The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 7 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and PrivateJefferson, Thomas
Philosophy
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 7 (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
DEAR SIR,--Your letter of August the 15th was received in due time, and
with the welcome of everything which comes from you. With its opinions
on the difficulties of revolutions from despotism to freedom, I very much
concur. The generation which commences a revolution rarely completes it.
Habituated from their infancy to passive submission of body and mind to
their kings and priests, they are not qualified when called on to think
and provide for themselves; and their inexperience, their ignorance and
bigotry make them instruments often, in the hands of the Bonapartes and
Iturbides, to defeat their own rights and purposes. This is the present
situation of Europe and Spanish America. But it is not desperate. The
light which has been shed on mankind by the art of printing, has eminently
changed the condition of the world. As yet, that light has dawned on the
middling classes only of the men in Europe. The kings and the rabble,
of equal ignorance, have not yet received its rays; but it continues
to spread, and while printing is preserved, it can no more recede than
the sun return on his course. A first attempt to recover the right of
self-government may fail, so may a second, a third, &c. But as a younger
and more instructed race comes on, the sentiment becomes more and more
intuitive, and a fourth, a fifth, or some subsequent one of the ever
renewed attempts will ultimately succeed. In France, the first effort
was defeated by Robespierre, the second by Bonaparte, the third by Louis
XVIII. and his holy allies: another is yet to come, and all Europe, Russia
excepted, has caught the spirit; and all will attain representative
government, more or less perfect. This is now well understood to be a
necessary check on kings, whom they will probably think it more prudent
to chain and tame, than to exterminate. To attain all this, however,
rivers of blood must yet flow, and years of desolation pass over; yet
the object is worth rivers of blood, and years of desolation. For what
inheritance so valuable, can man leave to his posterity? The spirit
of the Spaniard, and his deadly and eternal hatred to a Frenchman,
give me much confidence that he will never submit, but finally defeat
this atrocious violation of the laws of God and man, under which he is
suffering; and the wisdom and firmness of the Cortes, afford reasonable
hope, that that nation will settle down in a temperate representative
government, with an executive properly subordinated to that. Portugal,
Italy, Prussia, Germany, Greece, will follow suit. You and I shall look
down from another world on these glorious achievements to man, which
will add to the joys even of heaven.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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