Michael Mitchell: Archive

"How to ennoble the new regime? The most talented must be made to serve their country, rather than their selfish desires. That was what a well-designed regime did. One of Adams’s odder schemes for accomplishing this, which Mayville highlights, was his campaign for establishing high-toned titles for public office holders. Adams hoped these would serve as counterweights to oligarchic passions, as hereditary titles did in the Old World. The honorable pursuit of earned titles would lead the noblest minds away from avaricious money-making and into public service. Adams supported titles not, as critics charged, because he wished to foster an American aristocracy, but, instead, because he believed one would exist whether Americans liked it or not. The choice was between a public-spirited aristocracy or a selfish oligarchy, not between aristocracy or democracy."