The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
AMERICANS / SUPERIORITY OF
The European papers have announced, that the Assembly of Virginia
were occupied on the revisal of their code of laws. This, with some
other similar intelligence, has contributed much to convince the
people of Europe, that what the English papers are constantly
publishing of our anarchy, is false; as they are sensible that such a
work is that of a people only, who are in perfect tranquillity. Our
act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. The ambassadors
and ministers of the several nations of Europe, resident at this
Court, have asked of me copies of it, to send to their sovereigns, and
it is inserted at full length in several books now in the press; among
others, in the new "Encyclopedie." I think it will produce
considerable good even in these countries, where ignorance,
superstition, poverty, and oppression of body and mind, in every form,
are so firmly settled on the mass of the people, that their redemption
from them can never be hoped. If all the sovereigns of Europe were to
set themselves to work, to emancipate the minds of their subjects from
their present ignorance and prejudices, and that, as zealously as they
now endeavor the contrary, a thousand years would not place them on
that high ground, on which our common people are now setting out. Ours
could not have been so fairly placed under the control of the common
sense of the people, had they not been separated from their parent
stock, and kept from contamination, either from them, or the other
people of the old world, by the intervention of so wide an ocean. To
know the worth of this, one must see the want of it here. I think by
far the most important bill in our whole code, is that for the
diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can
be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness. If anybody
thinks that kings, nobles, or priests are good conservators of the
public happiness, send him here. It is the best school in the universe
to cure him of that folly. He will see here, with his own eyes, that
these descriptions of men are an abandoned confederacy against the
happiness of the mass of the people. The omnipotence of their effect
cannot be better proved, than in this country particularly, where,
not-withstanding the finest soil upon earth, the finest climate under
heaven, and a people of the most benevolent, the most gay and amiable
character of which the human form is susceptible; where such a people,
I say, surrounded by so many blessings from nature, are loaded with
misery, by kings, nobles, and priests, and by them alone. Preach, my
dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law
for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know, that the
people alone can protect us against these evils, and that the tax
which will be paid for this purpose, is not more than the thousandth
part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles, who will rise
up among us if we leave the people in ignorance. The people of
England, I think, are less oppressed than here [France]. But it needs
but half an eye to see, when among them, that the foundation is laid
in their dispositions for the establishment of a despotism. Nobility,
wealth, and pomp are the objects of their admiration. They are by no
means the free-minded people we suppose them in America. Their learned
men, too, are few in number, and are less learned, and infinitely less
emancipated from prejudice, than those of this country.
to George Wythe, 13 August 1786
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