Politics & Power Quote by Caleb Cushing

“Gentlemen forget” is doing the sharp work here: Cushing isn’t calmly defining republicanism, he’s scolding an audience of elites who are acting as if power properly belongs to them by default. The line is a reminder and a rebuke, wrapped in the polite theater of 19th-century public speech. By calling the U.S. government “republican” and insisting it “rests exclusively” on “the intelligence and virtue of the People,” he yokes legitimacy to civic character, not pedigree, office, or faction. That “exclusively” is a pressure point: it denies any alternate foundation for authority - aristocratic competence, technocratic expertise, or raw force - and dares his listeners to justify themselves without borrowing the people’s moral capital.

The subtext is anxious as much as it is democratic. Republicanism in Cushing’s era was always shadowed by the fear that the public could be misled, inflamed, or corrupted. “Intelligence and virtue” is both praise and demand: the people are sovereign, yes, but only insofar as they are educated enough to discern and virtuous enough to restrain self-interest. It’s a flattering doctrine that doubles as social discipline.

Contextually, this kind of formulation fits a diplomat-politician navigating a nation riven by expansion, party conflict, and the intensifying moral crisis over slavery. Invoking “the People” lets Cushing claim the high ground against rivals while sidestepping the question everyone felt pressing: which people, and whose virtue, actually counts.