The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
MORAL PRINCIPLES / AND CONSTITUTIONS
I received, my dear friend, your letter covering the Constitution for
your Equinoctial republics, just as I was setting out for this place.
I brought it with me, and have read it with great satisfaction. I
suppose it well formed for those for whom it was intended, and the
excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those
to be governed by it. For us it would not do. Distinguishing between
the structure of the government and the moral principles on which you
prescribe its administration, with the latter we concur cordially,
with the former we should not. We of the United States, you know, are
constitutionally and conscientiously democrats. We consider society as
one of the natural wants with which man has been created; that he has
been endowed with faculties and qualities to effect its satisfaction
by concurrence of others having the same want; that when, by the
exercise of these faculties, he has procured a state of society, it is
one of his acquisitions which he has a right to regulate and control,
jointly indeed with all those who have concurred in the procurement,
whom he cannot exclude from its use or direction more than they him.
We think experience has proved it safer, for the mass of individuals
composing the society, to reserve to themselves personally the
exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent, and to
delegate those to which they are not competent to deputies named, and
removable for un faithful conduct, by themselves immediately.
You
first set down as zeros all individuals not having lands, which are
the greater number in every society of long standing. Those holding
lands are permitted to manage in person the small affairs of their
commune or corporation, and to elect a deputy for the canton; in which
election; too, every one's vote is to be an unit, a plurality, or a
fraction, in proportion to his landed possessions. The assemblies of
cantons, then, elect for the districts; those of districts for
circles; and those of circles for the national assemblies. Some of
these highest councils, too, are in a considerable degree
self-elected, the regency partially, the judiciary entirely, and some
are for life. Whenever, therefore, an
esprit de corps, or of party, gets possession of them, which
experience shows to be inevitable, there are no means of breaking it
up, for they will never elect but those of their own spirit. Juries
are allowed in criminal cases only. I acknowledge myself strong in
affection to our own form, yet both of us act and think from the same
motive, we both consider the people as our children, and love them
with parental affection. But you love them as infants whom you are
afraid to trust with out nurses; and I as adults whom I freely leave
to self-government.
to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 24 April 1816
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