grimmeissen
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Join Date: 1/14/2004
Posts: 1217
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Posted: 1/29/2008 6:31:58 PM
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American politicians have a habit of paying lip service to the Constitution of the United States or to the Declaration of Independence. We rarely question these quotations or admirations and we rarely do our own research to determine the original context for which they were written or spoken. We also rarely examine our politicians' records to see if they actually match the ideals of the documents and people for which the lip service is paid.
It is important to study the writings of our founding fathers, for it is their vision we are trying to live. If a politician comes out and declares the founding fathers to be outdated, then it is our choice to determine whether or not we agree. However, if our politicians still hold those values and visions as their own, they must be looked at critically if their records prove otherwise.
Thomas Jefferson is considered one of the most influential politicians and philosophers in American history. He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, was one of the earliest Americans to promote the ideals of republicanism, and was the third president of the United States. Jefferson was one of the most influential of the founding fathers, and is still held in high regard today. While he is often quoted and heralded as an American hero, many of his greatest thoughts have been relegated to lip service references by modern-day politicians.
For this column I have gathered quotes from Thomas Jefferson's writings that deal with money, taxes, and debt--key themes of this site. For the remainder of the article I will include no personal thoughts or opinions. I will leave it to the reader to analyze Jefferson's writings, to determine their validity in a modern sense, and to verify whether or not our leaders still hold the ideals from which they often pay their lip service.
Thomas Jefferson on Debt
"Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:455, Papers 15:393
"The conclusion then, is, that neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:457, Papers 15:398n
"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world." --Thomas Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1820. FE 10:175
"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing. I now deny their power of making paper money or anything else a legal tender. I know that to pay all proper expenses within the year would, in case of war, be hard on us. But not so hard as ten wars instead of one. For wars could be reduced in that proportion; besides that the State governments would be free to lend their credit in borrowing quotas." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1798. ME 10:64
"I consider the fortunes of our republic as depending in an eminent degree on the extinguishment of the public debt before we engage in any war; because that done, we shall have revenue enough to improve our country in peace and defend it in war without recurring either to new taxes or loans. But if the debt should once more be swelled to a formidable size, its entire discharge will be despaired of, and we shall be committed to the English career of debt, corruption and rottenness, closing with revolution. The discharge of public debt, therefore, is vital to the destinies of our government." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1809. FE 9:264
"There [is a measure] which if not taken we are undone...[It is] to cease borrowing money and to pay off the national debt. If this cannot be done without dismissing the army and putting the ships out of commission, haul them up high and dry and reduce the army to the lowest point at which it was ever established. There does not exist an engine so corruptive of the government and so demoralizing of the nation as a public debt. It will bring on us more ruin at home than all the enemies from abroad against whom this army and navy are to protect us." --Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1821. (*) FE 10:193
Thomas Jefferson on Taxes
"I hope a tax will be preferred [to a loan which threatens to saddle us with a perpetual debt], because it will awaken the attention of the people and make reformation and economy the principle of the next election. The frequent recurrence of this chastening operation can alone restrain the propensity of governments to enlarge expense beyond income." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1820.
"Our citizens may be deceived for awhile and have been deceived; but... we may trust to... the tax-gatherers [for light]; for it is not worth the while of our anti-republicans to risk themselves on any change of government but a very expensive one. Reduce every department to economy, and there will be no temptation to them to betray their constituents." --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1799. FE 7:378
"Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass the money through so many new hands?" --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1784. Papers 7:557
"We should now set the example of appropriating some particular tax [for loans made] sufficient to pay the interest annually and the principal within a fixed term, less than nineteen years." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:273
"The English credit is the first, because they never open a loan without laying and appropriating taxes for the payment of the interest, and there has never been an instance of their failing one day in that payment." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1788. ME 6:452
"Calculation has convinced me that circumstances may arise and probably will arise wherein all the resources of taxation will be necessary for the safety of the state. For though I am decidedly of opinion we should take no part in European quarrels, but cultivate peace and commerce with all, yet who can avoid seeing the source of war in the tyranny of those nations who deprive us of the natural right of trading with our neighbors?... War requires every resource of taxation and credit." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1788. ME 7:224
"The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses enabled us to discontinue internal taxes. These covering our land with officers and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which, once entered, is scarcely to be restrained from reaching successively every article of produce and property." --Thomas Jefferson: 2nd Inaugural, 1805. ME 3:376
Thomas Jefferson on the Size of Government
"The accounts of the United States ought to be and may be made as simple as those of a common farmer and capable of being understood by common farmers." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1796. ME 9:324
"Private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
"Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have cherished their opposites: peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness." --Thomas Jefferson to Henry Middleton, 1813. ME 13:202
Thomas Jefferson on Money
"Paper is poverty,... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1788. ME 7:36
"Experience has proved to us that a dollar of silver disappears for every dollar of paper emitted." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1791. ME 8:208
"That paper money has some advantages is admitted. But that its abuses also are inevitable and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery of all private property, cannot be denied. --Thomas Jefferson to Josephus B. Stuart, 1817. ME 15:113
"It is a [disputed] question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie, is a good or an evil... I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:409
All of the quotes found in this article come from Thomas Jefferson's writings that have been documented by the Thomas Jefferson Digital Archive at the University of Virginia--a collegiate institution which Jefferson founded in 1819. The reference "Papers" refers to a quote found in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. The reference "ME" refers to a quote found in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition.
It is very common on the internet to find quotes of Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers which were either not actually written by them or were taken out of context. Some of the conspiracy-driven quotations of Jefferson have been made popular by modern documentaries, but can not be relied upon for absolute truth. When searching for quotations, always rely on qualified institutions such as university archives that have the ability to disclose the actual location of the quotes in the author's published writings.
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