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| The Father of American Democracy
RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY,
By GM. M. M. TRUMBULL.
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|| ||{{\\
The Father of American Democracy.
HIS POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND
RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY,
By GEN. M. M. TRUMBULL.
CHICAGO:
PUBLISHED BY GEORGE SCHILLING,
169 Washington Street.


THOMAS JEFFERSON,
His Moral, Religious and Political
Philosophy.
BY GEN. M. M. TRUMBULL.
There are men in every age who by mental and moral
superiority seize the opportunities and master the circumstances
of their time. By force of genius and enthusiasm they appro-
priate external conditions as the raw materials of statesmanship,
and mould them into those important actions and events, the
record of which we call history. Thomas Jefferson was one of
these. He was the political architect who quarried, and shaped,
and laid the corner stone of the great nation that shall be; and
his individuality gave harmony and proportion to much of the
original superstructure itself. As we often see the founder's
name carved on the corner stone of some stately temple, hos-
pital or school, so for centuries to come, posterity will read the
name of Thomas Jefferson cut deep in the foundation stone of
the American Republic. As the tall figure of this man recedes
into the past, his name becomes a talisman for demagogues to
conjure with; in four or five hundred years it may be a supersti-

4.
tion to work miracles with, and in a couple of thousand years,
when the surviving millions shall have exhausted the sustaining
powers of this continent, and they themselves be in their dot-
º and decay, Jefferson may have a place among the chiefest
of their gods. This is not an extravagant speculation, for even
now, while we have among us living men who have seen Jeffer-
son and talked with him, we behold a great political party
whose teachers and whose preachers consecrate and sanctify
their platforms and their “tickets” with his name; just as the
bishops and the priests consecrate their creeds, their liturgies,
and even their churches, with the name of St. Peter, St. Atha-
nasius, or St. Paul. It is not any more slavish and degrading
for a man to worship St. Patrick, than it is to worship St. Jef-
ferson. Of the millions of idolators who claim Jefferson as the
atron saint of their º nine out of every ten know abso-
utely nothing about his work, his character or his principles.
ºefferson was born in the second quarter of the eighteenth
century, and he died in the second quarter of the nineteenth
century. For sixty years he was an active moral and political
force; member of the Virginia Legislature; member of the Con-
tinental Congress; Governor of Virginia; Ambassador to France;
Secretary of State in Washington's Cabinet; Vice-President of
the United States, and President. Jefferson was fortunate in
his time; he flourished in a freethinking age, an age of intense
intellectual activity; an era of political, religious and social
revolution. He was fortunate in location, for he was born in
Virginia, the most influential and important of the American
colonies. He was fortunate in property for he had no fear of
poverty; he could afford himself agºod education, and he had leis-
ureto improve his mind. He was fortunatein his profession, for
the study of the law had compelled him to explore the history
of nations, to ascertain the origin of governments, whence
their authority to make any laws at all, and how far that author-
#. is limited by the right of the individual citizen to liberty.
e was unfortunate in this that he had no gift of oratory. Pol-
itican, º legislator, ambassador, he could not make a
speech. The pen preserved his thoughts and gave them to the
world. His friend Patrick Henry was a good orator, so they
say, but his oratory is only a tradition. His speeches have long
since mingled with their kindred wind, and if we want them we
must seek them in the air; another proof that the pen is not
only mightier than the sword, but also mightier than the
tongue.
ºterson has been called the “father of American democ-
racy,” and even the paternity of the Democratic party has been
charged upon him. That he was the father of American democ-
racy may be true or false according to the meaning of democ-
racy, and by the same test the assertion may be praise orblame.
In my own lifetime I have seen the threads of a thousand party
make-shifts and political contradictions traced to the forehead

5
of Thomas Jefferson; schemes of selfishness, monopoly and
usurpation against which his eighty-three years of life was one
long continued protest. If I had the time I could show you a
thousand counterfeits, all stamped with the image and super-
scription of Jefferson.
he democracy of Jefferson was not so much a form or
method of government, as it was a political principle opposed
to government. It was a code of restraints upon sovereignty
and mastership; a system of limitations upon public power.
think the theory of it was this: a weak government and a strong
citizen; a poor government and a rich people. Government is
not to be confounded with nation or state. It means the supreme
authority over the subject, as they phrase it in England, over
the citizen as we call it here. Jefferson thought that govern-
ment could not have anything, nor own anything, either of
power or money, but what it abstracted from the people, and
therefore the less it possessed of either, the more there was left
for the citizens to enjoy. He was not only opposed to a strong
fº but also to a permanent government. Sweeping
is eyes over the history of a thousand years, he saw the ten-
dency of government to encroach upon the liberties of the
people, an make itself a despotism. In his jealousy of tyranny
all governors and all governments became suspects," and he
desired that the Fº of rotation should be applied not only
to presidents, judges and legislators, but to the very constitu-
tion itself. He thought that no constitution should exist longer
than thirty-four years, and that each generation should make a
new constitution for itself. He could hardly separate the idea
of government from force, and in his mind the exercise of
tyranny was the very instinct of power. It was not easy to
convince him that the blessings of government outweighed
its evils, and in one of his morbid fits of jealousy he said:
“I am convinced that those societies which live without
government enjoy in their mass an infinitely greater degree of
happiness than those who live under the European governments.
Among the former public opinion is in the place of law, restrain-
ing morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Societies .
exist under three forms:
1st. Without government, as among the Indians.
2d. Under governments wherein every one has a just
influence.
3d. Under governments of force.
Ait is a problem not clear in my mind that the first condition
is not the best.”
Jefferson's theory of no government” was a delusive gen-
eralization based on the character of an imaginary people, all
virtuous and intelligent; a people that have not yet appeared in
the world, unless the Indians are that people. This principle
will never work in a Christian land. It was terribly º
the time of Shay's rebellion in Massachusetts, but rather than

6
surrender it he excused the rebellion. He went further than
that, and advocated occasional rebellion, whether there was
reason for it or not, as a healthy political tonic exercising a
wholesome influence upon government. He said: “God forbid
that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. hat signify a few lives
lost? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time
with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural
manure.”
This reads like a passionate scream from the Jacobin Club.
I believe the doctrine of it is radically false. If true it would
be a confession that civil society is a failure, and that laws,
even in restraint of mischief, must necessarily be bad because
they infringe upon º: After studying impartially the
writings of 5.m. I feel convinced that the sentiments just
quoted are merely eruptions coming to the surface of an angry
mind, and that in his calm judgment he believed that the char-
acter of a people is the true measure of the quantity of govern-
ment they require; and that only so much of it should be admin-
istered as is necessary to protect the citizen in his person and
property. I believe I am warranted in this opinion, because
although Jefferson sympathized most heartily with the French
revolution, he feared that the French people were not compe-
tent for freedom. So, also, when the South American colonies
revolted from old Spain, he feared that they did not possess
enough enlightenment to make them eligible for liberty.
It has been º charged on Jefferson that he was a polit-
ical visionary; and the charge is true. He was not only a polit-
ical visionary, but a social visionary, and a visionary in matters
of religion. Every man and every woman who has brain of a
superior º 1S a visionary. It is only the dull, senseless
clod who has no visions of a higher fed humanity; of an inter-
national brotherhood wherein there shall be no soldiers and few
º of a holier church, purer judges and a better law.
hese were some of the visions of Jefferson. He had others,
many of them impracticable and impossible, but it is not fair to
judge a man by his visions; judge him by his deeds. Which of
his dreams did he condense into active opinion? Which of
them did he force into politics, and which of them did he
transmute into law? These are the true tests of his character,
and not the hopeful speculations of a political philosophy
which in the latter half of the eighteenth century was neces-
sarily optimistic and experimental. When feudalism was
crumbling in decay, when the rattle of the printing press was
overturning the altars and the thrones; when the problem of
the hour was the reconstruction of society, theories of govern-
ment were thick as leaves in the forest; and it is not wonderful
that enthusiasts like Jefferson beheld visions of a glorified

7
humanity impossible for centuries to come. He made the mis-
take common to Democrats and Socialists alike. He gave the
gº more credit for capacity and virtue than they deserved.
peaking of Gen. Washington, he says: “The only point on
which he and I differed was that I had more confidence than he
had in the natural integrity and discretion of the people.” In
this difference of opinion I am not sure that the soldier was not
wiser than the statesman. What is the use of presenting a man
with a number seven hat when he has only a number six head?
Jefferson composed the inscription for his own tombstone,
so that what he regarded as the three principal achievements of
his life might be read by all the pilgrims to his grave. The in-
scription is in these words:
“Hierº Lies burned
THOMAS JEFFERSON,
Author of the Declaration of American Independ-
ence; of the Statute of Virginia for Relig-
ious Freedom ; and #º of
the University of Virginia.”
The “three persons” in this trinity are civil liberty, relig-
ious liberty, and education. I regard the Declaration of In-
dependence as the most enlightened, the most humane, and the
most important confession of political faith ever given to the
world. On the very front of it blazes the sublime statement of
human rights and the cheerful Fº of human redemption,
“all men are created equal.” he sorrowful soul is comforted,
and our drooping manhood lifted up when we find it written in
this charter that our right to liberty is inalienable and immortal.
This vital principle of the declaration has been criticized by
cynics, it has been diluted and adulterated by party platforms.
it has been denied by judges sitting in the capitol, it has been
assaulted by great armies whose tramp shook the nation like an
earthquake, but there it stands triumphant over the critics,
over the judges, over the parties, over the armies and their
cannon, stronger, brighter, and more inspiring than it was a
hundred years ago. nevery plow, on every shovel, on every
hammer, on every tool of industry, from the steam engine to
the hod, is engraven the motto of hope to the poor, “All men
are created equal.”
A short time ago there was inaugurated at New York, the
colossal statute of Liberty enlightening the world. Holding
aloft the electric torch in her right hand, the first lesson of in-
struction she gives the nations is that the vital sentiment of
the declaration, “All men are created equal.” I remember
when a soldier in the army, after four years of sorrow, and
strife, and blood, there came an order one day announcing the
surrender of General Lee, and the downfall of the great rebel-
lion. It also commanded that a salute of a hundred guns be
fired “in honor of the victory.” I heard the salute, and I easily

8
translated the speech that came from the lips of those hundred
guns. It was this, “All men are created equal.”
I do not condescend to discuss the childish quibble that
this is obviously untrue because all men are not six feet high,
nor equal in sense or money. The meaning of the declara-
tion is that all men are equal in rights and ought to have equal
privileges and opportunities; that they have all an equal political
partnership in the government. To secure these rights the
declaration says that governments are instituted among men
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
I think that the inspiration of this claim was a vision of Jeffer-
son, a vision of a virtuous democracy, with a government in-
capable of injustice. I cannot agree that the phrase is truthfully
descriptive, because governments derive their just powers, and
their unjust powers, from the same source, the consent of the
governors; those who have the privilege to prescribe the national
policy and to make the laws, either by themselves in mass con-
vention, as was the fashion of the Grecian democracies, or by
their representatives, as is the custom of the English monarchy,
and the American Republic. In this phrase Jefferson insinuates
that the exercise of unjust powers by governments is necessarily
a usurpation, and he assumes what is not true, that all the
overned are also governors, having an equal political partnership
in the State. It is the habit of moral philosophers, when speak-
ing of government, to argue from a vision of government as it
ought to be, and to hide the disagreeable sight of government
as it actually is. Blackstone, in his definition of law, tries,
like Jefferson to evade the principle of evil in the State. He
says: “Law is a rule of action prescribed by the supreme power
in the State commanding what is right and prohibiting what is
wrong.” He did not like to say “commanding what shall be
done, and whatshall not be done,” because that would imply that
the law-making power might deny right and establish wrong;
yet nothing can 5. plainer than this, that all acts of the legisla-
ture are equally laws whether their character be good or bad.
Without criticising any further the declaration, I desire to
point out that a part of its value consists in this: it contradicted
and reversed the former doctrine that “the powers that be are
ordained of God.” Jefferson declared that they are ordained of
the people, and Mr. Lincoln made the same claim at Gettysburg.
In the most democratic government in Europe, perhaps in the
world, the fiction is still maintained that Queen Victoria
reigns by right divine, and on every piece of English coin is
engraved the legend that she rules by the “Grace of God,” al-
though the statement is politically and historically false. She
reigns by the grace of Parliament. The legitimate heirs of the
monarchy were dethroned by act of Parliament, and the same
authority conferred the crown upon the house of Brunswick.
It is not for us to ridicule that theological pretension so long as
we wriggle, and squirm, and toady to the same sentiment. On

9
every nickel issued from the mint we engrave the motto of
national hypocrisy, “In God We Trust, when we know that
the most exalted virtue could not obtain credit for a pound of
sugar at any store in town. We claim divine sanction for our
overnment in a roundabout way because we have to avoid the
eclaration of Independence. We claim that our government
is divine because it rules by the will of the people, and “the
voice of the people is the voice of God.” Very º in-
deed our political clamor is the voice of the Devil; and we have
no difficulty in proving to the world, that a sovereign people
can be, when it pleases, as cruel and bigoted a despot as any
sovereign king.
“Of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom.” Jeffer-
son was justly proud of that statute because it was the hammer
with which he broke to pieces the mischievous union of Church
and State in Virginia; and the principle of the statute soon
spread far and wide beyond the boundaries of Virginia, and
finally became embodied in the constitution of the United
States. Jefferson saw that in every age of the world the partner-
ship of church and State was a corrupt alliance for the over-
throw of civil and religious liberty. It was a mutual compact
between the º º the king, the bishop and the lord, the
soldier and the priest, by which they agreed to pool their
issues” and enslave the bodies and the souls of men. I speak
of the Protestant pope, the Mohammedan pope, and the Budd-
hist pope, as well as the Catholic. The results of the partner-
ship are alike in all cases; they differ only in degree.
It is true that the divorced parties in this country are try-
ing to repeal this mandate so that they may marry again, but
out of the grave of Jefferson comes the protest, “I forbid the
banns; and the marriage will never take place. It is largely
due to Jefferson that in this country, all the statutes, customs,
and contrivances by which one man's body is taxed for the
help of another man’s soul are illegal under the constitution.
I care nothing about a man’s religious beliefs or unbeliefs
provided he will bravely proclaim them to the world; if, in
spite of the crowd he will speak them aloud. The pitiable
weakness of the churches is made very conspicious by their
eagerness to prove that every great man was a worshipper at
their altars or at least a patron of their creeds. For evidence of
this they will ransack º writings from schoolboy composi-
tions to his last will and testament for some word of compli-
ment or courtesy to their belief, and if they find it they will
sing a hymn of gratitude and say, “Behold we bring up
another great name to the help of the Lord against themi it," -
as if the Lord needed human help; as if mortals º ever
grow great enough to patronize God. With equal contempt I
look upon the childish efforts of infidels to prove that some
eminent philosopher soldier or statesman was not a believer in
Jesus, nor in Moses and the prophets. The vanity in the one

- O
case is as trivial as in the other, and I cannot help laughing
when I see the Christians on one side and the infidels on the
other, struggling for Jefferson. They remind me of a couple of
hotel runners trying to appropriate an unfortunate passenger
who has just come in on the train. Both claim him, and one
drags him to the right and the other to the left. Both sides
ought to know that the truth is indestructible and that it needs
not the patronage of statesmen, philosophers or generals to
prop it up. It is invincible and eternal.
Jefferson was an infidel in the modern acceptation of the
word, but I attach no importance to his unbelief except as it
had a virtuous influence upon his character, and gave a useful
direction to his official actions. It became a valuable agent
when it furnished him the moral inspiration to introduce the
statute of religious freedom, and the moral stamina to defend it
against a prejudiced opposition, and finally to establish it as the
organic law of his country. So, on the other hand, a man's
religious belief is nothing to me, until it becomes an evil inspi-
ration prompting him to interfere with my privileges and my
rights. My neighbor is welcome to worship any Joss he
pleases, provided his joss house is not exempted from taxation.
and provided also that he does not compel me to support his
Joss. He is welcome to all the prayers and sermons he can
manufacture or buy, provided he does not compel me to pay for
them, nor, what would be still more cruel, to listen to them.
He may spend Sunday as a day of rest or worship, but he must
allow me to use it either for work or play.
Jefferson spoke kindly of Jesus, and held him innocent of
the counterfeit doctrines which have been uttered in his name.
He denounced St. Paul as the evil genius who had corrupted
the religion of Christ. He studied the New Testament with
great care, and took the trouble to make a syllabus of its con-
tents, striking out the forgeries and interpolations as well as he
could, and leaving the moral precepts and reasonable history.
He says: “But while this syllabus is meant to place the charac-
ter of Jesus in its true light, as no impostor himself, but a grgat
reformer of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be under-
stood that I am with him in all his doctrines. I am a material-
ist; he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of
repentance toward the forgiveness of sins; I require a counter-
oise of good works to redeem it. * * * Among the sayings
imputed to Jesus by his biographers I find many passages of
fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovel
benevolence, and others * of so much ignorance, so º
absurdity, so much untruth, so much charlatanism and impos-
ture as to pronounce it impossible that such contradiction
should have proceeded from the same being. I separate there-
fore the º from the dross; restore to him the former, and
leave the latter to the stupidity of some and the roguery of

II.
others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and imposters,
Paul was the great Corypheus and first corrupter of the doc-
trines of Jesus.”
I take very little interest in this matter, but it looks to me
like grasping sectarian avarice for the churches to claim as
Christians both Jefferson and St. Paul. I give the extract as I
find it, for the encouragement of both sides. The Christians
are welcome to all the comfort there is in it for them, and the
infidels too. I think that Jefferson's idea of religion was that it
is a purely personal matter between a man and his own con-
science, or if you like it better, between the creature and the
Creator. Not until a man's religion takes the shape of politics
does it concern his neighbor, .# then it may become important.
Jefferson was so jealous of any partnership between the
church and State, that he denied the right of the government to
patronize religion in any way whatever, except by letting it
alone. He held that it was the right of every man to appoint
his own day of fasting and prayer, and his own days for feast-
ing and thanksgiving. So inflexible was he in this opinion, that
during the eight years that he was President he refused to
appoint any days of national thanksgiving or prayer. He
regarded the issuing of religious proclamations as a usurpation
of power, the unwarranted assertion of a claim that the Presi-
dent of the United States is like the English King, is not onl
chief of the state, but also head of the church. The well
meaning nonsense of our current thanksgiving proclamations
proves the wisdom of Jefferson.
In religion Jefferson was a freethinker; in social theory he
was an individualist; in politics he was a Democrat; in theories
of government he was called an anarchist. As we may differ
concerning the definition of the word “freethinker,” perhaps it
would be best to allow Jefferson himself to say what meant
by it. I quote from a letter on the study of freethinking, which
he wrote to his nephew, Peter Carr. e said:
"Shake of the fears of servile prejudice, under which
weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly on her
seat and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. * * *
Do not befrightened from this inquiry by any fear of its conse:
quences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will
find incitements to virtue in the effort and pleasantness you feel
in its exercise, and the love of others º it. º procure you.
If you find reason to believe there is a God, the consciousness
that you are acting under his eye, and that he approves you,
will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future
state, the hope of a happy existence in that state will increase
the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a God, you will
be comforted by a belief in his aid and love. In fine, I repeat,
º must lay aside all prejudices on both sides, and neither be:
ieve nor reject anything because any other person rejected or
believed it. Your own reason is the oracle given you by heaven

12
and you are answerable not for the rightness, but for the up
rightness of its decision.”
Here is no expression either for or against any religion
whatever. It might have been written by any Christian willing
to submit his faith to the test of credible evidence, and the
analysis of reason, that sublime defense which the Creator has
placed behind the forehead of every man to protect him against
imposture and lies. Yet the musical tone of the sentiment,
ringing round the world in harmony with universal law, tells us
that it must have been written by an infidel. Unhappily for us
all, the Christian refuses to bring before the tribunal of reason
either the facts of his Bible, or the opinions of his priests. He
warns us to beware of the foolishness of knowledge and the
depravity of the understanding. Any church that refuses to
bring every article of its creed before the supreme court of reason.
lays itself"open to suspicion; and the ministers of the gospel
º, deny the jurisdiction of that court are afraid that the truth
will get the verdict, and that justice will be done. From the
dawn of human reason until now liberty has been enlightening
the world, and logically enough the º all the time, have
been º put out the light by placing extinguishers upon
liberty. e advice of Jefferson to his nephew was the wis
dom of a liberal philosopher who knew that the man who is
not a freethinker is not a free man.
This letter is also valuable as a rebuke to those partisan idola-
tors who subscribe to certain political doctrines because they
think Saint Jefferson proclaimed them in his epistle to the Vir-
inians, or the Kentuckians, or, maybe, the Hibernians, or the
elvetians. They worship at the party shrine, and they vote
the ticket early and often to prove their enthusiasm for the
faith as it was in Jefferson. The mental servility of these
devotees is condemned in the epistle to Peter Carr: “Neither
believe or reject anything because any other person ever re-
rejected or believed it.” I have always admired the remark of
a certain doctor who once lectured before a Liberal society. One
of the members, in criticising him, called his attention to the
authority of some famous physician, to which the lecturer re-
plied with some impatience: “I, myself, am authority on this
uestion.” Self-conceit is a mark of weakness, but self-confi-
ence is a mark of strength. Whenever anyone tries to over
power us with “authority” in matters of religious º
whether it be the authority of Bibles, Korans, Apostles' Creeds.
or Catechisms; the authority of synods, sanhedrims, ecumenical
councils; the authority of popes of Rome, or Canterbury, or
Constantinople, let each of us answer with the independent self-
respect of a freethinker and say: “I, myself, am authority on
this question; and to my own conscience alone am I responsible,
and not even to that for the rightness, but only for the upright-
ness of my decision.” The writings and opinions of wise and
virtuous men on any subjectareworthy of study; they are indeed

I3
parts of our education; but we should never allow the wisest of
them to speak to us with “authority” in matters of religion.
Authority is always ambitious,andisforeverstriving to extendits
dominion over all the interests and all the relations of men. A
feeble Italian priest, of the very narrowest education, an elderly
gentleman who does not understand so well as the little news:
boy on the street the genius of our institutions, nor the political
character of our people, sends his authority all the way from
Rome to domineer in the politics of New York; and American
citizens who know ten times more than he does, actually bow
their heads in degrading submission to that authority. They
do not know their own minds until after they have heard from
the holy father. There is not a grandmother in Chicago who
has brought up children in honor who is not holier than he.
And to Americans the holy grandmother is a safer political guide
than any holy father or holy grandfather in all the land of Italy.
Jefferson has been canonized as the founder of a great party,
and yet he held in bitter scorn the putty men who lay their
manhood at the feet of the caucus, and hold their ballots subject
to the call of party discipline. In 1789, he wrote to Francis
Hopkins and said: “I am not a Federalist because I never sub-
mitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any
body of men, whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics,
or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself.
Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free moral agent.
If I could not go to heaven but with a party I would not go to
heaven at all.”
Early in 1860 I heard a gentleman say to a friend, “Who is
your first choice for the nomination?” º answer was, “My
first choice is the nominee.” He had abdicated himself and
surrendered his personality so effectually to the thimble-riggers
of the party that he had not manhood enough left to form a
choice or to express an opinion. He was merely one of the
chips with which political shufflers were gambling for the
Presidency. Thirty years of American politics have hardened
me in iniquity, and such a remark would neither shock nor sur-
prise me now; but at that time it startled me, for I had believed
that Americans were a free and independent people, and I said:
“If ever the sentiment of that answer becomes the inspiration
and the sign of party loyalty in this country, the corruption of
American public life will follow.” That corruption is the bane
of our politics to-day, and so contagious is the disease that the
moral poison of it has already infected our social constitution.
Business honesty is fading away, because it is not able to com-
pete with privileged monopoly. Almost everything we buy is
adulterated; 14 ounces make a pound of sugar, 3 pecks make a
bushel of potatoes, and 1,700 pounds a ton of coal. Instead of
being mutual helpers, we are competitors with one another in
the markets of labor.
Jefferson foresaw what was coming. With the moral

I4.
instinct of a great statesman who can analyze history and pro-
nounce judgment on the future, from a knowledge of the past,
he wrote, nearly a hundred º ago: “The people will remain
virtuous so long as agriculture is our principal object, which
will be the case while there remain vacant lands in America.
When we get piled on one another in large cities as in Europe.
we shall go to eating one another as they do there.” Well,
the land is gone. It is largely in the possession of monied cor-
porations or mortgagee landlords. We are piled upon one
another in great cities, and we are eating one another.
Speaking of old Rome, a little while before mortification
had set in, Mr. Froude, the historian, said: “Money was the
one thought from the highest senator to the poorest wretch who
sold his vote in the comitia. For money judges gave unjust
decrees, and juries gave corrupt verdicts. The elections were
managed by clubs and coteries, and those who spent most
freely were most certain of success. The great commoners
bought their way into the magistracies, and from the magistra-
cies they passed into the senate. Public spirit in the masses
was either dead or sleeping, and the free forms of the constitu-
tion were themselves the instruments of corruption.”
You will hardly believe me, but I assure you that Mr.
Froude wrote that of the Roman republic in the days of Julius
Caesar, and not of the American republic in the days of Grover
Cleveland. What a familiar sound it has: “The great common-
ers bought their way into the magistracies, and from the magis-
tracies they passed into the senate.” In the flurry of every
election I read in the papers that Boss Tom, or Boss Dick, or
Boss Harry, or Mick, has sold out this ward, or that club, or
the other precinct, but that he will not be able to deliver the
oods. I follow this prophesy to the end, and I generally find
º, false; he does deliver the goods, and he gets his money for
them. -
I have said that in matters of social theory Jefferson was an
individualist, a word which needs a special definition, and
which I define to mean in this discussion an advocate of the
separate and individual rights of man, as opposed to the princi-
ple of socialism, or that system in which personal freedom is
given up in return for the material advantages obtained under
the rule of a common government. As personal freedom has
always been a very great luxury to me, I was an individualist
in the sense of this definition of the word long before I knew
anything of the principles of Jefferson; and this luxury of per-
sonal independence I would not surrender for all other luxuries
combined. I believe in a communism of rights, privileges and
opportunities, but not in a communism of their achievements
and results. I believe in individual exertion and in individual
reward. Individualism compels development, while socialism,
although it may feed the bodies, will fatten the energies of men
and make them indolent. The industry of individual persons

15
and not of communities, makes the vast aggregate of human
comforts and all the marvelous triumphs of the body and the
mind. To me socialism appears to be a waste of men, and I
bring a monastery before you as an illustration of that waste.
Socialism is contentment, and from a state of contentmen begin
to degenerate and to retrograde. Content is a luscious fruit,
but it soon becomes mouldy and diseased.
These are some of my objections to socialism, as a plan for
the regulation of the affairs of men and women in what is
called civilized life. I have been assured by friends of mine
who are socialists, that there is nothing in socialism properly
understood that abridges in any way the personal freedom of
the citizen; on the contrary, they assure me that socialism
offers a security for that freedom. I hope they will be able to
maintain that position. It may be that the only difference
between the socialists and me is on the question: How much
of those rightts, privileges and opportunities is included in the
domain of socialism? And it may be in this matter of quantity
lies the difference between them and Jefferson.
When I say that in politics Jefferson was a Democrat, I
mean by politics the science of public welfare, the regulation of
human interests within the proper sphere of the agency called
government; and by Democrat I mean one who does not recog-
nize º class distinctions or privileges of caste; one who be-
lieves that the good of all the people is the proper object of
every act of government and the only moral foundation for
any law at all; one who holds that what is good or bad for them
must be determined by the public themselves; that their will
must govern, and that the surest way to ascertain that will is by
the popular expression of it in the form of a ballot, and that
the majority of opinion thus formed shall prevail.
It is a common belief in this country, as well as in England
and France, that an untrammeled democracy was Jefferson's
ideal of a perfect political system. This is a mistake, and out
of this mistake we have coined a good deal of clap-trap about
“majority rule,” the “sovereignty of the people,” the divine
melody of the people’s “voice,” and that canting excuse for a
thousand mistakes and a thousand wrongs, called “the greatest
5. to the greatest number,” as if there could be in a civilized
emocracy º “smallest number' outside the principle of the
“greatest good.” Jefferson believed in the rule of the majority
within the sphere of its legitimate powers, but that sphere
was a very contracted one, circumscribed within ve
narrow limits by the rights of the individual citizen. e
was as jealous of the “sovereignity of the people” as of the
sovereignity of the king. In his own day it was charged upon
Jefferson with great force that he was hostile to the constitu-
tion of the United States, and that he had opposed its adoption.
Even in our day this opposition is regarded by many as a flaw
in the statesmanship and a blemish on the patriotism of Jeffer-

16
son, but he º the constitution because it did not suffi-
ciently curb the democracy and diminish the sovereignty of the
eople. He opposed it because it did not contain the English
ill of rights and the English habeas corpus law. Again let
him speak for himself. He was in France when the constitu-
tion was about to be voted on by the States, and on the 20th of
December, 1787, he wrote from Paris to Mr. James Madison on
the subject of the constitution. After telling what he approved
in it he said: “I will tell you what I do not like. First, the
omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the
aid of sophism for freedom of religion, freedom of the press,
protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies,
the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws,
and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of
the land.” is objection to the constitution was not that it
gave the democracy too little, but too much; not that it was
not liberal enough to the º number,” but that it was
too liberal, and put the smallest number at the mercy of the
greatest.
Four years after he wrote that letter to Mr. Madison, the
statesmanship and patriotism of Jefferson were both vindicated,
and the constitution was amended in accordance with his de-
sire and his demand. The bill of rights and the habeas corpus
law were both inserted in that great charter, and they have also
become a part of every State constitution in the American
Union. The democracy of Jefferson was a principle entirely
subordinate to the higher law of individual freedom.
Individual man has natural rights; organizedman has none.
All the rights of society are artificial, mere concessions granted by
the individual man to enable his agents to perform their public
duties well. Organized man in his legislative, judicial or ex-
ecutive capacity, or in all three characters combined, is forever
trying to increase and multiply his artificial prerogatives at the
expense of his º the individual man. f think that
something like this must have been in the mind of Jefferson
when he said in that same letter to James Madison, “I own I
am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always
oppressive. It places the governors, indeed, more at their ease,
at the expense of the people.”
The system adopted by the Americans for the regulation of
their political affairs has been perverted from its original pur-
ose by the word “government " I do not know another case
in history where a mere word ever grew into such an important
and tremendous fact, affecting all the interests of a great peo-
ple, and twisting out of symmetry their social and political in
stitutions. When the Americans meant “agency,” they said
“government;" and the choice of the word . *ad great in-
fluence on their civic relations to one another. By adopting
the word they continued in practice the system for which it
stood, and in the new republic they divided themselves into

17
governors and governed, as they were under the old monarchy
of King George. When the King set men over the colonies
of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Bay, these magistrates
were very properly called governors. They were not in any
sense the agents of the colonists; they were the deputies of the
King. They were actual rulers, and the governed were prop-
erly called “subjects.” When the colonies became independ-
ent States, and the people hired their own superintendent of
political affairs, and paid him out of their own taxes, they still
called him governor, and thereby acknowledged themselves to
be the governed. True, they changed the word “subject” into
“citizen,” but by retaining the word governor they acknowl-
edged that official to be the ruler instead of an agent, and in
this way they attached to the citizen the inferior qualities of a
subject.
It is instructive to behold a great political genius like Jef-
ferson struggling in alabyrinth of incongruous threads, all spun
from one unlucky word. Having adopted the theory of
anarchy, and having admitted into his political system the word
overnment, he becomes involved º the contradicting
ideas that grow out of the words. We see him continually º
ing to untie himself and get out of the cobwebs. At last he
declares in favor of a weak government only, and thinks he has
escaped. But a weak government is a political solecism, a
machine wearing itself out by the friction of brakes on its own
shafts. Better no government than a weak one. As it is not
possible to escape entirely from the necessity of government,
we should endeavor to establish one that will govern as little as
possible, and as much as is necessary. But within its proper
orbit it ought to be irresistible. I do not like policemen very
well, but if I must have a policeman, I want him to be five feet
ten, broad-shouldered and strong. I do not at all admire that
ancient barbarian called a soldier, but if I must have a soldier, I
want him to be vigorous, active and brave. I think I have read
in Dr. Watts' hymns that
“Man wants but little here below,
But wants that little strong.”
I want but little government, but I want it strong.
Jefferson was by birth and inheritance a member of the
landed aristocracy, and yet he was the most thoroughly con-
sistent and philosophic democrat of his time. From the time
he was a schoolboy to the day of his death he deviated ve
little from his theory of an ideal democracy; based on persona
freedom and equal political rights. His residence in Europe
developed a merely philosophic opinion into a sentiment of
personal hatred against every form of royalty, of aristocracy
and priesthood. The bitterness of his hatred has led many of
his friends and enemies to form another erroneous estimate of
his political principles. They have imagined that he desired
to confiscate the prerogatives of the priests, the nobles and the

18
king, in order that he might bestow them upon his beloved
demolcacy; but nothing can be farther from the truth. He
desired to confiscate them indeed, not that they might be trans-
ferred to the democracy, but that they might be abolished alto-
gether from the face of the earth.
Jefferson's preference for a weak government easily let
him down to anarchy, the doctrine of no government at all.
Here he was fiercely assailed by the Federalists. They warned
the people that Jefferson designed to establish anarchy and
erect a guillotine in every town; and his answer was that they
desired to establish a monarchy and a state church upon the
ruins of the Republic. They replied that they only desired a
strong centralized government of extensive powers; and Ham-
ilton boldly acknowledged his preference for the English form.
I need not dwell any longer upon the details of this bitter and
savage contest. It ended in the ºverwhelming triumph of Jef.
ferson and the utter extinction of the Federalist party.
The individualist theory of Jefferson was equally opposed to
socialism as to monarchy. Jefferson desired to contract the
powers of government as a principle of absolute safety to the
citizen, but the socialists desired to contract only those powers
that were offensive to them; and those powers of which they
approved, they desired to increase and expand. Jefferson pro-
posed to unharness the individual man and let him go free in
body, mind, and soul; the socialists and the monarchists pro-
posed to harness him up tighter with additional straps and
bands of government. The difference between them was
merely a dispute as to who should hold the reins. The an-
archism of Jefferson was the delirious fever of a brain inflamed
by political conflict, by brooding over the crimes of govern-
ment, and by contemplating the misery and sin produced by in-
equality and wrong. His acts and opinions were modified and
controlled by the external conditions that immediately, pressed
upon him. He dared not trust either his anarchism, his indi-
vidualism, or his democracy to the French people. He was
American ambassador to France at the time of the French revo-
lution, and when consulted as to the best constitution for the
new France, he advised the French to establish their govern-
ment, not on the model of the American republic, but on that of
the English monarchy. He did not think the French people of
a hundred years ago were sufficiently just and enlightened to
govern either themselves or others. The sequel proved that in
this opinion he was right. Was he right when he thought that
the American people were morally and mentally qualified where
the French were not? This is a difficult question. My own
opinion is, that if they were qualified for self-government in
Jefferson's day, they are not qualified for it now. The supreme
effort of the American people to-day is to deprive one another
of liberty. To that end we are trying to adapt the compli-
cated machinery of our social and political system.

19
To impoverish the spirit of the American race, and to abolisl
ersonal independence is the effort of public and private legis-
ation, the doctrine of self-preservation, and the ruling principle
of “business.” If we cannot be despots in our own proper
persons, we try to hold stock in a despotism And when our
efforts to break the spirit of independence in our neighbors has
resulted, as it ever will result, in weakening our own, we crawl
at the feet of power and meanly beg for government. In the
ancient day, and even in this country in our own day, the man
entering the state of slavery was permitted under certain cir-
cumstances to chose his own master. We, too, entering slavery,
choose for our master that aspiring genius, government. º
beg alms of it, and work, and wages, and pensions. We require
of it that it make dear the articles we have to sell, and that it
make cheap the articles we have to buy. We pray to it that it
pour impossible prosperity upon our particular business as the
superstitious farmers pray for impossible rain. We demand that
it compel customers to come to our shop and drive them away
from the shop of our rival across the street. We demand of
government that every act of our own selfishness shall be made
an act of Congress. Busest of all we implore this Hercules
called government to break the arm or the leg of every man or
boy who aspires for a living at our own particular trade; or, at
least, to forbid him by law to learn or practice the craft, which
amounts to the same thing. Three-fourths of our clerks and
mechanics are at this moment imploring government to protect
them against the fingers and brains of women. Government is
all in all, and powerless manhood “stands like a cipher in the
great account.” Government must do everything, from digging
a river to building a monument to our dead politicians. º: the
last session of Congress a gentleman who was at Washington,
lobbying for the butterine bill, declared that it was the duty of
government to make butter 30 cents a pound and eggs 30 cents
a dozen. He is the president of the dairymen's association,
and as he was supposed to have a good many votes behind him
his claim was recognized and the butterine.bill was passed.
Last year a statesman from Chicago in the Illinois legislature
declared at Springfield that it was the duty of government to
make a scarcity of barrels, and buckets, º tubs. To that end
he introduced a bill º: it a penal offense for any person to
use those articles a second time. His reason was that the
coopers' trade needed a “boom,” and, of course, it was the
duty of “government” to create it. It used to be that a man
was of age at 21. It is not so now. Until he is three score and
ten, and even beyond that, he is under the patronage and guard-
ianship of “government.”
In the name of common sense, what is “government?” Is
it our creator or our creature? Are we its agents or its princi-
al? Do we exist for government or government for us? Has
it any money to distribute among us but what we give it? Has

2O
it any power except what has been given by us or taken from
us? e have given that it may serve us; it has taken, that it
may master us. Has government a surplus of privileges up in
the sky, which it may scatter among its favorites like a God?
As the sum of all the Fº belonging to the body politic is
included in the sum of all its rights, and as rights are equal it
follows that any special privilege conferred by government upon
one man is a right stolen from another.
I have lightly touched upon some of the prominent princi-
ples of Jefferson, and I have tried to adapt the moral of º to
our present conditions. The long public life of Jefferson, and
his freely uttered opinions of sixty years could not always be
consistent with each other, and yet } find him to be more con-
sistent in principles, in practice and opinions than any other
American statesman of national importance that lived in his
time or ours. Further, I find his doctrines possessed of moral
magnetism of such marvelous power that our wayward and
eccentric politics are always trying to get back to the principles
he established in his writings and in his official action. He was
an ardent Democrat in politics and religion. He thought that
the only sacred thing in either was humanity. He believed that
gods and angels were already well º for, but he knew
that men and women were not. He demanded that government
take its heavy hand of "..."; and oppression from the citi-
zen, and let the º O. e also required that each man
take his own heavy hand off his neighbor. We read in the
Bible that “Where the spirit of God is, there is liberty.” When
society rises to the level of Jefferson, the revised version will
read like this, “Where the spirit of man is, there is liberty.”
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