Thomas Jefferson on
Politics & Government |
 
|
|
16. Amending the Constitution
No work of man is perfect. It is inevitable that, in the course
of time, the imperfections of a written Constitution will become apparent.
Moreover, the passage of time will bring changes in society which a
Constitution must accommodate if it is to remain suitable for the nation. It
was imperative, therefore, that a practicable means of amending the
Constitution be provided.
"Whatever be the Constitution, great care must be taken to provide a mode
of amendment when experience or change of circumstances shall have manifested
that any part of it is unadapted to the good of the nation. In some of our
States it requires a new authority from the whole people, acting by their
representatives, chosen for this express purpose, and assembled in convention.
This is found too difficult for remedying the imperfections which experience
develops from time to time in an organization of the first impression. A
greater facility of ammendment is certainly requisite to maintain it in a
course of action accommodated to the times and changes through which we are
ever passing." --Thomas Jefferson to A. Coray, 1823. ME 15:488
"Time and changes in the condition and constitution of society may require
occasional and corresponding modifications." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward
Livingston, 1825. ME 16:113
"Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective.
This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it
by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and
trial show are still wanting." --Thomas Jefferson to Wilson Nicholas, 1803. ME
10:419
"Though we may say with confidence, that the worst of the American
constitutions is better than the best which ever existed before in any other
country, and that they are wonderfully perfect for a first essay, yet every
human essay must have defects. It will remain, therefore, to those now coming
on the stage of public affairs, to perfect what has been so well begun by
those going off it." --Thomas Jefferson to T. M. Randolph, Jr., 1787. ME 6:165
"We must be contented to travel on towards perfection, step by step. We
must be contented with the ground which [the new] Constitution will gain for
us, and hope that a favorable moment will come for correcting what is amiss in
it." --Thomas Jefferson to the Count de Moustier, 1788. ME 7:13
"To secure the ground we gain, and gain what more we can, is, I think, the
wisest course." --Thomas Jefferson to George Mason, 1790. ME 8:35
"Our government wanted bracing. Still, we must take care not to run from
one extreme to another; not to brace too high." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward
Rutledge, 1788. ME 7:81
"This peaceable and legitimate resource [i.e., amendment], to which we are
in the habit of implicit obedience, superseding all appeal to force and being
always within our reach, shows a precious principle of self-preservation in
our composition, till a change of circumstances shall take place, which is not
within prospect at any definite period." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph
Priestley, 1801. ME 10:230
The Right to Change a Constitution
"We have always a right to correct ancient errors and to establish what is
more conformable to reason and convenience." -- Thomas Jefferson to James
Madison, 1801. FE 8:82
"We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him
when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their
barbarous ancestors." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:41
"[The European] monarchs instead of wisely yielding to the gradual change
of circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to progressive
improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady
habits and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and
ruinous innovations which, had they been referred to the peaceful
deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into
acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples nor weakly
believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of
itself and of ordering its own affairs. Let us... avail ourselves of our
reason and experience to correct the crude essays of our first and
unexperienced although wise, virtuous, and well-meaning councils." --Thomas
Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:41
"[Algernon Sidney wrote in Discourses Concerning Government, Sect.
II, Par 13,] 'All human constitutions are subject to corruption and must
perish unless they are timely renewed and reduced to their first principles.'"
--Thomas Jefferson: copied into his Commonplace Book.
"I have found here [in America] a philosophic revolution, philosophically
effected." --Thomas Jefferson to Comtesse d'Houdetot, 1790. ME 8:15
"Happy for us that when we find our constitutions defective and
insufficient to secure the happiness of our people, we can assemble with all
the coolness of philosophers and set it to rights, while every other nation on
earth must have recourse to arms to amend or to restore their constitutions."
--Thomas Jefferson to C. W. F. Dumas, 1787. ME 6:295, Papers 12:113
"The European governments have resisted reformation until the people,
seeing no other resource, undertake it themselves by force, their only weapon,
and work it out through blood, desolation and long-continued anarchy. Here it
will be by large fragments breaking off, and refusing re-union but on
condition of amendment, or perhaps permanently." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert
J. Garnett, 1824. ME 16:15
"A schism in our Union... would be an incurable evil, because near friends
falling out, never re-unite cordially; whereas, all of us going together, we
shall be sure to cure the evils of our new Constitution, before they do great
harm." --Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Donald, 1788. ME 6:426
"Happy for us that abuses have not yet become patrimonies, and that every
description of interest is in favor of rational and moderate government. That
we are yet able to send our wise and good men together to talk over our form
of government, discuss its weaknesses and establish its remedies with the same
sang-froid as they would a subject of agriculture." --Thomas Jefferson
to Ralph Izard, 1788. ME 7:72, Papers 13:373
"The example of changing a constitution by assembling the wise men of the
State instead of assembling armies will be worth as much to the world as the
former examples we had given them." --Thomas Jefferson to David Humphreys,
1789. ME 7:322
Change is the Choice of the Living
"I willingly acquiesce in the institutions of my country, perfect or
imperfect, and think it a duty to leave their modifications to those who are
to live under them and are to participate of the good or evil they may
produce. The present generation has the same right of self-government which
the past one has exercised for itself." --Thomas Jefferson to John Hampden
Pleasants, 1824. ME 16:29
"My wish is to offend nobody; to leave to those who are to live under it,
the settlement of their own constitution." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel
Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:70
"We have not yet so far perfected our constitutions as to venture to make
them unchangeable. But still, in their present state, we consider them not
otherwise changeable than by the authority of the people on a special election
of representatives for that purpose expressly. They are until then the lex
legum." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:47
"Our children will be as wise as we are and will establish in the fulness
of time those things not yet ripe for establishment." --Thomas Jefferson to
John Tyler, 1810. ME 12:394
"The generation which is going off the stage has deserved well of mankind
for the struggles it has made and for having arrested that course of despotism
which had overwhelmed the world for thousands and thousands of years. If there
seems to be danger that the ground they have gained will be lost again, that
danger comes from the [upcoming] generation. But that the enthusiasm which
characterizes youth should lift its parricide hands against freedom and
science would be such a monstrous phenomenon as I cannot place among possible
things in this age and this country." --Thomas Jefferson to William Green
Munford, 1799.
Experience Dictates Change
"The precept... is wise which directs us to try all things and hold fast
that which is good." --Thomas Jefferson to William Drayton, 1788. ME 6:414
"I am a friend to the reformation generally of whatever can be made
better." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wilson, 1813. ME 13:349
"Let us go on perfecting the Constitution by adding, by way of amendment,
those forms which time and trial show are still wanting." --Thomas Jefferson
to Wilson Nicholas, 1803. ME 9:419
"It is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it." --Thomas
Jefferson: Address to Cherokee Nation, 1806. ME 19:149
"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them
like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the
men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to
be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with
it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present but without
the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is
worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves were they
to rise from the dead." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
"Those who [advocate] reformation of institutions pari passu with
the progress of science [maintain] that no definite limits [can] be assigned
to that progress. The enemies of reform, on the other hand, [deny] improvement
and [advocate] steady adherence to the principles, practices and institutions
of our fathers, which they [represent] as the consummation of wisdom and acme
of excellence, beyond which the human mind could never advance." --Thomas
Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:254
"I am not afraid of new inventions or improvements, nor bigoted to the
practices of our forefathers. It is that bigotry which keeps the Indians in a
state of barbarism in the midst of the arts [and] would have kept us in the
same state even now." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert Fulton, 1810. ME 12:380
"Nature and reason, as well as all our constitutions, condemn retrospective
conditions as mere acts of power against right." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles
Yancey, 1816. ME 14:380
"The real friends of the Constitution in its federal form, if they wish it
to be immortal, should be attentive, by amendments, to make it keep pace with
the advance of the age in science and experience. Instead of this, the
European governments have resisted reformation until the people, seeing no
other resource, undertake it themselves by force, their only weapon, and work
it out through blood, desolation and long-continued anarchy." --Thomas
Jefferson to Robert J. Garnett, 1824. ME 16:15
"I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws
and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with;
because, when once known, we accomodate ourselves to them and find practical
means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also that laws and
institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that
becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new
truths disclosed and manners and opinions change with the change of
circumstances, institutions must advance also and keep pace with the times."
--Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
The Slow Process of Amendment
"It will be said it is easier to find faults than to amend them. I do not
think their amendment so difficult as is pretended. Only lay down true
principles and adhere to them inflexibly." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel
Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:35
"I am sorry [the federal convention] began their deliberations by so
abominable a precedent as that of tying up the tongues of their members.
Nothing can justify this example but the innocence of their intentions, and
ignorance of the value of public discussions." --Thomas Jefferson to John
Adams, 1787. ME 6:289
"There is a snail-paced gait for the advance of new ideas on the general
mind under which we must acquiesce. A forty years' experience of popular
assemblies has taught me that you must give them time for every step you take.
If too hard pushed, they balk, and the machine retrogrades." --Thomas
Jefferson to Joel Barlow, 1807. ME 11:400
"Governments... are always in their stock of information a century or two
behind the intelligent part of mankind, and... have interests against touching
ancient institutions." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert Patterson, 1811. ME 13:87
"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." --Thomas Jefferson to John
Taylor, 1816. ME 15:22
The Earth Belongs to the Living
"The idea that institutions established for the use of the nation cannot be
touched nor modified even to make them answer their end because of rights
gratuitously supposed in those employed to manage them in trust for the
public, may perhaps be a salutary provision against the abuses of a monarch
but is most absurd against the nation itself. Yet our lawyers and priests
generally inculcate this doctrine and suppose that preceding generations held
the earth more freely than we do, had a right to impose laws on us unalterable
by ourselves, and that we in like manner can make laws and impose burdens on
future generations which they will have no right to alter; in fine, that the
earth belongs to the dead and not the living." --Thomas Jefferson to William
Plumer, 1816. ME 15:46
"I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self-evident: 'That the
earth belongs in usufruct to the living;' that the dead have neither
powers nor rights over it... We seem not to have perceived that by the law of
nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation to another."
--Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:454, Papers 15:392
"Can one generation bind another and all others in succession forever? I
think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights
and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter
unendowed with will." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:48
"The generations of men may be considered as bodies or corporations. Each
generation has the usufruct of the earth during the period of its continuance.
When it ceases to exist, the usufruct passes on to the succeeding generation
free and unencumbered and so on successively from one generation to another
forever. We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right,
by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the
succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country." --Thomas
Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:270
"These are axioms so self-evident that no explanation can make them
plainer; for he is not to be reasoned with who says that non-existence can
control existence, or that nothing can move something. They are axioms also
pregnant with salutary consequences." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Earle,
1823. ME 15:470
"Forty years [after a] Constitution... was formed,... two-thirds of the
adults then living are... dead. Have, then, the remaining third, even if they
had the wish, the right to hold in obedience to their will and to laws
heretofore made by them, the other two-thirds who with themselves compose the
present mass of adults? If they have not, who has? The dead? But the dead have
no rights. They are nothing, and nothing can not own something. Where there is
no substance, there can be no accident [i.e., attribute]." --Thomas Jefferson
to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. (*) ME 15:42
"A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life;
when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights
and powers their predecessors once held and may change their laws and
institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent
and unalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824.
ME 16:48
"The laws of civil society indeed for the encouragement of industry, give
the property of the parent to his family on his death, and in most civilized
countries permit him even to give it, by testament, to whom he pleases. And it
is also found more convenient to suffer the laws of our predecessors to stand
on our implied assent, as if positively re-enacted, until the existing
majority positively repeals them. But this does not lessen the right of that
majority to repeal whenever a change of circumstances or of will calls for it.
Habit alone confounds what is civil practice with natural right." --Thomas
Jefferson to Thomas Earle, 1823. ME 15:470
"Let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated periods.
What these periods should be nature herself indicates. By the European tables
of mortality, of the adults living at any one moment of time, a majority will
be dead in about nineteen years. At the end of that period, then, a new
majority is come into place; or, in other words, a new generation. Each
generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which
had gone before. It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form
of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently,
to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself that received
from its predecessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind that a
solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years should be
provided by the constitution, so that it may be handed on with periodical
repairs from generation to generation to the end of time, if anything human
can so long endure." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:42
"Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of
nineteen years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of
right. It may be said, that the succeeding generation exercising, in fact, the
power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had
been expressly limited to nineteen years only. In the first place, this
objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of
repeal is not an equivalent. It might be, indeed, if every form of government
were so perfectly contrived, that the will of the majority could always be
obtained, fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The
people cannot assemble themselves; their representation is unequal and
vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions
get possession of the public councils, bribery corrupts them, personal
interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents;
and other impediments arise, so as to prove to every practical man, that a law
of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal."
--Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:459, Papers 15:396
"This principle, that the earth belongs to the living and not to the
dead,... will exclude... the ruinous and contagious errors... which have armed
despots with means which nature does not sanction, for binding in chains their
fellow-men." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:460, Papers
15:396
Cross References
To other sections in Thomas
Jefferson on Politics & Government:
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For further information please refer to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
|
