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>Dear Sir, I am looking for a particular quote by Jefferson that goes >something to the effect that when the gov'mnt keeps our attention on >making a living we will help put the chains around our fellow sufferers >necks.I read this many moons ago and wrote it down but have misplaced >it.Thanks in advance and have a good day. The quote you are looking for is probably the following: "If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39 There is also one that refers to the eradication of slavery: "An unsuccessful effort, as too often happens, would only rivet still closer the chains of bondage, and retard the moment of delivery to this oppressed description of men." --Thomas Jefferson: Answers to de Meusnier Questions, 1786. ME 17:102 I believe the first one is the one you are looking for. Best wishes, Eyler Coates