Words Worth Remembering: Wisdom, Goodness, Power
At twenty-nine, Benjamin Lincoln, Jr., was already a remarkable patriot in the mold of his father, General Benjamin Lincoln, Sr. As the people of Massachusetts debated the intricacies of mixed constitutionalism in a republic, Lincoln wrote and published ten essays under the pseudonym “The Free Republican.”
The first essay appeared in the Boston Independent Chronicle on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 24, 1785. The America of that day was one of uncertainty, disunity, and confusion. It was not yet the America of the Constitution, not to be drafted, debated, and ratified until three years later.
The Union, loose and vulnerable, having only been at peace for two years since its independence, was failing. The America of 1785 was a largely uncharted territory, an empty canvas awaiting the brushstrokes of thought and action that would shape it into an artwork unlike any other before or after it.
What was thought at this time, what was written, and what was done laid the intellectual groundwork for what Catherine Drinker Bowen termed the “miracle at Philadelphia.”
Under these clouds of meaning, young Lincoln Jr. set out to defend American political theory from claims of inadequacy, and in doing so put timeless truths to paper that call to us even now.
“It has been said, and perhaps with truth, that all governments inclined to decay, and that the most free must end in tyranny,” Lincoln wrote in his debut essay. “But though it may be impossible to prevent the free republics of America from finally meeting with the fate of the other kingdoms of the earth, yet it is undoubtedly in the power of the citizens of them to place the sad catastrophe at a distance.”
Truth be told, George Washington saw the American experiment as one headed rapidly toward failure before it even got a chance to begin. “No morning ever dawned more favorable than ours,” he wrote in 1785, “and no day was ever more clouded than the present.”
Rabid self-interest and the inherent weakness of the first national government had conceived disunion, division, and stalemate throughout the nascent Union.
A month before The Free Republican published his first essay, Washington lamented, “We are either a united people, or we are not.” The time had come, he added, for Americans to either “act as a nation” or “no longer act a farce by pretending it.”
Lincoln’s words, then, held a timely meaning: all governments decay, and America was not exempt. The task was to place it on a more sure foundation, just as the apostles had placed their teaching of the gospel on “a more sure word.”
Much like what Alexander Hamilton would write two years later, Lincoln placed the solution to the issues of the day in the hearts and hands of the people, who alone could ensure that decay would come later rather than sooner.
To do this, Lincoln, in his first essay, reminded the people of two fundamental truths about good government. First, “there can of right be no other object of their administration, but the good of the governed.” Second, “those who administer a government must have, united in them, wisdom, goodness, and power, in order to effect the happiness of the subject, the great and only proper object of civil society.”
In other words, since the only true and good purpose of government is the good of the governed, it is paramount that those who administer it possess wisdom, goodness, and power. One could not exist without the other.
Lincoln’s choice of words and their order reveal much about founding political theory. That wisdom here precedes goodness may seem unintentional, even untrue. However, one need not be good to be wise. Indeed, goodness is not a prerequisite for wisdom.
Thus, the transition from wisdom to power must in every free society be marked by goodness. Lincoln’s placement of goodness between wisdom and power signals a truth that was central to the founding generation’s conception of good government, one that is often lost on many of us: wisdom without goodness can be despotic; goodness without wisdom can become naive and weak; and power without both is almost always dangerous.
The order—wisdom, goodness, power—is intentional: goodness must act as the moral bridge between knowledge and authority. True and enduring power must be grounded in not just wisdom or goodness, but in both wisdom and goodness—only this can sustain a free society. Good government requires leaders—and people—with all three, united for one transcending purpose, much akin to the Holy Trinity.
In January 1788, the junior Lincoln died of a sudden illness. That year, the free and independent states of America engaged in a fierce debate on the first principles of government, on the science of good politics. The result was the ratification of the Constitution, an event unparalleled in human history, both then and now.
Now, as in Lincoln’s time, the task remains the same: to make government work for the people, and work well. Now, as then, American government must not be one of wisdom alone, or goodness alone, or power alone. It must, at all times, be one of wisdom, goodness, and power, or it is no good government at all.
To that end, we must remain vigilant—vigilant against those who, for greed, creed, or fear, would sever one from the other, unraveling the unity that sustains a healthy American soul.