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269
among the unregenerate because I fail even to perceive the existence of
the problem that troubles Mr. Perry, who seeks a reaffirmation of the
"American Tradition" to put an end to the "doubt and disillusionment"
of the past three decades. I can't fo.rget that earnest men complained
about "declension" before the end of the Seventeenth Century. Fisher
Ames, Hawthorne, and all the Adamses testify that doubt and di sillu–
sionment were always essential
ingredient~
of American thought. And 1
simply cannot grasp a conception of "Americanism' that rests on the
notion that "a social group constitutes a nation insofar as its members
are of one mind."
Quest for a tradition makes trouble for Mr. Perry too. He must
hold, for instance, that the two "historic creed," with which he deals
were not irreconcilable, in fact, that puritanism was "p;edisposed'' to
democracy. Here he parts company
with
most scholars who cannot fit
together the puritan doctrines of man's depravity, of a predestined body
of the elect, and of the literal acceptance of the Bible, with the demo–
cratic "trust in human faculties ... and the confident belief that the
world disclosed to these facuties was harmonious and beneficent." In
this book, reconciliation comes through redefinition. Puritanism here
is
"the moral necessity of subordinating all partial good to total good";
democracy, the "creed of equality and natural rights . . . embodied in
the Declaration of Independence." In the light of these definitions, it
becomes possible to use the terms Puritan, Calvinist, Protestant, and
Christian almost interchangeably, and to denominate the authors of the
constitution democrats, an epithet that would have horrified almost all
of them.
I will not question the right of a philosopher to make what defini–
tions he likes. For him, it seems, "it is more important that an idea
should be an idea, and that it should be true or false, than that anybody
should ever have believed it." The rub comes from the attempt to main–
tain that these are historic creeds, for then the behavior of real people
must be measured in the light of these ideas. By Mr. Perry's standards,
John Marshall and the Federalists who upheld natural rights against
the rule of the majority were democrats, Andrew Jackson was not. And
John Cotton becomes a bedfellow of Roger Williams and even of Wil–
liam Penn. N[r. Perry is often critical of "'rigorous' historians." It is not
hard to see why.
OSCAR HANDLIN
THE BURDEN OF REFORMISM
REPRESENTATIVE BuREAUCRACY: AN INTERPRETATION
oF
THE BruTISH
CIVIL SERVICE.
By ]. Donald Kingsley. The Antioch Press.
$3.50.
K
INGSLEY attempts an explanation of the nature of modern democratic
bureaucracy. He uses the two techniques of historical description
and functional analysis, the book being divided accordingly into two
