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The “Revolution Principle”: Ideology and Constitutionalism in the Thought of James Wilson*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

George M. Dennison
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Extract

Americans have not always adjusted comfortably to their peculiar heritage as the first revolutionary people of the modern era. Yet the idea of revolution fascinated the founding generation. The reflective, educated leaders based their speculation on the classical conception they inherited from the English Whig or Common-wealth radicals and the venerable ancients. Many went beyond that perspective in the effort to explain the changes produced by the experiences of 1763 to 1789. These thinkers strove to articulate a distinctively American conception of revolution. This article deals with the contribution toward that end of one man, thus making no claim to definitiveness in any broader sense. James Wilson of Scotland and Pennsylvania merits special study as a seminal thinker of considerable significance in American history. For he stands at the beginning of a line of American theorists and activists who not only espoused the idea of revolution but based American constitutionalism on that seemingly contradictory foundation. From reluctant rebel, Wilson emerged as the preeminent spokesman for a new, progressive ideology which fostered one important strand in the variegated fabric of American constitutional thought.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , April 1977 , pp. 157 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1977

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References

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98 As the Eleventh Amendment demonstrates, most Americans disagreed.

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