The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
CONSTITUTION / UNITED STATES / AMENDING
Where then is our republicanism to be found? Not in our Constitution
certainly, but merely in the spirit of our people. That would oblige
even a despot to govern us republicanly. Owing to this spirit, and to
nothing in the form of our Constitution, all things have gone well.
But this fact, so triumphantly misquoted by the enemies of
reformation, is not the fruit of our Constitution, but has prevailed
in spite of it. Our functionaries have done well, because generally
honest men. If any were not so, they feared to show it.
But it will be said, it is easier to find faults than to amend them.
I do not think their amendments so difficult as is pretended. Only lay
down true principles, and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be
frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the
croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people.
I am
not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our
dependence for continued freedom.
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem
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 in 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 change 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 6f 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 anything human can so long endure.
This corporeal globe, and everything 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 the best for themselves.
to Samuel Kercheval, 12 July 1816
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