"Men (and women) by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties:1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still, and pursue the same object. The last appellation of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all."
2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, tho’ not the most wise depository of the public interests.
Thomas Jefferson,
Letter to Henry Ludlow, 10 AUG 1824
Here
I should have added this to the site years ago.
Thanks to Jonathan Schwarz
posting at This Modern World 28 JUN 2006
for reminding me to finally do so.
from The Great Republic:
Presidents and States of the United States of America,
and Comments on American History
by Kelley Ross
"There are, indeed, libertarian anarchists, and it is even possible to argue that John Locke's own principles make it difficult to avoid anarchy. On the other hand, neither Locke, nor Smith, nor Washington, nor Jefferson, nor Mill, nor F.A. Hayek, nor even Ayn Rand were anarchists. To them "minimalist government" meant, indeed, government; and such a government needed to exercise maximal power but only for certain purposes, as never expressed better than by Jefferson himself, in his First Inaugural Address of 1801:
Still one thing more, fellow citizens -- a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.
Human Nature, Anarchy, and Capitalism
by Kelley Ross
"More than a mere renaissance man, Jefferson may actually have been a new kind of man. He was fluent in five languages and able to read two others. He wrote, over the course of his life, over sixteen thousand letters. He was acquainted with nearly every influential person in America, and a great many in Europe as well. He was a lawyer, agronomist, musician, scientist, philosopher, author, architect, inventor, and statesman. Though he never set foot outside of the American continent before adulthood, he acquired an education that rivaled the finest to be attained in Europe. He was clearly the foremost American son of the Enlightenment."Copyright ©1999-2001 by the Independence Hall Association
"Jefferson's arguments on majority rule are brilliant and virtually unanswerable; it is difficult to imagine alternatives to the system he described."
"Any perusal of the Jefferson writings will establish that the Sage of Monticello was a Deist who accepted the label Christian as he defined it. To him Jesus was a moral man who based his ethics on the natural rights of human beings. Jefferson, as his writings make abundantly clear, had contempt for much of the Christian clergy, rejected John Calvin as a tritheist, and wrote his own bible that excluded all references to miracles, wonders, signs, virgin birth, resurrection, the god-head, and whatever else conflicted with his own religious thought."
"I will place under this a syllabus of the doctrines of Epicurus, somewhat in the lapidary style, which I wrote some twenty years ago..."
"About to enter, fellow citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our government, and consequently those which ought to shape its administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet-anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people; a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution, where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burdened; the honest payment of our debts, and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion, freedom of the Press, and freedom of person, under the protection of the Habeas Corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected.
These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment; they should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."
Thomas Jefferson
Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, 23 SEP 1800