Sie sind auf Seite 1von 9

The Classical Theory of Deference

Author(s): J. G. A. Pocock
Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 81, No. 3 (Jun., 1976), pp. 516-523
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1852422 .
Accessed: 17/09/2013 17:19
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 170.210.60.60 on Tue, 17 Sep 2013 17:19:22 PM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Classical TheoryofDeference


J. G. A. POCOCK

A DEFERENTIAL SOCIETY IN THE CLASSICAL-that


is, eighteenth-centuryEnglish
and Amrerican-sense is usually conceived of as consisting of an elite and a
nonelite, in which the nonelite regard the elite, without too much resentment,
as being of a superior status and culture to their own, and consider elite
leadership in political mattersto be something normal and natural. Whether
elite leadership means simply that leaders must come fromthe elite, or, in
addition, that the leadership given on specific issues by members ofthe elite is
normally to be followed-by no means the same thing-is not perfectlyclear.
But this summary of deferenceas an ideal type is intended to suggest that it
contains another ambiguity which renders it both convenient and problematic
as a tool forthe historian. Deference is expected to be spontaneously exhibited
ratherthan enforced. A slave or a serfis floggedinto obedience, not deference,
and the deferentialman is frequentlydepicted as displaying deferenceas part
of his otherwise freepolitical behavior. He defersto his superiors because he
takes their superiorityfor granted, as part of the order of things. It is often
suggested that what makes him do so is the conditioning effectof tradition
and that the deferentialsociety is closely akin to another favoriteconceptual
tool of historical sociologists-the traditional society.
Deference is the product of a conditioned freedom,and those who display it
freelyaccept an inferior,nonelite, or follower role in a society hierarchically
structured.Scholars who employ the concept of a deferentialsociety,on either
side of the Atlantic and of the year i8oo, however, also pay considerable
attention to something less subjective, which Castlereagh characteristically
termed "persuasion in a tangible shape": that is, to the notion of an influence,
reaching from pure deference toward inducement and even coercion, and
including such means of social control as agrarian tenancy and political
patronage, which the elite in the deferential society exercised over their
inferiors.And it is supposed that finallythere occurred-in America during
the I78os or I820s, in Britain during the I 830S or I 860s-a democratic rebellion
This paper, which servesas an introductionto the two followingarticles,was part of a symposiumon
deferencepresentedat the 1974meetingsofthe AmericanHistoricalAssociationin Chicago. Richard W.
Davis' paper, now revisedforpublication,was also read at thatsession.David Spring,whowas notpartof
the Chicago program,wrotehis paper subsequentlyto round out this publishedsymposium.

5i6

This content downloaded from 170.210.60.60 on Tue, 17 Sep 2013 17:19:22 PM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Classical Theoryof Deference

517

against deference and influence alike, a movement toward a world in which


there was no god but equality and Tocqueville was his prophet.
This straw man, if such it be, is woven of a thick and complicated texture,
permittingsome ambiguities and confusions. It is perhaps time to look at a
few ways in which the notion of deference has been and may be applied, not
with any specially destructive intentionstoward its use as an analytical tool
but in the hope of clearing up some of the misunderstandings that may have
attended its use. Clearly, the understandings of British Whigs and American
Federalists need not be the same as those of their twentieth-centuryinterpreters,but the two views are likely to illuminate one another. In seeking to
understand the so-called deferential society, we should start by inquiring
what that society thought deference was.
Deference is an oldish word, whereas the term "deferential society" is a
twentieth-centuryneologism. And though political speakers and writersofthe
eighteenth century knew the word and used it on occasion, they did not
employ it as a key concept or as a means of denoting an essential attributeof
political society. They were acquainted, however, with what may be considered the essential meaning of the term: the voluntary acceptance of a leadership elite by persons not belonging to that elite, but sufficientlyfree as
political actors to render deference not only a voluntary but also a political
act. As clear and simple a description of this effectas any appears in James
Harrington's Oceana.' We are invited to suppose that out of any twentymen
engaged in political decision, six will be of superior capacity to the others.
Harrington's emphasis falls, however, less on the superior capacity of the six
than on the recognition of this capacity by the fourteen. He emphasizes
repeatedly that this will be instant, unforced, and infallible. One would say
that he presents it as rational but forthe difficulty
ofapplying that termto the
recognitionof a higher rationalityby a lower. At all events,there is no need to
restrainor compel the fourteenin their identification,recognition,and choice
of the six. The six will be there, and the fourteenwill findthem. The fourteen
will acknowledge the superior capacity of the few and accord them the
authority of fathers,less in the sense in which Filmer's patriarchs enjoy a
God-given patria potestasthan in that in which Roman senators were called
But the fathersowe theirauthorityless to theirown superiority
patresconscripti.
than to the acknowledgement-it would be proper to call it election-of their
inferiors.Here, surely, is what is meant by deference.
Harrington's fourteenare, no less than the six, active citizens charged with
performingpolitical functions. The firstand most important of these is the
finding and recognition of the six. But since Harrington was a republican
rather than a parliamentarian, he did not incur the wrath of Rousseau by
implying that the fourteen would then go home and leave the six in
plenipotentiaryenjoyment of their mandate. A complex distributionof functions ensued between the six and the fourteen,which to Harrington-indiffer'JohnToland, ed., TheOceanaandOtherWorks
ofJamesHarrington
(London, 1771),44,236-38.

This content downloaded from 170.210.60.60 on Tue, 17 Sep 2013 17:19:22 PM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

J. G. A. Pocock

5I8

ent as he was to separation of powers in the eighteenth-century


sensereduceditselfto thedistinction
between"debate" and "result." It was forthe
six to conceive and initiatepolicies, to articulatethe differences
between
them,to argue the cases forand against each one. When the debate of the
aristocracywas at an end,however,it was forthedemocracy-withoutspeech
or argument,perhaps by the silentroutinesofVenetianballoting-to determine whichofthe policies or courses proposedshould actuallybe adopted.
Harringtonstressesnotonlythatlibertyis at an end whendebate and result
are lodged in the same hands, but actually that the nonelitefourteenare
betterfittedto exercise the final determinationthan the elite six.2 The
superiorcapacitieswhichdistinguishthe six fathersturnout to be capacities
for invention,articulation,foresight,and analysis-the virtuesof theoria.
When it comes to actual decision, somethingelse counts. Perhaps it is
experience,and the fourteenhave moreofit because thereare moreofthem.
relationinsuresit in both
Alternatively,
it is honesty,and the fourteen-six
parties.At all events,thoughthe manyacknowledgethefewto be superiorin
theircapacities,the relationbetweendebate and resultis one of equality.
Deference,then,is perfectly
compatiblewithequality,so long as the latteris
proportionate
equalityin the Aristoteliansense. Indeed, thissortof equality
cannot exist unless qualitativedistinctionsand inequalitiesamong men are
recognized.And ifHarrington's"debate" and "result" be equated withthe
"speaking aristocracy"and "silent democracy"of whichwe hear in sevenNew England,3it becomes apparentthat the "silent democteenth-century
racy" need no more lack political will and power than need the "silent
"
majority.
Harringtonwas writingin thisway because he feltthe need to rehabilitate
aristocracyin the wake of what he saw as the collapse of feudaloligarchy.
When a fewownedthe land and the manyweretheirtenants,the latterwere
subjectto thepoweroftheformer
and lackedpoliticalcapacity.But whenthis
stateof affairscollapsed, and the manyacquired both propertiedindependence and politicalcapacity,therenecessarilyappeared a republicin whichthe
democraticcomponentwas ofvast importance.It was self-evident,
however,
to any republican theoristthat the people in a commonwealthmust be
differentiated
intoan aristocratic
and a democraticcomponent;butaccording
to Harrington'stheoryof deference,theydividenaturally,voluntarily,
and
spontaneously.There is littleneed to legislatethespecial qualificationsdefining an aristocracy.In the six ofsuperiorand recognizedcapability,we detect
the "natural aristocracy"(of so much concernto JohnAdams), whose progressivecollapse fromthe I780s to the 1820S providedAmerican political
culturewithits firstprolongedinternalcrisis.Yet ifa theoryofdeferencewas
coterminouswitha theoryofnaturalaristocracy,
it was a way ofarguingthat
Ibid. 44,236-38,487.
The phraseis Samuel Stone's. See also PerryMiller,TheNewEnglandMind(Bostoni,1961), 452. James
Harringtonwould have said thatifStone allowed the congregationno 'result,"he had no businessusing
the word "democracy."
2
3

This content downloaded from 170.210.60.60 on Tue, 17 Sep 2013 17:19:22 PM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Classical Theoryof Deference

519

no otheraristocracywas possibleor necessary;and it was a way ofwelcoming,legitimating,


and liberatingthe newlyacquiredpoliticalcapacitiesofthe
many. It furnishedthe grounds,we may suspect,on which Senator Barry
Goldwater,centurieslater, has feltable to welcome the extensionof the
franchiseto eighteen-year-olds.
The superiorcapacitiesofthesix willnotconsistofattributesofpersonality
alone. These talentswill also be recognizedthroughoutwardeconomicand
culturalsigns-wealth and birth,leisureand property,liberalityand education. Harringtonwas a gentleman,who thoughtpoliticshad somethingin it
peculiarlysuitedto the geniusofa gentleman,4
and he soughtto reassurehis
class thattheyneed notfearfortheirleadershipstatusin a yeomancommonwealth.But thoughhe was assuringothergentlementhatthe materialfoundations of theirelite status would remain intact,his point was that their
propertyand culturewould be recognizedby thedemos
as partofthesuperior
naturalcapacitieswhichthedemos
also recognized.The linkbetweenpersonal
capacityand materialcircumstance-in Harrington'slanguage,betweenthe
goodsofthemindand thegoodsoffortune5-wasprovidedbytheAristotelian
theoryof leisure. Propertybringsleisure,the opportunity
to turnthe mind
away frompropertyand toward the common good of which it is part.
Harrington'ssix will fairlycertainlyhave morepropertythanthe fourteenmoreleisureand opportunity
to developsuperiorcapacity-and the capacity
forthe limitedsortof leadershipwhich is expressedin debate as compared
withresult.Butwhatkeepsit a limitedleadershipis thefactthatthefourteen
too possessproperty,
and therefore
leisureand the abilityto knowsomething
about the commongood. Their politicalcapacityis notconfinedto recognizing and choosing the six; retainingthe power of result,they retain the
capacityofevaluatingthepolicieswhichthesixhavethecapacityto propose.
We are now in the worldof Charles Sydnor'sgentlemanfreeholders,
the
idealized Virginiaof TheCandidates.6
There the yeomenare certainlydeferential in the sense that theyaccept leadershipby a natural aristocracy.They
recognizeextrapersonalcharacteristics
such as birth,wealth,and culturethe membersof the gentryseem obliged to emphasize theireducation and
theirlibraries-as outwardand visiblesignsofthe superiorpersonalcapacities theyare lookingfor.But the yeomenmust firstfindand evaluate their
superiors.They are presumedcapable not only of knowinga fake natural
aristocratwhen they see one, but also of asking sensible and pertinent
questionsofthe genuinearticle.Deferenceprecludesthemfromthecapacity
forleadership,butnotfroman intelligently
criticalattitudetowardthosewho
possessthatcapacity.It is whollycompatiblewithproportionate
equalityand
public virtue.Indeed, if these thingspresupposepoliticalrelationsbetween
individualsofdiversified
capacity,theydependupon deference,
and deference
4 Toland,
6

Oceana,53.
Ibid.,36, 41-2.
Charles S. Sydnor,Gentlemen
Freeholders:
PoliticalPractices
in Washington's
Virginia(Chapel Hill, 1952).

This content downloaded from 170.210.60.60 on Tue, 17 Sep 2013 17:19:22 PM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

J. G. A. Pocock

520

is no morethan the recognitionof one capacityby another.It mightevenbe


shownby the fewtowardthe many.
Moderns are disposedto think,however,thatifone man has moremoney
than anotherhe has power overhim,or at any rate power that he does not
share with him; and they feel that Harrington'sequation of power with
propertyought to have includedthis perception.Harrington,however,did
notthinkin thisway; he was too exclusively
concernedwithfeudaltenure.He
thoughtthe House of Lords had existedbecause the nobilityhad once been a
feudal baronage. Since that no longerexisted,there could no longerbe a
House of Lords. The politicalrelationsbetweenEnglishmencould only be
thoseobtainingbetweenclassicallyequal citizens,ofwhichthe deferencethat
institutionalized
a natural aristocracywas an importantpart. But several
thingshappened in i66o that he had failedto foresee.While the House of
Lords was restored,feudalauthoritywas not. Yet the House of Lords flourishedfora longtimethereafter.
In consideringtheobvioussocial powerofthe
peerage, historiansmay conclude that the lords had ways of maintaining
social power, and of retainingmen in dependence,which Harringtonhad
failed to consider. But was that necessarilyhow the matterappeared to
contemporaries?

There was widespreadacceptanceof thatpart of the Harringtonianinterpretationwhich stressedthat since the landholdingclasses were no longer
dividedinto barons and theirdependentvassals or retainers,England must
nowbe governedby a schemeofcivicrelationsobtainingamongitsindependent proprietors.The latter,accordingto classical and constitutionaltheory,
mustbe dividedintoaristocraticand democraticcomponents,and therenow
existeda hereditary
but no longerfeudalupperhouse to play the aristocratic
role. Harringtonand otherradicals ofthe Interregnum
thoughtit important
to insure that the feudal nobilitywas not replaced by any other kind of
"standingaristocracy,"'whetherofhereditary
or ofelectsaints.
officeholders
The RestorationHouse of Lords, however,claimed no hereditarymonopoly
of any significantpoliticalfunction;the lords had instead hereditarytitles,
hereditary
rightsofsummonsto parliament,and lands inheritedindeed,but
inheritedin much the same way as by any othergentleman.Edmund Burke,
like most thinkersof the eighteenthcentury,argued that in a polity of
role in
the lords' hereditarydignityand hereditary
independentproprietors,
parliamentrenderedthemindependentin a veryspecial degree.This is the
pointofhis famousand not reallysycophanticletterto Richmond,in which
he says thatthe hereditarypeers are like greattreesand the new men-like
Burkehimself-thenone too hardyannuals thatbloom in theirshelter.8All
men are independent,Burkeis saying,and the hereditarily
independentare
not different
fromthe restof us. They are thoseanimalswho are moreequal
than others.
7
8

(London, 1656).
ofa Free-State
Forexample,see MarchmontNedham, The Excellencie
ofEdmundBurke(Cambridgeand Chicago, 1960), II, 377.
Lucy S. Sutherland,ed., The Correspondence

This content downloaded from 170.210.60.60 on Tue, 17 Sep 2013 17:19:22 PM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Classical Theoryof Deference

521

The theory of aristocracy in eighteenth-centuryEngland rested upon the


assertion that a hereditaryaristocracy, so long as it did not reduce all others
to dependence, was perfectlycapable of acting as a natural aristocracy. The
House of Lords could be praised for possessing the virtues of such an aristocracy; we read this as late as I867, in Coventry Patmore's informativeif
nauseating poem about "the year of the great crime/When the false English
nobles and their Jew,/By God demented, slew/The Trust they stood twice
pledged to keep fromwrong."9 Patmore ascribed to the nobility before their
apostasy such things as dignity,leisure, sprezzatura,the unbought grace of life,
and the Aristotelian virtues generally, and indicated that a class endowed
with these virtues had incomprehensibly renounced a political leadership
which might still have been rewarded with deference had they continued to
affirmit. But while Harrington's natural aristocracyreceived deferencewithin
a political process, in Hanoverian England deferenceoperated as oftenas not
outside electoral procedures and even in such a way as to render them
unnecessary. If deference was, then, a concept so highlycivic as to be quasirepublican, what was its theoretical role in an increasingly oligarchical
society,where the political activityof the lesser proprietorstended forat least
two generations to be progressivelyreduced?
There was always an alternative,in both theory and practice, to deference
as the voluntaryrespect which one kind of political capacity paid to another.
This alternative was the influence or patronage-possible only in a world of
office-which governmentmightexercise over society, or patrons over clients.
Most historians would agree that this had a great deal to do with the survival
of the peerage in a shape which Harrington had failed to predict, and those
who wish to reconcile the "crisis ofthe aristocracy," culminating in I640, with
its spectacular revival in the century beginning about i66o, seem disposed to
stress that members of the nobility growing up under the restored Stuarts
were involved in governmentto the point where they mightwell have become
an officialaristocracyratherthan a class ofparliamentary magnates.'0 But the
restoration of the House of Lords was part of the restoration of the parliamentary constitution, and the rhetoric of that restoration stressed the lords'
role as a pouvoirintermediaire,
a "screen or bank," as the phrase ran in English,
pointing toward their role as the hereditarynatural aristocracy of the landowning and propertied nation. Afteri688 and again after1714, the peerage did
develop into a class of parliamentary magnates-or a dominant component of
that class-but at the same time it becomes less and less necessary to
distinguish between the influence which peers exercised by reason of their
territorial holdings, the influence which they exerted over parliamentary
elections and electorates, and the influence which they possessed because of
their activity in government,office,and departments of state. If from one
point of view England seemed a vast Country, composed of independent
9CoventryPatmore,Poems: vol IV: The UnknownEros (London, 1879), 56.
10JohnR. Western,Monarchyand Revolution:The English State in the 168os (London, 1972).

This content downloaded from 170.210.60.60 on Tue, 17 Sep 2013 17:19:22 PM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

522

3. G. A. Pocock

proprietors of various sorts of freehold, there was another from which it


appeared a vast and dispersed Court, in which everyone constantly sought
patronage fromthose in positions to give it.
Here is one of the fundamental ambiguities of our subject, that between
"deference" and "influence." No doubt there was a deference proper to the
relations between client and patron: the sort of deference which Burke
displayed toward Richmond, or Hutchinson toward Hillsborough," or Chatham-for that matter-toward George III. But in these three cases (and
many others), the client was deeply concerned to maintain his independence.
Deference was not merely his means of inducing the patron to grant what he
had to offer,but also the means of reminding the patron that it was not his
business to reduce the client to dependence in the sense of servility,but to
treat him in a way which acknowledged the independence and self-respectof
both parties. The technical term forthis was "affability." Only a great man
could have affable manners. It was a failureof tonto ascribe them to one not of
superior station, but a patron who failed in affabilitytoward Jonathan Swift
or Samuel Johnson was likely to carry scar tissue to remind him that his
station had its duties.
There were those who realized that the patron-client relationship, in the
formit took when the latterwas a man of honor and independence, had much
in common with the relationship between lord and vassal, and this doubtless
contributed to the idealization of feudal society observable toward the end of
the eighteenthcentury. But once it was admitted-it was sometimes deniedthat the lord had been able to oblige and compel the vassal to followhim, then
it was no less certain to the Whig mind that eighteenth-centuryBritain was a
postfeudal society, and that deferenceand influence were equally techniques
of social control necessary because society was in such a state. Neither could
operate, or would be necessary, except among independent men. But it
seemed abundantly clear to theoriststhat deferencecould not corrupt men or
reduce them to servility,because in the last analysis it was concerned with
what Harrington had called "the goods ofthe mind. " Conversely, influencein
the sense of patronage could corrupt, because it was concerned with persuasion in a tangible shape, with the material and social rewards which
Harrington had ranked among "the goods offortune." There were thus moral
tensions between deference and influence,which it was the business of social
morality, in the age of great expectations, to tryto overcome; but to go any
further in this direction would be to enter that fascinating and difficult
territorywhere the two conceptions interpenetrate.
Given that in the half-centuryor longer beginning about I780 there occurred in Britain and America extensive reorganization of both electoral
institutionsand electoral behavior, which can be illuminated by applying the
concept of deference to them, the model constructed here, by extrapolation
from Whig political perceptions, suggests that in Britain the continued and
" BernardBailyn,The OrdealofThomasHutchinson
(Cambridge,Mass., 1974).

This content downloaded from 170.210.60.60 on Tue, 17 Sep 2013 17:19:22 PM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Classical Theoryof Deference

523

massive importance of the peerage was explained and legitimized by the


contention that a natural aristocracy, expecting deference, and a hereditary
aristocracy, exertinginfluence,were not mutually exclusive but could, within
limits,be identical. In America, however,the relative unimportance of hereditary station and political patronage meant that political elites, where they
existed, were, above all in the postindependence era, cast more exclusively in
the role of natural aristocracy and compelled to rely upon the expectation of
deference to the exclusion of any other means of maintaining their status.
Both societies were postfeudal, but one had been directlymodified by Whig
parliamentarism in ways that the other had not. This explains why American
political thought soon became and long remained preoccupied with acclaiming or deploring the failureof natural aristocracy,and the Federalists with the
role of aristocrats strugglingto understand the failure of the deference due
them. Likewise, it dramatizes, if it does not fully explain, the fact that
America preceded Britain in experiencing the rise of equality in a revolutionary, Tocquevillian sense in which established elite characteristics were considered irrelevantto claiming political leadership.
Richard W. Davis examines how far Whig parliamentary reformcan be
explained as an attempt to enlarge deference at the expense of influence,by
increasing the independent at the expense ofthe dependent electorates, and in
what sense, if any, the term deference itselfis useful as a description of the
ways in which independent electorates actually behaved. It would be an
ironical conclusion if we found that democratization in Britain was, even
initially,a successful experimentin the perpetuation of deference,since it was
in America that the rise of democratic machine-politics led to the assumption
by influence and patronage of an importance they had never had before and
cannot be said to have lost since. In this respect, new democrat was but old
Whig writ large, and it would be strange to find that our two societies had
exchanged the roles assigned them by the eighteenth-centuryantithesis.
Recent work by several historians of America has drawn attention to the
Federalist perception of a democratic assault upon classical education as part
of the overthrowof deferenceand virtue.'2In Britain, classical education was
brilliantly revived by radical Tories like the Arnold family as part of a not
unsuccessful attempt to bring a Coleridgean meritocracyinto being to redress
the balance upset by the decay of the propertied aristocracy. There were
utopian dimensions to this experiment, as the younger Arnolds discoveredMatthew by writing about barbarians, philistines, and populace, Thomas
junior by emigratingto seek deferenceas a clerical leader in such unpromising
places as New Zealand and Tasmania. But in Britain the creation of a
mandarinate proceeded, in however un-utopian a form. Perhaps this inquiry
into deference should conclude by asking at what points an advanced education became a positive disadvantage in the pursuit of elective office. And
perhaps part of the answer would be that in Britain it has not altogether
happened, even yet.
12

For example,see Linda K. Kerber,Federalists


irnDissent(Ithaca, 1970).

This content downloaded from 170.210.60.60 on Tue, 17 Sep 2013 17:19:22 PM


All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen