The History Room
What self-government orginally meant and what, regretfully, it has become.
Self-Government Requires Self-Governing Citizens
In the earliest dictionaries of American English, the definition of self-government was not political, but reflected the same personal quality expressed by Findley [During the first four decades of the American Republic, the irascible William Findley was the leading state politician of the Western Pennsylvania backcountry.]—it was the “government of one’s self.” This remained true as late as 1959 when the Merriam-Webster dictionary defined self-government as “Self-control; self-command,” and self-control meant simply, “control of one’s self.” The second definition followed, and is the one usually expressed today as majority rule. What was unusual for a dictionary definition was that the second definition was made dependent on the first: “Hence, government by the joint action of the mass of people constituting a civil body; also, the state of being so governed; specifically, democratic government.” By the inclusion of “Hence,” the dictionary reflected the view that you could not have democracy or the rule of law without individuals capable of governing themselves. The present edition of the dictionary has dropped that beginning, and today, we appear to think primarily of the collective, governmental meaning of self-government. Indeed many current English dictionaries simply list majority rule as the only definition of the term. To recapture a sense of the older notion, we need to go back to a time when Americans still maintained a clear conception of themselves as a people composed of individuals capable of self-government. The American revolution was the dramatic culmination of just such a moment.
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Originally Posted by Chris
