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34. Philosopher of Monticello
n repairing with so much eagerness to the shades of his native mountains, it seems not to have entered the mind of Mr. Jefferson to relax his efforts for the benefit of mankind, but to divert them into another channel. His whole life, he was in the habit of remarking, had been at war with his natural tastes, feelings, and wishes. Circumstances had led him along step-by-step the path he had trodden.
His was not the retirement of one who sought refuge from the pangs of disappointed ambition, and the world's mockery of them, in the resource of oblivion and stoical insensibility; or who coveted repose from the turbulence of the scene to indulge in indolence. No, his was the voluntary seclusion of one "who," as it has been beautifully said, "had well-filled a noble part in public life from which he was prepared and anxious to withdraw; who sought retirement to gratify warm affections and to enjoy his well-earned fame; who desired to turn those thoughts which had been necessarily restrained and limited, to the investigation of all the sources of human happiness and enjoyment; who felt himself surrounded in his fellow citizens by a circle of affectionate friends, and had no need to attribute to a rude expulsion from the theatre of ambition, his sincere devotion to the pursuits of agriculture and philosophy; and who, receiving to the last moment of his existence continued proofs of admiration and regard which penetrated his remote retirement, devoted the remainder of his days to record those various reflections for which the materials had been collected and treasured up, unknown to himself, on the long and various voyage of his life."
In the possession of undecayed intellectual powers and a physical strength unsubdued by the labors which "the history of a wonderful era had made incumbent on him," he devoted the remnant of his days to unlocking all the storehouses of knowledge and dispensing their treasures to the generation who had succeeded him on the theatre of public affairs, and to laying the foundations for the still greater extension of science by the establishment of a seminary of learning which should rival the institutions of Cambridge and Oxford.
To give a few choice selections from his cabinet, developing the OPINIONS of the Monticellian philosopher on questions interesting and important to mankind and which we have not yet brought into special review; his observations on the distinguished characters with whom he acted or came in contact in the course of his career; on the parties and political occurrences of the passing day; his daily occupations and habits of living -- all expressed in the freedom of private and unrestrained confidence -- seems the most satisfactory method of supplying that portion of his history for which the materials are of too abstract a nature to be adapted to historical narrative. The quotations must be necessarily limited, but possess great interest and value.
The Constitution and Popular Rights "Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the Ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. [We had not yet penetrated to the mother principle, that 'governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.' Hence, our first constitutions had really no leading principles in them... Though we may say with confidence that the worst of the American constitutions is better than the best which ever existed before in any other country, and that they are wonderfully perfect for a first essay, yet every human essay must have defects. It will remain, therefore, to those now coming on the stage of public affairs to perfect what has been so well begun by those going off it.] [note] I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with, because when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. Their monarchs, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual change of circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself and of ordering its own affairs. Let us... avail ourselves of our reason and experience to correct the crude essays of our first and unexperienced, although wise, virtuous, and well-meaning councils. And lastly, let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated periods. What these periods should be, nature herself indicates. By the European tables of mortality, of the adults living at any one moment of time, a majority will be dead in about nineteen years. At the end of that period, then, a new majority is come into place; or, in other words, a new generation. Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. It has, then, like them a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently, to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself that received from its predecessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years should be provided by the constitution; so that it may be handed on, with periodical repairs, from generation to generation, to the end of time, if anything human can so long endure. It is now forty years since the constitution of Virginia was formed. The same tables inform us that within that period, two-thirds of the adults then living are now dead. Have then the remaining third, even if they had the wish, the right to hold in obedience to their will and to laws heretofore made by them, the other two-thirds who, with themselves compose the present mass of adults? If they have not, who has? The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are nothing; and nothing cannot own something. Where there is no substance, there can be no accident. This corporeal globe and everything upon it belong to its present corporeal inhabitants during their generation. They alone have a right to direct what is the concern of themselves alone and to declare the law of that direction; and this declaration can only be made by their majority. That majority, then, has a right to depute representatives to a convention and to make the constitution what they think will be the best for themselves... If this avenue be shut to the call of sufferance, it will make itself heard through that of force, and we shall go on as other nations are doing in the endless circle of oppression, rebellion, reformation; and oppression, rebellion, reformation, again; and so on forever." (to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816. ME 15:40)
Relative Powers of the
General and State Governments"With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. To the State governments are reserved all legislation and administration in affairs which concern their own citizens only, and to the federal government is given whatever concerns foreigners or the citizens of other States; these functions alone being made federal. The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government; neither having control over the other, but within its own department. There are one or two exceptions only to this partition of power. But, you may ask, if the two departments should claim each the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground: but if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best." (to John Cartwright, June 5, 1824. ME 16:47)
Relative Powers of Each Branch
in the General Government"You seem to think it devolved on the judges to decide on the validity of the Sedition law. But nothing in the Constitution has given them a right to decide for the executive, more than to the executive to decide for them. Both magistracies are equally independent in the sphere of action assigned to them. The judges, believing the law constitutional, had a right to pass a sentence of fine and imprisonment, because the power was placed in their hands by the Constitution. That instrument meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and executive also in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch." (to Abigail Adams, Sept. 11, 1804. ME 11:50)
"If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se [act of suicide]. For intending to establish three departments, coordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not even a scare-crow; that such opinions as the one you combat, sent cautiously out as you observe also by detachment, not belonging to the case often, but sought for out of it as if to rally the public opinion beforehand to their views and to indicate the line they are to walk in, have been so quietly passed over as never to have excited animadversion, even in a speech of anyone of the body entrusted with impeachment. The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. It should be remembered as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only at first while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law." (to Spencer Roane, Sept. 6, 1819. ME 15:212)
Internal Improvement, Constructive Interpretations, Etc. "You will have learned that an act for internal improvement, after passing both houses, was negatived by the President [in 1817]. The act was founded, avowedly, on the principle that the phrase in the Constitution which authorizes Congress 'to levy taxes, to pay the debts, and provide for the general welfare,' was an extension of the powers specifically enumerated to whatever would promote the general welfare; and this, you know, was the federal doctrine. Whereas, our tenet ever was, and indeed it is almost the only land-mark which now divides the Federalists from the Republicans, that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money. I think the passage and rejection of this bill a fortunate incident. Every State will certainly concede the power, and this will be a national confirmation of the grounds of appeal to them, and will settle forever the meaning of this phrase which, by a mere grammatical quibble, has countenanced the general government in a claim of universal power." (to Albert Gallatin, June 16, 1817. ME 15:133)
Domestic Manufactures "I have now thirty-five spindles agoing, a hand carding machine, and looms with the flying shuttle for the supply of my own farms, which will never be relinquished in my time. I have not formerly been an advocate for great manufactories. I doubted whether our labor employed in agriculture and aided by the spontaneous energies of the earth would not procure us more than we could make ourselves of other necessaries. But other considerations entering into the question have settled my doubts." (to John Melish, Jan. 13, 1813. ME 13:207)
"You tell me I am quoted by those who wish to continue our dependence on England for manufactures. There was a time when I might have been so quoted with more candor, but within the thirty years which have since elapsed, how are circumstances changed! We were then in peace. Our independent place among nations was acknowledged. A commerce which offered the raw material in exchange for the same material after receiving the last touch of industry, was worthy of welcome to all nations. It was expected that those especially to whom manufacturing industry was important would cherish the friendship of such customers by every favor, by every inducement, and particularly cultivate their peace by every act of justice and friendship. Under this prospect, the question seemed legitimate, whether with such an immensity of unimproved land, courting the hand of husbandry, the industry of agriculture, or that of manufactures would add most to the national wealth? And the doubt [on the utility of the American manufactures] was entertained on this consideration chiefly, that to the labor of the husbandman a vast addition is made by the spontaneous energies of the earth on which it is employed: for one grain of wheat committed to the earth, she renders twenty, thirty, and even fifty fold, whereas to the labor of the manufacturer nothing is added. Pounds of flax in his hands yield, on the contrary, but penny-weights of lace. This exchange, too, laborious as it might seem, what a field did it promise for the occupations of the ocean; what a nursery for that class of citizens who were to exercise and maintain our equal rights on that element! This was the state of things in 1785, when the 'Notes on Virginia' were first printed; when, the ocean being open to all nations, and their common right in it acknowledged and exercised under regulations sanctioned by the assent and usage of all, it was thought that the doubt might claim some consideration...
"We have [since] experienced what we did not then believe, that there exists both profligacy and power enough to exclude us from the field of interchange with other nations: that to be independent for the comforts of life we must fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist. The former question is suppressed, or rather assumes a new form. Shall we make our own comforts, or go without them at the will of a foreign nation? He, therefore, who is now against domestic manufacture must be for reducing us either to dependence on that foreign nation, or to be clothed in skins and to live like wild beasts in dens and caverns. I am not one of these; experience has taught me that manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort." (to Benjamin Austin, January 9, 1816. ME 14:389)
Laboring Classes, Agriculture "These circumstances have long since produced an overcharge in the class of competitors for learned occupation, and great distress among the supernumerary candidates; and the more as their habits of life have disqualified them for re-entering into the laborious class. The evil cannot be suddenly nor perhaps ever entirely cured: nor should I presume to say by what means it may be cured. Doubtless there are many engines which the nation might bring to bear on this object. Public opinion and public encouragement are among these. The class principally defective is that of agriculture. It is the first in utility and ought to be the first in respect. The same artificial means which have been used to produce a competition in learning may be equally successful in restoring agriculture to its primary dignity in the eyes of men. It is a science of the very first order. It counts among its handmaids the most respectable sciences, such as chemistry, natural philosophy, mechanics, mathematics generally, natural history, botany. In every college and university, a professorship of agriculture and the class of its students might be honored as the first. Young men closing their academical education with this as the crown of all other sciences, fascinated with its solid charms, and at a time when they are to choose an occupation, instead of crowding the other classes, would return to the farms of their fathers, their own, or those of others, and replenish and invigorate a calling now languishing under contempt and oppression. The charitable schools, instead of storing their pupils with a lore which the present state of society does not call for, converted into schools of agriculture, might restore them to that branch, qualified to enrich and honor themselves and to increase the productions of the nation instead of consuming them. A gradual abolition of the useless offices, so much accumulated in all governments, might close this drain also from the labors of the field and lessen the burthens imposed on them. By these and the better means which will occur to others, the surcharge of the learned might in time be drawn off to recruit the laboring class of citizens, the sum of industry be increased, and that of misery diminished." (to David Williams, Nov. 14, 1803. ME 10:429)
A National Bank "From a passage in the letter of the President, I observe an idea of establishing a branch bank of the United States in New Orleans. This institution is one of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution. The nation is at this time so strong and united in its sentiments that it cannot be shaken at this moment. But suppose a series of untoward events should occur sufficient to bring into doubt the competency of a republican government to meet a crisis of great danger, or to unhinge the confidence of the people in the public functionaries; an institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the union, acting by command and in phalanx may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this Bank of the United States, with al its branch banks, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile? That it is so hostile we know, 1. from a knowledge of the principles of the persons composing the body of directors in every bank, principal or branch, and those of most of the stock-holders; 2. from their opposition to the measures and principles of the government and to the election of those friendly to them; and, 3. from the sentiments of the newspapers they support. Now, while we are strong, it is the greatest duty we owe to the safety of our Constitution to bring this powerful enemy to a perfect subordination under its authorities. The first measure would be to reduce them to an equal footing only with other banks as to the favors of the government. But in order to be able to meet a general combination of the banks against us in a critical emergency, could we not make a beginning towards an independent use of our own money, towards holding our own bank in all the deposits where it is received, and letting the Treasurer give his draft or note for payment at any particular place which, in a well-conducted government, ought to have as much credit as any private draft or bank note or bill, and would give us the same facilities which we derive from the banks? I pray you to turn this subject in your mind and give it the benefit of your knowledge of details; whereas, I have only very general views of the subject." (to Albert Gallatin, Dec. 13, 1803. ME 10:437)
Political Parties "I know too well the weakness and uncertainty of human reason to wonder at its different results. Both of our political parties, at least the honest part of them, agree conscientiously in the same object: the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers, the other by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove. We think that one side of this experiment has been long enough tried and proved not to promote the good of the many, and that the other has not been fairly and sufficiently tried. Our opponents think the reverse. With whichever opinion the body of the nation concurs, that must prevail. My anxieties on this subject will never carry me beyond the use of fair and honorable means of truth and reason; nor have they ever lessened my esteem for moral worth, nor alienated my affections from a single friend who did not first withdraw himself. Wherever this has happened, I confess I have not been insensible to it, yet have ever kept myself open to a return of their justice." (to Abigail Adams,Sept. 11, 1804. ME 11:52)
"The fact is, that at the formation of our government, many had formed their political opinions on European writings and practices, believing the experience of old countries, and especially of England, abusive as it was, to be a safer guide than mere theory. The doctrines of Europe were, that men in numerous associations cannot be restrained within the limits of order and justice but by forces physical and moral, wielded over them by authorities independent of their will. Hence their organization of kings, hereditary nobles, and priests. Still further to constrain the brute force of the people, they deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty, and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus barely to sustain a scanty and miserable life. And these earnings they apply to maintain their privileged orders in splendor and idleness, to fascinate the eyes of the people, and excite in them an humble adoration and submission, as to an order of superior beings." (to William Johnson, June 12, 1823. ME 15:440)
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