John G A Pocock - The classical theory of defference.pdf

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1/9

The Classical Theory of Deference

Author(s): J. G. A. PocockSource: The American Historical Review, Vol. 81, No. 3 (Jun., 1976), pp. 516-523Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1852422 .

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2/9

The Classical Theory fDeference

J. G. A. POCOCK

A

DEFERENTIAL SOCIETY IN THE CLASSICAL-that is, eighteenth-century

nglish

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 matters to be something normal and natural.

Whether

elite

leadership means simply that leaders must come from the

elite, or, in

addition, that the leadership given on specific ssues by members

of the elite is

normally to be followed-by no means the same thing-is not perfectly

lear.

But this summary of deference as an ideal type is intended to suggest

that

it

contains another ambiguity which renders t both convenient and problematic

as

a tool for he historian. Deference is expected to be spontaneously

exhibited

rather than enforced. A slave or a serf s flogged nto obedience, not deference,

and

the deferentialman is frequently epicted as displaying deference s part

of

his

otherwise freepolitical behavior. He defersto his superiors

because he

takes their

superiority for 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 deferential ociety is closely akin to another favorite onceptual

tool

of historical sociologists-the traditional society.

Deference is the product of a conditioned freedom, nd thosewho display it

freely ccept an inferior,nonelite, or follower role in a society hierarchically

structured.

Scholars who employ the concept of a deferential ociety,

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 thenotion 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 finally there occurred-in

America

during

the

I78os

or

I820s,

in

Britain

during

the I 830S

or

I860s-a democratic

rebellion

This

paper,

which

serves s

an introduction

o the two

following rticles,

was

part

of a

symposium

n

deference

resented

t

the

1974meetings

fthe American

HistoricalAssociation

n

Chicago.

Richard

W.

Davis' paper,

now

revised

or

ublication,was also read at that ession.David Spring,

who was

not

part

of

the

Chicago program,wrote

his

paper subsequently o round

out this

published ymposium.

5i6


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3/9

The Classical Theory f 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,

permitting ome 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 ntentions toward 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-centurynter-

preters, 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-century eologism. And though political speakers

and writers f the

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 attribute of

political society. They

were

acquainted, however,

with

what

may

be

consid-

ered the

essential meaning of the term: the voluntary acceptance

of a

lead-

ership elite by persons not belonging to that elite, but sufficiently

ree

as

political actors to render deference not only a voluntary but also

a

political

act. As clear and simple a description of this effect s any appears inJames

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, ess 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 t

as rational

but for he difficultyf applying

that term

to the

recognitionof a higher rationalityby a lower. At all events,there s no need to

restrainor compel the fourteen n their dentification, ecognition, nd 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, ess in the sense in which Filmer's patriarchs enjoy

a

God-given patria potestas

han

in

that

in

which Roman

senators

were called

patres onscripti.

ut

the fathers

we

their authority ess to their

own

superiority

than to the

acknowledgement-it would be proper

to call

it

election-of

their

inferiors.Here, surely, s what is meant by deference.

Harrington's fourteen re, no less than the six, active citizens charged

with

performingpolitical functions. The first nd 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

plenipotentiary enjoyment of their mandate. A complex distribution

of func-

tions ensued

between the six and the fourteen,which to Harrington-indiffer-

'John Toland, ed., TheOceana ndOtherWorksf ames arringtonLondon, 1771), 4, 236-38.




4/9

5I8 J. G. A. Pocock

ent as he was to separation

of

powers

in

the

eighteenth-centuryense-

reduced tself o the distinction etween debate and result.

t

was

for

he

six to conceive and initiate

policies, to articulate

he differences etween

them, o argue the cases for nd againsteach one. When thedebate ofthe

aristocracy as at an end, however,t was

for he

democracy-without peech

or argument, erhaps by the silentroutines

f Venetian

balloting-to deter-

mine which of the policies or courses proposed should actually

be

adopted.

Harrington tressesnot onlythat ibertys at an end when

debate

and result

are lodged in the same hands, but actually that the

nonelitefourteen

re

betterfitted o exercise the final determination han

the elite

six.2

The

superior apacitieswhichdistinguishhesix fathersurn ut

to be

capacities

for invention, rticulation, oresight, nd analysis-the virtues

of

theoria.

When it comes to actual decision, something lse counts. Perhaps it is

experience, nd the fourteen ave moreof t because there

re moreofthem.

Alternatively,t is honesty, nd the fourteen-six

elation nsures

t

in

both

parties.At all events, hough he manyacknowledge hefew o

be

superior

n

their

capacities,the relationbetweendebate and result

s

one

of

equality.

Deference, hen, s perfectlyompatiblewith quality, o long as the atter

s

proportionatequality n the Aristotelian ense. Indeed, this ortof equality

cannot exist unless qualitativedistinctions nd inequalities mong men

are

recognized.And if Harrington's debate and result be equated withthe

speaking aristocracy nd silent democracy of which

we hear in

seven-

teenth-century

ew

England,3 t becomes apparentthat the

silent democ-

racy need no more lack political will and power than need the silent

majority.

Harringtonwas writingn thisway because he felt he

need

to rehabilitate

aristocracy

n

the wake of what he saw as the collapse of feudal oligarchy.

When a few wned the and and the manyweretheir enants, he atterwere

subject

o

the

powerof heformernd lackedpolitical apacity.But

when his

stateofaffairs ollapsed, and the many cquired both propertiedndepend-

ence

andpolitical apacity, herenecessarily ppeareda republic

n

which he

democratic

omponent

was of

vast mportance.

t was

self-evident,owever,

to

any republican theorist hat the people

in

a commonwealthmust be

differentiatednto n aristocraticnd a democratic omponent; ut according

to

Harrington's heory f deference, heydivide naturally, oluntarily,nd

spontaneously. here s little eed to legislate he special qualifications

efin-

ing

an

aristocracy.n the six of uperior nd recognized apability,we detect

the

natural

aristocracy of so much concern o JohnAdams), whose pro-

gressive ollapse from he

I780s

to the 1820S providedAmerican political

culturewith ts first rolonged nternal risis.Yet if theory fdeference as

coterminous ith theory f natural ristocracy,t was a way of rguing hat

2

Ibid.

44,236-38, 87.

3 The phrase

s Samuel Stone's. See also PerryMiller,The

New

England

Mind

Bostoni,961),

452.

James

Harrington ould have said that f

Stone allowed the congregation

o

'result,

he had no

business

using

the word

democracy.




5/9

The

Classical Theory f

Deference

519

no

other

ristocracywas possible

or

necessary; nd it was a way

of

welcom-

ing,

egitimating,nd liberating he

newly

cquiredpolitical

apacitiesof he

many. It

furnished he

grounds,we may

suspect,on which

Senator

Barry

Goldwater,centuries ater,has felt able to welcome the extensionof the

franchise o

eighteen-year-olds.

The superior

apacitiesof he six

will notconsist f

ttributes f

personality

alone. These

talents

will

also

be

recognized

hrough utward conomic

nd

cultural

igns-wealth and birth,

eisure nd

property,iberalitynd educa-

tion.Harringtonwas a

gentleman,who

thought olitics

had

something

n

it

peculiarly

uitedto thegeniusofa

gentleman,4nd

he

sought o reassurehis

class

thatthey

need notfearfor heir

eadership tatus n

a

yeoman ommon-

wealth. But

thoughhe

was assuring ther

gentlemenhat the

material oun-

dationsof theirelite status would remain ntact,his point was thattheir

property nd

culture

would be recognized y

thedemoss partof

he superior

natural

apacitieswhich hedemos

lso

recognized.

he link

between

ersonal

capacity nd

material

ircumstance-in

Harrington'sanguage,

between he

goods

of he

mind nd the

goodsof

fortune5-was rovided

y

the

Aristotelian

theory

f

leisure.

Property rings eisure, he

opportunity

o turn he mind

away

from

property nd

toward the

common good

of

which it is

part.

Harrington's ix will

fairlyertainly ave more

property

han the

fourteen-

more eisure nd opportunityodevelop uperior apacity-and thecapacity

for he

limited ortof

eadershipwhich

s expressed n debate

as compared

with

result.

But whatkeeps t a

limited

eadership s thefact hat

hefourteen

too

possessproperty,nd

therefore

eisure nd

the

ability o know

omething

about the

commongood.

Theirpolitical

apacity s not

confinedo recogniz-

ing and

choosing the

six;

retaining he power of

result, theyretain the

capacity f

valuating hepolicies

which hesix have the

capacity

o propose.

We are now

in the

world ofCharles

Sydnor's

gentleman reeholders,

he

idealized Virginia

f TheCandidates.6

here the

yeomen

re

certainly

eferen-

tial in thesense thatthey ccept leadershipby a naturalaristocracy. hey

recognize

xtrapersonal

haracteristicsuch

as birth,wealth,

nd culture-

the

members

f the

gentry

eem

obliged to

emphasize

their ducation and

their

ibraries-as

outward nd

visible igns

of the

superior ersonalcapaci-

ties

they

re

looking

for.

But the

yeomen

must

first ind

nd

evaluate

their

superiors.

They

are

presumed

capable not onlyof

knowing

fake

natural

aristocratwhen

theysee

one, but also of

asking sensible and

pertinent

questions

f

thegenuine

rticle.

Deference recludes

hemfrom he

capacity

for

eadership,

utnot

from n

intelligentlyritical ttitude

oward

hose

who

possessthat apacity. t iswholly

ompatiblewith

roportionate

quality nd

public

virtue.

ndeed,

if

these

things

presupposepoliticalrelationsbetween

individuals f

diversified

apacity,

hey

ependupondeference,

nd deference

4

Toland, Oceana, 3.

Ibid.,36, 1-2.

6

Charles S.

Sydnor,Gentlemen

reeholders:olitical

racticesn

Washington's

irginiaChapel

Hill,

1952).




6/9

520

J.

G.

A.

Pocock

is no morethan the

recognition f one capacityby another. t might venbe

shownby the few owardthe

many.

Moderns are

disposed to

think, owever, hat

f

one

man

has moremoney

than anotherhe has poweroverhim,or at anyratepowerthathe does not

share

with him; and theyfeel that Harrington's quation of power

with

property ught to have

included this perception.Harrington, owever, id

not

think

n

thisway; he was

too exclusivelyoncernedwithfeudal enure.He

thought he House of Lords

had existedbecause the nobility ad

once

been

a

feudal

baronage. Since that no

longer xisted,there could no longer

be

a

House of Lords. The political

relationsbetweenEnglishmen ould only be

thoseobtaining etween

lassically qual citizens, fwhich he

deference hat

institutionalized natural aristocracywas an important art. But

several

thingshappened in i66o thathe had failed to foresee.While theHouse of

Lords was restored, eudal

authority as not. Yet the House of Lordsflour-

ishedfor longtime hereafter.

n considering he obvious ocial powerof he

peerage, historiansmay

conclude that the lords had ways

of

maintaining

social power, and of retaining

men in dependence,which Harringtonhad

failed

to consider.

But was that necessarilyhow the matterappeared to

contemporaries?

There was widespread cceptance of that part of the Harringtonian

nter-

pretationwhich stressed hatsince the landholding lasses wereno longer

divided nto barons and their

dependentvassals or retainers, nglandmust

now be

governed ya scheme f

civicrelations btaining mong ts

ndepend-

entproprietors. he latter,

ccording o classical and constitutional

heory,

must

be

divided

nto ristocraticnd democratic omponents, nd there

now

existed

hereditary ut no longer eudalupperhouse to play

the aristocratic

role. Harrington nd other

radicals of the nterregnumhought t

important

to insure

that the

feudalnobilitywas

not

replaced by any

other kind of

standing ristocracy, 'whether

f hereditaryfficeholders

r of lect

aints.

The RestorationHouse ofLords, however, laimedno hereditarymonopoly

of

any significant olitical

function; he

lords

had instead hereditary

itles,

hereditary ights

f

summons o

parliament,

nd lands inherited

ndeed,

but

inheritedn much the same

way as by any other entleman. dmundBurke,

like

most thinkers f the eighteenth entury, rgued that in a

polity

of

independent roprietors,

he

lords'

hereditary ignity

nd

hereditary

ole n

parliament endered hem

ndependent n a very pecial degree.

This

is

the

point

of his

famous nd notreally ycophantic etter o Richmond,

n

which

he says thatthehereditaryeers are like greattreesand thenew men-like

Burkehimself-the

none too

hardy

nnuals that bloom

in

their helter.8

ll

men

are

independent,

urke

s

saying, nd the hereditarilyndependent

re

not

differentrom he restofus. They are those nimalswho are more

equal

than others.

7

Forexample, eeMarchmontNedham,

TheExcellencief

Free-State

London,

1656).

8

Lucy S. Sutherland, d., The Correspondence

fEdmund urke

Cambridge nd Chicago, 1960), II, 377.




7/9

The Classical

Theory f Deference

521

The theory of

aristocracy in

eighteenth-century

ngland

rested

upon

the

assertion that a

hereditaryaristocracy, so

long as

it did not reduce all

others

to

dependence, was

perfectly

apable of acting as

a natural

aristocracy. The

House of Lords could be praised for possessing the virtues of such an aris-

tocracy;

we read this

as

late

as I867,

in

Coventry

Patmore's

informative

f

nauseating poem

about the year of the

great

crime/When the false English

nobles

and theirJew,/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, eisure,

sprezzatura,

he

unboughtgrace

of

ife,

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

affirmt. But whileHarrington's natural aristocracy received deferencewithin

a

political process,

in

Hanoverian England deference

operated as often s

not

outside

electoral

procedures and even

in such a way

as

to render them

unnecessary.

If

deference

was, then, a

concept

so

highly

civic

as to be

quasi-

republican, what was its

theoretical role in an

increasingly

oligarchical

society,

where

the

political activity f the lesser

proprietors

ended for t

least

two

generations to

be

progressivelyreduced?

There was always an

alternative, n

both theory and practice,

to deference

as the voluntaryrespect which one kindof political capacity paid to another.

This

alternative was the

influence or

patronage-possible only

in a world of

office-which

government

might exercise 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 of the

aristocracy, culminating

n

I640, with

its

spectacular revival in the

centurybeginning

about i66o, seem

disposed to

stress

that

members of the nobility

growing up

under the restored Stuarts

were involved in

government o the point

where they

mightwell have become

an official ristocracy rather than a class ofparliamentary magnates.'0 But the

restoration of the

House of

Lords was part of the

restorationof the

parlia-

mentaryconstitution, and the

rhetoric of

that restoration

stressed the lords'

role as

a pouvoir

ntermediaire,

screen or

bank, as the phrase

ran in

English,

pointing

toward

their role as

the hereditary natural

aristocracy

of

the

land-

owning

and propertied nation.

After 688

and again after 714, 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

9

Coventry atmore, oems:vol V: The Unknown

ros

(London,

1879),

56.

10JohnR. Western,Monarchy nd

Revolution:The English

State n the168os

(London,

1972).




8/9

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 from

those

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

Chat-

ham-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, ut

also the means of

remindingthe patron

that it

was not his

business to reduce

the client

to dependence in

the sense of

servility, ut to

treat him in a way which acknowledged the independence and self-respect f

both parties. The

technical

term for

this was affability.

Only

a

great

man

could

have

affable

manners. It was a

failureofton o ascribe

them

to one not of

superior

station, but a

patron who

failed

in

affability oward 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

form

t

took when

the latterwas a man

of honorand

independence, had much

in common with the relationshipbetween lord and vassal, and this doubtless

contributed to

the idealization

of

feudal society

observable toward

the

end of

the

eighteenth

entury. But once it was

admitted-it was sometimes

denied-

that

the

lord had been

able to oblige

and compel

the vassal to follow

him,

then

it was no

less certain

to the Whig mind

that

eighteenth-century

ritain 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

of the mind.

Conversely, nfluence

n

the

sense of

patronage could corrupt,

because it was

concerned

with per-

suasion

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,

n

the age

of great

expectations, to

try to overcome; but

to go

any

further n

this direction

would be to enter

that

fascinating and difficult

territory

where

the two

conceptions

interpenetrate.

Given

that in

the

half-century r longer

beginning about I780 there

oc-

curred in

Britain

and

America

extensive reorganization of

both electoral

institutions

nd

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

Bernard

Bailyn,The

Ordeal f

Thomas

utchinsonCambridge,Mass.,

1974).




9/9

The Classical

Theory f Deference

523

massive

importance

of the

peerage

was

explained

and

legitimized by the

contention that a natural

aristocracy, expecting deference,

and

a

hereditary

aristocracy, exerting nfluence,were not mutually exclusive

but could,

within

limits,be identical. In America, however,therelative unimportanceofheredi-

tary station

and political patronage meant that political

elites,

where

they

existed,

were, above all in the postindependence era, cast

more exclusively n

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 directly modified by Whig

parliamentarismin

ways that the other had not. This

explains why American

political

thought soon became and long remained preoccupied with acclaim-

ing or

deploring

the

failure

of

natural

aristocracy, and

the Federalists with

the

role of aristocrats struggling to 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

revolution-

ary, Tocquevillian

sense

in

which established elite characteristics

were con-

sidered

irrelevantto claiming political leadership.

Richard W.

Davis examines how far Whig

parliamentary reform

can be

explained as

an attempt to

enlarge deference at the expense of influence,by

increasing the independent at the

expense of the dependent electorates,and

in

what sense, if any, the termdeference itself s 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,

successful experiment n the perpetuation of

deference,

ince it was

in

America that the rise of

democratic machine-politics ed

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-century ntithesis.

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 deference nd virtue.'2 n Britain,

classical education

was

brilliantly

revived by radical

Tories like the Arnold family as part of a not

unsuccessful attempt to bring a Coleridgean meritocracy nto

being

to redress

the

balance

upset by

the

decay of the propertied

aristocracy.

There

were

utopian

dimensions to this experiment, as the younger

Arnolds discovered-

Matthew

by writing about

barbarians, philistines,

and

populace,

Thomas

junior by

emigrating

o

seek deference s 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

educa-

tion

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, ee

Linda K. Kerber,

Federalistsrn

issentIthaca, 1970).

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