August 13

[This is my letter to George Wythe on August 13, 1786, where I advocated for the education of the public as I believe its diffusion is most important for a happy people. When people are free from ignorance, they are free from tyranny.]

I think by far the most important bill in our whole code, is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness. If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, or priests are good conservators of the public happiness, send him here. It is the best school in the universe to cure him of that folly. He will see here, with his own eyes, that these descriptions of men are an abandoned confederacy against the happiness of the mass of the people. The omnipotence of their effect cannot be better proved, than in this country particularly, where, notwithstanding the finest soil upon earth, the finest climate under heaven, and a people of the most benevolent, the most gay and amiable character of which the human form is susceptible; where such a people, I say, surrounded by so many blessings from nature, are loaded with misery, by kings, nobles, and priests, and by them alone.

Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know, that the people alone can protect us against these evils, and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose, is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles, who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.

[This is a letter to Gideon Granger, dated August 13, 1800, regarding the ineffectiveness and corruption of a single consolidated central government — as compared to governments managed by independent states — because our country has become too large to service the needs and wants of all constituents nationally, except for foreign concerns.]

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, & from under the eye of their constituents, will, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer & overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizen; and the same circumstance by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder & waste: and I do verily believe that if the principle were to prevail of a common law being in force in the US. (Which principle possesses the general government at once of all the powers of the state governments, and reduces us to a single consolidated government) it would become the most corrupt government on the face of the earth.

You have seen the practices by which the public servants have been able to cover their conduct, or, where that could not be done, the delusions by which they have varnished it for the eye of their constituents. What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building & office hunting, would be produced by an assumption of all the state powers into the hands of the general government.

The true theory of our constitution is surely the wisest & best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves, & united as to everything respecting foreign nations. Let the general government be once reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, & a very unexpensive one: a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.

[This is from my letter to Benjamin Franklin, August 13, 1777. People do not miss tyranny when it is gone.]

With respect to the State of Virginia in particular, the people seem to have laid aside the monarchical, and taken up the republican government, with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old, and putting on a new suit of clothes. Not a single throe has attended this important transformation. A half-dozen aristocratical gentlemen, agonizing under the loss of pre-eminence, have sometimes ventured their sarcasms on our political metamorphosis. They have been thought fitter objects of pity, than of punishment.

[This is from a letter to Henry Lee, governor of Virginia, on August 13, 1792, on my belief that all official communications between sovereign nations should traditionally flow strictly through their respective Executive branches.]

I am of opinion that all communications between nations should pass through the channels of their Executives. However, in the instance of condolence on the death of Dr. Franklin, the letter from our general government was addressed to the President of the National Assembly; so was a letter from the Legislature of Pennsylvania, containing congratulations on the achievement of liberty to the French nation. I have not heard that, in either instance, their Executive took it amiss that they were not made the channel of communication. Perhaps, therefore, this method may at present be the safest, as it is not quite certain that the sentiments of their executive and legislative are exactly the same on the subject on which you have to address them.