Thomas Jefferson, the Apostle of Americanism

by Gilbert Chinard

This point alone should suffice to differentiate Jefferson's system from physiocracy, since the Physiocrats had adopted as their motto the famous laissez faire laissez passer and were certainly in favor of free trade. How far from Du Pont Jefferson remained in other particulars may be gathered from his "Introduction" and notes to the "Political Economy" of Destutt de Tracy, the translation and publication of which he supervised and directed. In it he paid homage to the founders of the science of political economy, and particularly to Gournay, Le Trosne and Du Pont de Nemours, "the enlightened, philanthropic and venerable citizen, now of the United States." But he pointed out that the several principles they had discussed and established had not been able to prevail, "not on account of their correctness, but because not acceptable to the people whose will must be the supreme law. Taxation is, in fact, the most difficult function of the government, and that against which their citizens are most apt to be refractory. The general aim is, therefore, to adopt the mode most consonant with the circumstances and sentiments of the country."

This is Jefferson's final judgment on the Economists. Another confirmation of his lack of interest in principles and theories not susceptible of immediate application may be seen in it. In matters of government, the important question, after deciding what should be done, was to determine how much could be done under the circumstances, and if a particular piece of legislation was turned down by the public will or only reluctantly accepted, to bide one's time and wait for a more favorable occasion. Even when doubting the wisdom of a popular verdict, it was the duty of the public servant to do the public will. Thus in this correspondence are revealed the two sides of Jefferson's character, or to speak more exactly, the two parallel tracks in which his mind ran at different times.

At the bottom of his heart, he believed that many of the economic doctrines of Du Pont were fundamentally sound; but he also knew that the citizens of the United States were not ready to accept the truth of these principles, and he did not feel that, as an executive, he had the right to attempt to shape the destinies of his country according to his own preferences. Thus he laid himself open to the reproach of insincerity, or at least of inconsistency, for on many occasions one may find a flagrant contradiction between his public utterances and the private letters he wrote to his friends. For this reason, Du Pont de Nemours was never fully able to understand his American friend. This difference between the French theorician and the American statesman will appear even more clearly in the letters in which they exchanged views on democracy and discussed the conditions requisite for the establishment of a representative government.

Jefferson's opinion of the French people with regard to the form of government they should adopt had never varied since the earliest days of the Revolution. Every time he was consulted by his friends on the matter, he invariably answered that they could do no better than to follow as closely as possible the system of their neighbors and hereditary enemies, the British. This answer, which recurred periodically in his correspondence, was made particularly emphatic in 1801, when he again warned Lafayette that France was not ready to enjoy a truly republican government. He went on by categorically stating that what was good for America might be very harmful to another country and that even in America it was neither desirable nor possible to enforce at once all the provisions of the Constitution. Thus, in a few lines, he defined his policies more clearly than any historian has ever done; he analyzed that curious combination of unwavering principles and practical expediency so puzzling to those once called by Jefferson himself "the closet politicians."

What is practicable—he said—must often control what is purely theory and the habits of the governed determine in a great degree what is practicable. The same original principles, modified in practice to the different habits of the different nations, present governments of very different aspects. The same principles reduced to form of practice, accommodated to our habits, and put into forms accommodated to the habits of the French nation would present governments very unlike each other.[530]

Thirteen years later his opinion had not varied one iota. Reviewing the situation in France after the return of the Bourbons, he wrote to Du Pont de Nemours:

I have to congratulate you, which I do sincerely, on having got back from Robespierre and Bonaparte, to your ante-revolutionary condition. You are now nearly where you were at the Jeu de Paume, on the 20th of June 1789. The King would then have yielded by convention freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury, habeas corpus and a representative legislation. These I consider as the essentials constituting free government, and that the organization of the executive is interesting, as it may ensure wisdom and integrity in the first place, but next as it may favor or endanger the preservation of these fundamentals.[531]

The same note reappears constantly in the letters written by Jefferson to his French friends, but a rapid survey of his correspondence with Du Pont de Nemours may serve to make his position even more definite.

When, in December, 1815, Du Pont was invited by "the republics of New Grenada, Carthagenes and Caracas" to give his views on the constitution they intended to adopt, he drew up a plan of government for the "Equinoctial republics" and sent it for approval to the Sage of Monticello. Faithful to the principles of the Physiocrats, he had divided the population into two classes: the real citizens or landowners and the "inhabitants", those who work for a salary, possess nothing but personal property, can go any day from one place to another, and make with their employers contracts which they can break at any time. These were entitled to protection, peaceful enjoyment of their personal property, free speech, freedom of religion, habeas corpus, and such natural rights, but Du Pont refused them any participation in the government; for only those who "owned the country" should have the right to decide how it was to be administered. To give the ballot to a floating population of industrial workers, unattached to the soil, who had nothing to sell except their labor, was "to brew a revolution, to pave the way for the Pisistrates, the Marius, the Caesars, who represent themselves as more democratic than they really are and than is just and reasonable, in order to become tyrants, to violate all rights, to substitute for law their arbitrary will, to offend morality and to debase humanity."[532]

This was a doctrine which Jefferson could not accept, for it was in direct contradiction to the tenets he had formulated early in his life and held to during all his career. Because he had read Locke, and more probably because he was trained as a lawyer, he opposed the contractual theory of society to this economic organization. He maintained that society was a compact, that all those who had become signatories to the compact were entitled to the same rights, and consequently should have the same privilege to share equally in the government, except, and this proviso was important, when they freely agreed to delegate part of their powers to elected magistrates and representatives.