Melancton Smith, Adam Smith, and the Sympathetic Theory of ... · Melancton Smith, Adam Smith, and...

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Melancton Smith, Adam Smith, and the Sympathetic Theory of Representation Trevor Latimer * [email protected] Dartmouth College On June 21, 1788, a merchant of “the middling sort” from Dutchess County named Melancton Smith 1 rose to address his state’s ratifying conven- tion in Poughkeepsie, New York. In response to some remarks the previous day from his frenemy Alexander Hamilton, he said: The idea that naturally suggests itself to our minds, when we speak of representatives is, that they resemble those they rep- resent; they should be a true picture of the people; possess the knowledge of their circumstances and their wants; sympathize in all their distresses, and be disposed to seek their true interests. 2 * Please do not cite or circulate without permission. 1 For biographical details, see Robin Brooks, “Melancton Smith: New York Anti Feder- alist, 1744-1798” (PhD diss., University of Rochester, 1964). 2 Convention Debates, 21 June 1788, in The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution Digital Edition ed. John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, Richard Leffler, Charles H. Schoenleber and Margaret A. Hogan (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2009), emphasis added. Unless otherwise noted, quotations from primary sources come from the DHRC Digital Edition, http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/ founders/default.xqy?keys=RNCN. The previous day, Smith had proposed an amendment to the third paragraph of article 2, section 1 of the proposed U.S. Constitution: Resolved that it is proper that the Number of Representatives be fixed at the Rate of one for every twenty Thousand Inhabitants to be ascertained on the Principles mentioned in the second Section of the first Article of the Constitu- tion until they amount to three hundred, after which they shall be apportioned among the States in Proportion to the Number of the Inhabitants of the States 1

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Melancton Smith, Adam Smith, and theSympathetic Theory of Representation

Trevor Latimer∗

[email protected]

Dartmouth College

On June 21, 1788, a merchant of “the middling sort” from DutchessCounty named Melancton Smith1 rose to address his state’s ratifying conven-tion in Poughkeepsie, New York. In response to some remarks the previousday from his frenemy Alexander Hamilton, he said:

The idea that naturally suggests itself to our minds, when wespeak of representatives is, that they resemble those they rep-resent; they should be a true picture of the people; possess theknowledge of their circumstances and their wants; sympathize inall their distresses, and be disposed to seek their true interests.2

∗Please do not cite or circulate without permission.1For biographical details, see Robin Brooks, “Melancton Smith: New York Anti Feder-

alist, 1744-1798” (PhD diss., University of Rochester, 1964).2Convention Debates, 21 June 1788, in The Documentary History of the Ratification

of the Constitution Digital Edition ed. John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, RichardLeffler, Charles H. Schoenleber and Margaret A. Hogan (Charlottesville: University ofVirginia Press, Rotunda, 2009), emphasis added. Unless otherwise noted, quotations fromprimary sources come from the DHRC Digital Edition, http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=RNCN. The previous day, Smith had proposed an amendmentto the third paragraph of article 2, section 1 of the proposed U.S. Constitution:

Resolved that it is proper that the Number of Representatives be fixed at theRate of one for every twenty Thousand Inhabitants to be ascertained on thePrinciples mentioned in the second Section of the first Article of the Constitu-tion until they amount to three hundred, after which they shall be apportionedamong the States in Proportion to the Number of the Inhabitants of the States

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This passage contains the key ingredients of one of the most compellingtheories of representation in the history of political thought.

Melancton Smith’s tete-a-tete with Alexander Hamilton was, in my view,the intellectual and rhetorical crescendo of the ratification debate of 1787-1788. Smith was an Anti-Federalist, according to the standard (but mislead-ing) terminology, despite eventually voting to ratify the new U.S. Constitu-tion, drafted the previous summer in Philadelphia.3

Described by Saul Cornell as the “other founders,” Anti-Federalists op-posed ratification of the proposed constitution (a replacement for the Articleof Confederation) without amendments.4 They worried that the new planwould sacrifice the liberties recently won in the war with Great Britain.Their objections ran the gamut from trivial to devastating, but one of theirmost frequently voiced concerns was that the legislature in the new “consoli-dated” national government would be unrepresentative of the people. Specif-ically, many Anti-Federalists argued that the national legislature would betoo small, with only 65 representatives and 26 senators, and that electoral

respectivelyAnd that before the first enumeration shall be made, the SeveralStates shall be entitled to chuse double the Number of Representatives for thatpurpose mentioned in the Constitution[.]

3The terminology is misleading because Anti-Federalists (e.g., Melancton Smith), whoopposed the new constitution, favored a national government organized on federal princi-ples, whereas Federalists (e.g., Alexander Hamilton), who supported the new U.S. Consti-tution, favored a “consolidated” national government. In the 1780s, “federal” and “confed-eral” were synonyms, as were “confederation” and “federation.” In Samual Johnson’s 1786edition of his dictionary, a confederacy (n.) is “A league; a contract by which several per-sons or bodies of men engage to support each other; union; engagement; federal compact,”federal (adj.) is “Relating to league or contract,” and federate (adj.) is “Leagued; joinedin confederacy.” Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language: In Which theWords Are Deduced from Their Originals, and Illustrated in Their Different Significationsby Examples from the Best Writers. . . (London: 1786). Also see Dimitrios Karmis andWayne Norman, “The Revival of Federalism in Normative Political Theory” in Theoriesof Federalism: A Reader, ed. Dimitrios Karmis and Wayne Norman, (New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2005), 5-7.

4Saul Cornell, The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition inAmerica, 1788-1828 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). The additionof “without amendments” is critical because many Anti-Federalists said they would havesupported the document with the necessary changes.

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districts would therefore be too large.5 I will refer to the spatial inflection ofAnti-Federalists’ objection as their localism.6

Anti-Federalists’ views about representation were articulated in a varietyof ways, both practical and theoretical, but Melancton Smith’s argument,quoted above in the passage above, was one of the most sophisticated andintriguing of the entire ratification debate.7

Arguments to the effect that an assembly of representatives ought toresemble or reflect the people in miniature were not new, however. Eric Nel-son has argued that they can be traced to the seventeenth century disputebetween the English Parliament and the Crown over principles of politicalrepresentation, especially in the writings of Henry Parker.8 Parker claimedthat Parliament is “nothing else, but the very people it self artificially congre-gated[.]”9 And in British North America, over a century later, John Adams(an exceedingly unlikely ally of Anti-Federalists) claimed that the represen-tative assembly “should be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people atlarge. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them.”10

Melancton Smith’s argument is different. He argues that the representa-tive assembly should be a true picture of the people, like Parker and Adams,but also that it should sympathize with the people. This is new.

Nevertheless, Smith’s originality does not come from his invocation ofsympathy on its own. A decade earlier, in the debate over the crisis in Amer-ica, Edmund Burke argued:

5For the sake of simplicity, I ignore the fact that some states chose to elect theirrepresentatives “at-large” rather than in single member districts.

6A note to conference participants: I am currently completing a book manuscript onthe subject of localism in political thought.

7For reasons described in Saul Cornell, “Moving Beyond the Canon of Traditional Con-stitutional History: Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights, and the Promise of Post-ModernHistoriography,” Law and History Review 12, no. 1 (1994): 1-28 I avoid referring to theAnti-Federalists. Anti-Federalists did not see themselves as a united movement; their al-liance was practical rather than sociological or theoretical.

8Eric Nelson, The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding (Cam-bridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 72.

9[Henry Parker], Observations Upon Some of His Majesties Late Answers and Expresses(London: 1642), quoted in Nelson, The Royalist Revolution, 73.

10Thoughts on Government (1776), in The Adams Papers Digital Edition, ed. Sara Mar-tin (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008-2017), http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/ADMS-06-04-02-0026-0004.

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It would (among public misfortunes) be an evil more natural andtolerable, that the House of Commons should be infected with ev-ery epidemical phrensy of the people, as this would indicate someconsanguinity, some sympathy of nature with their constituents,than that they should in all cases be wholly untouched by theopinions and feelings of the people out of doors. By this want ofsympathy they would cease to be an House of Commons.11

But Burke invokes sympathy without endorsing Parker’s or Adams’s “like-ness” view of representation. For Burke, sympathy is merely a necessarycondition of representation. Smith’s view is distinct because it binds the twoideas—likeness and sympathy—together in the same theory.

The concept of sympathy, and its role in theories of political repre-sentation and in Anti-Federalist political thought, is therefore the subjectof this paper. Previous commentators, most notably Bernard Manin, haverecognized that “Anti-Federalists formulated with great clarity a plausible,consistent, and powerful conception of representation.”12 Nevertheless, thework done by sympathy in Anti-Federalists’ conception of representation hasthus far escaped explicit treatment.13 Manin argued, correctly, that Anti-Federalists advanced a “descriptive” theory of representation, but also, Ibelieve erroneously, that “the ‘descriptive’ conception supposes that repre-sentatives will spontaneously do as the people would have done since they are

11“Thoughts on the Present Condition” (1770) in Select Works of Edmund Burke, vol.1, ed. Francis Canavan (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), 117-118.

12Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1997), 129. Also see Joel A. Johnson, ”Disposed to Seek TheirTrue Interests: Representation and Responsibility in Anti-Federalist Thought,” Review ofPolitics 66, no. 4 (2004): 649-673.

13The concept of sympathy is virtually ignored by the wider representation literatureas well. There is a single reference to sympathy, each in a discussion of Burke, in HannaFenichel Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press,1967) and Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Thereare scattered references to sympathy in David Runciman and Monica Brito Vieira, Repre-sentation (Cambridge: Polity, 2008). See also, Hans Von Rautenfeld, “Thinking for Thou-sands: Emerson’s Theory of Political Representation in the Public Sphere,” AmericanJournal of Political Science 49, no. 1 (2005): 184-197; Jason Frank, “Sympathy and Sep-aration: Benjamin Rush and the Contagious Public,” Modern Intellectual History 6, no. 1(2009): 27-57.

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a reflection of the people, share the circumstances of their constituents, andare close to them in both the metaphorical and spatial senses of the term.”14

By suggesting that representatives spontaneously do as the people wouldhave done when they “mirror” the people, in all of their diversity, Maninmakes Anti-Federalists’ descriptive theory of representation far more myste-rious than it needs to be. By way of correction, I argue that according to oneversion of Anti-Federalist theory, representatives do what the people wouldhave done not spontaneously, but through sympathy. Good representativesdo what their constituents would have done because they sympathize withthem. Whether mirroring and closeness are causally connected with sympa-thy is open to debate, but it is important to recognize that sympathy is themechanism, whereas closeness and mirroring are not. Accordingly, my firstobjective in this paper is to explain how sympathy works in Anti-Federalisttheory and why it constitutes a desideratum of political representation.

This part of the paper—in which I argue that sympathy plays a starring(and essential) role in Melancton Smith’s theory of representation—is pri-marily of interest to scholars of American political thought and theorists ofpolitical representation. The paper’s second ambition is to show that Anti-Federalists’ sympathetic theory of representation equivocates between theaccounts of sympathy offered by David Hume and Adam Smith.15 I will ar-gue that Hume’s “contagion” conception of sympathy makes better sense ofAnti-Federalists’ localism whereas Smith’s “projection” conception of sym-pathy is more closely aligned with the reasons we have to value sympathy inthe first place.16 In other words, the reasons we have to want representativesto sympathize with their constituents count in favor of Smith’s conception,but Anti-Federalist localism follows from Hume’s conception, not Smith’s.

The paper’s third and final objective is to explore the implications of thesympathetic theory of representation, grounded in Adam Smith’s particular

14Manin, The Principles of Representative Government, 111, emphasis in original.15David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1896 [1739]); Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments ed. D. D. Raphael andA. L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982 [1759]).

16I borrow these labels from Samuel Fleischacker, “Sympathy in Hume and Smith: AContrast, Critique, and Reconstruction,” in Intersubjectivity and Objectivity in AdamSmith and Edmund Husserl: A Collection of Essays, ed. Christel Fricke and DagfinnFollesdal (Frankfurt: Ontos, 2012), 273-311 and Stephen Darwall, “Empathy, Sympathy,Care,” Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the AnalyticTradition 89, no. 2/3 (1998): 261-282.

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conception of sympathy.17 Here I depart from the theory of representationas developed by Anti-Federalists in order to sketch an idealized sympathetictheory. My conjecture is that although Anti-Federalists were correct that anideal representative sympathizes with her constituents, they were wrong toargue that the theory entails a numerous legislature, small electoral districts,and representatives who are closely connected with their constituents.

In fact, the reasons we have to want representatives to sympathize withtheir constituents recommend an entirely different kind of representative thanAnti-Federalists imagined. The ideal representative, according to an idealizedsympathetic theory of representation, is blessed with imaginative dexterity.18

She need not be “like” her constituents, nor resemble them, but she musthave the capacity and the desire to walk a mile in their shoes.

Toward the end of paper, I briefly consider Publius’s invocation of sym-pathy in The Federalist (Nos. 35, 52, 55, 57, and 58), and suggest that JamesMadison and Alexander Hamilton were actually better expositors than Anti-Federalists of the sympathetic theory of representation, as developed herein.

The paper is organized as follows. In section 1, I begin by briefly summa-rizing the standard Anti-Federalist position on representation in the rat-ification debate. I then show how a few of the most sophisticated Anti-Federalists—chiefly in New York—invoked the concept of sympathy to sup-port their argument for a large (numerous) national legislature with smallelectoral districts. Throughout section 1, I will try to hedge between thetwo competing conceptions of sympathy. In section 2, I explain why Hume’s“contagion” conception of sympathy makes better sense of Anti-Federalists’localism. Then, in section 3, I show that to get what they were really after—alegislature in which representatives are in tune with the diverse concerns oftheir constituents—Anti-Federalists should have followed Smith rather thanHume. In section 4, I suggest that the sympathetic theory of representationrequires imaginative dexterity rather than proximity. Finally, in section 5, Iconsider Publius’s competing invocations of sympathy in The Federalist.

17I take it that Hume and Smith provide different conceptions of sympathy, both ofwhich are interpretations of the concept of sympathy. On the distinction, see John Rawls,A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,1999), 5.

18My understanding of dexterity is inspired by Sheryll Cashin, Loving: Interracial Inti-macy in America and the Threat to White Supremacy (Boston, MA: Beacon, 2017).

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As I mentioned above, one of the most commonly cited objections to thenew U.S. Constitution was that the national (or “federal”) legislature wouldbe too small. Until the first census could be completed, the House of Rep-resentatives was to have only sixty-five members. At the time, many statelegislatures were more numerous, ranging from 21 members in Delaware to200 members in South Carolina.19 A particularly striking contrast was theBritish House of Commons, which from 1754-1790 had 588 members.20

Like the failure to include a Bill of Rights, the Constitutional Conven-tion’s decision to set the membership of the lower house at 65 was, in myview, an unnecessary tactical blunder. Governour Morris, the chairman ofa special committee appointed to determine the apportionment in the firsthouse noted, “The Report is little more than a guess. [...] The Committeemeant little more than to bring the matter to a point for the considerationof the House.”21

But that guess—which would become the object of incessant criticism—stuck. The arbitrariness of the decision is perhaps demonstrated by the factthat James Madison, one of the two great defenders of the Constitution inThe Federalist, had proposed doubling the size of the lower house.22 Had theConvention supported Madison’s motion this paper could never have beenwritten.

Anti-Federalists’ objections to the size of the House of Representativeswere actually somewhat complicated, however. At first glance, their objectionappears to come out of nowhere, as Congress under the Articles of Confed-eration had approximately 50 members. Considering that, in general, Anti-Federalists were more sympathetic to the Articles of Confederation than theiropponents, their claim that the Constitution’s larger representative assembly(65 representatives, 26 senators) would be too small might seem out of place.

19Peverill Squire, “Historical Evolution of Legislatures in the United States,” AnnualReview of Political Science 9, no. 1 (2006): 28.

20http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1754-1790/survey/i-constituencies. The population of Great Britain was about 11 million in 1801, theyear of the first official census. The population of the United States was a little over 5million in 1800.

21Max Farrand, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 1 (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1911), 560-561.

22Ibid., 564.

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The key to understanding their objection to the size of the House of Rep-resentatives is to recognize that it was paired with an objection to the scopeof the new government’s powers. The small size of the Congress under theArticles of Confederation was acceptable, according to Anti-Federalists, be-cause it was a (con)federal government with extremely limited powers. Thegovernment under the Articles of Confederation was responsible for declaringwar, sending and receiving ambassadors, entering into treaties and alliances,and not much else. The document says much more about what Congresscannot do than what it can do. Moreover, Article II says that each state“retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, juris-diction, and right, which is not by this confederation, expressly delegated tothe United States, in Congress assembled.”

Anti-Federalists reasoned that since the Confederation Congress had suchlittle power, and since much of its power concerned relations between thestates and with foreign powers, it could remain small. In interstate and in-ternational matters, most Americans had similar interests, and therefore afew well-informed and disinterested individuals could represent everyone.

Not so with respect to “domestic” or “internal” matters. The new Con-stitution granted the national government a great deal more power in thisdomain than it possessed under the Articles of Confederation. Article I, Sec-tion 8 (enumerating Congressional powers) therefore became a popular targetfor Anti-Federalist attacks. It gave Congress the power “to lay and collecttaxes, duties, imposts and excises,” to borrow money, and to “regulate com-merce. . . among the several states.” There was considerable disagreement,with opposing and conflicting interests, over these issues.

Anti-Federalists argued that because the new Constitution would giveCongress the power to legislate in areas in which there were numerous com-peting interests, it would need to be large enough so as to represent eachinterest. A small legislature composed of well-informed and disinterested in-dividuals would no longer do. In fact, lofty disinterestedness could be consid-ered a vice rather than a virtue given multiple, competing, and geographicallyconcentrated interests. For the government to be truly representative, eachinterest would have to have its own advocate in the legislature.

Anti-Federalists’ interpretation of “necessary and proper” clause (the lastof section 8) made all of this even more consequential. They reasoned (andhere history is on their side) that the clause would be used to continuouslyexpand the powers of the national government. Each new task or functionundertaken by the national government would activate a new set of competing

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interests. This, in turn, would require a larger legislature so as to give voiceto the newly activated interests.

Thus far, I have presented Anti-Federalists’ position on representation inpluralist terms, as if each of the competing interests were roughly on par.23

But some Anti-Federalists were particularly concerned with what we todaywould call class. Instead of classes, late eighteenth-century Anglo-Americansreferred to “orders,” “sorts,” and the aristocracy.24 The class-based, as op-posed to pluralist, version of Anti-Federalist theory emphasized a hypothe-sized correlation between the legislature’s size and its class composition.

The argument went like this. Because candidates for public office aremore likely to win if they are well-known, increasing the size of the con-stituency shrinks the pool of viable candidates. Candidates whose reputationsare merely local become less likely to win as the size of the constituency in-creases. The wealthy, the “great,” and members of the “natural aristocracy”are more likely to be well-known throughout a larger constituency. Thus,the wealthy, the “great” and members of natural aristocracy are more likelyto win elections when constituencies are large. As the size of constituen-cies increases, the size of the legislative body necessarily decreases. Smallerlegislatures are therefore dominated by men of the higher orders.

This would be unproblematic if members of the various orders (or classes)had similar interests. But if different orders or classes have opposing interests,the tendency for small legislatures to be dominated by the upper classesshould raise eyebrows. It is therefore not much of a surprise that the taxingpower was frequently discussed alongside representation in the ratificationdebate. Taxation is a paradigmatic example of a issue over which there isclass-based disagreement. Article I, section 8 gave Congress the power toimpose both direct and indirect taxes, so this was no mere abstraction.

Anti-Federalists worried that without sufficient representation for the“middling sort,” the tax burden would be distributed unfairly. Addition-ally, some worried that because rich men were unaccustomed to the threatof poverty, they would be profligate with public funds, and pass the bill onto the lower orders. Yeoman farmers, in contrast, were thought to be hardy,

23For an account of pluralism, see Robert A. Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Powerin an American City (New Haven,: Yale University Press, 1961).

24See H. R. French, “Social Status, Localism and the ‘Middle Sort of People’ in England1620-1750,” Past & Present no. 166 (2000): 66-99.

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prudent and uniquely virtuous.25 The class-based version of Anti-Federalisttheory concluded that the only way to ensure that yeoman farmers would beelected to Congress would be to increase the size of the legislature. A largerlegislature would have smaller constituencies where the most respectable andwell-known yeomen would stand a chance.

In short, the standard Anti-Federalist argument was that the new leg-islature would be unrepresentative in two different senses. First, the newlegislature would be too small to represent each of the country’s diverse andcompeting interests. With such a small legislature, only the most numerousor powerful voices would be heard. Second, the new legislature would be filledby members of the upper classes who would neglect the interests of the lowerorders. Yeomen farmers, with their special virtues, could only be elected fromsmall constituencies.

I now want to turn to an important extension of this line of argumentinvolving the concept of sympathy. According to my analysis, The Documen-tary History of the Ratification of the Constitution Digital Edition containstwenty-seven references to sympathy in the relevant sense (i.e. with respectto political representation).26 Five of the references to sympathy belong toMelancton Smith, six to James Madison (all as Publius), four to AlexanderHamilton (three as Publius, one in the New York Ratifying Convention), fourto Federal Farmer, and one each to Brutus, John Lansing, Jr., Gilbert Liv-ingston, and John Williams (the latter three from the New York Ratifying

25A yeoman is “A man holding a small landed estate; a freeholder under the rank ofa gentleman; hence vaguely, a commoner or countryman of respectable standing, esp.one who cultivates his own land” (Oxford English Dictionary). Praise for the yeomanrycrossed class lines. Thomas Jefferson, for example, claimed that “cultivators of the earthare the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independant, themost virtuous, & they are tied to their country & wedded to its liberty & interests by themost lasting bonds.” To John Jay, August 23, 1785, in Jefferson: Political Writings ed.Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 549.

26My analysis is based on a search for “sympath*” in the digital edition. “Sympath*” re-turns sympathy, sympathize, sympathise, etc. The digital edition includes the first twenty-seven of the twenty-nine volumes currently in print. Four additional volumes are forth-coming. See https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whspress/series.asp.

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Convention; Brutus could not attend).27 Note that all but four references arefrom New York.28

A recent study of the “Melancton Smith Circle” provides convincing ev-idence that Melancton Smith, Federal Farmer, and Brutus were the sameperson, or at least members of the same close-knit working group. Utilizingtraditional historical techniques, Michael P. Zuckert and Derek Webb ar-gue in favor of the latter.29 John Burrows, using statistical techniques, findsstrong support for the former (the single-authorship hypothesis).30 I am morepersuaded by Burrows, for what it’s worth.

In any case, the references to sympathy by other members of the NewYork Ratifying Convention generate a respectable list of potential mem-bers of the Melancton Smith circle, namely John Lansing, Jr., Gilbert Liv-ingston, and John Williams.31 Given than Melancton Smith wrote to GilbertLivingston on January 1, 1789, and that both men were from DutchessCounty, Livingston seems like an especially promising candidate.32 If Melanc-ton Smith, Federal Farmer, and Brutus are considered together, they men-tioned sympathy a total of ten times, as did Madison and Hamilton, con-sidered together. Publius’s references to sympathy appear in responses toAnti-Federalists (Brutus in particular).33

27Like the Publius essays, the Brutus and Federal Farmer essays were written pseudony-mously. Pseudonymous publication was quite popular in the period. See Eran Shalev, “An-cient Masks, American Fathers: Classical Pseudonyms During the American Revolutionand Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 23, no. 2 (2003): 151-172.

28The remaining four references come from David Ramsey (SC), Samuel Chase (MD),and William Pierce (GA). Ramsay’s oration was reprinted in the Massachusetts Centinel.

29Introduction to Michael P. Zuckert and Derek Webb, eds., The Anti-Federalist Writ-ings of the Melancton Smith Circle (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2009), xi-xxxii.

30See “Appendix 1: The Authorship of Two Sets of Anti-Federalists Papers: A Compu-tational Approach,” in The Anti-Federalist Writings of the Melancton Smith Circle, ed.Michael P. Zuckert and Derek Webb (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2009), 397-419.

31Joel A. Johnson believes Brutus was John Williams. See Joel A. Johnson, “‘Brutus’and ‘Cato’ Unmasked : General John Williams’s Role in the New York Ratification Debate,1787-88,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 118, no. 2 (2009).

32This is to get ahead of myself a bit, but two members of the New York Ratifying Con-vention (Robert R. Livingston and Richard Morris) were also members of a subscriptionlibrary that owned a copy of Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. See TheCharter, and Bye-Laws, of the New-York Society Library; with a Catalogue of the BooksBelonging to the Said Library (New York: 1773).

33James Madison referred to Brutus as a “new Combatant. . . with considerable address& plausibility.” See James Madison to Edmund Randolph, New York, October 21, 1787(excerpt).

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In the remainder of this section I will be considering the most relevantAnti-Federalist references to sympathy in chronological order (Brutus, Fed-eral Farmer, Melancton Smith, John Lansing, Jr., Gilbert Livingston, andJohn Williams).

The first reference to sympathy appeared in Brutus’s third letter “To theCITIZENS of the STATE of New-York,” published in the New York Journalon November 15, 1787. In that letter, Brutus advances a version of the class-based argument against small legislatures described above (pp. 9–10). Hesays that the “great body of the yeomen of the country cannot expect anyof their order in this assembly. . . the distance between the people and theirrepresentatives, will be so very great, that there is no probability that afarmer, however respectable, will be chosen.” The consequence is that “therewill be no part of the people represented, but the rich.”

Thus far the argument is familiar. At this point, however, Brutus proceedsto explain why a legislature dominated by the rich is so problematic. In theaccount I gave above, the problem with the rich dominating the legislatureis that the various orders have conflicting interests. But this explanationsays nothing special about the rich. The same objection would apply to thedomination of the legislature by any class, rich, poor, working, or middle.Brutus explains why domination by “the rich” is particularly dangerous:“The well born, and highest orders in life, as they term themselves, will beignorant of the sentiments of the middling class of citizens, strangers to theirability, wants, and difficulties, and void of sympathy, and fellow feeling.”

To flesh this out a bit, one might say that the rich are deficient in tworespects, one epistemological and one sentimental. The rich are epistemolog-ically deficient because they lack sufficient knowledge of the abilities, desires,and challenges, as well as the opinions, of those in the middle classes. Presum-ably they are also ignorant of the opinions, abilities, desires, and challengesof the lower classes.34 The rich are sentimentally deficient because they lacksympathy and fellow feeling. The epistemological deficiency is concerned withfacts; the sentimental deficiency is concerned with feelings.

I have separated the epistemological from the sentimental because it ispossible for someone to be deficient in one respect but not the other. Onemight possess perfect knowledge of a group’s opinions, abilities, desires, and

34Samuel Chase makes this point explicitly in his “Objections to the Constitution,” April24-25, 1788. The “rich and wealthy. . . will be ignorant of the sentiments of the middling(and much more of the lower) class of citizens, strangers to their ability, unacquaintedwith their wants, difficulties and distress and need of sympathy and fellow feeling.”

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challenges without sympathizing with them (i.e. without the appropriate feel-ings). This is precisely the criticism often hurled at the contemporary Left’s“pointy-headed intellectuals.”35 Policy experts know everything they couldpossibly need to know, but treat other human beings as objects rather thansympathizing with them as persons.36 Similarly, it’s possible to sympathizewith a particular group without knowing much about them, as when Amer-icans sympathize with the starving African children who sometimes appearin emotionally-charged television commercials.

Thus when Brutus invokes sympathy in his criticism of the Constitu-tion, he is making a subtle point, one that most of his fellow Anti-Federalistsfailed to notice or to articulate. According to Brutus’s view, the new nationallegislature will be dominated by the rich because it is too small, and a leg-islature dominated by the rich can be expected to be epistemologically andsentimentally deficient (i.e. lacking sympathy). Yet Brutus is not completelyclear about why the rich are likely to lack sympathy. The most he says isthat the rich lack sympathy for the lower orders because they are unfamiliarwith them, in which case sympathy isn’t doing much work in the argument.

Federal Farmer helps fill in the pieces missing from Brutus’s argumentin “An Additional Number of Letters to the Republican,” published as apamphlet on May 2, 1788. In Letter VII (dated December 31, 1787), heinsists that members of the lower house “must possess abilities to discern thesituation of the people and of public affairs, a disposition to sympathize withthe people, and a capacity and inclination to make laws congenial to theircircumstances and condition.” Instead of simply saying that the rich are “voidof sympathy,” Federal Farmer clarifies that a “disposition to sympathize withthe people” is a desirable characteristic of representatives.

Subsequent comments are suggestive of the conditions under which rep-resentatives are likely to possess this desirable disposition. The members ofa small legislature, according to Federal Farmer, “must be too far removedfrom the people, in general, to sympathize with them[.]”37 Here is the crit-ical connection between space and sympathy alluded to earlier.38 In a small

35By the Right’s “dull-headed intellectuals?”36See P. F. Strawson, Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (London: Routledge,

2008), 1-28.37Emphasis added.38On this connection in Adam Smith’s thought, see Fonna Forman-Barzilai, “Sympathy

in Space(s): Adam Smith on Proximity,” Political Theory 33, no. 2 (2005): 189-217.

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legislature, each member represents more people, from larger geographicalconstituencies.

Federal Farmer must therefore be arguing that larger geographical con-stituencies make it more difficult for representatives to acquire the dispositionto sympathize with the people: “a representation must be extremely imper-fect where the representatives are not circumstanced to make the propercommunications to their constituents, and where the constituents in turncannot, with tolerable convenience, make known their wants, circumstances,and opinions, to their representatives[.]” The difficulties of travel associatedwith large geographical constituencies appear to be the circumstances Fed-eral Farmer is referring to in this passage. Larger geographical constituenciesmake communication between representatives and constituents more difficult.

Indeed, given a small legislature, with large constituencies, each represen-tative “can only mix, and be acquainted with a few respectable charactersamong his constituents[.]” The implication being that representatives remainunacquainted with the vast majority of their constituents.

The final piece of the argument I am reconstructing comes from LetterXI (January 10, 1788), where Federal Farmer explains the virtues of rotationin office. In this passage, one can see that Federal Farmer considers physicalproximity to be a necessary condition of sympathy:

Even in point of information. . . the useful information of legisla-tors is not acquired merely in studies in offices. . . they must learnthe actual situation of the people, by being among them. . . . Thusoccasionally to be among the people, is not only necessary to pre-vent or banish the callous habits and self-interested views of officein legislators, but to afford them necessary information, and torender them useful: another valuable end is answered by it, sym-pathy, and the means of communication between them and theirconstituents, is substantially promoted[.]

Notice that Federal Farmer separates considerations of “information,” “sym-pathy,” and “communication.” This at least suggests that he thinks sympa-thy is directly promoted by mixing with the people, rather than indirectlythrough “information” or “communication.” Furthermore, although his com-ments refer to rotation in office, it seems reasonable to equate being “amongthe people” with proximity. Thus proximity promotes sympathy, or the dis-position to sympathize with the people.

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In the New York Ratifying Convention (June 17-July 26), MelanctonSmith picked up where Federal Farmer left off. Besides the passage I quotedat the beginning of the paper, Smith’s most important remarks come laterin the same speech of June 21. He claims that the rich “cannot have thatsympathy with their constituents which is necessary to connect them closelyto their interest.” For Smith, then, sympathy is needed for representatives tobe connected with (understand? feel?) their constituents’ interests.

Smith also explains why the rich cannot be trusted with the public’s fi-nances: “Being in the habit of profuse living, they will be profuse in the publicexpences. They find no difficulty in paying their taxes, and therefore do notfeel public burthens: Besides if they govern, they will enjoy the emolumentsof the government.”

This is an especially pregnant example of the role of sympathy in polit-ical representation. Smith seems to be arguing that the rich will make badrepresentatives, especially with respect to financial matters, because their cir-cumstances prevent them from sharing the feelings of “the middling class.”The rich will be careless with public funds, Smith suggests, because theydon’t know what paying onerous taxes feels like.39

To round out my discussion of Anti-Federalists’ use of sympathy in theratification debate: John Lansing, Jr., Gilbert Livingston, and John Williams,clearly Melancton Smith’s acolytes, use the concept of sympathy to reinforcethe points above, primarily with reference to the Senate. Gilbert Livingstonworries that Senators will reside exclusively in “this Eden” (referring to thefuture District of Columbia) for their entire six year terms and will thereby“lose their sympathy, and contract selfish habits.” John Lansing, Jr. main-tains that Senators need to “return, at certain periods, to their fellow citi-zens” so that “they may. . . revive that sympathy with their feelings, whichpower and an exalted station are too apt to efface from the minds of rulers.”Finally, John Williams observes that the rulers of Great Britain impose heavytaxes on their subjects, and asks what “reason have we to suppose that ourrulers will be more sympathetic, and heap lighter burthens upon their con-stituents than the rulers of other countries?”

Let me conclude this section by suggesting that in the passages aboveAnti-Federalists use sympathy in two slightly different ways. Although they

39Smith’s remaining references to sympathy on June 23 (a reply to Hamilton’s claimthat the poor have less sympathy than the rich) and on June 25 (two references to thesame problem for the Senate) do not add anything substantial.

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all agree that it is desirable for representatives to sympathize with their con-stituents, they give conflicting accounts of how representatives acquire thedisposition to sympathize. One explanation is that the disposition to sym-pathize is acquired through proximity with one’s constituents, as in FederalFarmer’s discussion of rotation in office. The other explanation is that the dis-position to sympathize is the product of shared understanding, which is itselfthe product of a common background. The latter explanation is most clearlydisplayed in the passages about the deficiencies of the rich. The rich do notsympathize with the lower orders because they don’t understand them, andthey don’t understand them because they live under different circumstances.

2

In the introduction, I claimed that Anti-Federalists’ sympathetic theory ofrepresentation equivocates between the conceptions of sympathy advancedby David Hume and Adam Smith. I am now in a position to explain whythis is so. In brief, Anti-Federalists’ proximity explanation for how repre-sentatives acquire the disposition to sympathize with their constituents fitsperfectly with Hume’s “contagion” conception of sympathy, but considerablyless well with Smith’s “projection” conception of sympathy. Anti-Federalists’shared understanding explanation for sympathy can be made to fit both the“contagion” and “projection” conceptions. I reserve my argument for usingSmith’s conception in an idealized sympathetic theory of representation forsection 3.

The relevant portions of Hume’s account of sympathy appear in book 2,part 1, section 11, “Of the Love of Fame,” and book 2, part 2, section 2, “Ofpride and humility; their objects and causes” of A Treatise of Human Nature(1739). At the very outset, Hume suggests that “to sympathize with others”is “to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, howeverdifferent from, or even contrary to our own.”40 If sympathy is receiving bycommunication the inclinations and sentiments of others, Anti-Federalists’general failure to disentangle the conditions under which representatives bestcommunicate with their constituents and the conditions under which repre-sentatives best sympathize with their constituents begins to make a greatdeal more sense. If to sympathize is to receive inclinations and sentiments bycommunication, the conditions should be the same.

40Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 316, emphasis added.

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How, then, are sentiments and inclinations communicated? Hume saysthat “when any affection is infus’d by sympathy, it is at first known only byits effects, and by those external signs in the countenance and conversation,which convey an idea of it.”41 This passage is extremely important for myargument.

Any affection that is successfully communicated by sympathy is trans-ferred from one person to another in a series of steps. First, the personreceiving the affection observes its effects on the other person. The affectionitself is not observed. And the effects caused by the affection are revealedin “external signs” emanating from the other person, their source. Thus inorder to sympathize with another, one must be in a position to observe therelevant “external signs.”

Second, the recipient forms an idea of the affection from the observedexternal signs. Only by observing the effects of the affection can one form anidea of it. Third, the idea formed from the external signs of the affection is“converted into an impression.”42 Fourth and finally, the impression “acquiressuch a degree of force and vivacity, as to become the very passion itself,and produce an equal emotion, as any original affection.”43 Thus affectionsare transferred or “communicated” from one person to another. (One mightquestion whether this really amounts to “communication,” as it is ordinarilyunderstood.)

Hume says that the success of this process depends on the strength ofthe relationship between the recipient and the source of the affection: “Thestronger the relation is betwixt ourselves and any object, the more easily doesthe imagination make the transition, and convey to the related idea the vivac-ity of conception, with which we always form the idea of our own person.”44 Astronger relation between two persons renders the relevant transitions morereliable (affection→external signs→idea→impression→affection).

Hume focuses his discussion on two relations, resemblance and contiguity.The greater the resemblance between two persons, the more easily affectionsare transferred between them. I take it that this is because greater resem-blance between two persons implies greater similarity in their psychologicalconstitutions, which reduces “error” or “loss” in each stage of the transferral

41Ibid., 317.42Ibid.43Ibid.44Ibid., 318.

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process.45 Thus sympathy is easier, or more successful, when two persons arelike each other. Hume notes “that where, beside the general resemblance ofour natures, there is any peculiar similarity in our manners, or character, orcountry, or language, it facilitates the sympathy.”46

The effects on the ease of sympathy from resemblance are enhanced,Hume says, “from other relations, that may accompany it,” e.g., contigu-ity, consanguinity, and acquaintance.47 Contiguity, in particular, is requiredfor the sentiments of others to “communicate themselves entirely.” Proximityimproves the transfer of sentiments because “’tis natural for us to considerwith most attention such as lie contiguous to us.”48 That is, human beingsnaturally pay more attention to whatever is nearby. Presumably, when onepays more attention, one makes a more detailed (and perhaps more accurate)observation of the relevant external signs. A more detailed observation thengenerates a more accurate idea, and so on down the line.

Additionally, proximity could be said to improve the quality of sympathymore directly. Hume says that our observations of others’ “external signs”improve when we pay closer attention, but our observations also improvewhen we are simply closer. From across the room, it can sometimes to bedifficult to distinguish between tears of joy and tears of sorrow, or betweena frown and a grimace. One might say that the complexity of the emotionswe are capable of discerning, at a given time, is positively correlated withproximity. And if complex external signs make it easier to form an idea,or help us form more lively impressions, proximity itself contributes to thesuccess of sympathy.

It is interesting that Hume (at least at this point) speaks of the effect ofproximity on sympathy as though it were exclusively scalar. Clearly Humethinks that getting closer helps convey sentiments from one person to an-other. But it seems to me that the effect of proximity on sympathy ought tobe part scalar, but also part binary. For Hume said earlier that “any affection

45A line from the Broadway musical Hamilton illustrates this point perfectly. Afterthe exposure of Alexander Hamilton’s affair with Maria Reynolds, Angelica SchuylerChurch returned to New York from London to console her sister Eliza Hamilton (neeEliza Schuyler). To Alexander, she sings, “I know my sister like I know my own mind, youwill never find anyone as trusting or as kind. // I love my sister more than anything inthis life, I will choose her happiness over mine every time.”

46Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 318.47Ibid.48Ibid., 341.

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is. . . first known only by its . . . external signs.”49 If the potential recipient ofan affection is so far away that she cannot even observe the the relevant ex-ternal signs, sympathy will be impossible. Sympathy becomes more difficultas the distance between the recipient and the source increases until the pointat which sympathy becomes impossible. This is the point at which obser-vation of the external signs, by whatever means, of the source’s affectionsbecomes physically impossible.

At this point, the connection between Hume’s conception of sympathyand Anti-Federalists’ proximity explanation for how representatives acquirethe disposition to sympathize with their constituents should be far less ob-scure. When consciously or unconsciously, Anti-Federalists have essentiallyborrowed Hume’s conception of sympathy and applied it to their theory ofpolitical representation.

For Anti-Federalists, a good representative is one who sympathizes withher constituents. They claimed, further, that representatives are more likelyto sympathize with their constituents when the legislature is large and (moreto the point) when electoral districts are small. When electoral districts aresmall, representatives will be familiar with a greater proportion of their con-stituents and it will be easier for representatives and constituents to commu-nicate face to face.

Anti-Federalists’ proximity argument for small electoral districts alignsperfectly with Hume’s remarks about the effect of contiguity on sympathy.A representative from a small electoral district is more contiguous (on av-erage) to her constituents than she would have been in a large electoraldistrict. This means that she can be expected to pay closer attention to herconstituents and generate more accurate observations. According to Hume’saccount, these eventually lead to more lively impressions and more vivid pas-sions (i.e. enhanced sympathy). And according to Anti-Federalists, enhancedsympathy should make for better representation.

I think Hume’s “contagion” conception of sympathy can make sense ofAnti-Federalists’ shared understanding explanation for how representatives

49Ibid., 317

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acquire the disposition to sympathize with their constituents, but perhapsless well. Here the relevant relation is resemblance rather than contiguity.

Recall that Anti-Federalists’ class-based argument says that the new U.S.Constitution, with its large electoral districts, will produce a legislature dom-inated by the rich. A legislature dominated by the rich is problematic becausethe wealthy lack sympathy for the lower orders.

The question, when attempting to fit Hume’s conception of sympathy intothe Anti-Federalist argument, is whether resemblance (or the lack thereof) isdoing the work. One might think that the reason the rich lack sympathy forthe lower orders is that they are not like them. In addition to “the generalresemblance of our natures,” Hume mentioned “any peculiar similarity in ourmanners, or character, or country, or language” as sources of likeness.

One might say that the rich fail to sympathize with the poor because therich have different manners, or different characters. Differences in mannersor character would then hamper sympathy’s affection transference process.

But this is not quite what Anti-Federalists argue. They don’t think thatthe rich lack sympathy with the lower orders simply because of differencesbetween the two orders. The problem with the rich is special, not just aspecies of a general problem which occurs when any one class dominates thelegislature.

Anti-Federalists’ argument appears to turn on concerns with perspective,rather than resemblance, or so I argue. The problem with the rich is thattheir unique position in the social hierarchy renders certain features of theworld invisible to them. They miss things that their fellow citizens do notbecause of the position they inhabit.

This point is particularly clear in Anti-Federalist discussions of the Sen-ate. Because senators can be expected to be even richer than their colleaguesin the House (the Senate is smaller), their perspectives are even more dis-torted. And with long terms, Senators’ perspectives tend to drift further andfurther away from their constituents. The background assumption seems tobe that one’s perspective is gradually shaped by one’s circumstances, andtherefore that a certain amount of “perspectival drift” is inevitable.

Furthermore, if resemblance were doing the work in Anti-Federalists’class-based argument, it would be difficult to make sense of their explicitpreference for yeoman representatives. Perhaps one could say that yeomen,or men of the middling sort, resemble their fellow citizens more closely thando the rich. But this seems implausible. If the names of the different socialorders pick out groups of people with different manners and characters, I

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don’t see how the manners of the middling sort are closer to the poor andthe rich than the manners of the rich are to the poor and the middling sort.

There has to be something special about the middling sort (besides thefact that the Anti-Federalists who tend to make this argument are them-selves members of the middling sort). Indeed, Anti-Federalists suggest thatthe “sturdy yeomen” are special because of perspective generated by theirposition in the social order. According to Melancton Smith,

the circumstances in which men are placed in a great measure givea cast to the human character. Those in middling circumstances,have less temptation—they are inclined by habit and the companywith whom they associate, to set bounds to their passions andappetites—if this is not sufficient, the want of means to gratifythem will be a restraint they are obliged to employ their time intheir respective callings—hence the substantial yeomanry of thecountry are more temperate, of better morals and less ambitionthan the great.

So the yeomanry’s capacity to sympathize is not attributable to resemblance,but to circumstances and perspectives. Smith also suggests that the middlingsort are well positioned to attend to the interests of every social order: “theinterest of both the rich and the poor are involved in that of the middlingclass.”

In sum, although one could say that Hume’s “contagion” conception ofsympathy makes sense of Anti-Federalists’ class-based critique of the U.S.Constitution’s small legislature, the two accounts are imperfectly aligned.The rich lack sympathy with the lower orders less because they do not resem-ble them than because their perspectives are deficient. The following sectionshows why Smith’s “projection” conception of sympathy does a better job.

3

Adam Smith’s account of sympathy in the Theory of Moral Sentiments issimpler and (I believe) more plausible than Hume’s. Smith eschews Hume’smulti-step conversion phenomenology. For Smith, when we sympathize, af-fections are not transferred from one person to another. Nor do we form anidea of another person’s affections by reference to “external signs.” Instead,

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we sympathize by “conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situ-ation.”50 We imaginatively project ourselves “into his body, and become insome measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of hissensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is notaltogether unlike them.”51

We get the sensations we attribute to the other person from “the impres-sions of our own senses only. . . which our imaginations copy.”52 In a roughsense, Smith’s account is more plausible than Hume’s because Smith hasa credible story to tell about how we form the ideas we attribute to otherpeople. They are our ideas, the ones that arise when we step into the otherperson’s shoes. For Hume, the operation is a matter of (illicit?) inferencefrom effects; for Smith, of imaginative projection.53

For my purposes, the key difference between the two conceptions of sym-pathy concerns the role of imagination. Imagination, for Hume, guides theassociation of ideas at each stage of the sympathy process. For Smith, imag-ination is the mechanism through which sympathy takes place. Imaginativeprojection is how we sympathize.

This is why Smith can explain sympathy with the dead, while Humecannot. The dead (presumably) do not have sensations, and therefore theeffects of their (nonexistent) sensations do not appear in external signs. Soon Hume’s view, we cannot form ideas to convert into impressions and thensensations. The dead (minus zombies) have nothing for us to catch. Smith,in contrast, has no problem with the dead (or with young children, or withthe mentally ill). We sympathize with the dead by imagining what it wouldbe like to be dead. Of the course the sensations we feel upon sympathizingwith the dead are not the sensations the dead themselves feel (for they feelnothing).

Smith’s “projection” conception of sympathy has some trouble explainingAnti-Federalists’ proximity based arguments for small electoral districts be-

50Smith, TMS, 9.51Ibid.52Ibid.53For the comparison between the two accounts, see F. L. van Holthoon, “Adam Smith

and David Hume: With Sympathy,” Utilitas 5, no. 1 (1993): 35-48, Fleischacker, “Sym-pathy in Hume and Smith: A Contrast, Critique, and Reconstruction,” Darwall, “Empa-thy, Sympathy, Care,” Jon Rick, “Hume’s and Smith’s Partial Sympathies and ImpartialStances,” The Journal of Scottish Philosophy 5, no. 2 (2007): 135-158, John B. Rad-ner, “The Art of Sympathy in Eighteenth-Century British Moral Thought,” Studies inEighteenth-Century Culture (1979): 189-210.

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cause physical distance matters less for Smith than for Hume. Fonna Forman-Barzilai has argued that for Smith, familiarity is a key determinant of sym-pathy, but “familiarity is considerably more layered than mere physical pres-ence.”54 Physical proximity is not a necessary condition for sympathy, onSmith’s view. This is because sympathy works by imagination. Imaginationis not constrained by physical distance the way observation is in Hume.

This does not mean that sympathy is unaffected by physical distance.For Smith, it’s still the case that being nearby can make it easier to stepinto someone else’s shoes. But as Forman-Barzilai notes, physical proximityis “neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for sympathetic response.”55

Physical proximity is neither necessary nor sufficient on Smith’s conceptionbecause the imagination is not spatially constrained. In contrast, physicalproximity is necessary but not sufficient on Hume’s conception because ob-servation is spatially constrained. This is why Hume’s account makes bettersense of Anti-Federalists’ localism.

Smith’s conception of sympathy fares better as an explanation for Anti-Federalists’ class-based objection to the new U.S. Constitutions. Earlier Isuggested that the distinct problem with a legislature dominated by therich is not that the rich do not resemble members of the lower orders. Itis that they are poorly positioned in the social hierarchy and therefore lackimportant perspectival virtues.

The “imaginative projection” account of sympathy provides some tractionhere. Rich people make bad representatives because their imaginations havebeen stunted by their circumstances. They are profligate with public fundsbecause they cannot imagine having difficulty making ends meet. The rich,in short, lack imaginative dexterity.

Regarding imagination as central to sympathy also helps to explain Anti-Federalists’ preference for yeoman representatives. Representatives from themiddling sort have the imaginative dexterity missing in the rich. Those whoare neither rich nor poor are surrounded—within the social structure—bywealth and poverty. It is easier for them to imagine slipping into the lower

54Fonna Forman-Barzilai, Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy: Cosmopolitanismand Moral Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 139.

55Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy, 141.

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orders or rising into the ranks of the great. The middling sort’s unique imag-inative capacities therefore foster sympathy, which is a desideratum of polit-ical representation for Anti-Federalists.

I think Anti-Federalists were really on to something when they arguedthat representatives ought to sympathize with their constituents. I merelyquestion the downstream implications of this premise for their critique of theU.S. Constitution, namely their localism.

It is worthwhile to step back for a moment and consider why Anti-Federalists regarded sympathy with one’s constituents as a desideratum ofrepresentation. Many Anti-Federalists wrote as if, following Thomas Paine,representative government were an unfortunate capitulation to reality:

But as the colony encreases, the public concerns will encrease like-wise, and the distance at which the members may be separated,will render it too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every oc-casion as at first, when their number was small, their habitationsnear, and the public concerns few and trifling. This will point outthe convenience of their consenting to leave the legislative partto be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body,who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which thosehave who appointed them, and who will act in the same manneras the whole body would act were they present.56

Since the whole body of the people cannot assemble under the branches of“some convenient Tree,” representatives should be chosen “who will act in thesame manner as the whole body would act were they present.” Sympathy, itseems to me, is an especially promising mechanism for getting representativesto act as the people would.

If representatives step into their constituents’ shoes, and imagine whatit would be like to be them, they have special access to their interests andintentions. Of course representatives might go through the motions of sym-pathy, but do so poorly, in which case they won’t get an accurate picture oftheir constituents’ concerns. But a well-intentioned representative

56Thomas Paine, Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America (Philadel-phia: R. Bell, 1776), 4-5.

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must, first of all, endeavor, as much as he can, to put himself inthe situation of the other, and to bring home to himself everylittle circumstance of distress which can possibly occur in thesufferer. He must adopt the whole case of his companion with allits minutest incidents; and strive to render as perfect as possible,that imaginary change of situation. . . .57

This seems to me precisely what Anti-Federalists were after. They wantedtheir representatives to take the particularity of their constituents’ circum-stances into account, rather than to reason according to “universal” princi-ples. They worried that without the appropriate orientation, ordinary peoplewould be left behind. These are concerns that echo to this day.

The problem with Anti-Federalists’ extension of this premise is that smallelectoral districts do not guarantee good representation. The size of a con-stituency is only contingently (and I think only weakly) related to the capac-ity of representatives to sympathize well. Among the factors that contributeto a representative’s capacity to sympathize well, physical proximity is prettyfar down the list in order of importance. Considerations of character, expe-rience and motivation are much more critical. First in order of importance iswhat I have called “imaginative dexterity.” Representatives with imaginativedexterity are capable of bringing home to themselves a wider range of theirconstituents’ thoughts and feelings.

Anti-Federalists’ class-based argument against the new U.S. Constitution,as compared to their proximity argument, fits better with Smith’s conceptionof sympathy. Their emphasis on perspective and circumstances at least ap-pears to be knocking on imaginative dexterity’s door. Sturdy yeomen makegood representatives because of their unique position in the social hierar-chy. But we might also say that their unique position in the social hierarchyfosters imaginative dexterity. It is their proximity to wealth and poverty,their exposure to different ways of living, that extends the imagination. Ayeoman makes a better representative because her imagination is richer. Anti-Federalists were on the right track, but they substituted a proxy for imagi-native dexterity for the genuine article. And it is imaginative dexterity thatreally does the work.

57Smith, TMS, 21

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Let me now briefly sketch the idealized sympathetic theory of representa-tion implicit in the discussion above. Assuming that the ideal representa-tive should do what her constituents would have done were they present,58

an ideal representative ought to sympathize with her constituents. An idealrepresentative ought to sympathize with her constituents not by wanderingaround in her district trying to “catch” their thoughts and feelings, but byimaginatively projecting herself into their shoes.

One advantage of the theory is that by sympathizing in this way, the rep-resentative can access the (attributed) thoughts and feelings of constituentsshe has never met. The theory also responds to an unavoidable problem withrepresentation. In the colonial era, for example, representatives were oftengiven instructions by their constituents about how to vote in the legislature.These instructions were invariably mooted by shifting circumstances, leavingrepresentatives in the lurch. Representatives had to decide whether to re-turn home for new instructions or interpret their instructions liberally. Andrepresentatives could be recalled or removed for failures of interpretation.

The same problem arises in contemporary politics. Often representativesare voted into office according to the transitory mood of the population, asin the 2010 mid-term election in the United States, for example. Supportersof President Obama’s health care initiative were replaced en masse by theiropponents. With the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) already on the books,and with President Obama’s veto pen at the ready, what were these repre-sentatives to do? The House of Representatives repeatedly voted to repealthe entire bill, which of course went nowhere with President Obama still inoffice. But is this what they should have done?

The sympathetic theory of representation provides guidance in these kindsof cases. An ideal representative should step into her constituents’ shoes andimagine what they would do given the circumstances. In the colonial era,this would have given representatives a method to interpret their instruc-tions given changed circumstances. The representative asks, “what wouldmy constituents do, how would they have revised their instructions, in thecircumstances as they are now?” In contemporary politics, opponents of theAffordable Care Act could have stepped into their constituents’ shoes andimagined what they would have done given the impossibility of outright ap-

58This is to assume a great deal.

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peal. If President Obama’s opponents sympathized in this way, I doubt theywould have chosen to act as they did.

In the idealized sympathetic theory of representation, sympathy is notmerely a mechanical activity. An ideal representative does not enter into herconstituents’ shoes and unreflectively act as they would have. The sympa-thetic theory of representation leaves space for representatives’ judgment.In fact, judgment is unavoidable, because the representative must somehowreconcile her constituents’ conflicting thoughts and feelings. Understandinghow one’s constituents think and feel does not tell the representative how toact. The theory grants a role to Smith’s impartial spectator. Representativesmight, upon reflection, decide that their constituents thoughts and feelings(obtained through sympathy) are improper. At the very least, however, rep-resentatives who sympathize with their constituents are working with theright materials.

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As promised, I conclude by considering Publius’s use of the concept of sym-pathy in The Federalist (Nos. 35, 52, 55, 57, and 58). Publius does not denythat sympathy plays a desirable role in political representation.

In Federalist No. 35, Publius (Hamilton) responds to the objection that“the house of representatives is not sufficiently numerous for the reception ofall the different classes of citizens. . . and to produce a due sympathy betweenthe representative body and its constituents.” He says that this objection is“made up of nothing but fair sounding words,” and argues that sympathy isnot bounded by class, as claimed by Anti-Federalists. He suggests that me-chanics and manufacturers naturally sympathize with merchants, and smalllandowners and large landowners share common interests (which “may alwaysbe reckoned upon as the surest bond of sympathy”).59 In addition to commoninterests, Publius contends that “chords of sympathy” are the product of theaccountability relationship between representatives and constituents.

59“Will not the landholder know and feel whatever will promote or injure the interestsof landed property? and will he not from his own interest in that species of propertybe sufficiently prone to resist every attempt to prejudice or incumber it? Will not themerchant understand and be disposed to cultivate as far as may be proper the interestsof the mechanic and manufacturing arts to which his commerce is so nearly allied?”

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Thus Publius agrees with Anti-Federalists that sympathy is desirable,but denies Anti-Federalists’ claims about the factors contributing to sympa-thy. Any illusion of fundamental agreement is wiped away when Hamiltonsuggests that “the learned professions. . . truly form no distinct interest insociety; and according to their situation and talents will be indiscriminatelythe objects of the confidence and choice of each other and of other partsof the community.” That is, members of the learned professions make thebest representatives because of their impartiality. This constitutes a sharpcontrast with Anti-Federalist concerns.

In Federalist No. 52, James Madison reiterates Hamilton’s claim that sym-pathy is the product of the accountability relationship, what David Mayhewcalled “the electoral connection”:60 “Frequent elections are unquestionablythe only policy by which this dependence and sympathy can be effectuallysecured.”

Publius (Madison) continues his response to the charge that “the Houseof Representatives. . . will be taken from that class of citizens which will haveleast sympathy with the mass of the people” in Federalist No. 57. His strategyin this essay is to essentially ignore Anti-Federalists’ key claim, that thewealthy are more likely to be elected than those of the lower orders. Instead,he insists that the form of government is republican: that the electors areneither rich nor poor but rather “the great body of the people of the UnitedStates.” Moreover, “the objects of popular choice” include any “citizen whosemerit may recommend him to the esteem and confidence of his country.” Theimplication: if the legislature is dominated by the rich, the people have onlythemselves to blame.

Publius then asks whether a fundamental Anti-Federalist premise, thatsmall electoral districts select better representatives, is “supported by rea-son?” No, he says, unless

five or six thousand citizens are less capable of chusing a fit rep-resentative, or more liable to be corrupted by an unfit one, thanfive or six hundred. Reason, on the contrary assures us, that asin so great a number, a fit representative would be most likely tobe found, so the choice would be less likely to be diverted fromhim, by the intrigues of the ambitious, or the bribes of the rich.61

60David R. Mayhew, Congress : The Electoral Connection, 2nd ed. (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 2004).

61Emphasis added.

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Publius brings this line of defense to its crescendo in Federalist No. 58:

The people can never err more than in supposing that by multi-plying their representatives, beyond a certain limit, they strength-en the barrier against the government of a few. Experience willforever admonish them that on the contrary, after securing a suf-ficient number for the purposes of safety, of local information, andof diffusive sympathy with the whole society, they will counteracttheir own views by every addition to their representatives. Thecountenance of the government may become more democratic;but the soul that animates it will be more oligarchic. The ma-chine will be enlarged, but the fewer and often, the more secretwill be the springs by which its motions are directed.

I want to conclude this paper by briefly stating why I think Publius ismore faithful to Adam Smith’s conception of sympathy than Anti-Federalists.Throughout The Federalist, Publius insists that sympathy between represen-tatives and constituents is desirable. On this point, Federalists and Anti-Federalists agree. But Publius recognizes that the determinants of sympathyextend beyond proximity and shared social background.

He recognizes that the capacity to sympathize well is determined by thequality of the representative, not merely her circumstances. One might evenread Madison’s famous claim (in Federalist No. 10) that under the new U.S.Constitution, “the suffrages of the people. . . will be more likely to centreon men who possess the most attractive merit, and the most diffusive andestablished characters” as suggesting that the extended republic, with largeelectoral districts, will select representatives exemplified by their imaginativedexterity.

Furthermore, Publius contends that the Constitution’s complex structureof incentives helps ensure that representatives are motivated to sympathizewith their constituents. Like Hume, Publius believed that ambitious mendesired fame and glory. But to achieve fame and glory in a republic, Pub-lius reasoned, ambitious men require the confidence of the people. And thebest way to do that, I am suggesting, is for the ambitious to develop theircapacities for sympathy and to exercise them well.

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