Thomas Jefferson to William Smith, 1787
"Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever
exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts?
And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I
say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness.
God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people
cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be
discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If
they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of
death to the public liberty.
And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from
time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take
arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them.
What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be
refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its
natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789
On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make
a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to
the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as
they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons,
and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make
the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their
predecessors extinguished then in their natural course with those who gave them
being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no
longer. Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of
19 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 has been
expressly limited to 19 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.
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