our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their powers: that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, & to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this...
I wish you and he could concert your movements so as to meet here, and that you would make this your head quarters. it is a good central point from which to visit your connections; and you know our practice of placing our guests at their ease, by shewing them we are so ourselves, & that we...
as to federal slanders, I never wished them to be answered, but by the tenor of my life, half a century of which has been on a theatre at which the public have been spectators, and competent judges of it’s merit. their approbation has taught a lesson, useful to the world, that the man who fears...
I do not think their laws amendment so difficult as is pretended. only lay down true principles, and adhere to them inflexibly. do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth agains the ascendancy of the people.
I am not among those who fear the people. they and not the rich, are our dependance for continued freedom. and to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt ... if we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our...
Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, & 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,...
each generation is as independant of the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. it has then, like them, a right to chuse for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of it’s own happiness.
I have not been in the habit of mysterious reserve on any subject, nor of buttoning up my opinions within my own doublet. on the contrary, while in public service especially, I have thought the public entitled to frankness, and intimately to know whom they employed.
May We be “a Barrier against the Returns of Ignorance and Barbarism”! “What a Colossus Shall We Be”! But will it not be of Brass Iron and Clay? Your Taste is judicious in likeing better the dreams of the Future, than the History of the Past. Upon this Principle I prophecy that you and I Shall...
Bonaparte, with his repeated derisions of Ideologists (squinting at this author) has by this time felt that true wisdom does not lie in mere practice without principle.
Great Britain, in her pride and ascendency, has certainly hated and despised us beyond every earthly object. her hatred may remain, but the hour of her contempt is past; and is succeeded by dread; not a present, but a distant and deep one. it is the greater, as she feels herself plunged into an...
You ask if I mean to publish any thing on the subject of a letter of mine to my friend Charles Thompson? certainly not. I write nothing for publication, and last of all things should it be on the subject of religion. on the dogmas of religion as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind,...
I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.
say nothing of my religion. it is known to my god and myself alone. it’s evidence before the world is to be sought in my life. if that has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.
one of our fan-colouring biographers , who paints small men as very great, enquired of me lately, with real affection too, whether he might consider as authentic, the change in my religion much spoken of in some circles. now this supposed that they knew what had been my religion before, taking...
from sun-rise to one or two aclock, and often from dinner to dark, I am drudging at the writing table. and all this to answer letters into which neither interest nor inclination on my part enters; and often for persons whose names I have never before heard. yet, writing civilly, it is hard to...
I concur entirely in your leading principles of gradual emancipation, of establishment on the coast of Africa, and the patronage of our nation until the emigrants shall be able to protect themselves.
I do not entertain your apprehensions for the happiness of our brother Madison in a state of retirement. such a mind as his, fraught with information, and with matter for reflection, can never know ennui. besides, there will always be work enough cut out for him to continue his active usefulness...
now what we wish is that these pavilions as they will shew themselves above the dormitories, shall be models of taste & good architecture, & of a variety of appearance, no two alike, so as to serve as specimens for the Architectural Lectures.
You say I must go to writing history. while in public life, I had not time: and now that I am retired, I am past the time. to write history requires a whole life of observation, of enquiry, of labor and correction. it’s materials are not to be found among the ruins of a decayed memory. at this...
The pamphlet you were so kind as to send me manifests a zeal, which cannot be too much praised, for the interests of agriculture, the employment of our first parents of in Eden, the happiest we can follow, and the most important to our country.