laden with “Bancroftian notions” (pp. ix–x). Likewise, see Eidelberg, Philosophy of the American Constitution, and Bloom, Allan, ed., Confronting the Constitution (Washington, D. C.: The AEI Press, 1990)Google Scholar, for Straussian interpretations.

62. McMaster, With the Fathers, 108.

63. Hicks, The Federal Union, 198.

64. Parrington, Growth and Decadence, xi.

65. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 79.

66. Wilson, Division and Reunion, 12.

67. Parrington, Growth and Decadence, xii, x; Parrington, Main Currents, vol. I, 283–326. Warren, Charles, The Trumpeters of the Constitution (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1927), 10–12Google Scholar; criticized efforts to “minimize their greatness and to emphasize their commonness.” According to Warren, in American political culture the proper role of constitutional history was to highlight those traits that made the Founders “superior to the ordinary man” and, thereby, to “show how the life of a great man may serve as a model and incentive to us.”

68. Smith, Spirit, 40–185; Smith, Growth and Decadence, 79;Baldwin, Simeon E., Modern Political Institutions (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1898)Google Scholar. Goodnow, Politics and Administration, derived a further antidemocratic implication from the separation of powers. He argued that this separation made it impossible for “politics” (i. e., the legislated will of the people) to directly control “administration” (i. e., the execution of the will of the people). Therefore, parties were an inherent extralegal component of the Constitution that were structurally necessary to coordinate the two branches of government. Since political parties are private associations under the law, they became a vehicle for private interests, especially party bosses and the wealthy, to discipline the popular will under the disguise of formally democratic elections.

69. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 79.

70. Smith, Spirit, vii, 27–39.

71. Ibid., 186–87.

72. There were exceptions. Wilson, Woodrow, in Division and Reunion and A History of the American People (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1901)Google Scholar, interpreted the Jacksonian upheaval as a new “beginning of democracy” in the United States. While he accepted the populist interpretation of the Constitution and the continuing hegemony of the aristocratic spirit in American politics, Wilson argued that each cyclical revolt did erode some of that hegemony. The “new freedom” of his own administration was supposed to finally “return” power to the people. Cf. Wilson, Woodrow, The New Freedom (New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1913)Google Scholar. Also, McMaster, John Bach, The Acquisition of Political, Social, and Industrial Rights of Man in America (Cleveland: Imperial Press, 1903)Google Scholar.

73. Wilson, Division and Reunion, 12–13; Wilson, History of the American People, vol. V, pp. 79–83.

74. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 80.

75. Parrington, Growth and Decadence, xii–xvi; Parrington, Main Currents, vol. I, pp. 278

79. While Wilson, Division and Reunion, and Orin G. Libby, Geographical Distribution of the Vote, accepted this analytic framework as a basic working hypothesis, they also took note of several cross-cutting cleavages—both economic and regional—which later exerted a heavy influence on Beard's critique of the Progressive interpretation.

76. McMaster, With the Fathers, 71; Smith, Growth and Decadence, 80.

77. Parrington, Main Currents, vol. I, p. 279.

78. Ibid., 279.

79. McMaster, With the Fathers, 71.

80. Ibid., 74–75; Smith, Growth and Decadence, 114.

81. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 85. Smith claimed that “the relatively small class controlling the means of production under present day capitalism realize that they need the protection of a large government friendly to their interests. . Capitalism being a form of class control, could not survive without government support. . A permanent military force, therefore, is necessary to insure adequate protection for capital in time of economic turmoil” (pp. 215–16).

82. Smith, Spirit, 331–32.

83. Ibid., 51–58.

84. Ibid., 300.

85. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 86–98.

86. Smith, Spirit, 65–124; Smith, Growth and Decadence, 102.

87. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 97–102.

88. Ibid., 102; Fisher, True History, 8.

89. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 97.

90. Ibid., 97–114. Smith juxtaposed historical claims against this legal fiction to demonstrate that there was “no justification for the claim that it [the Constitution] was an expression of the popular will. . the facts concerning the framing, adoption, amendment, interpretation, and enforcement of this instrument furnish no substantial basis for this belief.”

91. Ibid., 100. Croly, Progressive Democracy, 46–57, indicates that social democrats were extremely critical of Smith's argument, especially on this point. Looking at the conflict from an economic perspective, Croly contends that only “in certain respects” were “the interests of the farmers opposed to those of the capitalists; but in still more fundamental respects they were capable of adjustment. Both parties were seeking the satisfaction of individual economic purposes.” To this degree the interests of the two classes “did not coalesce,” but “they ran along parallel lines.” Thus, “American democrats at the end of the eighteenth century soon found that they had no imperative reason to be dissatisfied with the Constitution” even though “they would have preferred a weaker government.”

92. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 100–1.

93. Ibid., 109–10; Smith, Spirit, 300.

94. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 162–85.

95. Ibid., 202–16; Goodnow, Politics and Administration, 252–53; Wilson, The New Freedom, 87–115.

96. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 202–16.

97. Goodnow, Frank J., Municipal Home Rub (New York: Macmillan Co., 1895)Google Scholar; Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989, reprint of 1909 edition), chap. XI.

98. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 111–61.

99. Baldwin, Modern Political Institutions, 328.

100. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 111–12; Smith, Spirit, 40–64.

101. Smith, Spirit, 338. Croly, Progressive Democracy, 6–13, charged that Baldwin's and Smith's positions rested on “hopeless superficiality and utter ignorance of the recorded history of government and human society.” He argued that Populism failed because it was always led by “local malcontents” with “superficial economic grievances.” It was therefore “unintelligently planned, insufficiently informed and inadequately organized.” According to Croly, the real problem was that American citizens consistently failed “to live up to the high intellectual and moral responsibilities imposed upon them” by the Constitution. Thus, the solution lay in a vigorous “social education” of the citizenry.

102. Smith, Growth and Decadence, 52; Goodnow, Politics and Administration, 204–5.

103. Parrington, Main Currents, vol. Ill, p. xxvii.

104. Beard grew up on a successful and comfortable farm in Indiana. He was attending DePauw University during the heyday of the Populist party. He received an extensive introduction to the works of Karl Marx while attending DePauw; see Nore, Charles A. Beard, chap. 1; Philips, Clifton J., “The Indiana Education of Charles A. Beard,” Indiana Magazine of History 55 (03 1959): 1–15Google Scholar.

105. Eric F. Goldman, “The Origins of Beard's Economic Interpretation,” 234–36; Williams, William Appleman, “A Note on Charles Austin Beard's Search for a General Theory of Causation,” American Historical Review (10 1956): 61–62Google Scholar; Borning, Bernard C., The Political and Social Thought of Charles A. Beard (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962), 46Google Scholar.

106. Ruskin College defined its mission as taking “men who have been merely condemning our social institutions and teaching them instead how to transform those institutions,” Paul, Eden and Paul, Cedar, Proletcull (London: Leonard Parsons, 1921), 54Google Scholar; Phillips, Harlan B., “Charles Beard, Walter Vrooman, and the Founding of Ruskin Hall,” South Atlantic Quarterly 50 (04 1951): 186–91Google Scholar; Wilkins, Burleigh T., “Charles A. Beard on the Founding of Ruskin Hall,” Indiana Magazine of History 52 (09 1956): 277–84Google Scholar.

107. Goldman, Journal of the History of Ideas, 4.

108. Beard, , New Republic, 11 14, 1914, p. 18Google Scholar.

109. Beard, , Survey Graphic, 04 1937, pp. 201–2Google Scholar.

110. On this point, Beard acknowledges (by footnote) the influence of his Columbia mentor Frank Goodnow, Politics and Administration. He accepts Goodnow's argument that parties, state electoral laws, federal statutes organizing the judiciary and bureaucracy, and tradition must all be regarded as “informal,” but equally important parts of the U.S. Constitution. Thus, Beard argues that most of the important democratic modifications to American constitutional structure have occurred at this informal level. Hence, looking only at formal amendments is a misleading measure of actual change; see Beard, Charles A., American Government and Politics, 5th ed. (New York: Macmillan Co., 1930), 81–126Google Scholar.

111. Beard, Charles A., “The Rise of the Democratic Idea in the United States,” Survey Graphic (04 1937): 201–2Google Scholar.

112. Cf. Pancake, John S., ed., Thomas Jefferson: Revolutionary Philosopher, A Selection of Writings (Woodbury: Barron's Educational Series, Inc., 1976), 111–40Google Scholar; Blau, Joseph L., ed., Social Theories of Jacksonian Democracy (New York: Liberal Arts Press, Inc., 1954)Google Scholar.

113. Beard, “The Myth of Rugged American Individualism,” 13–22; Dorfman, Joseph, The Economic Mind in American Civilization (New York: Viking Press, 1946), vol. I, pp. 348–49Google Scholar.

114. Beard, “Review of The New Freedom,” 506–7.

115. Beard and Beard, America in Mid-Passage, 673. As an example, see Beard, Charles A., “The Constitution of Oklahoma,” Political Science Quarterly (03 1909): 95–114Google Scholar.

116. Beard, “Review of The New Freedom,” 507.

117. Beard, “The Myth of Rugged American Individualism,” 22.

118. Beard, “Jefferson and the New Freedom,” 18.

119. Beard, Charles A. and Beard, Mary R., The Rise of American Civilization, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan Co., 1930), vol. I, p. 132Google Scholar; Beard, Jefferson, Corporations, and the Constitution, 24–26.

120. Beard, “The Myth of Rugged American Individualism,” 19–22; Beard, Charles A., “Social Change v. the Constitution,” Current History (07 1935): 346Google Scholar; Beard, Contemporary American History, 234–37.

121. Beard, “The Myth of Rugged American Individualism,” 19.

122. Beard, Jefferson, Corporations, and the Constitution, 26.

123. Beard and Beard, The Rise of American Civilization, vol. I, p. 538; Beard and Beard, America in Mid-Passage, pp. 515–35.

124. Beard, “Review of The New Freedom,” 507.

125. Croly, Progressive Democracy, 15–17, shares Beard's critique of Populism and the Wilsonian New Freedom. He comments favorably upon Beard's Economic Interpretation, while criticizing Smith's Spirit of American Government. However, unlike Beard, Croly argues that Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive party of 1912 are agencies of social democracy (pp. 378–407). On the other hand, Beard argued that TR was “the idol of the American middle-class” because “Mr. Roosevelt, in all of his recommendations, took the ground that the prevailing system of production was essentially sound.” See Beard, Contemporary American History, 254–61.

126. Beard, , Harper's Monthly Magazine (12 1931): p. 22Google Scholar.

127. Beard and Beard, Rise of American Civilization, 543–65.

128. Ibid., 577. Italics mine.

129. Ibid., 538.

130. Beard, Charles A., “The Potency of Labor Education,” American Federalist (07 1922): 500–2Google Scholar.

131. Beard and Beard, America in Mid-Passage, 557–72.

132. Nore, Charles A. Beard, 28–29, 51.

133. Beers, Forrest W., “A New Labor College,” American Federationist (01 1901): 14Google Scholar.

134. Nore, Charles A. Beard, 28–52. For background, see, Hansome, Marius, World Workers' Educational Movements: Their Social Significance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931)Google Scholar.

135. The Workers' Education Bureau was initially a predominantly socialist coalition of trade unionists, political activists, and academic intellectuals organized “to cooperate and assist in every possible manner the educational work now carried on by the organized workers; and to stimulate the creation of additional enterprises in labor education throughout the United States”; see Miller, Spencer Jr, “Workers' Education—Its Achievements and Futures,” American Federationist (12 1922): 886Google Scholar; Barrow, Clyde W., “Counter-Movement within the Labor Movement: Workers' Education and the American Federation of Labor, 1900–1937,” Social Science Journal 27 (10 1990): 395–417Google Scholar.

136. Wolfe, Bertram D., A Life in Two Centuries: An Autobiography (New York: Stein and Day, 1981), 395Google Scholar; “Classes Open at Workers' School,” Daily Worker, October 16, 1928, p. 2, Col. 2.

137. Nore, Charles A. Beard, 94.

138. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 1–11; Beard, Charles A., “Review of The American Constitution by Frederic J. Stimson, ” Political Science Quarterly (06 1908): 340–43Google Scholar; Beard, Charles A., “Review of The Constitution of the United States by David K. Watson,” Political Science Quarterly (09 1911): 549–51Google Scholar.

139. Beard's first two systematic discussions of the Constitution in 1912 were explicit polemical attacks on the Progressive interpretation. He rejected their defense of the critical period and the Confederation, but more importantly, he rejected the claim that judicial review was a belated usurpation of authority. Beard defended judicial review as an intended and vital component of the Constitutional system; see Beard, Charles A., “The Supreme Court-Usurper of Grantee?” Political Science Quarterly (03 1912): 1–35Google Scholar; Beard, Charles A., The Supreme Court and the Constitution (New York: Macmillan Co., 1912)Google Scholar.

140. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 13. Contemporary debates on the theory of the state resurfaced as a contest between these “structural” and “instrumental” standpoints; see Poulantzas, Nicos, Political Power and Social Classes (London: New Left Books, 1973)Google Scholar; Mili-band, Ralph, The State in Capitalist Society (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1969)Google Scholar.

141. Beard, Supreme Court, 81.

142. Beard and Beard, Rise of American Civilization, vol. I, pp. 306–7.

143. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 26–30.

144. Beard, Charles A., The Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York: Macmillan Co., 1915), 399Google Scholar, 429, 467.

145. For a neo-Beardian account of this period, see Main, Jackson Turner, Political Parties Before the Constitution (New York: W. W. Norton, Inc., 1973)Google Scholar.

146. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 26–30.

147. Beard, Supreme Court, 77–78.

148. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 25. Cf. Brown, Robert Eldon, Middle-Cluss Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691–1780 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1955), 366–67Google Scholar. Jensen, Articles of Confederation, viii–xii, 240, appropriately notes that contemporary leftists have disregarded “the fact that this class consciousness derived not from an industrial but from an agrarian-mercantile economy. The vast majority of revolutionary leaders and followers were property-owners or property-minded.”

149. Beard and Beard, Rise of American Civilization, vol. I, pp. 301–4.

150. Beard, American Government and Politics, 5th ed., 64–65.

151. Ibid., 62–66; Beard, Charles A., The Enduring Federalist (Garden City: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1948), 28Google Scholar.

152. Beard, The Enduring Federalist, 28–29.

153. Beard, The Supreme Court, 80–81.

154. Beard, The Enduring Federalist, 28–29.

155. Beard, The Supreme Court, 76–77. Political “conservatism” in this historical context simply meant support for a greater concentration of government authority in the national government: stronger national defense, wider powers of taxation, restriction of the sphere of state powers/sovereignty, greater checks and balances (e. g., judicial review and an independent executive), and the ability of the national government to enforce its laws directly against citizens. It emphasized a national as opposed to local politics.

156. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 31. Cf. Land, Aubrey C., “Economic Base and Social Structure: The Northern Chesapeake in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History (12 1965): 639–54Google Scholar.

157. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 49.

158. Ibid., 39; Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, 391. Cf. East, Business Enterprise, 279; Main, Jackson Turner, The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1787–1788 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), 2–8Google Scholar; Rutland, Robert Allen, The Ordeal of the Constitution: The Antifederalists and the Ratification Struggle of 1787–1788 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), 68–69Google Scholar.

159. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 39.

160. Ibid., 38–50.

161. Libby, Geographical Distribution, and Wilson, Division and Reunion, 12–14, and History of the People, vol. V, 79–80, were the only two Populist writers to hint at the complexity of the relationship between geographic section, group interests, and actual party coalitions. It is therefore consistent with my argument that Beard cites both favorably.

162. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 50.

163. Beard, Supreme Court, 81.

164. Beard, The Enduring Federalist, 29; Beard, American Government and Politics, 5th ed., 67–69; Beard, Supreme Court, 81–85.

165. Beard, Supreme Court, 76.

166. Ibid., 78–79.

167. Ibid., 81.

168. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 52.

169. Ibid., 54. Despite the impressive advance of recent empirical criticisms by Robert E. Thomas, Robert E. Brown, and Forrest McDonald, a careful reading of Beard and his critics would indicate that still “not even the elementary data necessary to test Beard's main hypothesis have been systematically collected,” that on balance it still retains its plausibility as a beginning hypothesis, and that it is “premature” to set Beard aside. See Benson, Lee, Turner and Beard: American Historical Writing Reconsidered (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Main, Jackson T., “Sections and Politics in Virginia, 1781–1787,” William and Mary Quarterly (01 1955): 96–112Google Scholar; Main, The Antifederalists; Main, Jackson T., “Charles A. Beard and the Constitution: A Critical Review of Forrest McDonald's We the People,” William and Mary Quarterly (01 1960): 86–102Google Scholar.

170. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 55–72.

171. Ibid., 73–151; Beard, Supreme Court, 75.

172. Beard, Economic Origins, 106.

173. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 216. Beard, Charles A., “Review of The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 by Max Farrand,” Political Science Quarterly (09 1911): 551–53Google Scholar, refers to Farrand's summary as an “admirable work” that “has completely superseded all other publications.” Furthermore, George S. Counts, a friend and colleague of Beard's for many years, observes that Beard “never tired of comparing the Federalist favorably with the best social and political thought of Europe.” See “Charles Beard, the Public Man,” Beale, ed., Charles A. Beard, 247.

174. Marx, Karl, “The German Ideology,” in Tucker, Robert C., ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton Co., Inc., 1978), 172–74Google Scholar.

175. Beard, Economic Interpretation, xvi, 73. Italics mine.

176. Ibid., 151.

177. Beard, American Government and Politics, 5th ed., 69.

178. Ibid., 71; Beard, Supreme Court, 90.

179. Beard, Supreme Court, 89–90.

180. Ibid., 89.

181. Ibid., 95, 90, 80; Beard, American Government and Politics, 5th ed., 70–71.

182. Beard, American Government and Politics, 5th ed., 73–74.

183. Beard, Economic Origins, 3.

184. Beard, Charles A., The Economic Basis of Politics (New York: Vintage Books, 1959), 55Google Scholar.

185. Beard, Supreme Court, 94–97; Beard, American Government and Politics, 73.

186. As told by Counts, “Charles Beard, the Public Man,” 250.

187. Beard, Supreme Court, 97.

188. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 188, 291.

189. Beard, Economic Origins, 195. Identifying the economic constituency of the delegates was often more important to Beard than the economic interests of individual delegates. In a similar test, two years later, Beard analyzed Congressional voting behavior on Hamilton's economic proposals. He examined members' votes with regard to the geographic distribution of public securities in their districts and with reference to their own personal holdings of public securities. Beard concludes that nearly all members of Congress “represented the dominant economic interests of their respective constituencies rather than personal interests” when and if the two were in conflict.

190. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 292, 294–96.

191. Ibid., 240–42. This claim is consistent with recent findings. See Williamson, Chilton, American Suffrage; From Property to Democracy, 1760 to 1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

192. Beard, Economic Interpretation, 25.

193. Ibid., 252.

194. Ibid., 227.

195. Beard, Economic Origins, 85, 106.

196. Ibid., 86–87. Beard and Beard, Rise of American Civilization, vol. I, p. 81.

197. Beard, American Government and Politics, 5th ed., 101.

198. Beard, Charles A., The American Party Battle (New York: Macmillan Co., 1928), 141–42Google Scholar.

199. Beard, American Government and Politics, 5th ed., 126.

200. Beard was quite familiar with German historicism and was deeply influenced by the Italian Croce's, Hegelian BenedettoHistory: Its Theory and Practice (New York: Russell and Russell, 1960)Google Scholar. For example, Beard, Charles A., The Nature of the Social Sciences in Relation to the Objectives of Instruction (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934)Google Scholar, chap. 1; Beard, Charles A., The Discussion of Human Affairs (New York: Macmillan Co., 1936)Google Scholar; Beard, Charles A. and Vaghts, Al-fred, “Currents of Thought in Historiography,” American Historical Review (10–07 1936/1937): 460–83Google Scholar. Also see Sorenson, Lloyd R., “Charles A. Beard and German Historiographical Thought,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review (09 1955): 274–87Google Scholar.

201. Beard and Beard, Rise of American Civilization, vol. I, pp. 336–51.

202. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 349–627.

203. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 13–207. Cf. Bensel, Richard, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

204. Beard, Charles A., “The Contest Between Rural and Urban Economy,” Bulletin of the University of Georgia: Institute of Public Affairs and International Relations 30(2) (11 1929): 70–78Google Scholar.

205. Beard, Charles A. and Beard, Mary R., The American Spirit: A Study of the Idea of Civilization in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1942)Google Scholar.

206. Beard, Charles A., “Jefferson in America Now,” Yale Review (12 1935): 241–57Google Scholar.

207. Beard, “The Rise of the Democratic Idea,” 201–3.

208. Beard and Beard, Rise of American Civilization, vol. II, pp. 321–24.

209. For his stinging criticisms of the American Federation of Labor, see Beard, Contemporary American History, 249–52.

210. Beard and Beard, Rise of American Civilization, vol. II, pp. 248–52.

211. Beard, Charles A., “The Historical Approach to the New Deal,” American Political Science Review (02 1934): 11–15Google Scholar, argued that the New Deal marked a significant “alteration” of the American democratic tradition “by an influx of ideas imported from the Old World,” i. e., social democracy. Even though he praised the New Deal as a social democratic advance in its early years, by 1939 he considered it as a “minor gain” for labor; Beard and Beard, America in Mid-Passage, 516. For Beard, the New Deal did not go far enough in abandoning Jeffersonian economics (i. e., subsidies to small business, farmers, and professionals). It also did not elevate labor to a position of dominant industrial or political power. He suggested the greatest political obstacle to social democracy would continue to be a Jeffersonian middle class and its ally, the American Federation of Labor (pp. 557–76).

212. Beard, American Government and Politics, 5th ed., 101; Beard, Charles A., “Review of Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy by Robert Michels,” Political Science Quarterly (03 1917): 153–55Google Scholar.

213. Beard and Beard, Rise of American Civilization, vol. II, pp. 576–663.

214. Beard, American Government and Politics, 5th ed., 117.

215. Ibid., 83.

216. Ibid.

217. Beard, “Review of Property and Contract,” 511.

218. Beard, Jefferson, Corporations, and the Constitution, 24–26. Cf. Croly, Progressive Democracy, 51–56.

219. Beard, Charles A., “Review of Popular Government by William A. Taft,” Political Science Quarterly (12 1918): 594–96Google Scholar.

220. For similar critiques, see Pound, Roscoe, “Liberty of Contract,” Yale Law Journal (05 1909): 454–87Google Scholar; Frankfurter, Felix, “Hours of Labor and Realism in Constitutional Law,” Harvard Law Review (02 1916): 353–73Google Scholar.

221. heard, Jefferson, Corporations, and the Constitution, 27.

222. Ibid., 15–16.

223. Ibid., 16–24.

224. Beard, Charles A., “Political Science in the Crucible,” New Republic (11 17, 1917): 3Google Scholar, observes that: when powerful economic groups in the country have sought to block progressive and humane legislation and logic has failed in the forum, the mysteries of constitutional law have been invoked with firm assurance. Pollock v. the Farmers' Loan and Trust Company and Lockner v. New York—there they stand, not forever, but until political and social forces (not forgetting the grim reaper, Death), change the courts.

225. Beard, “Social Change v. the Constitution,” 345–52.

226. Beard, Jefferson, Corporations, and the Constitution, 24–26.

227. Ibid., 32, 27.

228. The decline and renewal theme is common to republican political thought. See Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar. The idea of political cycles has been advanced more recently by Schlesinger, Arthur Jr, The Cycles of American History (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1986)Google Scholar.

229. Levin, Peter R., “Charles A. Beard: Wayward Liberal,” Tomorrow 8 (03 1949): 36–40Google Scholar; Strout, Cushing, “In Retrospect: Charles Beard's Liberalism,” New Republic (11 17, 1955): 17–18Google Scholar; Hartz, Louis, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1955), 27–28Google Scholar.

230. Wood, Gordon S., The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 626Google Scholar. Most notably, see McDonald, Forrest, We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Brown, Middle-Class Democracy and The Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691–1780; Thomas, Robert E., “The Virginia Convention of 1788: A Criticism of Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution,” Journal of Southern History 19 (02 1953): 63–72Google Scholar.

231. Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians, 344.

232. Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 626.

233. Seidelman, Raymond, Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis (Albany: SUNY Press, 1985), vii–xviGoogle Scholar, chaps. 1, 3.

234. Cf. Dahl, Robert A., A Preface to Economic Democracy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985),Google Scholar, esp. chaps. 1–2; Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert, Democracy and Capitalism: Property, Community, and the Contradictions of Modern Social Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1987)Google Scholar; Offe, Glaus, Contradictions of the Welfare State (Boston: MIT Press, 1984)Google Scholar, esp. chaps. 5–6.

235. Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians, 344.