Bicameralism and Unicameralism Debated for the Coming Revolution

Adams disagreed with the proponents of a unicameral legislature, especially Turgot and Condorcet. Eventually, Kant will defend the ideas of Condorcet. He thought that such a political theory would lead to disaster. Adams responded to Turgot’s ideas in his Defense of the Constitutions of the Government of the United States, which he published in 1787. After the French Revolution began, Adams continued his attack on the idea of unicameral legislatures. In 1790 he published Discourses on Davila with a view critiquing what he viewed to be the ominous developments of Revolutionary France. Thomas Paine joined the debate in 1791 with his publication of The Rights of Man. By accident, an essay by Jefferson introduced the American edition of Paine’s Rights of Man listing Adams’s book Davila among the “political heresies” of the American Regime. This essay, along with Paine’s work, led to an intensely partisan competition in the United States between pro-English and pro-French factions during the 1790s (Thompson, 1996, 364-365).

The debate that erupted in the United States following the publication of Discourses on Davila and then Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man was a coming to the surface of tensions that were already present when Adams published A Defence of the Constitutions … of America in 1787. When Jefferson received the book, he invited Adams to reconsider his idea that Congress was a diplomatic and not a legislative assembly. Jefferson said that he feared the book would be poorly translated, and so he found a good translator. After securing the translator, he left on a wine-tasting tour which he had been planning.
(It is just as likely that the French blocked the book, and that TJ told this to JA).

Jefferson, as late as November, indicated that the book was being translated. It seems, however that Philip Mazzei, an associate of Jefferson, Adams, and the book publisher, blocked translation and publication of the book in the final days before printing. In part, this had to do with the politics of France at the time. France was in the midst of a debate between the Anglomanes, those who desired a bicameral legislature with the King and a senate-like aristocratic body checking the popular branch, and the Gallomanes, those who preferred a unicameral popular legislature with predominant power over the other estates in French society. Mazzei and Condorcet were on the side of the Gallomanes. They perceived that Adams was among the potential leaders of the Anglomanes. Mazzei was able to publish a pamphlet by Stevens instead of Adams’s book. Even though this pamphlet also advocated a bicameral legislature, Mazzei was able to insert another 200 pages in which he critiqued Anglomane theory and twisted the arguments of Stevens so as to support the Gallomane position.

Jefferson and Adams met in person January or February of 1788. By that time, there would be no publication of Adams’s book. While we do not have any direct evidence as to the content of that meeting between Jefferson and Adams, we can imagine that the topic of the book translation was brought up. We could hypothesize that both Jefferson and Adams knew of the debate raging in France, and how individuals with more influence than Jefferson could block the publication of Adams’s book. Jefferson admitted to Adams initially that even finding someone to translate it properly would be difficult. Perhaps he realized that what Mazzei and his associates had done to Stevens, they would have done to Adams. Whatever the circumstances in February and January of 1788, it does not seem from the correspondence that at that time Adams was upset about the book not being published.

But, a few years later, in 1791, Thomas Paine published his pamphlet The Rights of Man. In the first edition that Paine published he included an introductory essay by Jefferson critiquing Adams’ Discourses as containing ideas that were “political heresy.” Jefferson did not want these comments to be published, and yet, they were. Nevertheless, they caused indignation in the mind of Adams and they began a firestorm in American politics that raged throughout the 1790s. This storm included many events that divided the democratic republicans against the federalists during the political debates of the 1790s.

This short history about Adams and Jefferson before and in the early days of the French Revolution reveals to us that Adams, on the whole, was becoming more pessimistic about the goodness of human nature. He was also becoming more pessimistic about the possibility of humans, short of institutional checks, of reaching a good end in political life. Humans are too dominated by envy and a love for money. For this reason, Adams was skeptical of those theorists who believed that a unicameral legislature could adequately check the passions of men. He expressed his fears in books and writings. He hoped his friend Jefferson would help him translate his ideas into French.

Jefferson, who was also friends with the same people that Adams critiqued, remained slightly more optimistic about human nature and what kind of political institutions human nature could support. In addition, perhaps he saw that the real disagreement between he and Adams was not one of principle. Instead, it was one of what emphasis was necessary given the historical circumstances of the time. Stevens, the supposed opponent whose tract was published instead of Adams’s book, advocated bicameral legislatures.

Jefferson also was not an opponent of bicameralism. But Jefferson feared that the United States, and perhaps France as well in the opening days of the Revolution, risked falling into the English system, which was proving itself to be an obstacle rather than a proponent of true political development. Jefferson thought that, given the historical circumstances, what needed strengthening and support in the 1790s was the popular branch. It would not make sense in the early days of the Republic to put too great an emphasis on institutions such as the Senate or Presidency, so as to make them like the House of Lords or the King in England.

In addition, Jefferson thought that too much attachment to England might actually limit the healthy development of the American system, as England would further involve the United States in European conflicts. England was also pressuring the French in such a way so as to antagonize the tensions already present in French society.

Jefferson was not overly enthusiastic about the excesses of the French Revolution. He admitted, in a way, that Robsepierre ended the popular part of the Revolution. Nevertheless, he did not see US involvement in European wars, entering on the side of England, as healthy for the US. Adams perhaps failed to fully understand the checks and balances that were part of the Constitution. In addition, he failed to appreciate the possibility that the Constitution and the Institutions that it established did educate the citizens of the United States to acquire political habits that would support the constitution over time. Or, perhaps he understood this, but, given this affection for England and position in England, his statements could easily be bent by the Gallomanes in France to attack the Anglomanes and to advance the Gallomane position.