The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
ARISTOCRACY / OF TALENT
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 ascendency. 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 coordinates. 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 your-self, 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 the government nearly hereditary in
those families. I presume that from an early period of your history,
members of those 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 Virginia . . . laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the foot 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
taughit. 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.
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 me, that for the man of these States.
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.
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 suggestions of a former letter of yours, that we ought not to die
before we have explained ourselves to each other.
to John Adams, 28 October 1813
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