In a landmark work, a leading scholar of the eighteenth century examines the ways in which an understanding of the nature of history influenced the thinking of the founding fathers.As Jack P. Greene has observed, “[The Whig] conception saw the past as a continual struggle between liberty and virtue on one hand and arbitrary power and corruption on the other.” Many founders found in this intellectual tradition what Josiah Quincy, Jr., called the “true old English liberty,” and it was this Whig...
