Читать книгу Thomas Jefferson, the Apostle of Americanism - Gilbert Chinard - Страница 22

The opinion that our lands were allodial possessions is one which I have very long held, and had in my eye during a pretty considerable part of my law reading which I found always strengthened it. … This opinion I have thought and still think to prove if ever I should have time to look into books again. … Was not the separation of the property from the perpetual use of lands a mere fiction? Is not it's history well known, and the purposes for which it was introduced, to wit, the establishment of a military system of defense? Was it not afterwards made an engine of immense oppression? … Has it not been the practice of all other nations to hold their lands as their personal estate in absolute dominion? Are we not the better for what we have hitherto abolished of the feudal system?[58]

It was the first great blow at the landed hereditary aristocracy of Virginia. The abolition of patrimonial estates, rendering them subject to all the obligations of personal property "susceptible to be sold, conveyed, seized, exchanged and willed" as ordinary property, meant the rapid abolition of that refined class of Virginia planters which constituted such a distinguished feature of colonial life. It was a bold step to take, since it meant the antagonism of a powerful class, the beginning of hatred that pursued Jefferson during his whole life and long after his death. Yet he had the courage to do it and was no little proud of it.[59] He was opposed by both Mr. Pendleton and Patrick Henry, "but the bill passed finally for entire abolition."

With the Bill to Abolish Entails Jefferson introduced another bill on the naturalization of foreigners, containing an expressed recognition of the right of expatriation already defended in the "Summary View" of 1774—another remarkable instance of Jefferson's persistency and relentless efforts to win his point by legal means.

Simultaneously a committee on religion had been appointed "to meet and adjourn from day to day, and to take into their consideration all matters and things relating to religion and religious morality." Besides Jefferson, there were seventeen members on the committee, including Fleming, Page, and Nicholas. Being in a minority, Jefferson began the struggle which was to end in the famous Bill for Religious Freedom—a long hard fight of which more will be said later. For the time being, however, Jefferson had to be satisfied with a partial success:

We prevailed so far only, as to repeal the laws which rendered criminal the maintenance of any religious opinions, the forbearance of repairing to church, or the exercise of any mode of worship; and further, to exempt dissenters from contributing to the support of the established church; and to suspend, only until next session, levies on the members of that church for the salaries of their own incumbents.[60]

Yet this was a very significant victory since, from the days of Sir Walter Raleigh, there had been an express proviso that the laws of the colony "should not be against the true Christian faith, now professed in the Church of England." Dissenters as well as members of the Established Church were assessed for the support of the Anglican ministers, and although other denominations, particularly Presbyterians, had succeeded in gaining more than a foothold in some parishes, a majority of dissenters were still obliged to pay for the support of the minority.

But important as they were, these constituted only minor points. The whole structure of laws had to be remodelled to fit new conditions; a new legal monument had to be erected. Jefferson's practice of law had convinced him of the obscurities, contradictions, absurdities, and iniquities of the assemblage of English laws on top of which had been superimposed local regulations. The Bill for a General Revision of the Laws passed October 26. The fifth of November five revisors were appointed by ballot in the following order: Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, George Mason, Thomas Ludwell Lee. As this is a more important contribution of Jefferson, we may omit here the part he played on many committees of the House, drafting and reporting on "Declaring what shall be treason"; bills "For raising six additional battalions of infantry", "For establishing a Court of Appeals", "For establishing a High Court of Chancery", "For establishing a General Court and Courts of Assize", "For establishing a Court of Admiralty", "For better regulating the proceedings of the County Courts." He plunged into the work of the complete reorganization of the State judicial machinery, with all the enthusiastic zeal of a born jurist, and his capacity for precise, minute work was once more brought into play.

The committee of revisors met at Fredericksburg to determine on a manner of procedure and to distribute the work between the five members. First of all a question of methods had to be settled: "It had to be determined whether we should propose to abolish the whole existing system of laws, and prepare a new and complete Institute, or preserve the general system, and only modify it to the present state of things."

Pendleton and Lee stood for the former methods, Wythe, Mason, and Jefferson for the latter, and this was the procedure finally adopted. Rather than the account given by Jefferson in his "Autobiography" we shall follow the contemporary account drawn up at the time by George Mason.

Plan settled by the committee of Revisors in Fredericksburg, January, 1777.

(1) The common law not to be meddled with, except where alterations are necessary. The statutes to be revised and digested, alterations proper for us to be made; the diction where obsolete or redundant, to be reformed; but otherwise to undergo as few changes as possible. The acts of the English Commonwealth to be examined. The statutes to be divided into periods; the acts of Assembly made on the same subject to be incorporated into them. The laws of other colonies to be examined, and any good ones to be adopted.

In the margin is here written:

General rules in drawing provisions &c., which would do only what the law would do without them, to be omitted. Bills to be short; not to include matters of different natures; not to insert an unnecessary word; nor omit a useful one. Laws to be made on the spur of the present occasion, and all innovating laws to be limited in their duration.[61]

Truly an admirable plan! Not the scheme of rash reformers, of a priori-minded legislators, deriving a code of laws from a certain number of abstract principles. It was not their purpose to make a tabula rasa of the old structure which had slowly grown stone by stone, statute by statute and to rebuild entirely on new plans. The old house resting on solid Anglo-Saxon foundations was still substantial and safe and it could serve its purpose if only a few partitions were torn down, a few useless annexes demolished, and better ventilation provided. Nothing was farther from the mind of the committee than to erect in Virginia a Greek or Roman temple of Themis.

The statutes were divided into five parts. Jefferson was to take "the first period in the division of statutes to end with 25th, H. 8th"; Pendleton the second period "to end at the Revolution"; Wythe the third "to come to the present day"; G. Mason the fourth, "to consist of the residuary part of the Virginia laws to which is added the criminal law and land law." The fifth, attributed to Lee, "to be the regulation of property in slaves, and their condition; and also the examination of the laws of the other colonies."[62] Mason soon retired, "being no lawyer", and Lee having died, the work was redistributed which explains the somewhat different allotment indicated by Jefferson in the "Autobiography." On the other hand, he seems to have claimed for himself in the "Autobiography" an honor and an attitude that really belonged to the committee:

I thought it would be useful, also, in new draughts to reform the style of the later British statutes, and of our own arts of Assembly; which, from their verbosity, their endless tautologies, their involution of case within case, and parenthesis within parenthesis, and their multiplied efforts at certainty, by saids and aforesaids, by ors and by ands, to make them more plain, are really rendered more perplexed and incomprehensible, not only to common readers, but to the lawyers themselves.

The notes taken by G. Mason leave no doubt that this was also the attitude of the committee and their definite policy. It was a slow, painstaking, meticulous task, requiring common sense, good judgment, a good sense for words and erudition. To make laws intelligible and clear is no small achievement. But certainly it was not the sort of work that an a priori philosopher, fond of generalizations and universal principles, would have relished, or would have been willing to submit himself to for more than two years. If in some political matters Jefferson differed from Mr. Pendleton, he admired him and later paid him a handsome tribute in the "Autobiography." Pendleton—cool, smooth and persuasive, quick, acute and resourceful—was a remarkable debater.

George Mason, a man of the first order of wisdom, of expansive mind, profound judgment, cogent in argument, learned in the lore of our former constitution, and earnest for the republican change on democratic principles … his virtue was of the purest tint; his integrity inflexible, and his justice exact; of warm patriotism, and, devoted as he was to liberty, and to the natural and equal rights of man, he might truly be called the Cato of his country without the avarice of the Roman.[63]

When the preliminary work was done, the reviewers met at Williamsburg in February, 1779, and "day by day" they examined critically their several parts, sentence by sentence, scrutinizing and amending, "until they had agreed on the whole." "The Revised Laws", comprehending one hundred and twenty-six bills, were reported to the General Assembly June 18, 1779; bills were taken out occasionally from time to time, and because of Madison's efforts fifty-six out of the one hundred and twenty-six were after amendments made laws at the sessions of 1785, 1786. Among the bills reworded or initiated by Jefferson several stood out conspicuously.

The Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments is a particularly good example of the methods used by Jefferson in rewriting the old legislation. On sending it to George Wythe he wrote:

I wished to exhibit a sample of reformation in the barbarous style into which our modern statutes have degenerated from their ancient simplicity. In its style, I have aimed at accuracy, brevity, simplicity, preserving however the words of the established law, wherever their meaning had been sanctioned by judicial decision, as rendered technical by usage.[64]

The transformation undergone by the old statutes can more easily be observed because Jefferson was careful to indicate in footnotes his authorities from the old texts, in Latin, and even in French and Anglo-Saxon. But the very title of the bill indicates that Jefferson's purpose went farther than a mere codification of the old law. He could not be entirely satisfied with the scale of punishments determined by the committee; he regretted particularly the maintainance of the Lex Talionis, "an eye for an eye and a hand for a hand" (Section XV), and he attempted to restrict the penalty of death to a few limited cases, for it was "the last melancholy resource against those whose existence is become inconsistent with the safety of their fellow citizens." His preamble reflects to a large extent the views of Montesquieu and Beccaria which he copied in the "Commonplace Book." But it could hardly be called humanitarian in the modern and sometimes derogatory sense of the word. The provisions of the code itself are far from showing any weakness or sentimentality: the death penalty is provided for treason against the Commonwealth and for whomsoever committeth murder by way of duel; manslaughter, previously "punishable at law by burning in the hands, and forfeiture of chattels", is punished by hard labor for seven years in the public works, and the murderer "shall forfeit one half of his lands and goods to the next of kin of the person slain, the other half to be sequestered during such times, in the hands, and to the use, of the commonwealth." Rape, polygamy, or sodomy "shall be punished if a man by castration, if a woman by boring through the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch in diameter at least." Witchcraft, conjuration, or sorcery "shall be punished by ducking and whipping, at the discretion of a jury, not exceeding fifteen stripes", and, most extraordinary for modern readers, "Whenever sentences of death shall be pronounced against any person for treason or murder, execution thereof shall be done on the next day but one, after such sentence, unless it be Sunday, and then on Monday following" (Section XIII). Truly enough the law of nature is once mentioned in a footnote to the effect that if a prisoner tries to escape from prison he shall not be considered as a capital offender. "The law of nature impels every one to escape from confinement; he should not therefore be subjected to punishment. Let the legislature restrain his criminal by walls, not by parchment." If there is "philosophy" in this statement it is common sense and certainly not sentimentality.

The Bill for the more General Diffusion of Knowledge is far more philosophical in its terms. There for the first time will be found a picture of democracy as Jefferson pictured it to himself at that date. The general statement at the beginning may be an echo from Montesquieu; but while the French philosopher had not indicated any remedy for such a situation, Jefferson was interested in it only in so far as it could be amended.

Experience has shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, … and whereas it is generally true that people will be happiest whose laws are best, and are best administered, and that laws will be wisely formed, and honestly administered, in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance; but the indigence of the greater number disabling them from so educating, at their own expence, those of their children whom nature hath fitly formed and disposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expence of all, than that the happiness of all should be confined to the weak or wicked.

Is this a democratic view in the modern sense of the word? At any rate it is not the democratic phraseology of a modern politician. There is no protest at all in the name of immanent justice against the unequality of conditions, there is no desire to give every boy a fair chance in life, no indication that men being born equal, all children should have equal opportunities. We are perfectly free to believe that Jefferson entertained such sentiments at that date. Historically, however, there is no evidence that he did so. All we have here is a hard-headed proposition with the corrective that, under the new system, a child of genius or great talent was to be given an opportunity to develop his native qualities, for it was both the duty and the interest of society to prevent such a waste of intellectual potentialities. Furthermore, Jefferson was manifestly of the opinion that no man could properly participate in the government of society unless he had been rendered worthy to receive and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of his fellow citizens. Neither wealth, birth, nor accidental circumstances should determine who is fit for public office, but education should be the criterion. As he was doing his utmost to abolish the last privileges and prestige of the landed hereditary aristocracy of Virginia, Jefferson was striving to constitute and to get recognition for another aristocracy, an aristocracy of learning and intelligence, a true ruling class, or more exactly a governing and legislative class; for he was persuaded that the business of the legislator cannot be learned in a day, that it requires, besides native qualities of mind, a certain expert knowledge of the subject.

The provisions of the bill are most extraordinary for the time. Jefferson provided for the division of the State into a certain number of districts or hundreds; in each hundred a schoolhouse was to be built and so located that all the children within it might daily attend the school.

In each of the schools shall be taught reading, writing, and common arithmetick, and the books which shall be used therein for instructing the children to read shall be such as will at the same time make them acquainted with Graecian, Roman, English and American history. At these schools all the free children, male and female, resident within the respective hundred, shall be entitled to receive tuition gratis for the term of three years.

In addition, the bill provided that a certain number of grammar schools would be erected, "their situation to be as central as possible for the inhabitants of the said counties, the schools to be furnished with good water, convenient to plentiful supplies of provision and fuel and above all things that it be healthy." In all of these grammar schools, which shall receive boarders

shall be taught the Latin and Greek languages, English Grammar, geography, and the higher part of numerical arithmetick, to wit., vulgar and decimal fractions, and the extrication of the square and cube roots. In order to provide proper facilities for children of particular ability, the overseer of the hundred schools (one for ten schools) shall appoint from among the boys who shall have been two years at the least at some one of the schools under his superintendance and whose parents are too poor to give them farther education some one of the best and most promising genius and dispositions to proceed to the grammar schools.

At the end of the first year one third of the boys shall be discontinued as public foundations after examination; "all shall be discontinued at the end of two years save one only, the best in genius and disposition, who shall be at liberty to continue there four years longer on the public foundation, and shall thence forward be deemed a senior." Finally, "the visitors will select one among the said seniors of the best learning and most hopeful genius and disposition who shall be authorized by them to proceed to William and Mary College; there to be educated, boarded, and clothed three years: the expense of which shall be paid by the Treasurer."

This rigorous selective process looks very familiar to any one acquainted with the modern French system of free elementary schools, boarding colléges and lycèes, and the system of competitive scholarships and fellowships of the French. But it was not fully developed in France before the Third Republic and it was not even dreamed of before the Revolution. Many times the French have been criticized for the undemocratic features of an educational system which reserves secondary education to those who are able to pay and to the small number of children who win scholarships. There is no possibility that this scheme was ever borrowed by Jefferson from any French theorician, and there is, on the contrary, some reason to believe that in France it owes its beginning to the publication of Jefferson's plan in the "Notes on Virginia" printed in Paris and in French in 1786.

The educational structure of the State would not have been complete if Jefferson had not provided for a reorganization of William and Mary College. Such is the purpose of the next bill (Bill LXXX) in the Report of the Committee of Revisors. There he was more ruthless and more radical. After a first section which recounts the foundation of the college and its history, Jefferson concluded that "the said college, thus amply endowed by the public has not answered their expectation, and there is reason to hope, that it would become more useful, if certain articles in its constitution were altered and amended." By one stroke of the pen, Jefferson abolished the school of theology, took the administration out of the hands of the former trustees to place it in the hands of visitors appointed by the Legislature and "not to be restrained in their legislation by the royal prerogatives, or the laws of the kingdom of England, or the canons of the constitution of the English Church, as enjoined in the Charter." The president and faculty were to be dismissed, and six professorships created; to wit, one of moral law and police; one of history, civil and ecclesiastical; one of anatomy and medicine; one of natural philosophy and natural history; one of the ancient languages Oriental and northern; and one of modern languages.—

A missionary will be appointed to the several tribes of the Indians, whose business will be to investigate their laws, customs, religion, traditions, and more particularly their languages, constructing grammar thereof, as well as may be, and copious vocabularies, and on oath to communicate, from time to time, to the said President and Professors the material he collects.

Thus the college was to become the training school in which "those who are to be the future guardians of the rights and liberties of their country may be endowed with science and virtue, to watch and preserve the sacred deposit." It was not a democratic institution, but the finishing school of the future legislators and experts in the science of government.

As to disinterested "researches of the learned and curious", they were to be encouraged by the establishment at Richmond of a Free Public Library with yearly appropriation of two thousand pounds for the purchase of books and maps.

One may state here without any fear of contradiction that no system so complete, so logically constructed and so well articulated had ever been proposed in any country in the world. It already embodied the ideas for which Jefferson stood during all his life, it preceded by more than fifteen years the plans of the French Convention. As the first charter of American public education it is an astonishing document and deserves more attention than it has hitherto received.

The Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in Jefferson's opinion ranked in importance with the Declaration of Independence. It was not intended to be a revolutionary document, but simply a common-sense adjustment of the situation brought about by the repeal of several provisions of the old Virginia laws. Jefferson took care to explain the true purpose of the bill in the "Notes on Virginia" (Query XVII). The Virginia Bill of Rights had proclaimed "it to be a truth, and a natural right that the exercise of religion should be free." On the other hand, no mention of it had been made in the Convention and no measure had been adopted to protect religious freedom. The Assembly, however, had repealed, in 1776, "all acts of Parliament which had rendered criminal the maintaining any opinion in matters of religion", and suspended the laws giving salaries to the clergy. This suspension was made perpetual in October, 1779. But religious matters still remained subject to common law and to acts passed by the Assembly. At Common Law, heresy was a capital offence, punishable by burning, according to the writ de haeretico comburando. Furthermore, by an act of the Assembly of 1705, "if a person brought up in the Christian religion denies the being of a God, or the Trinity, or asserts there are more gods than one, or denies the Christian religion to be true, or the Scriptures to be of divine authority, he is punishable on the first offence by incapacity to hold any office or employment ecclesiastical, civil, or military: on the second by disability to sue, to take any gift or legacy, to be guardian, executor, or administrator, and by three years' imprisonment without bail."[65]

This being the situation, the article of the Bill of Rights concerning religious freedom remained a dead letter until provisions could be made to take religious matters out of the jurisdiction of the Common Law.

Historians seem to have been somewhat misled both by the lofty and philosophical tone of the Bill for Religious Freedom and the comments made by Jefferson in the "Notes on Virginia", specially written by him, as we always must remember, for a group of French philosophers and the French public. A philosopher he was, but before all he was a purist and a historian of law. For him the main question was first to determine whether the jurisdiction of the Common Law in matters of religion was founded in law. He had already studied minutely the history of Common Law and made copious extracts in his "Commonplace Book"; he had noticed in Houard's "Coutumes Anglo-Normandes" that some pious copyist had prefixed to the laws of Alfred four chapters of Jewish law. "This awkward Monkish fabrication makes the preface to Alfred's genuine laws stand in the body of the Work; and the very words of Alfred himself form the frauds, for he declares in that preface that he has collected these laws from those of Ina, of Offa, Ethelbert, and his ancestors, saying nothing of any of them being taken from the scripture." Consequently the pretended laws of Alfred were a forgery.

Yet, palpable as it must be to a lawyer, our judges have piously avoided lifting the veil under which it was shrouded. In truth, the alliance between Church and State in England, has ever made their judges accomplices in the frauds of the clergy; and even bolder than they are: for, instead of being contented with these four surreptitious chapters of Exodus, they have taken the whole leap, and declared at once, that the whole Bible and Testament, in a lump, make part, of the Common law. … Finally in answer to Fortescue Aland's question why the Common law of England should not now be a part of the Common law of England? We may say that they are not, because they never were made so by legislative authority; the document which imposed that doubt on him being a manifest forgery.[66]

A PAGE FROM JEFFERSON'S "COMMONPLACE BOOK" From the manuscript in the possession of the Library of Congress

Bolstered up with his texts, references, and authorities, Jefferson could now, if need be, confute the redoubtable Mr. Pendleton in the Committee of Revisors, but such a legal technical presentation of the facts would evidently not appeal either to the Assembly at large or to the public. These had to be approached in an entirely different way; for to speak of frauds, forgeries, and monkish fabrication would not do at all in a public document and, on the contrary, might create a revulsion of feeling. It became necessary to present the reform in an entirely different light and Jefferson did so in the first section of the bill.

The phrasing of these lofty principles is well known; still it may not be out of place to reproduce them once more:

Well aware that the opinions of belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether susceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness … to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; … that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; … that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government.

In Section II, after that preamble, the religious independence of the individual was proclaimed:

We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, or shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or beliefs; but that all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

Furthermore, in the first section, Jefferson gave the first and final expression of his understanding of freedom of thought:

That it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its offices to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

It is not surprising that the bill was savagely attacked in the Assembly and did not pass until 1786. It simply shows that the Church of England had more supporters than Jefferson led us to believe, when he wrote in the "Notes on Virginia" that "two-thirds of the people had become dissenters at the commencement of the present revolution." The remaining third, if such was the proportion, were at least well organized and offered a strong resistance. This bill marked the beginning of the accusations of impiety and infidelity so often launched at Jefferson. Whatever his private sentiments on the matter may have been, he was not the man to discriminate against any one because of religious beliefs; and at the very time when he was engaged in preparing his bill, he took the initiative of starting a subscription towards the support of the Reverend Mr. Charles Clay of Williamsburg. The document, never before published, is entirely written in his hand and is of such importance that I may be permitted to reproduce it here:

Whereas, by an act of General assembly, freedom of Religious opinion and worship is restored to all, and it is left to the members of each religious society to employ such Teachers they think fit for their own Spiritual comfort and instruction and to maintain the same by their free and voluntary contributions. We the subscribers (professing the most Catholic affection for other religious sectaries who happen to differ from us in points of conscience,) yet desirous of encouraging and supporting (a church in our opinion so truly Apostolick as) the Protestant Episcopalian Church, and of deriving to ourselves, through the ministry of it's teachers, the benefits of Gospel-knowledge and Religious improvement, and at the same time of supporting those, who, having been at considerable expence in qualifying themselves by regular education for explaining the holy scriptures, have dedicated their time and labor to the service of the said church (and moreover approving highly the conduct of the rev^d Charles Clay, who early rejecting the tyrant and tyranny of Britain, proved his religion genuine by its harmony with the liberties of mankind and conforming his public prayers to the spirit and the injured rights of his country, addressed the god of battles for victory to our arms, while others impiously prayed that our enemies might vainquish and overcome us) do hereby oblige ourselves our heirs executors and administrators on or before the 25th day of December in this present year 1777, and likewise on or before the 25th day of December in every year following until we shall withdraw our subscription in open vestry, or until the legislature shall make other provision for the support of the said clergy, to pay to the (reverend) said Charles Clay of Albemarle his executor or administrators the several sums affixed to our respective names: in Consideration whereof we expect that the said Charles Clay shall perform divine service and preach a sermon in the town of Charlottesville on every fourth Sunday, or oftener, if a regular rotation with the other churches that shall have put themselves under his care will admit a more frequent attendence.

And we further mutually agree with each other that we will meet at Charlottesville on the 1^st day of March in the present year, and on the second Thursday in—— in every year following so long as we continue our subscriptions and there make choice by ballot of three wardens to collect our said subscriptions, to take care of such books and vestments as shall be provided for the use of our church, to call meetings of our Congregation when necessary, and to transact such other business relating to our Congregation as we shall hereafter confide to them.

Th. Jefferson, six pounds; Jno Harvie, four pounds; Randolph Jefferson, two pounds ten schillings; Thos. Garth, fifteen schillings; Philip Mazzei, sixteen schillings eight pence.[67]

Far more important than the local reception of the revised laws, since most of them were adopted only years later, and thanks to the efforts of Madison, during the sessions of 1785 and 1786, is the fact that Jefferson had already formulated at that time for himself and his fellow citizens the most essential principles of his doctrine. He was not unaware of this, and stated it himself in his "Autobiography" when he declared: "I considered four of these bills, passed or reported as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of ancient or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican."[68]

The ideal government he had in mind at the time could perhaps be described as a democracy, but he did not use the word himself, not even many years later in his "Autobiography" where he simply spoke of "a government truly republican." He was much opposed to the perpetuation of an hereditary landed gentry, but I do not see that he would have approved or even conceived the possibility of a government placed entirely under the control of unenlightened men. The Bill for the more General Diffusion of Knowledge makes clear that only through a liberal education can men be "rendered worthy to receive and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens", and the Bill for Amending the Charter of William and Mary proclaims even more emphatically that the old college must "become the seminary, in which those who are to be the future guardians of the rights of liberty of their country may be endowed with science and virtue, to watch and preserve the sacred deposit." Jefferson was a friend of the people, but no admirer and no flatterer of the "plain people", nor did he entertain any illusion about their participation in all the forms of government. For the present it was enough, as he wrote in the "Autobiography", if they were qualified through elementary education "to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-Government." If he rebelled against aristocracy of wealth, he would have reacted with equal vehemence against mob tyranny. Neither was he radical enough to admit propagandistes par le fait and to forbid society the right to intervene "when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order." (Bill for Religious Freedom.) For freedom of speech does not entail freedom of action: and the civil rights or rights of compacts are necessarily subject to civil regulations.

It is easily seen now that Jefferson so far remained perfectly consistent, and followed in practice the distinction between natural rights and rights of compact he had established in order to clarify his own mind, in the meditation quoted at the end of the preceding chapter. If this theory is accepted, it is evident that society being founded upon a legal compact, the ideal form of government is one in which both parties, the individual on the one hand and society on the other, scrupulously live up to its terms. A breach of contract can no more be condoned in the individual than in society. On the other hand, natural rights remain always truly "inalienable" and apart from civil rights. When any individual comes to the conclusion that the sacrifice he has made of certain rights in order to enjoy more security is not compensated for by sufficient advantages, he has the right to denounce the compact: hence the right of expatriation always so energetically maintained by Jefferson. This is the very reason why Jefferson could not and did not blame John Randolph for going to England in August, 1775, since "the situation of the country had rendered it not eligible to him to remain longer in it." Thus the conflict seen by so many political philosophers between man and society disappears entirely. The individual cannot stand against society when he is free to break the social bond at any time—nor can society oppress the individual without endangering its very existence. Such a theory was more than a "philosophical construction." It was largely based upon facts and observation; it expressed the current political philosophy of the colonies. It was eminently the juridistic explanation of the pioneer spirit.

Granting what is undoubtedly true, that Jefferson aroused antagonism and enmities in the Assembly, he certainly had also his admirers and followers. If the prophet had preached in the desert, he would not have gained the prompt recognition that came to him when he was chosen Governor of Virginia, the first of June, 1779, to succeed Patrick Henry. He was then thirty-six years old.