Dreaming Of This Nation Of Rural Ideals...
If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all
the rights of citizenship: but I doubt the expediency
of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements. I
mean not that these doubts should be extended to the
importation of useful artificers. The policy of that
measure depends on very different considerations. Spare
no expence in obtaining them. They will after a while
go to the plough and the hoe; but, in the mean time,
they will teach us something we do not know. It is not
so in agriculture. The indifferent state of that among
us does not proceed from a want of knowledge merely;
it is from our having such quantities of land to waste
as we please. In Europe the object is to make the most
of their land, labour being abundant: here it is to
make the most of our labour, land being abundant...
The political economists of Europe have established
it as a principle that every state should endeavour
to manufacture for itself: and this principle, like
many others, we transfer to America, without calculating
the difference of circumstance which should often produce
a difference of result. In Europe the lands are either
cultivated, or locked up against the cultivator. Manufacture
must therefore be resorted to of necessity not of choice,
to support the surplus of their people. But we have
an immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman.
Is it best then that all our citizens should be employed
in its improvement, or that one half should be called
off from that to exercise manufactures and handicraft
arts for the other?
Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people
of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts
he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and
genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive
that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from
the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass
of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation
has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those,
who not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and
industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistance,
depend for it on the casualties and caprice of customers.
Dependance begets subservience and venality, suffocates
the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs
of ambition. This, the natural progress and consequence
of the arts, has sometimes perhaps been retarded by
accidental circumstances: but, generally speaking, the
proportion which the aggregate of the other classes
of citizens bears in any state to that of its husbandmen,
is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts,
and is a good-enough barometer whereby to measure its
degree of corruption.
While we have land to labour then, let us never wish
to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench, or twirling
a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in
husbandry: but, for the general operations of manufacture,
let our work-shops remain in Europe. It is better to
carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than
bring them to the provisions and materials, and with
them their manners and principles. The loss by the transportation
of commodities across the Atlantic will be made up in
happiness and permanence of government.
The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support
of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the
human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people
which preserve a republic in vigour. A degeneracy in
these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its
laws and constitution... Young as we are, and with such
a country before us to fill with people and with happiness,
we should point in that direction the whole generative
force of nature, wasting none of it in efforts of mutual
destruction. It should be our endeavour to cultivate
the peace and friendship of every nation, even of that
which has injured us most, when we shall have carried
our point against her. Our interest will be to throw
open the doors of commerce, and to knock off all its
shackles, giving perfect freedom to all persons for
the vent of whatever they may chuse to bring into our
ports, and asking the same in theirs. Never was so much
false arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which
has been employed to persuade nations that it is their
interest to go to war. Were the money which it has cost
to gain, at the close of a long war, a little town,
or a little territory, the right to cut wood here, or
to catch fish there, expended in improving what they
already possess, in making roads, openingrivers, building
ports, improving the arts, and finding employment for
their idle poor, it would render them much stronger,
much wealthier and happier. This I hope will be our
wisdom. And, perhaps, to remove as much as possible
the occasions of making war, it might be better for
us to abandon the ocean altogether, that being the element
whereon we shall be principally exposed to jostle with
other nations: to leave to others to bring what we shall
want, and to carry what we can spare. This would make
us invulnerable to Europe, by offering none of our property
to their prize, and would turn all our citizens to the
cultivation of the earth; and, I repeat it again, cultivators
of the earth are the most virtuous and independant citizens.
from Thos. Jefferson’s only book, Notes On The
State Of Virginia (1781)
