Posted on 07/03/2003 5:59:18 AM PDT by Tribune7
On July 4, Americans everywhere will, at some point, have an opportunity to hear the words of the Declaration of Independence as written by Thomas Jefferson.
It is, without doubt, his best-known work. Jefferson, however, wrote volumes during his life and, not surprisingly, had many things to say concerning a myriad of subjects. He was, after all, a firm believer in "free speech and free press" and he often said precisely what was on his mind.
The following is a small sampling of quotations by Jefferson, which reflect his timeless wisdom on a variety of subjects. Small wonder that he became known as the "Man of the People" and the "Sage of Monticello."
"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing."
Letter to his daughter Martha, May 5, 1787: "...Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
Letter to Col. Edward Carrington, Jan. 16, 1787: "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."
(Excerpt) Read more at countypressonline.com ...
"What is the inference from all these observations? That we ought to go as far in order to attain stability and permanency, as republican principles will admit. Let one branch of the Legislature hold their places for life or at least during good-behaviour. Let the Executive also be for life. He appealed to the feelings of the members present whether a term of seven years, would induce the sacrifices of private affairs which an acceptance of public trust would require, so so as to ensure the services of the best Citizens. On this plan we should have in the Senate a permanent will, a weighty interest, which would answer essential purposes. But is this a Republican Govt. it will be asked? Yes, if all the Magistrates are appointed, and vacancies are filled, by the people, or a process of election originating with the people. He was sensible that an Executive constituted as he proposed would have in fact but little of the power and independence that might be necessary. On the other plan of appointing him for 7 years, he thought the Executive ought to have but little power. He would be ambitious, with the means of making creatures; and as the object of his ambition wd. be to prolong his power, it is probable that in case of a war, he would avail himself of the emergence, to evade or refuse a degradation from his place. An Executive for life has not this motive for forgetting his fidelity, and will therefore be a safer depositary of power. It will be objected probably, that such an Executive will be an elective Monarch, and will give birth to the tumults which characterise that form of Govt. He wd. reply that Monarch is an indefinite term. It marks not either the degree or duration of power. If this Executive Magistrate wd. be a monarch for life--the other propd. by the Report from the Committee of the whole, wd. be a monarch for seven years. The circumstance of being elective was also applicable to both. It had been observed by judicious writers that elective monarchies wd. be the best if they could be guarded agst. the tumults excited by the ambition and intrigues of competitors. He was not sure that tumults were an inseparable evil. He rather thought this character of Elective Monarchies had been taken rather from particular cases than from general principles. The election of Roman Emperors was made by the Army. In Poland the election is made by great rival princes with independent power, and ample means, of raising commotions. In the German Empire, The appointment is made by the Electors & Princes, who have equal motives & means, for exciting cabals & parties. Might not such a mode of election be devised among ourselves as will defend the community agst. these effects in any dangerous degree? Having made these observations he would read to the Committee a sketch of a plan which he shd. prefer to either of those under consideration. He was aware that it went beyond the ideas of most members. But will such a plan be adopted out of doors? In return he would ask will the people adopt the other plan? At present they will adopt neither. But he sees the Union dissolving or already dissolved--he sees evils operating in the States which must soon cure the people of their fondness for democracies--he sees that a great progress has been already made & is still going on in the public mind. He thinks therefore that the people will in time be unshackled from their prejudices; and whenever that happens, they will themselves not be satisfied at stopping where the plan of Mr. R. wd. place them, but be ready to go as far at least as he proposes." - Speech of Mr. Hamilton, June 18, 1787, Records of the Constitutional Convention
Federal concentration at the expense of the states occurred in immeasurably greater ammounts during and as a result of the war than from anything after it. By suggesting otherwise you are ignoring the cake and focusing upon a particularly small ammount of its icing.
Contrasting the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and the Sedition Act is a good place to start to understand the differences between the Federalist and Republican parties, and the consequent loss of influence of the Federalist Party.
Precisely. The founding fathers were a divided camp on economic matters. The sane and liberty-minded ones were well versed in Adam Smith's principles and, to the greatest degree possible, formed a government that was mindful of them. A smaller but nevertheless loud minority opposed those principles and advocated intervention from the very start. At first it was disguised as something "necessary" to get the country on its feet to "compete" with the world (which is economic bullsh*t to anyone who knows capitalism and, with it, knows that the market is far better for this purpose than any government activity). We were told that we needed "temporary" tariffs to protect the "infant" American industries (as if nobody in America was engaged in any economic activity prior to 1776). We were told that we needed a bank to "stabilize" American currency and get the nation on its feet, at which point capitalism could "take over." But that was not to be. 20, 30, 40, and even 70 years later the same crowd was still demanding tariffs to "protect" industries from "unfair" foreign competition. The same crowd still wanted federalized monetary policy to "stabilize" the currency. The same crowd still wanted the exact same type of economic intervention that they told us was only going to be temporary to get capitalism going, even though now they wanted more of it.
Hamiltonian economic policy to "build capitalism" was nothing more than its own day's version of statist Keynesianism. "Prime the pump" with the government to get the economy rolling, they say. But when the economy gets rolling not because of those policies but rather IN SPITE OF them, the same people who initialled called for the primers demand that they keep pumping and the intervention never goes away.
That is a valid point. The vitriol with which they operate makes their cause unappealing. Add the simple-minded categorical reductionism that they use to draw their lines and its a wonder that anything coherent could ever be discerned from their words.
The constitutional disputes were more than just Jefferson v. Hamilton. They broke into those two general schools, but also into schools of states versus federal, puritan versus fundamentalist, slavery versus no slavery, trade versus protection, farm versus industry, and any number of other lines. Often they were intersecting and overlapping in ways unfound among the Jeffersonian/Hamiltonian split. Some of the leading early states righters and anti-federalists, for example, were among the most outspoken anti-slavery participants in the founding.
A prominent founder in his own day who has now, unfortunately, fallen into neglect was Maryland's legendary Attorney General Luther Martin. Martin represented what was probably the strictest and most pure "states rights" view at the Constitutional Convention. He was one of its most active participants and, according to some that were there, one of the most brilliant members of that body. He was open in a lot of his views and spoke his mind by saying things that others did not desire to hear even if they had truth to them, which made him very abrasive to the other delegates. Martin, though he was politically a member of the Federalist party, developed a doctrine of states rights that directly opposed the Hamiltonian school (He later argued before the supreme court against the federal bank in McCulloch v. Maryland). At the convention he took a staunch state-sovereignty approach and even proposed an amendment anticipating the civil war (it provided for procedures under which the laws of nations would apply if two or more of the states or the federal government itself ever became involved in a war). Martin was also vehemently anti-slavery and refused to sign the Constitution, in part, because he would not give sanction to statutory inequality between human beings who he saw as equal before the eyes of God.
Another important but now forgotten founder was Richard Henry Lee, who took a very similar states rights/state sovereignty approach to the republic. Lee also did so with far greater authority than Hamilton ever had because he was the member of the continental congress who actually designed and drafted the clause of union now enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Lee later blasted the Hamiltonians for attempting to alter the union that he had designed by consolidating it on a federal level. And interestingly enough for all those such as Partisan who try to brand states rights with "slavery," Lee too was an anti-slavery pioneer in Virginia. He grew up into a prominent plantation family yet amazingly as early as the 1750's was putting forth the first proposals to ban the slave trade in Virginia and bring about its eventual dissolution.
You are playing semantics games by making a statement of that sort. As Hamilton's speech clearly noted "Monarch is an indefinite term" that "marks not either the degree or duration of power." He used it interchangably with "executive magistrate" and other similar terms and noted the concept to be the same - a lifetime executive with stable power - no matter what the office was officially called, king, magistrate, or president.
LOL! It never ceases to amaze me how those with an axe to grind, grind the edge of that axe right off.
Too bad Hamilton participated so little in the debate at the convention leaving the real work to Madison and other more significant participants such as Washington, James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, Gorham, King, Gerry, Sherman, Ellsworth, Franklin, Randolph, Mason, Rutledge, the Pinckneys, William Samuel Johnson, Paterson, Read, Dickinson, Luther Martin, Daniel Carroll, Hugh Williamson- to name a few there who had much greater influence than Hamilton.
Ironically, we'd agree that it was very 'Jeffersonian' of Hamilton to leave the hard work at the convention to others.
Well, I'll leave with our agreement that Hamilton is underrated. He was a great help in the Federalists, as a counter to the Republicans, and for his advice to Washington.
His advice and his service to both general and President Washington. A faithful man (though he did a little finagling at odds with Washington he was a loyal servant compared to Jefferson) .
It occurs to me that one reason for his holding a reputation beneath his accomplishments is his untimely death. He never had the chance, in his retirement, to expound upon his beliefs and intents.
Nonsense. Do yourself a favor and look up what was said by those policy's advocates in the 1790's and early 1800's. Over and over and over again it was "our fishermen need protection from competition so they can get on their feet," and "our shipbuilders need tariffs to get going so they aren't run out of business by Britain" and so forth.
Tariffs were used for REVENUE not protection.
Not true. Protectionist tariff policies dotted the political scene in the US from the constitution up until the civil war. The early ones were indeed smaller and more limited than, say the Morrill Tarriff of 1861. But they were indeed protectionist off and on throughout that entire period exempting a period of moderate free trade from 1846-57 and strong free trade from '57-60.
And, prior to the war, industry was restricted or prevented entirely by Englands trade regulations.
And that is one of the arguments the protectionists used to pass their laws! They insisted that their industries were all "infant" and needed protection, even though capitalism works immeasurably better at developing smaller industries than does protection.
There was never any claim that the tariff would be temporary.
Go back and read the debates. Everything was founded on the claim that they needed a little time to get up on their feet and out of their infancy, upon which it was presumed that protection would no longer be necessary since they would have the ability to compete.
Certainly in the South capitalism would not have developed because of slavery.
Nonsense. Though the two eventually conflict in a great way that necessitates the abolition of the latter, they are not exclusively prohibitive. To suggest otherwise is to marxian endorse labor reductionism around something that is an ATTRIBUTE of an economy rather than its substance or policy.
Hamilton understood Adam Smith far better than any of his opponents.
Not really. The free traders understood Smith best of any group as they had the foresight to see where Smith himself erred and where his theory would be refined, that being Ricardan trade. Some (though not all) of the agrarians also understood Smith better than any of the urbanite commercialists because they recognized its conditions most closely reflected what we know today as perfectly competitive markets out of any part of the economy.
The Bank was necessary to "create" a currency since there was none to speak of.
No it wasn't. The use of gold or another intrinsically valued specie as a basis for monetary development is as natural as it is practical and accordingly works far better than managed currency implementation.
Hamilton's opponents had to admit they were wrong about the Bank and after the ideological embarrassment and economic chaos caused by not renewing the charter had to swallow their lies and renew it after all.
Newsflash for you. As any non-marxist economist will tell you, the post-Jacksonian panic was CREATED by the policies of the previous bank, not its abolition. The same may be said of the great depression, which was CREATED by the interventionist policies of the federal reserve system and government and worsened by the New Deal. The only basis you have for asserting otherwise is post hoc ergo propter hoc, and that is an inherently fallacious principle.
Hamilton's program was a tremendous godsend to America and essentially created 80 million in capital out of thin air just on the word of the federal government.
Creating money out of thin air on the word of a government (which in fact is nothing more than a pledge to rob a future people of their future tangible earnings) is precisely the problem with interventionist monetary policy in the first place. It is also a primary exacerbator of the business cycle because money created out of thin air is inclined to destabilize into a value equivalent of thin air during times of uncertainty.
Any monarch whose monarchy is so construed by governing rules of ascension other than birth right. Historically this has generally entailed schemes of pre-determined electors and the sort who decide upon monarchical succession.
Just as your hero Hamilton said, "Monarch is an indefinite term" that "marks not either the degree or duration of power."
I would add Kennedy to your list - the public schools adore him - but you are absolutely right. It's all about the company he keeps, and Lincoln is consistently upheld in the company of FDR and Kennedy and Clinton - the only other permissible presidents that the left adores.
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