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. 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 changes 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, as our sister States have done, 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 of
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 any thing 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 every thing 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 best for themselves. But how
collect their voice? This is the real difficulty. If invited by private
authority to county or district meetings, these divisions are so large,
that few will attend; and their voice will be imperfectly or falsely
pronounced. Here, then, would be one of the advantages of the ward
divisions I have proposed. The mayor of every ward, on a question like
the present, would call his ward together, take the simple yea or nay of
its members, convey these to the county court, who would hand on those
of all its wards to the proper general authority; and the voice of
the whole people would be thus fairly, fully, and peaceably expressed,
discussed, and decided by the common reason of the society. 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, for ever.
These, Sir, are my opinions of the governments we see among men, and of
the principles by which alone we may prevent our own from falling into
the same dreadful track. I have given them at greater length than your
letter called for. But I cannot say things by halves; and I confide them
to your honor, so to use them as to preserve me from the gridiron of the
public papers. If you shall approve and enforce them, as you have done
that of equal representation, they may do some good. If not, keep them
to yourself as the effusions of withered age, and useless time. I
shall, with not the Less truth, assure you of my great respect and
consideration.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXXXVI.--TO JOHN TAYLOR, July 21, 1816
TO JOHN TAYLOR.
Monticello, July 21, 1816.
Dear Sir,
Yours of the 10th is received, and I have to acknowledge a copious
supply of the turnip-seed requested. Besides taking care myself, I
shall endeavor again to commit it to the depository of the neighborhood,
generally found to be the best precaution against losing a good thing.
I will add a word on the political part of our letters. I believe we do
not differ on either of the points you suppose. On education certainly
not; of which the proofs are my bill for the diffusion of knowledge,
proposed near forty years ago, and my uniform endeavors, to this day,
to get our counties divided into wards, one of the principal objects of
which is, the establishment of a primary school in each. But education
not being a branch of municipal government, but, like the other arts
and sciences, an accident only, I did not place it, with election, as a
fundamental member in the structure of government. Nor, I believe, do
we differ as to the county courts. I acknowledge the value of this
institution; that it is in truth our principal executive and judiciary,
and that it does much for little pecuniary reward. It is their
self-appointment I wish to correct; to find some means of breaking up
a cabal, when such a one gets possession of the bench. When this takes
place, it becomes the most afflicting of tyrannies, because its powers
are so various, and exercised on every thing most immediately around
us. And how many instances have you and I known of these monopolies of
county administration! I knew a county in which a particular family (a
numerous one) got possession of the bench, and for a whole generation.
never admitted a man on it who was not of its clan or connection. 1 know
a county now of one thousand and five hundred militia, of which sixty
are federalists. Its court is of thirty members, of whom twenty are
federalists, (every third man of the sect.) There are large and populous
districts in it without a justice, because without a federalist
for appointment: the militia are as disproportionably under federal
officers. And there is no authority on earth which can break up this
junto, short of a general convention. The remaining one thousand four
hundred and forty, free, fighting, and paying citizens, are governed
by men neither of their choice nor confidence, and without a hope
of relief. They are certainly excluded from the blessings of a free
government for life, and indefinitely, for aught the constitution has
provided. This solecism may be called any thing but republican, and
ought undoubtedly to be corrected. I salute you with constant friendship
and respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXXXVII.--TO SAMUEL KERCHIVAL, September 5, 1816
TO SAMUEL KERCHIVAL.
Monticello, September 5, 1816.
Sir,
Your letter of August the 16th is just received. That which I wrote to
you under the address of H. Tompkinson, was intended for the author
of the pamphlet you were so kind as to send me, and therefore, in your
hands, found its true destination. But I must beseech you, Sir, not to
admit a possibility of its being published. Many good people will revolt
from its doctrines, and my wish is to offend nobody; to leave to those
who are to live under it, the settlement of their own constitution, and
to pass in peace the remainder of my time. If those opinions are sound,
they will occur to others, and will prevail by their own weight,
without the aid of names. I am glad to see that the Staunton meeting has
rejected the idea of a limited convention. The article, however, nearest
my heart, is the division of the counties into wards. These will be pure
and elementary republics, the sum of all which, taken together, composes
the State, and will make of the whole a true democracy as to the
business of the wards, which is that of nearest and daily concern.
The affairs of the larger sections, of counties, of States, and of
the Union, not admitting personal transaction by the people, will be
delegated to agents elected by themselves; and representation will thus
be substituted, where personal action becomes impracticable. Yet,
even over these representative organs, should they become corrupt and
perverted, the division into wards constituting the people, in their
wards, a regularly organized power, enables them by that organization
to crush, regularly and peaceably, the usurpations of their unfaithful
agents, and rescues them from the dreadful necessity of doing it
insurrectionally. In this way we shall be as republican as a large
society can be; and secure the continuance of purity in our government,
by the salutary, peaceable, and regular control of the people. No other
depositories of power have ever yet been found, which did not end in
converting to their own profit the earnings of those committed to their
charge. George the III., in execution of the trust confided to him, has,
within his own day, loaded the inhabitants of Great Britain with debts
equal to the whole fee-simple value of their island, and under pretext
of governing it, has alienated its whole soil to creditors who could
lend money to be lavished on priests, pensions, plunder, and perpetual
war. This would not have been so, had the people retained organized
means of acting on their agents. In this example, then, let us read a
lesson for ourselves, and not ‘go, and do likewise.’
Since writing my letter of July the 12th, I have been told, that on the
question of equal representation, our fellow-citizens in some sections
of the State claim peremptorily a right of representation for their
slaves. Principle will, in this, as in most other cases, open the way
for us to correct conclusion. Were our State a pure democracy, in which
all its inhabitants should meet together to transact all their business,
there would yet be excluded from their deliberations, 1. Infants, until
arrived at years of discretion. 2. Women, who, to prevent depravation
of morals, and ambiguity of issue, could not mix promiscuously in the
public meetings of men. 3, Slaves, from whom the unfortunate state of
things with us takes away the rights of will and of property. Those,
then, who have no will, could be permitted to exercise none in the
popular assembly; and of course could delegate none to an agent in a
representative assembly. The business, in the first case, would be done
by qualified citizens only; and, in the second, by the representatives
of qualified citizens only. It is true, that in the general
constitution, our State is allowed a larger representation on account
of its slaves. But every one knows, that that constitution was a
matter of compromise; a capitulation between conflicting interests
and opinions. In truth, the condition of different descriptions of
inhabitants in any country is a matter of municipal arrangement, of
which no foreign country has a right to take notice. All its inhabitants
are men as to them. Thus, in the New England States, none have the
powers of citizens but those whom they call freemen; and none are
freemen Until admitted by a vote of the freemen of the town. Yet, in the
General Government, these non-freemen are counted in their quantum of
representation and of taxation. So, slaves with us have no powers as
citizens; yet, in representation in the General Government, they count
in the proportion of three to five; and so also in taxation. Whether
this is equal, is not here the question. It is a capitulation of
discordant sentiments and circumstances, and is obligatory on that
ground. But this view shows there is no inconsistency in claiming
representation for them from the other States, and refusing it within
our own.
Accept the renewal of assurances of my respect.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXXXVIII.--TO JOHN ADAMS, October 14, 1816
TO JOHN ADAMS,
Monticello, October 14, 1816.
Your letter, dear Sir, of May the 6th, had already well explained the
uses of grief. That of September the 3rd, with equal truth, adduces
instances of its abuse; and when we put into the same scale these
abuses, with the afflictions of soul which even the uses of grief cost
us, we may consider its value in the economy of the human being, as
equivocal at least. Those afflictions cloud too great a portion of
life, to find a counterpoise in any benefits derived from its uses. For
setting aside its paroxyms on the occasions of special bereavements, all
the latter years of aged men are overshadowed with its gloom. Whither,
for instance, can you and I look without seeing the graves of those we
have known? And whom can we call up, of our early companions, who has
not left us to regret his loss? This, indeed, may be one of the salutary
effects of grief; inasmuch as it prepares us to loose ourselves also
without repugnance. Doctor Freeman’s instances of female levity cured by
grief, are certainly to the point, and constitute an item of credit in
the account we examine. I was much mortified by the loss of the Doctor’s
visit, by my absence from home. To have shown how much I feel indebted
to you for making good people known to me, would have been one pleasure;
and to have enjoyed that of his conversation, and the benefits of
his information, so favorably reported by my family, would have been
another. I returned home on the third day after his departure. The loss
of such visits is among the sacrifices which my divided residence costs
me.
Your undertaking the twelve volumes of Dupuis, is a degree of heroism
to which I could not have aspired even in my younger days. I have been
contented with the humble achievement of reading the analysis of his
work by Destutt Tracy, in two hundred pages, octavo. I believe I should
have ventured on his own abridgment of the work, in one octavo volume,
had it ever come to my hands; but the marrow of it in Tracy has
satisfied my appetite: and even in that, the preliminary discourse of
the analyzer himself, and his conclusion, are worth more in my eye than
the body of the work. For the object of that seems to be to smother all
history under the mantle of allegory. If histories so unlike as those
of Hercules and Jesus, can, by a fertile imagination and allegorical
interpretations, be brought to the same tally, no line of distinction
remains between fact and fancy. As this pithy morsel will not
overburthen the mail in passing and repassing between Quincy and
Monticello, I send it for your perusal. Perhaps it will satisfy you, as
it has me; and may save you the labor of reading twenty-four times its
volume. I have said to you that it was written by Tracy; and I had so
entered it on the title-page, as I usually do on anonymous works whose
authors are known to me. But Tracy requested me not to betray his
anonyme, for reasons which may not yet, perhaps, have ceased to weigh. I
am bound, then, to make the same reserve with you. Destutt-Tracy is, in
my judgment, the ablest writer living on intellectual subjects, or the
operations of the understanding. His three octavo volumes on Ideology,
which constitute the foundation of what he has since written, I have not
entirely read; because I am not fond of reading what is merely abstract,
and unapplied immediately to some useful science. Bonaparte, with his
repeated derisions of Ideologists (squinting at this author) has by
this time felt that true wisdom does not lie in mere practice without
principle. The next work Tracy wrote was the Commentary on Montesquieu,
never published in the original, because not safe; but translated and
published in Philadelphia, yet without the author’s name. He has since
permitted his name to be mentioned. Although called a Commentary, it is,
in truth, an elementary work on the principles of government, comprised
in about three hundred pages octavo. He has lately published a third
work on Political Economy, comprising the whole subject within about
the same compass; in which all its principles are demonstrated with
the severity of Euclid, and, like him, without ever using a superfluous
word. I have procured this to be translated, and have been four years
endeavoring to get it printed: but, as yet, without success. In the mean
time, the author has published the original in France, which he thought
unsafe while Bonaparte was in power. No printed copy, I believe, has yet
reached this country. He has his fourth and last work now in the press
at Paris, closing, as he conceives, the circle of metaphysical sciences.
This work, which is on Ethics, I have not seen, but suspect I shall
differ from it in its foundation, although not in its deductions. I
gather from his other works that he adopts the principle of Hobbes,
that justice is founded in contract solely, and does not result from the
constitution of man. I believe, on the contrary, that it is instinct and
innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as
that of feeling, seeing, or hearing; as a wise creator must have seen to
be necessary in an animal destined to live in society: that every human
mind feels pleasure in doing good to another: that the non-existence of
justice is not to be inferred from the fact that the same act is deemed
virtuous and right in one society which is held vicious and wrong
in another; because, as the circumstances and opinions of different
societies vary, so the acts which may do them right or wrong must vary
also; for virtue does not consist in the act we do, but in the end it
is to effect. If it is to effect the happiness of him to whom it
is directed, it is virtuous, while, in a society under different
circumstances and opinions, the same act might produce pain, and would
be vicious. The essence of virtue is in doing good to others, while what
is good may be one thing in one society, and its contrary in another.
Yet, however we may differ as to the foundation of morals (and as
many foundations have been assumed as there are writers on the subject
nearly), so correct a thinker as Tracy will give us a sound system of
morals. And, indeed, it is remarkable, that so many writers, setting out
from so many different premises, yet meet all in the same conclusions.
This looks as if they were guided unconsciously, by the unerring-hand of
instinct.
Your history of the Jesuits, by what name of the author or other
description is it to be inquired for?
What do you think of the present situation of England? Is not this the
great and fatal crush of their funding system, which, like death, has
been foreseen by all, but its hour, like that of death, hidden from
mortal prescience? It appears to me that all the circumstances now exist
which render recovery desperate. The interest of the national debt is
now equal to such a portion of the profits of all the land and the labor
of the island, as not to leave enough for the subsistence of those
who labor. Hence the owners of the land abandon it and retire to other
countries, and the laborer has not enough of his earnings left to him
to cover his back and to fill his belly. The local insurrections, now
almost general, are of the hungry and the naked, who cannot be quieted
but by food and raiment. But where are the means of feeding and clothing
them? The landholder has nothing of his own to give; he is but the
fiduciary of those who have lent him money; the lender is so taxed in
his meat, drink, and clothing, that he has but a bare subsistence left.
The landholder, then, must give up his land, or the lender his debt,
or they must compromise by giving up each one half. But will either
consent, peaceably, to such an abandonment of property? Or must it not
be settled by civil conflict? If peaceably compromised, will they agree
to risk another ruin under the same government unreformed? I think not;
but I would rather know what you think; because you have lived with
John Bull, and know better than I do the character of his herd. I salute
Mrs. Adams and yourself with every sentiment of affectionate cordiality
and respect;
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXXXIX.--TO JOHN ADAMS, TO JOHN ADAMS
TO JOHN ADAMS.
Monticello, January 11, 1817.
Dear Sir,
Forty-three volumes read in one year, and twelve of them quarto! Dear
Sir, how I envy you! Half a dozen octavos in that space of time are as
much as I am allowed. I can read by candlelight only, and stealing long
hours from my rest: nor would that time be indulged to me, could I by
that light see to write. From sunrise to one or two o’clock, and often
from dinner to dark, I am drudging at the writing-table. And all this
to answer letters into which neither interest nor inclination on my part
enters; and often from persons whose names I have never before heard.
Yet, writing civilly, it is hard to refuse them civil answers. This is
the burthen of my life, a very grievous one indeed, and one which I must
get rid of. Delaplaine lately requested me to give him a line on the
subject of his book; meaning, as I well knew, to publish it. This I
constantly refuse; but in this instance yielded, that in saying a
word for him, I might say two for myself. I expressed in it freely
my sufferings from this source; hoping it would have the effect of an
indirect appeal to the discretion of those, strangers and others, who,
in the most friendly dispositions, oppress me with their concerns,
their pursuits, their projects, inventions, and speculations, political,
moral, religious, mechanical, mathematical, historical, &c. &c. &c.
I hope the appeal will bring me relief, and that I shall be left to,
exercise and enjoy correspondence with the friends I love, and on
subjects which they, or my own inclinations, present. In that case, your
letters shall not be so long on my files unanswered, as sometimes they
have been to my great mortification.
To advert now to the subjects of those of December the 12th and 16th.
Tracy’s Commentaries on Montesquieu have never been published in the
original. Duane printed a translation from the original manuscript a few
years ago. It sold, I believe, readily, and whether a copy can now
be had, I doubt. If it can, you will receive it from my bookseller in
Philadelphia, to whom I now write for that purpose. Tracy comprehends,
under the word ‘Ideology’ all the subjects which the French term
_Morale_, as the correlative to _Physique_, His works on Logic,
Government, Political Economy, and Morality, he considers as making up
the circle of ideological subjects, or of those which are within the
scope of the understanding, and not of the senses. His Logic occupies
exactly the ground of Locke’s work on the Understanding. The translation
of that on Political Economy is now printing; but it is no translation
of mine. I have only had the correction of it, which was, indeed, very
laborious. _Le premier jet_ having been by some one who understood
neither French nor English, it was impossible to make it more than
faithful. But it is a valuable work.
The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading in the four
words, ‘Be just and good,’ is that in which all our inquiries must end;
as the riddles of all the priesthoods end in four more, ‘_Ubi panis, ibi
deus_.’ What all agree in, is probably right; what no two agree in, most
probably wrong. One of our fan-coloring biographers, who paints small
men as very great, inquired of me lately, with real affection too,
whether he might consider as authentic, the change in my religion much
spoken of in some circles. Now this supposed that they knew what had
been my religion before, taking for it the word of their priests, whom
I certainly never made the confidants of my creed. My answer was, ‘Say
nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself alone. Its
evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been
honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it
cannot be a bad one.’ Affectionately adieu.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CXL.--TO JOHN ADAMS, May 5, 1817
TO JOHN ADAMS.
Monticello, May 5, 1817.
Dear Sir,