"Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single
government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye
of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable
to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government
of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection
impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption,
plunder and waste." --Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1800. ME 10:167
"While smaller governments are better adapted to the ordinary objects of
society, larger confederations more effectually secure independence and
the preservation of republican government." --Thomas Jefferson to the Rhode
Island Assembly, 1801. ME 10:262
"The extent of our country was so great, and its former division into
distinct States so established, that we thought it better to confederate
as to foreign affairs only. Every State retained its self-government in
domestic matters, as better qualified to direct them to the good and satisfaction
of their citizens, than a general government so distant from its remoter
citizens and so little familiar with the local peculiarities of the different
parts." --Thomas Jefferson to A. Coray, 1823. ME 15:483
"I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General
Government our foreign ones." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823.
ME 15:450
"My general plan would be, to make the States one as to everything connected
with foreign nations, and several as to everything purely domestic." --Thomas
Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME 6:227
"Distinct States, amalgamated into one as to their foreign concerns,
but single and independent as to their internal administration, regularly
organized with a legislature and governor resting on the choice of the
people and enlightened by a free press, can never be so fascinated by the
arts of one man as to submit voluntarily to his usurpation. Nor can they
be constrained to it by any force he can possess. While that may paralyze
the single State in which it happens to be encamped, [the] others, spread
over a country of two thousand miles diameter, rise up on every side, ready
organized for deliberation by a constitutional legislature and for action
by their governor, constitutionally the commander of the militia of the
State, that is to say, of every man in it able to bear arms." --Thomas
Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1811. ME 13:19
"It is hoped that by a due poise and partition of powers between the
General and particular governments, we have found the secret of extending
the benign blessings of republicanism over still greater tracts of country
than we possess, and that a subdivision may be avoided for ages, if not
forever." --Thomas Jefferson to James Sullivan, 1791. FE 5:369
The Basis of Separation of Powers
"Our citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation as to
others and several States as among themselves. To the united nation belong
our external and mutual relations; to each State, severally, the care of
our persons, our property, our reputation and religious freedom." --Thomas
Jefferson: To Rhode Island Assembly, 1801. ME 10:262
"The States in North America which confederated to establish their independence
of the government of Great Britain, of which Virginia was one, became on
that acquisition, free and independent States, and as such, authorized
to constitute governments, each for itself, in such form as it thought
best. They entered into a compact (which is called the Constitution of
the United States of America), by which they agreed to unite in a single
government as to their relations with each other and with foreign nations,
and as to certain other articles particularly specified. They retained
at the same time each to itself, the other rights of independent government,
comprehending mainly their domestic interests." --Thomas Jefferson: Declaration
and Protest of Virginia, 1825. ME 17:442
"The radical idea of the character of the constitution of our government,
which I have adopted as a key in cases of doubtful construction, is, that
the whole field of government is divided into two departments, domestic
and foreign (the States in their mutual relations being of the latter);
that the former department is reserved exclusively to the respective States
within their own limits, and the latter assigned to a separate set of functionaries,
constituting what may be called the foreign branch, which, instead of a
federal basis, is established as a distinct government quoad hoc
[to this extent], acting as the domestic branch does on the citizens directly
and coercively; that these departments have distinct directories, co-ordinate,
and equally independent and supreme, each within its own sphere of action."
--Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1824. ME 16:23
"Nor is it admitted... that the people of these States, by not investing
their federal branch with all the means of bettering their condition, have
denied to themselves any which may effect that purpose; since, in the distribution
of these means, they have given to that branch those which belong to its
department, and to the States have reserved separately the residue which
belong to them separately. And thus by the organization of the two branches
taken together, have completely secured the first object of human association,
the full improvement of their condition, and reserved to themselves all
the faculties of multiplying their own blessings." --Thomas Jefferson:
Declaration and Protest of Virginia, 1825. ME 17:444
"To the State governments are reserved all legislation and administration
in affairs which concern their own citizens only, and to the federal government
is given whatever concerns foreigners or the citizens of other States;
these functions alone being made federal. The one is the domestic, the
other the foreign branch of the same government; neither having control
over the other, but within its own department. There are one or two exceptions
only to this partition of power." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright,
1824. ME 16:47
"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground:
That "all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the
people." [X Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus
specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession
of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
--Thomas Jefferson: National Bank Opinion, 1791. ME 3:146
"The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had secured
themselves against constructive powers." --Thomas Jefferson to William
Johnson, 1823. ME 15:450
"The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best,
that the States are independent as to everything within themselves, and
united as to everything respecting foreign nations." --Thomas Jefferson
to Gideon Granger, 1800. ME 10:168
"The best general key for the solution of questions of power between
our governments is the fact that 'every foreign and federal power is given
to the Federal Government, and to the States every power purely domestic.'
I recollect but one instance of control vested in the Federal over the
State authorities in a matter purely domestic, which is that of metallic
tenders. The Federal is, in truth, our foreign government, which department
alone is taken from the sovereignty of the separate States." --Thomas Jefferson
to Robert J. Garnett, 1824. ME 16:15
"To draw around the whole nation the strength of the General Government
as a barrier against foreign foes; to watch the border of every State that
no external hand may intrude or disturb the exercise of self-government
reserved to itself; to equalize and moderate the public contributions that
while the requisite services are invited by due remuneration, nothing beyond
this may exist to attract the attention of our citizens from the pursuits
of useful industry, nor unjustly to burden those who continue in those
pursuits--these are the functions of the General Government on which you
have a right to call." --Thomas Jefferson to Amos Marsh, 1801. ME 10:293
"The preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional
vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad, I deem
[one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one
of] those which ought to shape its administration." --Thomas Jefferson:
1st Inaugural Address, 1801. ME 3:321
Maintaining Separate Responsibilities
"It has been so often said, as to be generally believed, that Congress
have no power by the [Articles of] Confederation to enforce anything; for
example, contributions of money. It was not necessary to give them that
power expressly; they have it by the law of nature. When two parties make
a compact, there results to each a power of compelling the other to execute
it." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME 6:227
"I like much the general idea of framing a government which should go
on of itself, peaceably, without needing continual recurrence to the State
legislatures." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. ME 6:386
"The States should be left to do whatever acts they can do as well as
the General Government." --Thomas Jefferson to John Harvie, 1790. FE 5:214
"It is of immense consequence that the States retain as complete authority
as possible over their own citizens. The withdrawing themselves under the
shelter of a foreign jurisdiction is so subversive of order and so pregnant
of abuse, that it may not be amiss to consider how far a law of praemunire
[a punishable offense against government] should be revised and modified,
against all citizens who attempt to carry their causes before any other
than the State courts, in cases where those other courts have no right
to their cognizance." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1797. ME 9:424
"[Regulating] the condition of the descriptions of men composing
a State... certainly is the exclusive right of every State, which nothing
in the Constitution has taken from them and given to the General Government.
Could Congress, for example, say that the non-freemen of Connecticut shall
be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other State?" --Thomas
Jefferson to John Holmes, 1820. ME 15:250
Relation of State to Federal
"With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think
their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose
the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are
co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole." --Thomas Jefferson
to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:47
"The several States composing the United States of America are not united
on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but...
by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United
States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government
for special purposes,-- delegated to that government certain definite powers,
reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own
self-government." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798.
ME 17:379
"It is a fatal heresy to suppose that either our State governments are
superior to the Federal or the Federal to the States. The people, to whom
all authority belongs, have divided the powers of government into two distinct
departments, the leading characters of which are foreign and domestic;
and they have appointed for each a distinct set of functionaries. These
they have made coordinate, checking and balancing each other like the three
cardinal departments in the individual States; each equally supreme as
to the powers delegated to itself, and neither authorized ultimately to
decide what belongs to itself or to its coparcener in government. As independent,
in fact, as different nations." --Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1821.
ME 15:328
"Comparing the two governments together, it is observable that in all
those cases where the independent or reserved rights of the States are
in question, the two executives, if they are to act together, must be exactly
co-ordinate; they are, in these cases, each the supreme head of an independent
government. In other cases, to wit, those transferred by the Constitution
to the General Government, the general executive is certainly preordinate;
e. g. in a question respecting the militia, and others easily to
be recollected." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1801. ME 10:267
"I do not think it for the interest of the General Government itself,
and still less of the Union at large, that the State governments should
be so little respected as they have been. However, I dare say that in time
all these as well as their central government, like the planets revolving
round their common sun, acting and acted upon according to their respective
weights and distances, will produce that beautiful equilibrium on which
our Constitution is founded, and which I believe it will exhibit to the
world in a degree of perfection, unexampled but in the planetary system
itself. The enlightened statesman, therefore, will endeavor to preserve
the weight and influence of every part, as too much given any member of
it would destroy the general equilibrium." --Thomas Jefferson to Peregrine
Fitzhugh, 1798. ME 10:3
Separation is Essential for a Free Nation
"The true barriers of our liberty in this country are our State governments;
and the wisest conservative power ever contrived by man is that of which
our Revolution and present government found us possessed." --Thomas Jefferson
to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1811. ME 13:19
"To preserve the republican forms and principles of our Constitution
and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that has established...
are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall
be in danger of foundering." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823.
ME 15:452
"The spirit of concord [amongst] sister States... alone carried us successfully
through the revolutionary war, and finally placed us under that national
government, which constitutes the safety of every part, by uniting for
its protection the powers of the whole." --Thomas Jefferson to William
Eustis, 1809. ME 12:227
"It is a singular phenomenon that while our State governments are
the very best in the world, without exception or comparison, our
General Government has, in the rapid course of nine or ten years, become
more arbitrary and has swallowed more of the public liberty than even that
of England." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1798. ME 10:65
Drawing the Line
"I have always thought that where the line of demarcation between the
powers of the General and the State governments was doubtfully or indistinctly
drawn it would be prudent and praiseworthy in both parties never to approach
it but under the most urgent necessity." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C.
Cabell, 1814. ME 14:83
"In one sentiment of [Edward Livingston's] speech I particularly concur.
'If we have a doubt relative to any power, we ought not to exercise it.'
When we consider the extensive and deep-seated opposition to [a certain]
assumption, the conviction entertained by so many, that this deduction
of powers by elaborate construction prostrates the rights reserved to the
States, the difficulties with which it will rub along in the course of
its exercise; that changes of majorities will be changing the system backwards
and forwards, so that no undertaking under it will be safe; that there
is not a State in the Union which would not give the power willingly by
way of amendment with some little guard, perhaps, against abuse; I cannot
but think it would be the wisest course to ask an express grant of the
power." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1824. (*) ME 16:24
"A spirit of forbearance and compromise, therefore, and not of encroachment
and usurpation, is the healing balm of such a Constitution [as ours]; and
each party should prudently shrink from all approach to the line of demarcation,
instead of rashly overleaping it, or throwing grapples ahead to haul to
hereafter." --Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1821. ME 15:328
"The interests of the States... ought to be made joint in every possible
instance in order to cultivate the idea of our being one nation, and to
multiply the instances in which the people shall look up to Congress as
their head." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1785. ME 5:14, Papers
8:229
"By [the] operations [of public improvement] new channels of communication
will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will disappear,
their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and
indissoluble ties." --Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806. ME 3:423
"Many are the exercises of power reserved to the States wherein a uniformity
of proceeding would be advantageous to all. Such are quarantines, health
laws, regulations of the press, banking institutions, training militia,
etc., etc." --Thomas Jefferson to James Sullivan, 1807. ME 11:237
Contests for Power
"The system of the General Government is to seize all doubtful ground.
We must join in the scramble, or get nothing. Where first occupancy is
to give right, he who lies still loses all." --Thomas Jefferson to James
Monroe, 1797. ME 9:423
"Were it observed that either party [i.e., State or General government]
set up unjustifiable pretensions, perhaps the other might be right in opposing
them by a tenaciousness of his own rigorous rights." --Thomas Jefferson
to James Monroe, 1801. ME 10:267
"If the two departments [Federal and State] should claim each the same
subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between
them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties
will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but if it can neither
be avoided not compromised, a convention of the States must be called to
ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best."
--Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:47
"Congress... has always shown that it would wait, as it ought to do,
to the last extremities, before it would execute any of its powers which
are disagreeable." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME 6:228
"The peculiar happiness of our blessed system is that in differences
of opinion between these different sets of servants, the appeal is to neither,
but to their employers peaceably assembled by their representatives in
convention. This is more rational than the jus fortioris, or the
canon's mouth, the ultima et sola ratio regum." --Thomas Jefferson
to Spencer Roane, 1821. ME 15:328
A Gradation of Republics
"The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all
to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly
the function he is competent to. Let the National Government be entrusted
with the defence of the nation and its foreign and federal relations; the
State governments with the civil rights, laws, police and administration
of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns
of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is
by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one
down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration
of every man's farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own
eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best." --Thomas Jefferson
to Joseph C. Cabell, 1816. ME 14:421
"It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their
distribution that good government is effected. Were not this great country
already divided into States, that division must be made that each might
do for itself what concerns itself directly and what it can so much better
do than a distant authority. Every state again is divided into counties,
each to take care of what lies within its local bounds; each county again
into townships or wards, to manage minuter details; and every ward into
farms, to be governed each by its individual proprietor... It is by this
partition of cares descending in gradation from general to particular that
the mass of human affairs may be best managed for the good and prosperity
of all." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:122
"We should thus marshal our government into, 1. the general federal
republic, for all concerns foreign and federal; 2. that of the State, for
what relates to our own citizens exclusively; 3. the county republics,
for the duties and concerns of the county; and 4. the ward republics, for
the small and yet numerous and interesting concerns of the neighborhood;
and in government, as well as in every other business of life, it is by
division and subdivision of duties alone, that all matters, great and small,
can be managed to perfection. And the whole is cemented by giving to every
citizen, personally, a part in the administration of the public affairs."
--Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:38
"But how collect [the people's] voice? This is the real difficulty.
If invited by private authority, [to] county or district meetings, these
divisions are so large that few will attend; and their voice will be imperfectly,
or falsely, pronounced. Here, then, would be one of the advantages of the
ward divisions I have proposed. The mayor of every ward, on a question
like the present, would call his ward together, take the simple yea or
nay of its members, convey these to the country court, who would hand on
those of all its wards to the proper general authority; and the voice of
the whole people would be thus fairly, fully, and peaceably expressed,
discussed, and decided by the common reason of the society." --Thomas Jefferson
to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:43
The Ward Republics
"These wards once established, will be found convenient and salutary
aids in the administration of government, of which they will constitute
the organic elements, and the first integral members in the composition
of the military." --Thomas Jefferson: Note to Elementary School Act, 1817.
ME 17:419
"These wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle
of their governments and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever
devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government and
for its preservation." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME
15:38
"The elementary republics of the wards, the county republics, the State
republics, and the Republic of the Union, would form a gradation of authorities,
standing each on the basis of law, holding every one its delegated share
of powers and constituting truly a system of fundamental balances and checks
for the government. Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his
ward-republic, or of some of the higher ones, and feels that he is a participator
in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the
year, but every day; when there shall not be a man in the State who will
not be a member of some one of its councils, great or small, he will let
the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from
him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell,
1816. ME 14:422
"My proposition [to divide every county into wards and to establish
in each a free school] had for a further object, to impart to these wards
those portions of self-government for which they are best qualified, by
confiding to them the care of their poor, their roads, police, elections,
the nomination of jurors, administration of justice in small cases, elementary
exercises of militia; in short, to have made them little republics, with
a warden at the head of each, for all those concerns which, being under
their eye, they would better manage than the larger republics of the county
or State. A general call of ward meetings by their wardens on the same
day through the State, would at any time produce the genuine sense of the
people on any required point, and would enable the State to act in mass."
--Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:400
"The article... nearest my heart is the division of counties into
wards. These will be pure and elementary republics, the sum of which taken
together composes the State, and will make of the whole a true democracy
as to the business of the wards, which is that of nearest and daily concern.
The affairs of the larger sections, of counties, of States, and of the
Union, not admitting personal transactions by the people, will be delegated
to agents elected by themselves; and representation will thus be substituted
where personal action becomes impracticable. Yet even over these representative
organs, should they become corrupt and perverted, the division into wards
constituting the people, in their wards, a regularly organized power, enables
them by that organization to crush, regularly and peaceably, the usurpations
of their unfaithful agents, and rescues them from the dreadful necessity
of doing it insurrectionally. In this way we shall be as republican as
a large society can be, and secure the continuance of purity in our government
by the salutary, peaceable, and regular control of the people." --Thomas
Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:70
"Divide the counties into wards of such size as that every citizen can
attend, when called on, and act in person. Ascribe to them the government
of their wards in all things relating to themselves exclusively. A justice
chosen by themselves, in each a constable, a military company, a patrol,
a school, the care of their own poor, their own portion of the public roads,
the choice of one or more jurors to serve in some court, and the delivery
within their own wards of their own votes for all elective officers of
higher sphere, will relieve the county administration of nearly all its
business, will have it better done, and by making every citizen an acting
member of the government, and in the offices nearest and most interesting
to him, will attach him by his strongest feelings to the independence of
his country and its republican Constitution." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel
Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:37
"Each ward would thus be a small republic within itself, and every man
in the State would thus become an acting member of the common government,
transacting in person a great portion of its rights and duties, subordinate
indeed, yet important, and entirely within his competence. The wit of man
cannot devise a more solid basis for a free, durable and well-administered
republic." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:46
"These little republics would be the main strength of the great one.
We owe to them the vigor given to our revolution in its commencement in
the Eastern States." --Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1810. ME 12:394
"If it is believed that... elementary schools will be better managed
by the governor and council, the commissioners of the literary fund or
any other general authority of the government than by the parents within
each ward, it is a belief against all experience. Try the principle one
step further, and... commit to the governor and council the management
of all our farms, our mills and merchants' stores. No, my friend, the way
to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to
divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions
he is competent to." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1816. ME 14:420
"I have long contemplated a division of [our own state of Virginia]
into hundreds or wards, as the most fundamental measure securing good government,
and for instilling the principles and exercise of self-government into
every fibre of every member of our commonwealth." --Thomas Jefferson to
Joseph C. Cabell, 1814. ME 14:70
"There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further
as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties
into wards. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely
hanging on these two hooks." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1814.
ME 14:84
"As Cato, then concluded every speech with the words, 'Cathago delenda
est,' so do I every opinion with the injunction, 'divide the counties into
wards.'" --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1816. ME 14:423