REBELLION
/ LATIN AMERICA
And behold! another example of man rising in
his might and bursting the chains of his oppressor, and in the same
hemisphere. Spanish America is all in revolt. The insurgents are
triumphant in many of the States, and will be so in all. But there
the danger is that the cruel arts of their oppressors have enchained
their minds, have kept them in the ignorance of children, and as
incapable of self-government as children. If the obstacles of
bigotry and priest-craft can be surmounted, we may hope that common
sense will suffice to do everything else. God send them a safe
deliverance. |
Thaddeus
Kosciusko
(General)
13 Apr 1811 |
REBELLION
/ REFLECTIONS ON
While Mr. Girardin was in this neighborhood
writing his continuation of Burke's history, I had suggested to him
a proper notice of the establishment of the committee of
correspondence here in 1773. …The transaction took place in the
session of Assembly of March, 1773. Patrick Henry, Richard Henry
Lee, Frank Lee, your father and myself, met by agreement, one
evening, about the close of the session, at the Raleigh Tavern, to
consult on the measures which the circumstances of the times seemed
to call for. We agreed, in result, that concert in the operations of
the several colonies was indispensable; and that to produce this,
some channel of correspondence between them must be opened; that
therefore, we would propose to our House the appointment of a
committee of correspondence, which should be authorized and
instructed to write to the Speakers of the House of Representatives
of the several colonies, recommending the appointment of similar
committees on their part, who, by a communication of sentiment on
the transactions threatening us all, might promote a harmony of
action salutary to all. I remember that Mr. Carr and myself,
returning home together, and conversing on the subject by the way,
concurred in the conclusion that that measure must inevitably beget
the meeting of a Congress of Deputies from all the colonies, for the
purpose of uniting all in the same principles and measures for the
maintenance of our rights. I am certain I remember also, that a
similar proposition, and nearly cotemporary, was made by
Massachusetts, and that our northern messenger passed theirs on the
road. |
Dabney
Carr
19 Jan 1816 |
RELIGION
/ DEMONISM
I concur with you strictly in your opinion of
the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see
nothing but the latter in the Being worshipped by many who think
themselves Christians. Your opinions and writings will have effect
in bringing others to reason on this subject. |
Dr.
Price
8 Jan 1789 |
RENT
/ AGRICULURAL, FRANCE
… I am constantly roving about, to see
what I have never seen before, and shall never see again. In the
great cities, I go to see what travellers think alone worthy of
being seen; but I make a job of it, and generally gulp it all down
in a day. On the other hand, I am never satiated with rambling
through the fields and farms, examining the culture and cultivators,
with a degree of curiosity which makes some take me to be a fool,
and others to be much wiser than I am. I have been pleased to find
among the people a less degree of physical misery than I had
expected. They are generally well clothed, and have a plenty of
food, not animal indeed, but vegetable, which is as wholesome.
Perhaps they are over-worked, the excess of the rent required by the
landlord obliging them to too many hours of labor in order to
produce that, and wherewith to feed and clothe themselves. . . .It
will be a great comfort to you, to know, from your own inspection,
the condition of all the provinces of your. own country, and it will
be interesting to them at some future day, to be known to you. This
is, perhaps, the only moment of your life in which you can acquire
that knowledge. And to do it most effectually, you must be
absolutely incognito, you must ferret the people out of their hovels
as I have done, look into their kettles, eat their bread, loll on
their beds under pretence of resting yourself, but in fact, to find
if they are soft. You will feel a sublime pleasure in the course of
this investigation, and a sublimer one hereafter, when you shall be
able to apply your knowledge to the softening of their beds, or the
throwing a morsel of meat into their kettle of vegetables.
|
Marquis
de Lafayette
11 Apr 1787 |
REPUBLICANISM
/ AND ACTIVISM
In the great work which has been effected in
America, no individual has a right to take any great share to
himself. Our people in a body are wise, be-cause they are under the
unrestrained and unperverted operation of their own understanding.
Those whom they have assigned to the direction of their affairs,
have stood with a pretty even front. If any one of them was
withdrawn, many others entirely equal, have been ready to fill his
place with as good abilities. A nation, composed of such materials,
and free in all its members from distressing wants, furnishes
hopeful implements for the interesting experiment of
self-government; and we feel that we are acting under obligations
not confined to the limits of our own society. It is impossible not
to be sensible that we are acting for all mankind; that
circumstances denied to others, but indulged to us, have imposed on
us the duty of proving what is the degree of freedom and
self-government in which a society may venture to leave its
individual members. One passage, in the paper you enclosed me, must
be corrected. It is the following, "and all say it was yourself
more than any other individual, that planned and established it,"
i.e., the Constitution. I was in Europe when the Constitution was
planned, and never saw it till after it was established. On
receiving it I wrote strongly to Mr. Madison, urging the want of
provision for the freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial
by jury, habeas corpus, the substitution of militia for a standing
army, and an express reservation to the States of all rights not
specifically granted to the Union. He accordingly moved in the first
session of Congress for these amendments, which were agreed to and
ratified by the States as they now stand. This is all the hand I had
in what related to the Constitution. Our predecessors made it
doubtful how far even these were of any value; for the very law
which endangered your personal safety, as well as that which
restrained the freedom of the press, were gross violations of them.
However, it is still certain that though written constitutions may
be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a
text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the
people; they fix too for the people the principles of their
political creed. |
Joseph
Priestley
(Doctor)
19 Jun 1802 |
REPUBLICANISM
/ AND DEMOCRACY
Men by their constitutions are naturally
divided into two parties: I. Those who fear and distrust the people,
and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher
classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have
confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and
safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests.
In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where
they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare
themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins
and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists,
Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are
the same parties still, and pursue the same object. The last
appellation of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing
the essence of all. |
Henry
Lee
10 Aug 1824 |
REPUBLICANISM
/ INTERNAL ATTACKS ON
It cannot be denied that we have among us a
sect who believe that to contain whatever is perfect in human
institutions; that the members of this sect have, many of them,
names and offices which stand high in the estimation of our
countrymen. I still rely that the great mass of our community is
untainted with these heresies, as is its head. On this I build my
hope that we have not labored in vain, and that our experiment will
still prove that men can be governed by reason. You have excited my
curiosity in saying "there is a particular circumstance, little
attended to, which is continually sapping the republicanism of the
United States." What is it? What is said in our country of the
fiscal arrangements now going on? I really fear their effect when I
consider the present temper of the southern States. Whether these
measures be right or wrong abstractly, more attention should be paid
to the general opinion. |
Colonel
Mason
4 Feb 1791 |
REPUBLICANISM
/ INTERNAL ATTACKS ON
What an effort, my dear Sir, of bigotry in
politics and religion have we gone through! The barbarians really
flattered themselves they should be able to bring back the times of
Vandalism, when ignorance put everything into the hands of power and
priestcraft. All advances in science were proscribed as innovations.
They pretended to praise and encourage education, but it was to be
education of our ancestors. We were to look backwards, not forwards,
for improvements; the President himself declaring, in one of his
answers to addresses, that we were never to expect to go beyond them
in real science. This was the real ground of all the attacks on you.
. . . It is with heartfelt satisfaction that, in the first moments
of my public action, I can hail you with welcome in our land, tender
to you the homage of its respect and esteem, cover you under the
protection of those laws which were made for the wise and good like
you, and disdain the legitimacy of that libel on legislation, which,
under the form of a law, was for some time placed among them.
As the storm is now subsiding, and the horizon becoming serene, it
is pleasant to consider the phenomenon with attention. We can no
longer say there is nothing new under the sun. For this whole
chapter in the history of man is new. The great extent of our
republic is new. Its sparse habitation is new. The mighty wave of
public opinion which has rolled over it Is new. But the most
pleasing novelty is, its so quietly subsiding over such an extent of
surface to its true level again. The order and good sense displayed
in this recovery from delusion, and in the momentous crisis which
lately arose, really bespeak a strength of character in our nation
which augurs well for the duration of our republic; and I am much
better satisfied now of its stability than I was before it was
tried. I have been, above all things, solaced by the prospect which
opened on us, in the event of a non-election of a President; in
which case, the federal government would have been in the situation
of a clock or watch run down. There was no idea of force, nor of any
occasion for it. A convention, invited by the republican members of
Congress, with the virtual President and Vice-President, would have
been on the ground in eight weeks, would have repaired the
Constitution where it was defective, and wound it up again.
|
Joseph
Priestly
21 Mar 1801 |
REPUBLICANISM
/ JEFFERSON PRESIDENCY
A just and solid republican government
maintained here, will be a standing monument and example for the aim
and imitation of the people of other countries; and I join with you
in the hope and belief that they will see, from our example, that a
free government is of all others the most energetic; that the
inquiry which has been excited among the mass of mankind by our
revolution and its consequences, will ameliorate the condition of
man over a great portion of the globe. What a satisfaction have we
in the contemplation of the benevolent effects of our efforts,
compared with those of the leaders on the other side, who have
discountenanced all advances in science as dangerous innovations,
have endeavored to render philosophy and republicanism terms of
reproach, to persuade us that man cannot be governed but by the rod,
etc. I shall have the happiness of living and dying in the contrary
hope. |
John
Dickinson
6 Mar 1801 |
REPUBLICANISM
/ REFORMS
I am sensible how far I should fall short of
effecting all the reformation which reason would suggest, and
experience approve, were I free to do whatever I thought best; but
when we reflect how difficult it is to move or inflect the great
machine of society, how impossible to advance the notions of a whole
people suddenly to ideal right, we see the wisdom of Solon's remark,
that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear, and
that all will be chiefly to reform the waste of public money, and
thus drive away the vultures who prey upon it, and improve some
little on old routines. Some new fences for securing constitutional
rights may, with the aid of a good legislature, perhaps be
attainable. |
Walter
Jones
31 Mar 1801 |
REPUBLICANISM
/ THREATENED BY WAR
On politics I must write sparingly, lest it
should fall into the hands of persons who do not love either you or
me. . . . If we are forced into war, we must give up political
differences of opinion, and unite as one man to defend our country.
But whether at the close of such a war, we should be as free as we
are now, God knows. In fine, if war takes place, republicanism has
everything to fear; if peace, be assured that your forebodings and
my alarms will prove vain; and that the spirit of our citizens now
rising. as rapidly as it was then running crazy, and rising with a
strength and majesty which show the loveliness of freedom, will make
this government in practice, what it is in principle, a model for
the protection of man in a state of freedom and order.
May heaven have in store for your country a restoration of these
blessings, and you be destined as the instrument it will use for
that purpose. But if this be forbidden by Fate, I hope. we shall be
able to preserve here an asylum where your love of liberty and
disinterested patriotism will be forever protected and honored.
|
Thaddeus
Kosciusko
21 Feb 1799 |
REPUBLICS
/ FORMS OF
Indeed, it must be acknowledged, that the term
republic is of very vague application in every language.
Witness the self-styled republics of Holland, Switzerland, Genoa,
Venice, Poland. Were I to assign to this term a precise and definite
idea, I would say, purely and simply, it means a government by its
citizens in mass, acting directly and personally, according to rules
established by the majority; and that every other government is more
or less republican, in proportion as it has in its composition more
or less of this ingredient of the direct action of the citizens.
Such a government is evidently restrained to very narrow limits of
space and population. I doubt if it would be practicable beyond the
extent of a New England township. …The further the departure
from direct and constant control by the citizens, the less has the
government of the ingredient of republicanism.
The purest republican feature in the government of our own State,
is the House of Representatives. The Senate is equally so the first
year, less the second, and so on. …And add, also, that one-half
of our brethren who fight and pay taxes, are excluded, like Helots,
from the rights of representation, as if society were instituted for
the soil, and not for the men inhabiting it; or one-half of these
could dispose of the rights and the will of the other half, without
their consent.
If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their
government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know
no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much
less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other
words, that the people have less regular control over their agents,
than their rights and their interests require. And this I ascribe,
not to any want of republican dispositions in those who formed these
Constitutions, but to a submission of true principle to European
authorities, to speculators on government, whose fears of the people
have been inspired by the populace of their own great cities, and
were unjustly entertained against the independent, the happy, and
therefore orderly citizens of the United States. Much I apprehend
that the golden moment is past for reforming these heresies. The
functionaries of public power rarely strengthen in their
dispositions to abridge it, and an unorganized call for timely
amendment is not likely to prevail against an organized opposition
to it. We are always told that things are going on well why change
them? "Chi sta bene, non si muove," said the
Italian, "let him who stands well, stand still." This is
true; and I verily believe they would go on well with us under an
absolute monarch, while our present character remains, of order,
industry and love of peace, and restrained, as he would be, by the
proper spirit of the people. But it is while it remains such, we
should provide against the consequences of its deterioration. And
let us rest in the hope that it will yet be done. …
On this view of the import of the term republic, instead of
saying, as has been said, "that it may mean anything or
nothing," we may say with truth and meaning, that governments
are more or less republican, as they have more or less of the
element of popular election and control in their composition; and
believing, as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest
depository of their own rights and especially, that the evils
flowing from the duperies of the people, are less injurious than
those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that
composition of government which has in it the most of this
ingredient. And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking
establishments are more dangerous than standing armies. |
John
Taylor
28 May 1816 |
RESPONSIBILITY
When I recollect that at fourteen years of age,
the whole care and direction of myself was thrown on myself
entirely, without a relation or friend qualified to advise or guide
me, and recollect the various sorts of bad company with which I
associated from time to time, I am astonished I did not turn off
with some of them, and become as worthless to society as they were.
I had the good fortune to become acquainted very early with some
characters of very high standing, and to feel the incessant wish
that I could ever become what they were. Under temptations and
difficulties, I would ask myself what would Dr. Small, Mr. Wythe,
Peyton Randolph do in this situation? What course in it will insure
me their approbation? I am certain that this mode of deciding on my
conduct, tended more to correctness than any reasoning powers I
possessed. Knowing the even and dignified line they pursued, I could
never doubt for a moment which of two courses would be in character
for them. Whereas, seeking the same object through a process of
moral reasoning, and with the jaundiced eye of youth, I should often
have erred. From the circumstances of my position, I was often
thrown into the society of horse racers, card players, fox hunters,
scientific and professional men, and of dignified men; and many a
time have I asked myself, in the enthusiastic moment of the death of
a fox, the victory of a favorite horse, the issue of a question
eloquently argued at the bar, or in the great council of the nation,
well, which of these kinds of reputation should I prefer? That of a
horse jockey? a fox hunter? an orator? or the honest advocate of my
country's rights? Be assured, my dear Jefferson, that these little
returns into ourselves, this self-catechising habit, is not trifling
nor useless, but leads to the prudent selection and steady pursuit
of what is right.
I have mentioned good humor as one of the preservatives of our
peace and tranquillity. It is among the most effectual, and its
effect is so well imitated and aided, artificially, by politeness,
that this also becomes an acquisition of first rate value. In truth,
politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of
it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to
the real virtue. It is the practice of sacrificing to those whom we
meet in society, all the little conveniences and preferences which
will gratify them, and deprive us of nothing worth a moment's
consideration; it is the giving a pleasing and flattering turn to
our expressions, which will conciliate others, and make them pleased
with us as well as themselves. How cheap a price for the good will
of another! When this is in return for a rude thing said by another,
it brings him to his senses, it mortifies and corrects him in the
most salutary way, and places him at the feet of your good nature,
in the eyes of the company. But in stating prudential rules for our
government in society, I must not omit the important one of never
entering into dispute or argument with another. I never saw an
instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument.
I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, and shooting
one another. Conviction is the effect of our own dispassionate
reasoning, either in solitude, or weighing within ourselves,
dispassionately, what we hear from others, standing uncommitted in
argument ourselves. It was one of the rules which, above all others,
made Doctor Franklin the most amiable of men in society, "never
to contradict anybody." If he was urged to announce an opinion,
he did it rather by asking questions, as if for information, or by
suggesting doubts. When I hear another express an opinion which is
not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to
mine; why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and
shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument
to one opinion? If a fact be misstated, it is probable he is
gratified by a belief of it, and I have no right to deprive him of
the gratification. If he wants information, he will ask it, and then
I will give it in measured terms; but if he still believes his own
story, and shows a desire to dispute the fact with me, I hear him
and say nothing. It is his affair, not mine, if he prefers error.
|
Thomas
Jefferson Randolph
24 Nov 1808 |
|
