The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and PrivateJefferson, Thomas
History
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 6 (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
What gave Sir William Wallace his amazing aristocratical superiority? His
strength. What gave Mrs. Clark her aristocratical influence--to create
generals, admirals, and bishops? Her beauty. What gave Pompadour and Du
Barry the power of making cardinals and popes? And I have lived for years
in the hotel de Valentinois, with Franklin, who had as many virtues as
any of them. In the investigation of the meaning of the word "talents,"
I could write 630 pages as pertinent as John Taylor's, of Hazlewood;
but I will select a single example; for female aristocrats are nearly as
formidable as males. A daughter of a green grocer walks the streets in
London daily, with a basket of cabbage sprouts, dandelions, and spinage,
on her head. She is observed by the painters to have a beautiful face,
an elegant figure, a graceful step, and a _debonair_. They hire her to
sit. She complies, and is painted by forty artists in a circle around
her. The scientific Dr. William Hamilton outbids the painters, sends
her to school for a genteel education, and marries her. This lady not
only causes the triumphs of the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar, but
separates Naples from France, and finally banishes the king and queen
from Sicily. Such is the aristocracy of the natural talent of beauty.
Millions of examples might be quoted from history, sacred and profane,
from Eve, Hannah, Deborah, Susanna, Abigail, Judith, Ruth, down to Helen,
Mrs. de Mainbenor, and Mrs. Fitzherbert. For mercy's sake do not compel
me to look to our chaste States and territories to find women, one of
whom let go would in the words of Holopherne's guards, deceive the whole
earth.
The proverbs of Theognis, like those of Solomon, are observations on
human nature, ordinary life, and civil society, with moral reflections on
the facts. I quoted him as a witness of the fact, that there was as much
difference in the races of men as in the breeds of sheep, and as a sharp
reprover and censurer of the sordid, mercenary practice of disgracing
birth by preferring gold to it. Surely no authority can be more expressly
in point to prove the existence of inequalities, not of rights, but of
moral, intellectual, and physical inequalities in families, descents and
generations. If a descent from pious, virtuous, wealthy, literary, or
scientific ancestors, is a letter of recommendation, or introduction in
a man's favor, and enables him to influence only one vote in addition
to his own, he is an aristocrat; for a democrat can have but one vote.
Aaron Burr has 100,000 votes from the single circumstance of his descent
from President Burr and President Edwards.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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