![]() Believing that ‘Societies, like individuals, have their periods of sickness,’ elitist men such as Hamilton did everything in their power to stave off the rising tide of ‘levelling’ and democracy. ![]() ![]() In 1760, an anonymous contributor to The Boston Evening-Post drove home Hamilton’s convictions, noting that It is a truth acknowledged by all who have examined into the constitution of civil society, that the strength and vigour of the whole, depends on the union and harmony of the particular constituent parts.īut, as Hamilton’s experiences demonstrated, lower-class colonists were hashing out their own democratic vision of civil society, which their supposed superiors considered rough at best, damning at worst. For self-styled elites such as Hamilton, ‘true’ civil society relied upon their ability to command their social inferiors. On the contrary, he hoped to control the masses from a safe distance: to ‘keep the great Leviathan of Civil Society under proper discipline and order … as that the frantic animal may not destroy itself.’ But when Hamilton complained to the tavernkeeper about the ‘disorderly fellows’, the publican could only reply: ‘Alas Sir! We that entertain travellers must strive to oblige everybody, for it is our daily bread.’ĭr Hamilton’s discomfort in mixing with the lower sorts exposes 18th-century colonists’ clashing conceptions of civil society. As an elite physician travelling North America’s eastern seaboard, Hamilton was not keen to mix with men of inferior social standing, especially when they were drunk. He was revolted by the ‘Bacchanalians’ who were so intoxicated that ‘the only thing intelligible in was oaths and God damns’, and left the tavern only when they found ‘no more rum in play’. Upon arriving at a Maryland tavern in 1744, Dr Alexander Hamilton (not to be confused with the more famous secretary of the treasury) found himself seated amid a ‘drunken club’ of lower-class men.
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