The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
PAINE, THOMAS / BRITAIN'S CONSTITUTION
I am much indebted for your kind letter of February the 29th, and for
your valuable volume on the English constitution. I have read this
with pleasure and much approbation, and think it has deduced the
constitution of the English nation from its rightful root, the
Anglo-Saxon. It is really wonderful, that so many able and learned men
should have failed in their attempts to define it with correctness. No
wonder, then, that Paine, who thought more than he read, should have
credited the great authorities who have declared, that the will of
parliament is the constitution of England. So Marbois, before the
French Revolution, observed to me, that the Almanac Royal was the
constitution of France. Your derivation of it from the Anglo-Saxons,
seems to be made on legitimate principles.
And although this
constitution was violated and set at naught by Norman force, yet force
cannot change right.
It has ever appeared to me, that the
difference between the Whig and the Tory of England is, that the Whig
deduces his rights from the Anglo-Saxon source, and the Tory from the
Norman.
to John Cartwright, 5 June 1824
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