Posted on 01/08/2010 6:22:18 AM PST by Loud Mime
I recommend you read the entire letter -- about five pages -- at its source.
I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.
(Break added by poster)
Our landholders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation. This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.
Jefferson's political view was liberty. As is mine.
Yes, history indicates this time and time again. Best illustrated by the Romans. Another modern example would be the British empire and their devolution continues today.
This is why from time to time the tree of liberty must be watered in the American experiment so that growth begins anew and replenishes the foliage. Our founders anticipated these issues, and the left does it's best to neuter the built-in fixes that the Constitution allows for.
IMHO
P4L
They were so aware of the foibles of human nature and of their own weaknesses, yet were able craft a system that worked to protect against and counter those weaknesses.
Alas, time has chipped away and corrupted that system. Yet I will remain optimistic that what was done before can be done again.
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Just Damn! TJ even predicted the rise of Revenuers.
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