Thomas Jefferson on Centralized Power
Since we (in the U.S.) will be celebrating our Independence Day this week, I thought it would be nice, as well as helpful, to post some comments by the Founders on government. The first is Thomas Jefferson.
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.
Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1816. ME 14:421When 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.
Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821. ME 15:332
Tags:History, politics, Thomas Jefferson, United States of America
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