Probably no man in America in 1800 knew more about, or cared more
passionately for, republicanism than Thomas Jefferson. It was the
common belief that a true republic had to be of a fairly limited size,
on the model of the Greek republics, in which Athens, at perhaps 200,000
was the largest, or the Italian republics of the middle ages, which
generally numbered no more than 70,000 or 80,000 people. The point was
that since these operated not by face-to-face democracy but by
representation, the deliberative body to which citizens sent their
delegates had to be limited—in the hundreds, but certainly no bigger
than the Athenian assembly that was 500 at its largest. But Jefferson,
then President of a nominal republic of 5 million people, still believed
that the American system was a republic: first, because each state was
sovereign and could nullify Federal laws that it thought
unconstitutional, second because the popular legislative body (the
House) was limited to one representative for every 30,000 people, so
that even the redistricting after the 1800 census would limit the number
to about 178 representatives, a workable body.Probably no man in America in 1800 knew more about, or cared more
passionately for, republicanism than Thomas Jefferson.
It was the
common belief that a true republic had to be of a fairly limited size,
on the model of the Greek republics, in which Athens, at perhaps 200,000
was the largest, or the Italian republics of the middle ages, which
generally numbered no more than 70,000 or 80,000 people. The point was
that since these operated not by face-to-face democracy but by
representation, the deliberative body to which citizens sent their
delegates had to be limited—in the hundreds, but certainly no bigger
than the Athenian assembly that was 500 at its largest. But Jefferson,
then President of a nominal republic of 5 million people, still believed
that the American system was a republic: first, because each state was
sovereign and could nullify Federal laws that it thought
unconstitutional, second because the popular legislative body (the
House) was limited to one representative for every 30,000 people, so
that even the redistricting after the 1800 census would limit the number
to about 178 representatives, a workable body.
