The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
UNITED STATES / CONDITIONS IN, COMPARED TO ENGLAND
And, first, we have no paupers, the old and crippled among us, who
possess nothing and have no families to take care of them, being too
few to merit notice as a separate section of society, or to affect a
general estimate. The great mass of our population is of laborers; our
rich, who can live without labor, either manual or professional, being
few, and of moderate wealth. Most of the laboring class possess
property, cultivate their own lands, have families, and from the
demand for their labor are enabled to exact from the rich and the
competent such prices as enable them to be fed abundantly, clothed
above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their families. They
are not driven to the ultimate resources of dexterity and skill,
because their wares will sell although not quite so nice as those of
England. The wealthy, on the other hand, and those at their ease, know
nothing of what the Europeans call luxury. They have only somewhat
more of the comforts and decencies of life than those who furnish
them. Can any condition of society be more desirable than this? Nor in
the class of laborers do I mean to withhold from the comparison that
portion whose color has condemned them, in certain parts of our Union,
to a subjection to the will of others. Even these are better fed in
these States, warmer clothed, and labor less than the journeymen or
day-laborers of England. They have the comfort, too, of numerous
families, in the midst of whom they live without want, or fear of it;
a solace which few of the laborers of England possess. They are
subject, it is true, to bodily coercion; but are not the hundreds of
thousands of British soldiers and seamen subject to the same, without
seeing, at the end of their career, when age and accident shall have
rendered them unequal to labor, the certainty, which the other has,
that be will never want? And has not the British seaman, as much as
the African, been reduced to this bondage by force, in flagrant
violation of his own consent, and of his natural right in his own
person? and with the laborers of England generally, does not the moral
coercion of want subject their will as despotically to that of their
employer, as the physical constraint does the soldier, the seaman, or
the slave?
But do not mistake me. I am not advocating slavery. I am not
justifying the wrongs we have committed on a foreign people by the
example of another nation committing equal wrongs on their own
subjects. On the contrary, there is nothing I would not sacrifice to a
practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and
political depravity. But I am at present comparing the condition and
degree of suffering to which oppression has reduced the man of one
color, with the condition and degree of suffering to which oppression
has reduced the man of another color; equally condemning both. Now let
us compute by numbers the sum of happiness of the two countries. In
England, happiness is the lot of the aristocracy only; and the
proportion they bear to the laborers and paupers, you know better than
I do. Were I to guess that they are four in every hundred, then the
happiness of the nation would be to its misery is one in twenty-five.
In the United States it is as eight millions to zero, or as all to
none. But it is said they possess the means of defence, and that we do
not. How so? Are we not men? Yes; but our men are so happy at home
that they will not hire themselves to be shot at for a shilling a day.
Hence we can have no standing armies for defence, because we have no
paupers to furnish the materials. The Greeks and Romans had no
standing armies, yet they defended themselves. The Greeks by their
laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put
into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a
standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and
oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was
reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us
so. In the beginning of our government we were willing to introduce
the least coercion possible on the will of the citizen. Hence a system
of military duty was established too indulgent to his indolence. This
is the first opportunity we have' had of trying it, and it has
completely failed; an issue foreseen by many, and for which remedies
have been proposed. That of classing the militia according to age, and
allotting each age to the particular kind of service to which it was
competent, was proposed to Congress in 1805, and subsequently; and, on
the last trial was lost, I believe, by a single vote only. Had it
prevailed, what has now happened would not have happened.
With this force properly classed, organized, trained, armed and
subject to tours of a year of military duty, we have no more to fear
for the defence of our country than those who have the resources of
despotism and pauperism.
But, you will say, we have been devastated in the meantime. True,
some of our public buildings have been burnt, and some scores of
individuals on the tide-water have lost their movable property and
their houses. I pity them, and execrate the barbarians who delight in
unavailing mischief. But these individuals have their lands and their
hands left They are not paupers, they have still better means of
subsistence than 24/25 of the people of England. Again, the English
have burnt our Capitol and President's house by means of their force.
We can burn their St. James' and St Paul's by means of our money,
offered to their own incendiaries, of whom there are thousands in
London who would do it rather than Starve. But it is against the laws
of civilized warfare to employ secret incendiaries. Is it not equally
so to destroy the works of art by armed incendiaries? Bonaparte,
possessed at times of almost every capital of Europe, with all his
despotism and power, injured no monument of art. If a nation, breaking
through all the restraints of civilized character, uses its means of
destruction (power for example) without distinction of objects, may we
not use our means (our money and their pauperism) to retaliate their
barbarous ravages? Are we obliged to use for resistance exactly the
weapons chosen by them for aggression? When they destroyed Copenhagen
by superior force, against all the laws of God and man, would it have
been unjustifiable for the Danes to have destroyed their ships by
torpedoes? Clearly not; and they and we should now be justifiable in
the conflagration of St. James' and St. Paul's. And if we do not carry
it into execution, it is because we think it more moral and more
honorable to set a good example, than follow a bad one.
to Thomas Cooper (Doctor), 10 September 1814
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