Legal Commentary

I have always wondered why the founding generation never really looked to the Republic of Venice as a model for republican government.  To be sure, America was just in the offing as Venice suffered its coup de grace at the hands of Napoleon.  Venice's 18th century history was marked by Sybaritic decline in the form of Carnevale and the Grand Tour -- a kind of Las Vegas for wealthy English and continental gentlemen.

Still, many of the founders were quite cultivated, and it seems strange that they would have bought into Napoleon's obnoxiously prudish and self-congratulatory views about an ancient civilization with an extremely distinguished republican history.  For centuries, Venice was the closest thing to a pure republic since pre-Caesarean Rome, and certainly by far the most successful and enduring of the late medieval/early modern republics (at points its voting systems were almost preciously democratic).  But I haven't located any love for Venice.  I am not a historian and haven't studied the issue thoroughly, but I've largely found the opposite.  

For purposes of this post, I'll limit discussion to what can be found about Venice in the Federalist.  Obviously that is not the only relevant source in this kind of discussion, but I very much hope that readers will point to additional documents and references involving the early American understanding and appreciation (or not) of Venice.

In the Federalist, one sees two kinds of views about Venice, which are quite different but both negative.  There is, first, a critique of Venice as the prototypical decadent oligarchy -- indeed, as luridly decadent because oligarchical.  Second, there is a view of Venice as essentially ungovernable because overly or too commitedly democratic. 

In the first category, consider Federalist 6, where Hamilton offers Venice as an example of a republic that was beguiled by the love of lucre and rightly put down by the League of Cambrai in the 16th century (good grief).  Similarly, in Federalist 39, Madison describes Venice as a kind of ersatz republic ?where absolute power over the great body of the people is exercised, in the most absolute manner, by a small body of hereditary nobles.?  Madison contrasts this state of affairs with an authentic republic, in which power is derived ?from the great body of the society.? 

Contrast that ahistorically Napoleonic position with Federalist 48, which is, in my view, a much truer and more sophisticated sort of critique.  There Madison is describing the checking powers that one branch ought to have over the others -- that the branches ought not be strictly separated.  Madison is nervous about the despotism that a purely majoritarian system of government might portend.  He says,

?One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one.  Let those who doubt it, turn their eyes on the Republic of Venice . . . . an ELECTIVE DESPOTISM was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.?

While I think this is a better angle on some of the problems Venice encountered in its republic history, I am still surprised that the overall picture of Venice which emerges is so unqualified in its condemnation.  And once the 19th century got rolling, Venice's stock seems to have declined even more in American eyes: I once tried (unsuccessfully) to read James Fenimore Cooper's "The Bravo" and thought it ridiculous and overblown, the product of a kind of prideful, ignorant Americanism.

I hope readers will weigh in with data about how Venice was viewed by the founding generation.