The Volokh Conspiracy - "Of the People [and] for the People":

I'm writing a short item on Thomas Cooper, the late 18th and early 19th century English and American public intellectual, judge, legal scholar, chemistry professor, Sedition Act defendant, and troublemaker. In a 1794 work of his, Some Information Respecting America, I noticed the phrase "The government [in America] is the government of the people, and for the people."

This obviously sounds much like Lincoln's "government of the people, by the people, for the people." It seems equally obvious that even if Lincoln's line was indirectly influenced by Cooper's, the influence will be hard to trace, and it may well be that Lincoln's sources came up with it independently of Cooper.

But I did want to ask whether any of you folks know of any earlier sources that join "of the people" and "for the people" (or "by the people"). I might want to credit Cooper with having the first known use of the phrase and I don't want to do that if there's contrary evidence. So if you can let me know of that, I'll be much obliged. (I checked some searchable databases on this, but the difficulty is that many of them exclude words like "of," "for," and "the" from their searches.) Many thanks!

(link)

Steve Vladeck (mail):

I'm not sure about Cooper, but I've always suspected that Lincoln may have borrowed the phrase from Chief Justice Marshall's opinion in McCulloch -- "The Government of the Union then (whatever may be the influence of this fact on the case) is, emphatically and truly, a Government of the people. In form and in substance, it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit." 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 404-05 (1819).

And it strikes me that Marshall was far more likely to be familiar with Cooper...

1.13.2009 4:59pm

Matt G:

Eugene:

Google book search turns up a 1724 reference. Not the same meaning (I think), but perhaps a source:

Cato's Letters ...
By John Trenchard, Thomas Gordon, Thomas Jones
Published by Printed for W. Wilkins, T. Woodward, J. Walthoe, and J. Peele, 1724
Item notes: v.1
Original from the University of Michigan
Digitized Jun 5, 2007

Page 89: "Here then is a true standard for the government to judge of the people, and for the people to judge the government."

1.13.2009 5:04pm

Also, apparently plenty of other 18th century sources as found on a google book search restricted to 1700-1795.

1.13.2009 5:07pm

Eugene Volokh (www):

Matt G: I had done the Google book search, and found the Cato's item. But it doesn't really use the "of the people, and for the people" trope in the sense that Cooper and Lincoln use it. Cooper and Lincoln say the government is for the people; Cato says it's for the people to judge the government. The other sources your (and my) Google book search found are either quotes of Cooper, or are more modern items, despite Google's view of their age.

1.13.2009 5:27pm

Eugene:

Of course, in the strict sense, you are right. But it's entirely possible that Cooper (or other Americans reading Cato in the latter half of the 18th century) fused this language with the contemporary notion of sovereignty of the people, completely undermining the meaning while retaining the phrasing. But still making Cato the original source.

The letters were quite popular and influential, no?

1.13.2009 5:40pm

Arkady:

From the Wiki page on the Gettysburg address:

Several theories have been advanced by Lincoln scholars to explain the provenance of Lincoln's famous phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people." In a discussion "A more probable origin of a famous Lincoln phrase,"[40] in The American Monthly Review of Reviews, Albert Shaw credits a correspondent with pointing out the writings of William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, who wrote in the 1888 work Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of A Great Life that he had brought to Lincoln some of the sermons of abolitionist minister Theodore Parker, of Massachusetts, and that Lincoln was moved by Parker's use of this idea:

I brought with me additional sermons and lectures of Theodore Parker, who was warm in his commendation of Lincoln. One of these was a lecture on 'The Effect of Slavery on the American People'...which I gave to Lincoln, who read and returned it. He liked especially the following expression, which he marked with a pencil, and which he in substance afterwards used in his Gettysburg Address: 'Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people.'[41]

Fn 40: Shaw, Albert, ed. The American Monthly Review of Reviews. Vol. XXIII, January–June 1901. New York: The Review of Reviews Company, 1901. p. 336.

Fn 41: Herndon, William H. and Jesse W. Welk. Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of A Great Life New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1892. Vol II., p 65.

Flagar:

Eugene --

I found a source on Google Book from 1909 which discusses various sources that could have been used by Lincoln (Parker, Webster, Marshall).


1.13.2009 5:50pm

pluribus:

In Lincoln at Gettysburg, p. 145, Garry Wills argues that Lincoln was familiar with and impressed by Theodore Parker's phrase, but that he expanded it, so that it did not just mean freedom and popular government (as Parker had used it), but also meant that "America is a people" (i.e., one unified people under the United States Constitution).

This is the Parker quote:

A democracy,—that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness’ sake I will call it the idea of Freedom.

The American Idea: Speech at N. E. Anti-Slavery Convention, Boston, May 29, 1850.

http://www.bartleby.com/100/459.html

1.13.2009 5:55pm

Here is a phrase that appeared in the Southern Review in 1832 - I couldn't really determine who said it, however - the editor?

"[The Constitution] is the law of the people, made by the people, for the people, and addressed to the people."


1.13.2009 6:15pm

JD33:

In case you haven't searched it already, you might want to try the Archive of Americana:

http://www.readex.com/readex/?content=93

1.13.2009 6:20pm

Katl L (mail):

Kings are made by the people
We have shown before that it is God that appoints and chooses kings, and who gives them their kingdoms. Now we say that it is the people who establish kings, puts the sceptre into their hands, and who with their support, approves the election. God would have it done in this manner so that kings should acknowledge that after God, they hold their power and sovereignty from the people.And that this would then encourage them to concentrate and direct all their efforts on the benefit of the people
Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos. Brutus

1.13.2009 9:16pm

FredC:

This isn't really a scholarly research-technique, is it?

1.13.2009 9:36pm

FredC: It's not the only scholarly research technique. But it's a nice supplement to the other research I'm doing on the subject. Think of it as asking a bunch of colleagues in the lunch room, as well as doing more comprehensive searches.

1.13.2009 10:38pm

cognitis:

The phrase "government of the people and for the people" is not a trope. Cooper's use of a comma between two prepositional phrases is not correct.

1.13.2009 10:45pm

a knight (mail) (www):

"Let us heare what our brethren say for the government of the people, and their judicial! power in generall"

Rutherford, S. (1644). The due right of presbyteries; Or, A peaceable plea for the government of the Church of Scotland. London: Printed by E. Griffin, for R. Whittaker and A. Crook. pg 26

I found this searching Google books: [string = {for the people}] AND [time constraint = {1600-1700}]

I didn't check for any 18th century texts. I saw many possible hits an a quick browse of the records, but did not search deeper. It would probably be better to narrow down the time constraints, as just "full view only" returned 355 records.

Also, in some other broader spectrum searches I breezed through, there were others authored by Samuel Rutherford.

1.13.2009 11:07pm

bjr:

Abraham Lincoln SAYS he is an honest, trustworthy politician. But he was caught STEALING a line he used in a speech he gave at a WAR CEMETERY. It doesn't sound like Abe is very Honest after all. Don't trust your future, or your CHILDREN'S future, with a old-style politician who is willing to plagiarize from an American Hero and disrespect our war dead.

VOTE McCLELLAN in '64

1.14.2009 12:09am

Here's another Samuel Rutherford citation:

"The people have the power to chose their own Governours. Ergo, All Governments, except Democracie, or Government by the people, must be sinfull and unlawfull."

Rutherford, S. (1644). Lex, rex: the law and the prince. A dispute for the just prerogative of king and people. Containing the reasons and causes of the most necessary defensive wars of the kingdom of Scotland, and of their expedition for the ayd and help of their dear brethren of England. In which their innocency is asserted, and a full answer is given to a seditious pamphlet, intituled, Sacro-sancta regum majestas, or, The sacred and royall prerogative of Christian kings. London: Printed for John Field. pg 53

I'd never contemplated the origins of the phrase: "government of the people and by the people", but it seems plausible there could be Scottish influence.

If there is a connection to Presbyterianism, there is a tinge of irony along with it. Presbyterians believed in government for and by the people, as well as religious tolerance when they were being persecuted in England, but quickly turned into persecutors of other sects upon establishing colonies in America. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson wrote on occasion about Presbyterian fanaticism and spiritualism being a threat to the people's liberty.

There is also a convergence with Jefferson, Cooper and Presbyterianism, although I do not know if it is germane to your present task at hand. Jefferson, in at least two of his letters to Thomas Cooper writes about Presbyterian fanaticism in America.

1) Thomas Jefferson's Letter to Doctor Thomas Cooper, August 14, 1820. - Jefferson (ME) Vol XV pp 264-269

2) Thomas Jefferson's Letter To Doctor Thomas Cooper, November 2, 1822. - Jefferson (ME) Vol XV; pp 403-406

The latter is amusing to me because Jefferson uses a girlieboy derogation in his criticism of religious fanaticism:

I had no idea, however, that in Pennsylvania, the cradle of toleration and freedom of religion, it could have arisen to the height you describe. This must be owing to the growth of Presbyterianism. The blasphemy and absurdity of the five points of Calvin, and the impossibility of defending them, render their advocates impatient of reasoning, irritable, and prone to denunciation. In Boston, however, and its neighborhood, Unitarianism has advanced to so great strength, as now to humble this haughtiest of all religious sects; insomuch, that they condescend to interchange with them and the other sects, the civilities of preaching freely and frequently in each others' meeting-houses. In Rhode Island, on the other hand, no sectarian preacher will permit an Unitarian to pollute his desk. In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and praying parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a henpecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty would permit them to use to a mere earthly lover.

I marked-up to XHTML and published a transcript of this letter for easy citing and copying, a few months ago. I would have marked-up and published the former letter this evening, but it has a Greek phrase in it, and my Greek proficiency is almost nil, so it takes a fair amount of time to assure the transcription is accurate.

1.14.2009 2:14am

Plumb Bob (mail):

The prologue to John Wycliffe's English translation of the Bible, dated 1384, includes this observation:

The Bible is for the Government of the People, by the People, and for the People.

Lincoln was most likely quoting Wycliffe.

1.14.2009 11:39am

Moshe (mail):

Ah - too bad, Plumb Bob beat me to it - I just chanced on this citation of Wycliffe's by total chance the other day (at Aish.com) and remembered this post.

1.18.2009 10:23am

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