Thomas Jefferson on
Politics & Government |
 
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20. Against Consolidated Government
The separation of powers was essential to prevent the
consolidation of government and the formation of centralized, authoritarian
tyranny to which all governments are prone. Jefferson has often been
referred to as a proponent of "States Rights," but his main interest was not
so much in the rights of States in and of themselves, but rather in a
division of powers in order to prevent the destruction of liberty that would
inevitably result from a national government that gathered all powers unto
itself.
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but
one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the
powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of
magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being
effectually checked and restrained by the others." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes
on Virginia Q.XIII, 1782. ME 2:163
"I wish to preserve the line drawn by the Federal Constitution between the
general and particular governments as it stands at present, and to take every
prudent means of preventing either from stepping over it." --Thomas Jefferson
to Archibald Stuart, 1791. ME 8:276
"I am for preserving to the States the powers not yielded by them to the
Union, and to the legislature of the Union its constitutional share in the
division of powers; and I am not for transferring all the powers of the States
to the General Government, and all those of that government to the executive
branch." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:77
"[We have seen] the importance of preserving to the State authorities all
that vigor which the Constitution foresaw would be necessary, not only for
their own safety, but for that of the whole." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward
Tiffin, 1807. ME 11:146
Consolidation Destroys Liberty
"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." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1816. ME 14:421
"When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things,
shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render
powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as
venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." --Thomas
Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821. ME 15:332
"The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a
government of unlimited powers." --Thomas Jefferson: Declaration and Protest
of Virginia, 1825. ME 17:445
"[We are] determined... to submit to undelegated, and consequently
unlimited powers in no man or body of men on earth." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft
Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. ME 17:386
"We are willing to sacrifice to [union with our sister States, and to the
instrument and principles by which we are united] everything but the rights of
self-government in those important points which we have never yielded, and in
which alone we see liberty, safety, and happiness." --Thomas Jefferson to
Wilson C. Nicholas, 1799. ME 10:131
Consolidation is Anti-Republican
"The truth is that finding that monarchy is a desperate wish in this
country, [the enemies of republicanism] rally to the point which they think
next best: a consolidated government. Their aim is now therefore to break down
the rights reserved by the Constitution to the States as a bulwark against
that consolidation, the fear of which produced the whole of the opposition to
the Constitution at its birth... But I trust they will fail... and that the
friends of the real Constitution and Union will prevail against consolidation
as they have done against monarchism. I scarcely know myself which is most to
be deprecated, a consolidation or dissolution of the States. The horrors of
both are beyond the reach of human foresight." --Thomas Jefferson to William
Johnson, Oct 27, 1822. (*)
"In the convention which formed our government, [the monarchists]
endeavored to draw the cords of power as tight as they could obtain them, to
lessen the dependence of the general functionaries on their constituents, to
subject to them those of the States, and to weaken their means of maintaining
the steady equilibrium which the majority of the convention had deemed
salutary for both branches, general and local." --Thomas Jefferson to William
Johnson, 1823. ME 15:441
"Consolidation is the present principle of distinction between republicans
and the pseudo-republicans." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME
15:421
"The support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most
competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks
against antirepublican tendencies, I deem [one of] the essential principles of
our Government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its
administration." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:321
Consolidation Leads to Corruption
"I wish... to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers
established by the Constitution for the limitation of both [the State and
General governments], and never to see all offices transferred to Washington
where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly
be bought and sold as at market." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823.
ME 15:450
"What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering,
office-building and office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all
the State powers into the hands of the General Government!" --Thomas Jefferson
to Gideon Granger, 1800. ME 10:168
"Our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it
will pass to destruction; to wit: by consolidation first and then corruption,
its necessary consequence. The engine of consolidation will be the Federal
judiciary; the two other branches the corrupting and corrupted instruments."
--Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1821. ME 15:341
Consolidation Usurps the Rights of States
"Monarchy, to be sure, is now defeated,... yet the spirit is not done away.
The same party takes now what they deem the next best ground, the
consolidation of the government; the giving to the federal member of the
government, by unlimited constructions of the Constitution, a control over all
the functions of the States, and the concentration of all power ultimately at
Washington." --Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1825. ME 16:95
"I see,... and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which
the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of
all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all
powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if
legitimate, leave no limits to their power... It is but too evident that the
three ruling branches of [the Federal government] are in combination to strip
their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and
to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic." --Thomas Jefferson
to William Branch Giles, 1825. ME 16:146
"[We] disavow and declare to be most false and unfounded, the doctrine that
the compact, in authorizing its federal branch to lay and collect taxes,
duties, imposts and excises to pay the debts and provide for the common
defence and general welfare of the United States, has given them thereby a
power to do whatever they may think or pretend would promote the
general welfare, which construction would make that, of itself, a complete
government, without limitation of powers; but that the plain sense and obvious
meaning were, that they might levy the taxes necessary to provide for the
general welfare by the various acts of power therein specified and delegated
to them, and by no others." --Thomas Jefferson: Declaration and Protest of
Virginia, 1825. ME 17:444
"Though the experiment has not yet had a long enough course to show us from
which quarter encroachments are most to be feared, yet it is easy to foresee,
from the nature of things, that the encroachments of the State governments
will tend to an excess of liberty which will correct itself,... while those of
the General Government will tend to monarchy, which will fortify itself from
day to day instead of working its own cure, as all experience shows." --Thomas
Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1791. ME 8:276
"I am firmly persuaded that it is by giving due tone to the particular
governments that the general one will be preserved in vigor also, the
Constitution having foreseen its incompetency to all the objects of government
and therefore confined it to those specially described." --Thomas Jefferson to
James Sullivan, 1791. FE 5:369
"Can it be believed that under the jealousies prevailing against the
General Government at the adoption of the Constitution, the States meant to
surrender the authority of preserving order or enforcing moral duties and
restraining vice within their own territory?... Can any good be effected by
taking from the States the moral rule of their citizens and subordinating it
to the general authority?" --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME
15:449
"[Since] no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or
freedom of the press [was] delegated to the United States by the Constitution
nor prohibited by it to the States, all lawful powers respecting the same did
of right remain and were reserved to the States or the people... Thus was
manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging
how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without
lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be
separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be
destroyed." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. ME 17:381
"Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume
authority in religious discipline has been delegated to the General
Government. It must then rest with the States, as far as it can be in any
human authority." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. ME 11:428
"[We] believe that to take from the States all the powers of
self-government and transfer them to a general and consolidated government
without regard to the special delegations and reservations solemnly agreed to
in [the Federal] compact, is not for the peace, happiness or prosperity of
these States." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. ME 17:386
The Federal Judiciary's Role
"The [federal] judiciary branch is the instrument which, working like
gravity, without intermission, is to press us at last into one consolidated
mass." --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Thweat, 1821. ME 15:307
"There is no danger I apprehend so much as the consolidation of our
government by the noiseless and therefore unalarming instrumentality of the
Supreme Court." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:421
"We already see the [judiciary] power, installed for life, responsible to
no authority (for impeachment is not even a scare-crow), advancing with a
noiseless and steady pace to the great object of consolidation. The
foundations are already deeply laid by their decisions for the annihilation of
constitutional State rights and the removal of every check, every counterpoise
to the engulfing power of which themselves are to make a sovereign part."
--Thomas Jefferson to William T. Barry, 1822. ME 15:388
"After twenty years' confirmation of the federated system by the voice of
the nation, declared through the medium of elections, we find the judiciary on
every occasion, still driving us into consolidation." --Thomas Jefferson to
Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:212
"The judges... are practicing on the Constitution by inferences, analogies,
and sophisms, as they would on an ordinary law. They do not seem aware that it
is not even a Constitution, formed by a single authority and subject to
a single superintendence and control, but that it is a compact of many
independent powers, every single one of which claims an equal right to
understand it and to require its observance. However strong the cord of
compact may be, there is a point of tension at which it will break. A few such
doctrinal decisions... happening to bear immediately on two or three of the
large States may induce them to join in arresting the march of government, and
in arousing the co-States to pay some attention to what is passing, to bring
back the compact to its original principles or to modify it legitimately by
the express consent of the parties themselves, and not by the usurpation of
their created agents. They imagine they can lead us into a consolidated
government, while their road leads directly to its dissolution." --Thomas
Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1825. ME 16:113
"Of all the doctrines which have ever been broached by the federal
government, the novel one of the common law being in force and cognizable as
an existing law in their courts, is to me the most formidable. All their other
assumptions of un-given powers have been in the detail... -- solitary,
inconsequential, timid things, in comparison with the audacious, barefaced and
sweeping pretension to a system of law for the United States, without the
adoption of their Legislature, and so infinitely beyond their power to adopt.
If this assumption be yielded to, the State courts may be shut up, as there
will then be nothing to hinder citizens of the same State suing each other in
the federal courts in every case, as on a bond for instance, because the
common law obliges payment of it, and the common law they say is their law."
--Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Randolph, 1799. ME 10:125
"I do verily believe that if the principle were to prevail of a common law
being in force in the United States (which principle possesses the general
government at once of all the powers of the state governments, and reduces us
to a single consolidated government), it would become the most corrupt
government on the earth." --Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1800. 10:168
States Must Resist Consolidation
"I have been blamed for saying that a prevalence of the doctrines of
consolidation would one day call for reformation or revolution. I
answer by asking if a single State of the union would have agreed to the
Constitution had it given all powers to the General Government? If the whole
opposition to it did not proceed from the jealousy and fear of every State of
being subjected to the other States in matters merely its own? And if there is
any reason to believe the States more disposed now than then to acquiesce in
this general surrender of all their rights and powers to a consolidated
government, one and undivided?" --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823.
ME 15:444
"Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus
non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power
by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the
dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of
judgment for them." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. ME
17:387
"If Congress fails to shield the States from dangers so palpable and so
imminent, the States must shield themselves and meet the invader foot to
foot." --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Thweat, 1821. ME 15:307
"This branch of government [i.e., the State Judiciary] will have the weight
of the conflict [between the general and the particular governments] on their
hands, because they will be the last appeal of reason." --Thomas Jefferson to
Archibald Stuart, 1791. ME 8:277
"It is important to strengthen the State governments; and as this cannot be
done by any change in the Federal Constitution (for the preservation of that
is all we need contend for), it must be done by the States themselves,
erecting such barriers at the constitutional line as cannot be surmounted
either by themselves of by the General Government. The only barrier in their
power is a wise government. A weak one will lose ground in every contest."
--Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1791. ME 8:276
Dissolution is a Last Resort
"If every infraction of a compact of so many parties is to be resisted at
once as a dissolution, none can ever be formed which would last one year. We
must have patience and longer endurance then with our brethren while under
delusion; give them time for reflection and experience of consequences; keep
ourselves in a situation to profit by the chapter of accidents; and separate
from our companions only when the sole alternatives left are the dissolution
of our Union with them or submission to a government without limitation of
powers. Between these two evils, when we must make a choice, there can be no
hesitation. But in the meanwhile, the States should be watchful to note every
material usurpation on their rights; to denounce them as they occur in the
most peremptory terms; to protest against them as wrongs to which our present
submission shall be considered, not as acknowledgments or precedents of right,
but as a temporary yielding to the lesser evil, until their accumulation shall
overweigh that of separation." --Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles,
1825. ME 16:148
"We should never think of separation but for repeated and enormous
violations." --Thomas Jefferson to Wilson C. Nicholas, 1799. ME 10:131
"We will breast... every misfortune save that only of living under a
government of unlimited powers. We owe every other sacrifice to ourselves, to
our federal brethren, and to the world at large to pursue with temper and
perseverance the great experiment which shall prove that man is capable of
living in society, governing itself by laws self-imposed, and securing to its
members the enjoyment of life, liberty, property and peace; and further to
show that even when the government of its choice shall manifest a tendency to
degeneracy, we are not at once to despair, but that the will and the
watchfulness of its sounder parts will reform its aberrations, recall it to
original and legitimate principles, and restrain it within the rightful limits
of self-government." --Thomas Jefferson: Declaration and Protest of Virginia,
1825. ME 17:445
"A single government... of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and
incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface... will not be
borne, and you will have to choose between reformation and revolution. If I
know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable. Before
the canker is become inveterate, before its venom has reached so much of the
body politic as to get beyond control, remedy should be applied." --Thomas
Jefferson to William T. Barry, 1822. ME 15:389
"The only greater [evil] than separation... [is] living under a government
of discretion." --Thomas Jefferson to William Gordon, 1826. ME 10:358
"If the States look with apathy on this silent descent of their government
into the gulf [of consolidation] which is to swallow all, we have only to weep
over the human character formed uncontrollable but by a rod of iron, and the
blasphemers of man as incapable of self-government become his true
historians." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821. ME 15:332
Cross References
To other sections in Thomas
Jefferson on Politics & Government:
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