TCA ISSUE PAPER-9
June 8, 2007
Lycia is a gentle peninsula that lies along the southern coast of Turkey, on the Mediterranean Sea. In addition to being one of the most scenic landscapes of Turkey, Lycia in ancient times was the home of a famous league of republics. When James Madison appealed to Lycia in 1787, it was part of the Ottoman Empire, but he was referring to this much earlier era in its history, to the Lycian civilization that flourished there in the 5th Century BC. Among the various civilizations that lived in Anatolia through the ages, the Lycians always held a distinctive place. Locked away in their mountainous country, they had a fierce love of freedom and independence, and resisted all attempts at outside domination. An advanced civilization, the Lycians had their own language and alphabet.
The republic of the Lycians was an association of twenty-three towns; the large ones had three votes in the common council; the medium-sized ones, two; the small ones, one. The towns of Lycia paid the costs in proportion to their votes. In Lycia, the judges and magistrates of the towns were elected by the common council in that proportion. From the evidence unearthed by archeologists, we now know that the governing executive was called the “Lyciarch” and that the common council met in the building called the bouleuterion.
In summary, the Lycian confederacy made three contributions to the American Constitution. First, it was a model of a federal union the strength of whose parts in the national councils is proportionate to their size. Second, it showed the possibility of popular government that was representative. Third, it offered the example of a strong national government with its own strong officers and the power to make laws that applied directly to individual citizens.
We recognize Professor James Muller of the University of Alaska Anchorage for increasing public awareness on Lycia’s influence on the United States and Professor Gul Isin of Akdeniz University and her colleagues for their painstaking work in excavating Lycia, which is deepening our understanding of the antecedents of the American Constitution and the historical bonds between two friendly republics, Turkey and the United States.
The Lycian Confederacy and the American Constitution
On June 30, 1787, in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, a crucial day at America’s Constitutional Convention, James Madison, who is rightly considered the father of our Constitution, gave a speech in which he appealed to the Lycian confederacy. This was a crucial moment for the Convention, because they had rejected the New Jersey Plan for a more modest revision of the Articles of Confederation, America’s earlier constitutional frame, and had therefore resolved to try to reach agreement on a new national constitution, but they were deeply divided on what its features should be.
Why was there suddenly this attention to ancient Lycia almost two millennia later and many thousands of miles away, in the New World?
For months before the Constitutional Convention, Madison had made a comprehensive study of confederated governments. Madison was replying that day to a speech by Oliver Ellsworth, a delegate from Connecticut, who was arguing for the old principle of the Articles of Confederation that states had to be equal in the national councils. Ellsworth had asked, “Where is or was a confederation ever formed, where equality of voices was not a fundamental principle?” It had been a fundamental principle under the Articles of Confederation, under which every state, large or small, had one vote. Big states like Virginia and Pennsylvania were loath to cede power to a federation in which they had no more say than Rhode Island and Delaware, but the equal power of these little states kept the bigger ones from making any change under the Articles.
Now listen to Madison’s reply to Ellsworth on June 30:
Notwithstanding the admirable and close reasoning of the gentleman who spoke last, I am not yet convinced that my former remarks are not well founded. I apprehend he is mistaken as to the fact on which he builds one of his arguments. He supposes that equality of votes is the principle on which all confederacies are formed—that of Lycia, so justly applauded by the celebrated Montesquieu, was different.
The different political weights of cities in the common assembly of the Lycian confederacy showed the possibility of a federation in which members of different sizes came together in a way that reflected their real strength. This was the idea for Congress in James Madison’s Virginia Plan, which proposed a bicameral legislature—two houses—both of which gave states representation in proportion to their population, as in Lycia. Madison had to compromise with his opponents and accept the equality of states in the Senate, but the American House of Representatives, where states have representation in proportion to their population, is founded, as Madison urged, on the principle of the Lycian confederation.
This is the first of the three great contributions of the example of Lycia to the American government—the possibility of a larger republic that would gain support from its component parts because they were represented in it in proportion to their real strength.
The second contribution of the example of Lycia to the American Constitution is representative government. Hamilton’s criticism of the ancient republics was partly based on their aptitude to be ruled by faction when the people ruled directly, a claim that was echoed by Madison in Federalist no. 10:
…such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
The trouble was, as Hamilton had said, that when the people ruled directly, the result was either tyranny or anarchy. But Madison argued that this defect in popular government could be remedied by delegating the government “to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.” He had learned this argument from Montesquieu, who argued in Book XI of The Spirit of the Laws that
the great advantage of representatives is that they are able to discuss public business. The people are not at all appropriate for such discussions…The people should not enter the government except to choose their representatives…
The common council of the Lycian confederation offered an example of this representation.
The third contribution of Lycia to American government is a strong national government. In the Federalist, Hamilton and Madison refer to the Lycian confederacy three times, in nos. 9, 16, and 45. Hamilton, in Federalist no. 9, explains that in Lycia, the common council had the power to appoint all judges and magistrates for the confederated cities. Under the Articles of Confederation, there was not much of a federal executive or judiciary, but the Lycian confederacy was a model for strong new national offices established by the American Constitution. Then, in Federalist no. 16, Hamilton explains that in Lycia, federal laws applied directly to individuals, not just to cities. The fact that under the Articles of Confederation the laws of the confederation applied only to states and not to individuals was considered by Hamilton in Federalist no. 15 to be the “radical vice” of the confederation. It was remedied by the proposed new Constitution, in which federal laws applied to individuals as well as states. Finally, in Federalist no. 45, Madison refers to the “degree and species of power” of the national government in Lycia, which he cites approvingly as a model for the stronger national government established by the Constitution.
In summary, the Lycian confederacy made three contributions to the American Constitution. First, it was a model of a federal union the strength of whose parts in the national councils is proportionate to their size. Second, it showed the possibility of popular government that was representative. Third, it offered the example of a strong national government with its own strong officers and the power to make laws that applied directly to individual citizens.
Excerpted from remarks by James W. Muller, University of Alaska Anchorage delivered to the American Friends of Turkey and the Patrons of Patara gala on March 27, 2006. To receive full text, please send email to info@turkishcoalitionofamerica.org.
