Two Letters

Consider these two letters:

Adams to Jefferson, January 31, 1796 (259)
“I consider all Reasoning upon French Affairs of little moment. The Fates must determine hereafter as they have done heretofore. Reasoning has been all lost. Passion, Prejudice, Interest, Necessity has governed and will govern; and a Century must roll away before any permanent and quiet System will be established. An Amelioration of human affairs I hope and believe will be the result, but You and I must look down from the Battlements of Heaven if We ever have the Pleasure of Seeing it.

TJ to JA, Sep 4th 1823
"The spirit of the Spaniard and his deadly and eternal hatred to the Frenchman, gives me much confidence that he will never submit, but finally defeat this atrocious violation of the laws of god and man under which he is suffering; and the wisdom and firmness of the Cortes afford reasonable hope that the nation will settle down in a temperate representative government, with an executive properly subordinated to that. Portugal, Italy, Prussia, Germany, Greece will follow suit. You and I shall look down from another world on these glorious achievements to man, which will add to the joys of heaven."

Could Jefferson in 1823 have had in mind Adams's letter from 1796, indicating to Adams that the French Revolution did not slow down the progress of representative government in the way that Adams had predicted in 1796?

The Constitution was the Creed, We Never Got the Catechism

According to John Adams, the American Constitution needed a catechism to explain how we should live it out:

The idea that a moral social and political culture was necessary to maintain the Constitution is an idea that Adams held before the French Revolution began. Adams thought that the Congress needed write a political and moral catechism that would be taught in American schools. Adams asked Abbé Mably to write this catechism. Mably declined the offer, arguing that it would be better for Adams and the people in the US Congress to write and publish such a catechism (The information on the Catechism is in “John Adams on the Abbé de Mably.” More Books: The Bulletin of the Boston Public Library. Volume VIII April 1933. 125-145). This catechism was to explain the principal parts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, with a view to explaining the kind of personal and social life that was necessary for each person to live and maintain in order to live the political truths contained in our founding creeds.

Despite this early rejection by Mably, and despite such a catechism never being written, Adams never lost his concern for the political culture that he thought was necessary to support the American creed. And so, in his letters to Jefferson, Adams expressed concerns about the negative effects that Rousseau’s philosophy might have on the interpretation of the American Constitution. If we were to extrapolate from his comments to Mably, political philosophy is the catechism of the Constitution. If Rousseau’s philosophy were to become the catechism of the Constitution, it would distort and ruin the Constitution over time because it would not adequately explain the Constitution and the institutions that it established.

Adams saw Rousseau’s political philosophy as informing the movements of the French Revolution. He feared the growing influence that the writings of Rousseau were having on young American intellectuals. He thought that if the intellectuals interpreted the Constitution through the lens of a Rousseauean philosophy, it would be the end of the Constitution and the institutions that it established. There are certain cultural ideas that need to be maintained in order to uphold the constitution and the institutions it established. Rousseau’s philosophy tended toward the breakdown of these ideals.