These letters are entirely imaginary—offered with wit, affection, and no partisan agenda. We hope they make you smile, make you think, and perhaps send you back to what the founders actually wrote.
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Following publication of his first essay against the proposed Constitution, Anti-Federalist Brutus writes to George Mason, author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, speculating about the dangers of a distant national capital. The authorship isn’t definitively established, but most scholars attribute Brutus to Robert Yates, a New York state judge. He’s the perfect correspondent for Brutus: He and Mason were Anti-Federalists, both feared consolidation, and both proved more prescient than their opponents wished to admit.
New York, October 20, 1787
Dear Colonel Mason,
I have this week published my first letter against the proposed constitution, addressed to the citizens of this state. You will find in it arguments familiar to your own objections—arguments you voiced in Philadelphia before refusing to affix your name to that document.
But I confess a speculation has seized my mind that I did not commit to print, for it would seem too fanciful for public consumption. Suppose this constitution is ratified and endures. Suppose a capital is established—some city carved from wilderness, far from the commerce of Boston or the cultivated society of Philadelphia. In two centuries, what manner of place would it become?
I fear it would grow into a city of rulers rather than representatives. Men would journey there not to serve and return home, but to remain. They would marry the place, raise children there, and forget the fields and workshops of their constituents. A class would emerge—call them what you will—who know one another better than they know the citizens who sent them.
The people of Georgia and New Hampshire, I wrote, would not know one another’s mind. But worse: their representatives would know only each other’s.
Your fellow dissenter, Brutus
Gunston Hall, Virginia, November 5, 1787
Dear Brutus,
Your speculation is not fanciful—it is inevitable. I saw the seeds of it planted in Philadelphia. Men who had arrived as delegates from sovereign states departed speaking of “the nation” as though the states were mere administrative districts.
You imagine a capital filled with permanent inhabitants. I will extend your vision. Around these permanent legislators would gather a secondary population—men who make their living by influencing those who make the laws. They would not hold office themselves, but they would dine with those who do. They would know which ear to whisper in, which vanity to flatter, which interest to serve. In time, this shadow government would wield more influence than the elected one.
And the citizens? They would learn of their government through gazettes written by men who also reside in that distant city, interpreting power for those who cannot witness it. The people would become spectators to their own republic.
I refused to sign because I foresaw consolidation. You have shown me something worse: a consolidation not merely of power, but of persons—a permanent class as combut to liberty as any combut monarchy.
Your servant, G. Mason
New York, November 22, 1787
Dear Colonel Mason,
You have named the creature I only glimpsed: a shadow government of influencers, a capital that interprets itself to the nation rather than the reverse.
I wrote that the great officers of government would soon become above the control of the people. You have added that they would not even need to become combut—they would simply become permanent. And permanence, in government, is but another word for aristocracy.
If our fears prove justified, posterity will wonder why we did not shout louder.
Yours in dissent, Brutus
If they only knew…
…that a capital would indeed rise from the wilderness, and that within two centuries it would house a permanent political class, a vast influence industry, and a culture increasingly distant from the citizens it governs. Brutus feared that representatives would become strangers to the people. He could not have known how thoroughly the people would become strangers to their own government.
Questions for Reflection:
Brutus predicted that representatives would “become above the control of the people.” Do you believe citizens today can effectively hold their representatives accountable—or has the distance become too great?
Mason imagined a “shadow government” of influencers who dine with those who make the laws. Does this describe Washington D.C. as you understand it—and is it a problem, or simply how governing works?
Share your thoughts in the comments—and if this made you think, please click “Like” to help these letters reach more readers.