a political object. The whole piece is a moral exhortation,
[Illustration: page226]
and this passage particularly seems to be a reproof to man, who,
while with his domestic animals he is curious to improve the race, by
employing always the finest male, pays no attention to the improvement
of his own race, but intermarries with the vicious, the ugly, or the
old, for considerations of wealth or ambition. It is in conformity with
the principle adopted afterwards by the Pythagoreans, and expressed by
Ocellus in another form;
[Illustration: page226a
which, as literally as intelligibility will admit, may be thus
translated; ‘Concerning the interprocreation of men, how, and of whom it
shall be, in a perfect manner, and according to the laws of modesty and
sanctity, conjointly, this is what I think right. First, to lay it down
that we do not commix for the sake of pleasure, but of the procreation
of children. For the powers, the organs, and desires for coition have
not been given by God to man for the sake of pleasure, but for the
procreation of the race. For as it were incongruous for a mortal born
to partake of divine life, the immortality of the race being taken away,
God fulfilled the purpose by making the generations uninterrupted
and continuous. This, therefore, we are especially to lay down as a
principle, that coition is not for the sake of pleasure.’ But nature,
not trusting to this moral and abstract motive, seems to have provided
more securely for the perpetuation of the species, by making it the
effect of the _oestrum_ implanted in the constitution of both sexes.
And not only has the commerce of love been indulged on this unhallowed
impulse, but made subservient also to wealth and ambition by marriages,
without regard to the beauty, the healthiness, the understanding, or
virtue of the subject from which we are to breed. The selecting the best
male for a Haram of well chosen females, also, which Theognis seems
to recommend from the example of our sheep and asses, would doubtless
improve the human, as it does the brute animal, and produce a race of
veritable
[Illustration: page227].
For experience proves, that the moral and physical qualities of man,
whether good or evil, are transmissible in a certain degree from father
to son. But I suspect that the equal rights of men will rise up against
this privileged Solomon and his Haram, and oblige us to continue
acquiescence under the
[Illustration: page227a],
which Theognis complains of, and to content ourselves with the
accidental _aristoi_ produced by the fortuitous concourse of breeders.
For I agree with you, that there is a natural aristocracy among men.
The grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly, bodily powers
gave place among the _aristoi_. But since the invention of gunpowder
has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death,
bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness, and other
accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground of distinction.
There is also an artificial aristocracy, founded on wealth and birth,
without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the
first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious
gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of
society. And, indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to
have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue
and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even
say, that that form of government is the best, which provides the most
effectually for a pure selection of these natural _aristoi_ into the
offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous
ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its
ascendancy. On the question, what is the best provision, you and I
differ; but we differ as rational friends, using the free exercise of
our own reason, and mutually indulging its errors. You think it best
to put the pseudo-aristoi into a separate chamber of legislation, where
they may be hindered from doing mischief by their co-ordinate branches,
and where, also, they may be a protection to wealth against the Agrarian
and plundering enterprises of the majority of the people. I think that
to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief, is
arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil. For
if the co-ordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they that of
the co-ordinates. Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively.
Of this, a cabal in the Senate of the United States has furnished many
proofs. Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy;
because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the
legislation, to protect themselves. From fifteen to twenty legislatures
of our own, in action for thirty years past, have proved that no fears
of an equalization of property are to be apprehended from them. I think
the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our constitutions, to
leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the _aristoi_
from the _pseudo-aristoi_, of the wheat from the chaff. In general,
they will elect the really good and wise. In some instances, wealth may
corrupt, and birth blind them; but not in sufficient degree to endanger
the society.
It is probable that our difference of opinion may, in some measure, be
produced by a difference of character in those among whom we live. From
what I have seen of Massachusetts and Connecticut myself, and still
more from what I have heard, and the character given of the former by
yourself, (Vol. I, page 111,) who know them so much better, there seems
to be in those two States a traditionary reverence for certain families,
which has rendered the offices of government nearly hereditary in those
families. I presume that from an early period of your history, members
of these families happening to possess virtue and talents, have honestly
exercised them for the good of the people, and by their services have
endeared their names to them. In coupling Connecticut with you, I mean
it politically only, not morally. For having made the Bible the common
law of their land, they seem to have modeled their morality on the story
of Jacob and Laban. But although this hereditary succession to office
with you may, in some degree, be founded in real family merit, yet in a
much higher degree, it has proceeded from your strict alliance of Church
and State. These families are canonized in the eyes of the people on the
common principle, ‘You tickle me, and I will tickle you.’ In Virginia,
we have nothing of this. Our clergy, before the revolution, having been
secured against rivalship by fixed salaries, did not give themselves the
trouble of acquiring influence over the people. Of wealth, there were
great accumulations in particular families, handed down from generation
to generation, under the English law of entails. But the only object
of ambition for the wealthy was a seat in the King’s Council. All their
court then was paid to the crown and its creatures; and they Philipized
in all collisions between the King and the people. Hence they were
unpopular; and that unpopularity continues attached to their names. A
Randolph, a Carter, or a Burwell must have great personal superiority
over a common competitor, to be elected by the people, even at this
day. At the first session of our legislature after the Declaration of
Independence, we passed a law abolishing entails. And this was followed
by one abolishing the privilege of primogeniture, and dividing the
lands of intestates equally among all their children, or other
representatives. These laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the root
of pseudo-aristocracy. And had another which I prepared been adopted by
the legislature, our work would have been complete. It was a bill for
the more general diffusion of learning. This proposed to divide every
county into wards of five or six miles square, like your townships; to
establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing, and common
arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects
from these schools, who might receive, at the public expense, a higher
degree of education at a district school; and from these district
schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects, to
be completed at an University, where all the useful sciences should
be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every
condition of life, and completely prepared by education for defeating
the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts. My proposition
had, for a further object, to impart to these wards those portions of
self-government for which they are best qualified, by confiding to them
the care of their poor, their roads, police, elections, the nomination
of jurors, administration of justice in small cases, elementary
exercises of militia; in short, to have made them little republics, with
a warden at the head of each, for all those concerns which, being under
their eye, they would better manage than the larger republics of the
county or State. A general call of ward-meetings by their wardens on the
same day through the State, would at any time produce the genuine sense
of the people on any required point, and would enable the State to act
in mass, as your people have so often done, and with so much effect, by
their town-meetings. The law for religious freedom, which made a part of
this system, having put down the aristocracy of the clergy, and restored
to the citizen the freedom of the mind, and those of entails and
descents nurturing an equality of condition among them, this on
education would have raised the mass of the people to the high ground
of moral respectability necessary to their own safety, and to orderly
government; and would have completed the great object of qualifying them
to select the veritable aristoi, for the trusts of government, to the
exclusion of the pseudalists: and the same Theognis, who has furnished
the epigraphs of your two letters, assures us that
[Illustration: page229]
Although this law has not yet been acted on but in a small and
inefficient degree, it is still considered as before the legislature,
with other bills of the revised code, not yet taken up, and I have great
hope that some patriotic spirit will, at a favorable moment, call it up,
and make it the key-stone of the arch of our government.
With respect to aristocracy, we should further consider, that before the
establishment of the American States, nothing was known to history
but the man of the old world, crowded within limits either small or
overcharged, and steeped in the vices which that situation generates. A
government adapted to such men would be one thing; but a very different
one, that for the man of these States. Here every one may have land to
labor for himself, if he chooses; or, preferring the exercise of any
other industry, may exact for it such compensation as not only to afford
a comfortable subsistence, but wherewith to provide for a cessation
from labor in old age. Every one, by his property or by his satisfactory
situation, is interested in the support of law and order. And such men
may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control
over their public affairs, and a degree of freedom, which, in the hands
of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted
to the demolition and destruction of every thing public and private. The
history of the last twenty-five years of France, and of the last forty
years in America, nay, of its last two hundred years, proves the truth
of both parts of this observation.
But even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man.
Science had liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and
the American example had kindled feelings of right in the people. An
insurrection has consequently begun, of science, talents, and courage,
against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt. It has failed
in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used
for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty, and vice, could
not be restrained to rational action. But the world will recover from
the panic of this first catastrophe. Science is progressive, and talents
and enterprise on the alert. Resort may be had to the people of
the country, a more governable power from their principles and
subordination; and rank and birth and tinsel-aristocracy will finally
shrink into insignificance, even there. This, however, we have no right
to meddle with. It suffices for us, if the moral and physical condition
of our own citizens qualifies them to select the able and good for the
direction of their government, with a recurrence of elections at such
short periods as will enable them to displace an unfaithful servant,
before the mischief he meditates may be irremediable, I have thus
stated my opinion on a point on which we differ, not with a view to
controversy, for we are both too old to change opinions which are the
result of a long life of inquiry and reflection; but on the suggestion
of a former letter of yours, that we ought not to die before we have
explained ourselves to each other. We acted in perfect harmony,
through a long and perilous contest for our liberty and independence.
A constitution has been acquired, which, though neither of us thinks
perfect, yet both consider as competent to render our fellow-citizens
the happiest and the securest on whom the sun has ever shone. If we do
not think exactly alike as to its imperfections, it matters little to
our country, which, after devoting to it long lives of disinterested
labor we have delivered over to our successors in life, who will be able
to take care of it and of themselves.
Of the pamphlet on aristocracy which has been sent to you, or who may be
its author, I have heard nothing but through your letter. If the person
you suspect, it may be known from the quaint, mystical, and hyperbolical
ideas, involved in affected, newfangled, and pedantic terms, which stamp
his writings. Whatever it be, I hope your quiet is not to be affected at
this day by the rudeness or intemperance of scribblers; but that you may
continue in tranquillity to live and to rejoice in the prosperity of
our country, until it shall be your own wish to take your seat among the
_aristoi_ who have gone before you.
Ever and affectionately yours.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXVI.--TO THOMAS LIEPER, January 1, 1814
TO THOMAS LIEPER.
Monticello, January 1, 1814.
Dear Sir,
I had hoped, when I retired from the business of the world, that I
should have been permitted to pass the evening of life in tranquillity,
undisturbed by the peltings and passions of which the public papers
are the vehicles. I see, however, that I have been dragged into the
newspapers by the infidelity of one with whom I was formerly intimate,
but who has abandoned the American principles out of which that intimacy
grew, and become the bigoted partisan of England, and malcontent of his
own government. In a letter which he wrote me, he earnestly besought me
to avail our country of the good understanding which subsisted between
the executive and myself, by recommending an offer of such terms to
our enemy as might produce a peace, towards which he was confident that
enemy was disposed. In my answer, I stated the aggressions, the insults,
and injuries which England had been heaping on us for years, our long
forbearance in the hope she might be led by time and reflection to a
sounder view of her own interests, and of their connection with justice
to us, the repeated propositions for accommodation made by us, and
rejected by her, and at length her Prince Regent’s solemn proclamation
to the world, that he would never repeal the orders in council as to
us, until France should have revoked her illegal decrees as to all
the world, and her minister’s declaration to ours, that no admissible
precaution against the impressment of our seamen could be proposed: that
the unavoidable declaration of war which followed these was accompanied
by advances for peace, on terms which no American could dispense with,
made through various channels, and unnoticed and unanswered through
any: but that if he could suggest any other conditions which we ought
to accept, and which had not been repeatedly offered and rejected, I was
ready to be the channel of their conveyance to the government: and, to
show him that neither that attachment to Bonaparte nor French influence,
which they allege eternally without believing it, themselves, affected
my mind, I threw in the two little sentences, of the printed extract
enclosed in your friendly favor of the 9th ultimo, and exactly these two
little sentences, from a letter of two or three pages, he has thought
proper to publish, naked, alone, and with my name, although other parts
of the letter would have shown that I wished such limits only to the
successes of Bonaparte, as should not prevent his completely closing
Europe against British manufactures and commerce; and thereby reducing
her to just terms of peace with us.
Thus am I situated. I receive letters from all quarters, some from known
friends, some from those who write like friends, on various subjects.
What am I to do? Am I to button myself up in Jesuitical reserve, rudely
declining any answer, or answering in terms so unmeaning, as only
to prove my distrust? Must I withdraw myself from all interchange of
sentiment with the world? I cannot do this. It is at war with my habits
and temper. I cannot act as if all men were unfaithful, because some are
so; nor believe that all will betray me, because some do. I had rather
be the victim of occasional infidelities, than relinquish my general
confidence in the honesty of man.
So far as to the breach of confidence which has brought me into the
newspapers, with a view to embroil me with my friends, by a supposed
separation in opinion and principle from them. But it is impossible
there can be any difference of opinion among us on the two propositions
contained in these two little sentences, when explained, as they were
explained in the context from which they were insulated. That Bonaparte
is an unprincipled tyrant, who is deluging the continent of Europe with
blood, there is not a human being, not even the wife of his bosom, who
does not see: nor can there, I think, be a doubt as to the line we ought
to wish drawn between his successes and those of Alexander. Surely none
of us wish to see Bonaparte conquer Russia, and lay thus at his feet the
whole continent of Europe. This done, England would be but a breakfast:
and although I am free from the visionary fears which the votaries of
England have affected to entertain, because I believe he cannot effect
the conquest of Europe; yet put all Europe into his hands, and he might
spare such a force, to be sent in British ships, as I would as lieve
not have to encounter, when I see how much trouble a handful of British
soldiers in Canada has given us. No. It cannot be our interest that all
Europe should be reduced to a single monarchy. The true line of
interest for us is, that Bonaparte should be able to effect the complete
exclusion of England from the whole continent of Europe, in order, as
the same letter said, ‘by this peaceable engine of constraint, to make
her renounce her views of dominion over the ocean, of permitting no
other nation to navigate it but with her license, and on tribute to her,
and her aggressions on the persons of our citizens who may choose to
exercise their right of passing over that element.’ And this would be
effected by Bonaparte’s succeeding so far as to close the Baltic against
her. This success I wished him the last year, this I wish him this
year; but were he again advanced to Moscow, I should again wish him
such disasters as would prevent his reaching Petersburg. And were the
consequences even to be the longer continuance of our war, I would
rather meet them, than see the whole force of Europe wielded by a single
hand.
I have gone into this explanation, my friend, because I know you will
not carry my letter to the newspapers, and because I am willing
to entrust to your discretion the explaining me to our honest
fellow-laborers, and the bringing them to pause and reflect, if any of
them have not sufficiently reflected on the extent of the success we
ought to wish to Bonaparte, with a view to our own interests only; and
even were we not men, to whom nothing human should be indifferent. But
is our particular interest to make us insensible to all sentiments of
morality? Is it then become criminal, the moral wish that the torrents
of blood this man is shedding in Europe, the sufferings of so many human
beings, good as ourselves, on whose necks he is trampling, the burnings
of ancient cities, devastations of great countries, the destruction of
law and order, and demoralization of the world, should be arrested, even
if it should place our peace a little further distant? No. You and
I cannot differ in wishing that Russia, and Sweden, and Denmark, and
Germany, and Spain, and Portugal, and Italy, and even England, may
retain their independence. And if we differ in our opinions about Towers
and his four beasts and ten kingdoms, we differ as friends, indulging
mutual errors, and doing justice to mutual sincerity and honesty. In
this spirit of sincere confidence and affection, I pray God to bless you
here and hereafter.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXVII.--TO DOCTOR WALTER JONES, January 2,1814
TO DOCTOR WALTER JONES.
Monticello, January 2,1814.
Dear Sir,
Your favor of November the 25th reached this place December the 21st,
having been near a month on the way. How this could happen I know not,
as we have two mails a week both from Fredericksburg and Richmond. It
found me just returned from a long journey and absence, during which
so much business had accumulated, commanding the first attentions, that
another week has been added to the delay.