Date: 25 June ‘09 Political Snippets
Thomas Jefferson
On the issue of “Principles of Government”, Thomas Jefferson in a letter from Monticello dated Feb. 2, 1816, discussed Montesquieu’s Review of the principles of government as the best elementary book he had reviewed, and also Chipman’s and Priestley’s Principles of Government, and then opined as follows:
“[t]he way to have good and safe government, is not trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to. Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man’s farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate. And I do believe that if the Almighty has not decreed that man shall never be free, (and it is blasphemy to believe it,) that the secret will be found to be in the making himself the depository of the powers respecting himself, so far as he is competent to them, and delegating only what is beyond his competence by a synthetical process, to higher and higher orders of functionaries, so as to trust fewer and fewer powers in proportion as the trustees become more and more oligarchical. The elementary republics of the wards, the county republics, the States republics, and the republic of the Union, would form a gradation of authorities, standing each on the basis of law, holding every one its delegated share of powers, and constituting truly a system of fundamental balances and checks for the government. Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic, or of some of the higher ones, and feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day; ... he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested form him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte. ... God Bless you, and all our rulers, and give them the wisdom, as I am sure they have the will, to fortify us against the degeneracy of one government, and the concentration of all its powers in the hands of the one, the few, the well-born or the many.” (Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, February 2, 1816 letter to Joseph C. Cabell).
To what extent and length of time, should the president and the Congress be authorized to obligate and place the United States and its citizens in a state of indebtedness? This is not a new question, but was considered in the early days of our republic. In a letter to James Madison from Paris on September 6th 1789, Thomas Jefferson discuss the question of: “Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another”, in part, thus:
“To keep our ideas clear when applying them to a multitude, let us suppose a whole generation of men to be born on the same day, to attain mature age on the same day, and to die on the same day, leaving a succeeding generation in the moment of attaining their mature age all together. Let the ripe age be supposed of 21 years, and their period of life 34 years more, that being the average term given by the bills of mortality to persons who have already attained 21 years of age. Each successive generation would, in this way, come on and go off the stage at a fixed moment, as individuals do now. Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations during it’s course, fully, and in their own right. The 2d. generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances [1789 spelling] of the 1st., the 3d. of the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and the living generation. Then no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence (by this he means principal and interest). At 21 years of age they may bind themselves and their lands for 34 years to come: at 22 for 33: at 23 for 32 and at 54 for one year only; because these are the terms of life which remain to them at those respective epochs. ...
“What is true of a generation all arriving to self-government on the same day, and dying all on the same day, is true of those on a constant course of decay and renewal, with this only difference. A generation coming in and going out entire as in the first case, would have a right in the 1st year of their self dominion to contract a debt for 33 years, in the 10th for 24 in the 20th for 14 in the 30th for 4 whereas generations changing daily, by daily deaths and births, have one constant term beginning at the date of their contract, and ending when a majority of those of full age at that date shall be dead. The length of that term may be estimated from the tables of mortality, corrected by the circumstances of climate, occupation &c peculiar to the country of the contractors. Take, for instance, the table of M. De Buffon wherein he states that 23,994 deaths, and the ages at which they happened. Suppose a society in which 23,994 persons are born every year and live to the ages stated in this table. The conditions of that society will be as follows. 1st it will consist constantly of 617,703 persons of all ages. 2dly. of those living at any one instant of time, one half will be dead in 24 years 8 months. 3dly. 10,675 will arrive every year at the age of 21 years complete. 4tly. it will constantly have 348,417 persons of all ages above 21 years. 5ly. and the half of those of 21 years and upwards living at any one instant of time will be dead in 18 years 8 months, or say 19 years as the nearest integral number. Then 19 years is the term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation, nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly extend a debt.”
But Obama in some 100 days, obligates and indebted the Nation and future generations to tens of Trillions of interest and principal, and continues the insanity ad nauseam, more than all the previous presidents and Congresses put together. And, without any serious consideration of the Constitution or the authority to do so. For this socialist take over of our government, he richly deserves to be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and if not so, for fundamental incompetence; as it is extremely doubtful that our country will be able to economically survive Obama’s onslaught of liberal socialist William Ayres community organizer insanity for three and a half more years.
Fred Marrs
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