Abstract
In Politics III, Aristotle famously argues a point common in ancient accounts of democracies and republics, namely, that “no man can practice virtue who is living the life of a mechanic or laborer.” Cicero, not wholly sharing Aristotle’s view, nevertheless likewise relegates this portion of the population to a secondary role. Modern republics, on the other hand, seem to be animated by a kind of universal call to republican virtue and office, such that early American statesman Charles Carroll observed in 1828 that the “protracted existence” of the American republic depended on the “morality, sobriety, and industry of the people, and on no part more than on the mechanics, forming in our cities the greatest number of their most useful inhabitants.” The well-educated Carroll knew the arguments of the ancients, but his thinking rested on an insight they did not possess: the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition, which presents a fundamental alteration to the older understanding. While he was no “Christian nationalist,” this paper will argue that Carroll’s Catholicism was crucial to his understanding of republicanism.