One of the circumstances that make it tempting to exaggerate the ubiquity of the republican impulse in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century politics is that anyone opposed to the institution of monarchy became a republican by definition. In Europe, monarchy itself remained a divisive issue, but it was a dead issue in the United States after 1783. In that limited sense, republicanism really was a universal creed, at least for Americans. But we knew that long ago. If the "republican synthesis" can claim to advance our understanding of the past, it is only because it distinguishes republicanism from liberalism, demonstrates its continuing appeal, and thus refutes the hypothesis of liberal consensus. Unfortunately many of the most celebrated republicans in Anglo-American history, so called because of their hatred of monarchy, cannot be seen as republicans in any other sense of the term.

Take the case of Tom Paine, a "republican" if there ever was one in his vigorous attack on the "baleful institution" of monarchy. Apart from this, however, there is very little in Paine's thought that would tie him to the civic tradition. He was untroubled by the question of representation that troubled so many Antifederalists in the I780s. Opponents of the new Constitution argued that republican government could not flourish in a large nation in which citizens, instead of directly governing themselves, would have to settle for vicarious participation through their representatives. The specialization of political functions was no more acceptable to republicans than the specialization of military functions. Both illustrated the dangers of the division of labor, which undermined self-sufficiency and made men passive and dependent. These concerns in turn underlay the fear that geographical expansion would destroy republican virtue.

Paine did not bother to answer these objections. He simply asserted, without argument, that "by ingrafting representation upon democracy, we arrive at a system of government capable of embracing and confederating all the various interests and every extent of territory and population." He objected neither to the replacement of direct participation by representation nor to men's increasing absorption in commercial pursuits, which drew them away from their civic duties, according to repub

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