Jefferson followed Franklin in the same vein, but with greater fervor. The author of the Declaration of Independence could not do otherwise. Constantly he testifies to his idea of a Republic. Thus he wrote to Alexander von Humboldt, under date of June 13, 1817, affirming the rights of the majority as “the first principle of Republicanism,” and assuming the principle of Equal Rights:-- “The first principle of Republicanism is, that the _lex majoris partis_ is the fundamental law of every society of individuals _of equal rights_. To consider the will of the society enounced by the majority of a single vote as sacred as if unanimous is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism.”[128] In another letter, to John Taylor, of Caroline, dated May 28, 1816, he thus defines a Republic:-- “Indeed, it must be acknowledged that the term _Republic_ is of very vague application in every language. Witness the self-styled Republics of Holland, Switzerland, Genoa, Venice, Poland. Were I to assign to this term a precise and definite idea, I would say, purely and simply, it means _a government by its citizens in mass_, acting directly and personally, _according to rules established by the majority_,--and that every other government is more or less republican in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of the direct action of the citizens.”[129] Here again, while confessing the unquestionable vagueness of the term according to old examples, he assumes that in a republic all citizens must have a voice. And again, in the same letter, he thus indignantly condemns denial of representation:-- “And also that one half of our brethren who fight and pay taxes are excluded, like Helots, from the rights of representation, as if society were instituted for the soil, and not for the men inhabiting it, _or one half of these could dispose of the rights and the will of the other half without their consent_.”[130] Thus did he scout the whole wretched pretension of oligarchy and monopoly by which citizens are deprived of equal rights. To these may be added his earliest and latest declarations on this important question. The earliest is in his “Notes on Virginia,” written in 1781, where he recognizes “a reciprocation of right” as a presiding principle:-- “When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give _a reciprocation of right_: that without this they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience.”[131]