The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 3 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and PrivateJefferson, Thomas
History
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 3 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
These subordinate governments,
though completely dependent on the general one, will be intrusted with
almost the whole of the details which our State governments exercise.
They will have their own judiciary, final in all but great cases, the
executive business will principally pass through their hands, and a
certain local legislature will be allowed them. In short, ours has been
professedly their model, in which such changes are made as a difference
of circumstances rendered necessary, and some others neither necessary nor
advantageous, but into which men will ever run, when versed in theory and
new in the practice of government, when acquainted with man only as they
see him in their books and not in the world. This plan will undoubtedly
undergo changes in the Assembly, and the longer it is delayed, the greater
will be the changes; for that Assembly, or rather the patriotic part of
it, hooped together heretofore by a common enemy, are less compact since
their victory. That enemy (the civil and ecclesiastical aristocracy)
begins to raise its head. The lees, too, of the patriotic party, of
wicked principles and desperate fortunes, hoping to pillage something
in the wreck of their country, are attaching themselves to the faction
of the Duke of Orleans; that faction is caballing with the populace, and
intriguing at London, the Hague, and Berlin, and have evidently in view
the transfer of the crown to the Duke of Orleans. He is a man of moderate
understanding, of no principle, absorbed in low vice, and incapable of
extracting himself from the filth of that, to direct anything else. His
name and his money, therefore, are mere tools in the hands of those who
are duping him.
* * * * *
They may produce a temporary confusion, and even a temporary civil war,
supported, as they will be, by the money of England; but they cannot have
success ultimately. The King, the mass of the substantial people of the
whole country, the army, and the influential part of the clergy, form a
firm phalanx which must prevail. Should those delays which necessarily
attend the deliberations of a body of one thousand two hundred men, give
time to this plot to ripen and burst, so as to break up the Assembly
before anything definite is done, a constitution, the principles of which
are pretty well settled in the minds of the Assembly, will be proposed by
the national militia (* * * * *), urged by the individual members of the
Assembly, signed by the King, and supported by the nation, to prevail till
circumstances shall permit its revision and more regular sanction. This I
suppose the _pis aller_ of their affairs, while their probable event is
a peaceable settlement of them. They fear a war from England, Holland,
and Prussia. I think England will give money, but not make war. Holland
would soon be a fire, internally, were she to be embroiled in external
difficulties. Prussia must know this, and act accordingly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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