The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
GOVERNMENT / LEGISLATIVE BRANCH
I have read your book with infinite satisfaction and improvement. It
will do great good in America. Its learning and its good sense will, I
hope, make it an institute for our politicians, old as well as young.
There is one opinion in it, however, which I will ask you to
reconsider, because it appears to me not entirely accurate, and not
likely to do good. Page 362, "Congress is not a legislative, but
a diplomatic assembly." Separating into parts the whole
sovereignty of our States, some of these parts are yielded to
Congress. Upon these I should think them both legislative and
executive, and that would have been judiciary also, had not the
confederation required them for certain purposes to appoint a
judiciary. It has accordingly been the decision of our courts that the
confederation is a part of the law of the land, and superior in
authority to the ordinary laws, because it cannot be altered by the
legislature of any one State. I doubt whether they are at all a
diplomatic assembly.
to John Adams, 23 February 1787
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