The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
GOVERNMENT / LOCAL / RESPONSIBILITIES OF
My letter of the 24th ultimo conveyed to you the grounds of the two
articles objected to in the College bill. Your last presents one of
them in a new point of view, that of the commencement of the war4
schools as likely to render the law unpopular to the country. It must
be a very inconsiderate and rough process of execution that would do
this. My idea of the mode of carrying it into execution would be this:
Declare the county
ipso facto divided into wards for the present, by the
boundaries of the militia, captaincies; somebody attend the ordinary
muster of each company, having first desired the captain to call
together a full one. There explain the object of the law to the people
of the company, put to their vote whether they will have a school
established, and the most central and convenient place for it; get
them to meet and build a log school-house; have a roll taken of the
children who would attend it, and of those of them able to pay. These
would probably be sufficient to support a common teacher, instructing
gratis the few unable to pay. If there should be a deficiency, it
would require too trifling a contribution from the county to be
complained of; and especially as the whole county would participate,
where necessary, in the same resource. Should the company, by its
vote, decide that it would have no school, let them remain without
one. The advantages of this proceeding would be that it would become
the duty of the alderman elected by the county, to take an active part
in pressing the introduction of schools, and to look out for tutors.
If, however, it is intended that the State government shall take this
business into its own hands, and provide schools for every county,
then by all means strike out this provision of our bill. I would never
wish that it should be placed on a worse footing than the rest of the
State. But if it Is believed that these elementary schools will be
better managed by the Governor and Council, the commissioners of the
literary fund, or any other general authority of the government, than
by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all
experience. Try the principle one step further, and amend the bill so
as to commit to the Governor and Council the management of all our
farms, our mills, and merchants' stores. No, my friend, the way to
have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to
divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the
functions he is competent to. Let the national government be entrusted
with the defence of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations;
the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police, and
administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with
the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests
within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from
the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it
ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing
under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be
done for the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in
every government which has ever existed under the sun? The
generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no
matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the
aristocrats of a Venetian senate. And I do believe that if the
Almighty has not decreed that man shall never be free, (and it is a
blasphemy to believe it,) that the secret will be found to be in the
making himself the depository of the powers respecting himself, so far
as he is competent to them, and delegating only what is beyond his
competence by a synthetical process, to higher and higher orders of
functionaries, so as to trust fewer and fewer powers in pr6portlon as
the trustees become more and more oligarchical. The elementary
republics of the wards, the county republics, the State republics, and
the republic of the Union, would form a gradation of authorities,
standing each on the basis of law, holding every one its delegated
share of powers, and constituting truly a system of fundamental
balances and checks for the government. Where every man is a sharer in
the direction of his ward-republic, or of some of the higher ones, and
feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs, not
merely at an election one day in the year, but every day; when there
shall not be a man in the State who will not be a member of some one
of its councils, great or small, he will let the heart be torn out of
his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a
Bonaparte. How powerfully did we feel the energy of this organization
in the case of embargo? I felt the foundations of the government
shaken under my feet by the New England townships. There was not an
individual in their States whose body was not thrown with all its
momentum into action; and although the whole of the other States were
known to be in favor of the measure, yet the organization of this
little selfish minority enabled it to overrule the Union. What would
the unwieldy counties of the Middle, the South, and the West do? Call
a county meeting, and the drunken loungers at and about the
court-houses would have collected, the distances being too great for
the good people and the industrious generally to attend. The character
of those who really met would have been the measure of the weight they
would have had in the scale of public opinion. As Cato, then,
concluded every speech with the words, "Carthago delenda est,"
so do I every opinion, with the injunction, "divide the counties
into wards." Begin them only for a single purpose; they will soon
show for what others they are the best instruments. God bless you, and
all our rulers, and give them the wisdom, as I am sure they have the
will, to fortify us against the degeneracy of our government, and the
concentration of all its powers in the hands of the one, the few, the
wellborn or the many.
to Joseph C. Cabell, 2 February 1816
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