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I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy
among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly,
bodily powers gave place among the aristoi [the best human beings].
But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well
as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty,
good humor, politeness, and other accomplishments, has become but
an auxiliary ground for distinction. There is also an artificial
aristocracy, founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue
or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The
natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature,
for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And
indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed
man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom
enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say,
that that form of government is the best, which provides the most
effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the
offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous
ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent
its ascendency. On the question, What is the best provision, you
and I differ; but we differ as rational friends, using the free
exercise of our own reason, and mutually indulging its errors. You
think it best to put the Pseudo-aristoi (those who falsely claim
or appear to be the best] into a separate chamber of the legislature
where they may be hindered from doing mischief by their coordinate
branches, and where they also may be a protection to wealth against
the Agrarian and plundering enterprises of the Majority of the people.
I think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing
mischief is, is arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying
the evil. For if the coordinate branches can arrest their action,
so may they that of the coordinates. Mischief may be done negatively
as well as positively. Of this a cabal in the Senate of the U.S.
has furnished many proofs. Nor do I believe [a separate branch of
government] necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of
these will find their way into every branch of the legislation to
protect themselves. From 15 to 20 legislatures of our own, in action
for 30 years past, have proved that no fears of an equalisation
of property are to be apprehended from them.
I think the best remedy is exactly that provided
by all our constitutions, to leave to 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 them, but
not in sufficient degree to endanger the society....
At the first session of our legislature after the
Declaration of Independence, we passed a law abolishing entails
[limitations on the inheritance of property to a specified succession
of heirs]. And this was followed by one abolishing the privilege
of primogeniture [the eldest child’s exclusive right of inheritance],
and dividing the lands of intestates equally among all their children,
or other representatives. These laws, drawn by myself, laid the
ax to the foot of Pseudo-aristocracy. And had another which I prepared
been adopted by the legislature, our work would have been complete.
It was a bill for the more general diffusion of learning. This proposed
to divide every county into wards of five or six miles square, like
your townships; to establish in each ward a free school for reading,
writing, and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection
of the best subjects from these schools, who might receive, at the
public expense, a higher degree of education at a district school;
and from these district schools to select a certain number of the
most promising subjects, to be completed at a university, where
all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would
thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely
prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and
birth for public trusts….
My proposition had the further object to impart to
these wards those portions of self-government for which they are
best qualified, by confiding to them the care of their poor, their
roads, police, elections, the nomination of jurors, administration
of justice in small cases, elementary exercises of militia, in short,
to have made them into little republics, with a Warden at the head
of each, for all those concerns which, bring under their eye, they
would better manage than the larger republics of the county or state.
A general call of ward-meetings by their Wardens on the same day
thro’ the state would at any time produce the genuine sense
of the people on any required point, and would enable the state
to act in mass, as your people have so often done, and with so much
effect, by their town meetings. The law for religious freedom, which
made a part of this system, having put down the aristocracy of the
clergy, and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind, and
those of entails and descents nurturing an equality of condition
among them, this on Education would have raised the mass of people
to the high ground of moral respectability necessary to their own
safety, and to orderly government; and would have completed the
great object of qualifying them to select the veritable aristoi,
for the trusts of government, to the exclusion of the Pseudalists....
Altho’ this law has not yet been acted on but in a small and
inefficient degree, it is still considered as before the legislature,
with other bills of the revised code, not yet taken up, and I have
great hope that some patriotic spirit will, at a favorable moment,
call it up, and make it the key-stone of the arch of our government.
With respect to aristocracy, we should further consider,
that before the establishment of the American States, nothing was
known to history but the man of the old world, crowded within limits
either small or overcharged, and steeped in the vices which that
situation generates. A government adapted to such men would be one
thing, but a very different one, that for the man of these States.
Here every one may have land to labor for himself, if he chooses;
or, preferring the exercise of any other industry, may exact for
it such compensation as not only to afford a comfortable subsistence,
but wherewith to provide for a cessation from labor in old age.
Every one, by his property, or by his satisfactory situation, is
interested in the support of law and order. And such men may safely
and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control over
their public affairs, and a degree of freedom, which, in the hands
of the canaille [the masses] of the cities of Europe, would be instantly
perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything public
and private. The history of the last twenty-five years of France,
and of the last forty years in America, nay of its last two hundred
years, proves the truth of both parts of this observation.
But even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place
in the mind of man. Science had liberated the ideas of those who
read and reflect, and the American example had kindled feelings
of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently begun,
of science, talents, and courage, against rank and birth, which
have fallen into contempt. It has failed in its first effort, because
the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment,
debased by ignorance, poverty, and vice, could not be restrained
to rational action. But the world will recover from the panic of
this first catastrophe. Science is progressive, and talents and
enterprise on the alert. Resort may be had to the people of the
country, a more governable power from their principles and subordination;
and rank, and birth, and tinsel-aristocracy will finally shrink
into insignificance, even there. This, however, we have no right
to meddle with. It suffices for us, if the moral and physical condition
of our own citizens qualifies them to select the able and good for
the direction of their government, with a recurrence of elections
at such short periods as will enable them to displace an unfaithful
servant, before the mischief he meditates may be irremediable....
A constitution has been acquired, which, though neither of us thinks
perfect, yet both consider as competent to render our fellow citizens
the happiest and the securest on whom the sun has ever shone. If
we do not think exactly alike as to its imperfections, it matters
little to our country, which, after devoting to it long lives of
disinterested labor, we have delivered over to our successors in
life, who will be able to take care of it and of themselves.
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