The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
PATRIOTISM / AND MERCHANTS
I join in your reprobation of our merchants, priests, and lawyers,
for their adherence to England and monarchy, in preference to their
own country and its Constitution. But merchants have no country. The
mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as
that from which they draw their gains. In every country and in every
age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance
with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his
own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than
by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest
religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible
to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purposes.
With the lawyers it is a new thing. They have, in the Mother country,
been generally the firmest supporters of the free principles of their
constitution. But there too they have changed.
to Horatio G. Spafford, 17 March 1814
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