Thomas Jefferson, the Apostle of Americanism

by Gilbert Chinard

This was the theory, the inalienable principle to be proclaimed in a bill of rights, the necessary preamble to any constitution. In practice, however, various limitations to universal suffrage were to be recognized. One could not even think of granting the ballot to minors, to emancipated slaves or to women. It did not follow either that, all citizens being endowed with the same rights, they were equally ready to exercise the same functions in the government. Men are created equal in rights but differ in intelligence, learning, clear-sightedness and general ability. In other words, there are some natural aristoi, and John Adams brought Jefferson to this admission without any difficulty. If this fact be accepted, the next step is to recognize that "that form of government is the best, which provided the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into offices of the government." It was the good fortune of America that all her constitutions were so worded as "to leave the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat from the chaff. In general, they will elect the really good and wise. In some instances, wealth may corrupt, and birth blind; but not in a sufficient degree to endanger society."[533]

According to this theory, the real function of the people is not to participate directly in all governmental activities, but to select from among themselves the most qualified citizens and the best prepared to administer the country. In a letter to Doctor Walter Jones, who had sent him a paper on democracy, Jefferson made his position even more definite by establishing a very important distinction which gives more than any other statement his true idea of a progressive democracy—an ideal to be striven for, not a condition already reached:

I would say that the people, being the only safe depository of power, should exercise in person every function which their qualifications enable them to exercise, consistently with the order and security of society; that we now find them equal to the election of those who shall be invested with their executive powers, and to act themselves in the judiciary, as judges in questions of fact; that the range of their powers ought to be enlarged....[534]

In these circumstances, Jefferson's reluctance to encourage both his French and Spanish friends to establish at once a government modeled on the American government in their respective countries, is perfectly intelligible. Of all the nations of the earth, England alone could "borrow wholesale the American system."

They will probably turn their eyes to us, and be disposed to tread in the footsteps, seeing how safely these have led us into port. There is no part of or model to which they seem unequal, unless perhaps the elective presidency, and even that might possibly be rescued from the tumult of the elections, by subdividing the electoral assemblage into very small parts, such as of wards or townships, and making them simultaneous.[535]

As for the other nations, they were no more qualified to exercise the duties of a truly representative government than were the inhabitants of New Orleans at the time of the purchase. The French, in particular, had proved in several instances that they could not be intrusted with the administration of their own affairs.

More than a generation will be requisite—he wrote to Lafayette—under the administration of reasonable laws favoring the progress of knowledge in the general mass of the people, and their habituation to an independent security of person and property, before they will be capable of estimating the value of freedom, and the necessity of sacred adherence to the principles on which it rests for preservation. Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere accident or force, it becomes, with an unprepared people, a tyranny still, of the many, the few, or one.[536]

From these declarations, to which many other similar passages could be added, a capital difference between the idealism of Jefferson and the idealism of the French philosophers becomes quite obvious. The author of the Declaration of Independence had proclaimed that all men are born free and equal, but he never thought that women, Indians and newly enfranchized slaves should be admitted to the same rights and privileges as the other citizens. In like fashion, although representative government remains the best possible form of government, he found it desirable that some people, who are still children, should not be granted at once the full enjoyment of their natural rights. Thus self-government, which had become a well established fact and a reality in America, should remain for other peoples a reward to be obtained after a long and painful process of education. It could be hoped that some day, after many disastrous experiments and much suffering, the peoples of Europe and South America might deserve the blessings enjoyed by the American people. But nothing was further from the character of Jefferson than to preach the gospel of Americanism to all the nations of the world. Instead of considering as desirable a close imitation of the American Constitution by the newly liberated nations, he maintained that each people should mold their institutions according to their own habits and traditions. Far from being a Jacobin, a wild radical, or a "closet philosopher", this practical politician had come to the conclusion that each people have the government they deserve, and that durable improvements can come only as a result of the improvement of the moral qualities of every citizen—from within and not from without. Such a moderate conclusion may surprise those who are accustomed to damn or praise Jefferson on a few sentences or axioms detached from their context; but, after careful scrutiny of the evidence, it seems difficult to accept any other interpretation.

Comparatively perfect as it was, the government of the United States presented certain germs of weakness, corruption and degeneracy. The Sage of Monticello did not fail to call his friends' attention to some of the dangers looming up on the horizon. As he had warned them against inflation, he opposed the formation of societies which might become so strong as "to obstruct the operation of the government and undertake to regulate the foreign, fiscal, and military as well as domestic affairs." This might be taken already as a warning against lobbying. He was fully aware that a time might come when the speeches of the Senators and Representatives "would cease to be read at all" and when the Legislature would not enjoy the full confidence of the people. He deplored the law vacating nearly all the offices of government nearly every four years, for "it will keep in constant excitement all the hungry cormorants for office, render them as well as those in place sycophants to their Senators, engage in eternal intrigue to turn out and put in another, in cabale to swap work, and make of them what all executive directories become, mere sinks of corruption and faction."[537]

Serious and pressing as these dangers were, they could be left to future generations to avoid, but at the very moment he wrote another fear obsessed his mind: