The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
ROMAN EMPIRE / CICERO'S WRITING
I have been amusing myself latterly with reading the voluminous
letters of Cicero. They certainly breathe the purest effusions of an
exalted patriot, while the parricide Caesar is lost in odious
contrast. When the enthusiasm, however, kindled by Cicero's pen and
principles, subsides into cool reflection, I ask myself, what was that
government which the virtues of Cicero were so zealous to restore, and
the ambition of Caesar to subvert? And if Caesar had been as virtuous
as he was daring and sagacious, what could he, even in the plenitude
of his usurped power, have done to lead his fellow citizens into good
government? I do not say to
restore it, because they never had it, from the rape of the
Sabines to the ravages of the Caesars. If their people indeed had
been, like ourselves, enlightened, peaceable, and really free, the
answer would be obvious. "Restore independence to all your
foreign conquests, relieve Italy from the government of the rabble of
Rome, consult it as a nation entitled to self-government, and do its
will." But steeped in corruption, vice and venality, as the whole
nation was (and nobody had done more than Caesar to corrupt it), what
could even Cicero, Cato, Brutus have done, had it been referred to
them to establish a good government for their country? They had no
ideas of government themselves, but of their degenerate Senate, nor
the people of liberty, but of the factious opposition of their
tribunes. They had afterwards their Tituses, their Trajans and
Antoninuses, who had the will to make them happy, and the power to
mold their government into a good and permanent form. But it would
seem as if they could not see their way clearly to do it. No
government can continue good, but under the control of the people; and
their people were so demoralized and depraved, as to be incapable of
exercising a wholesome control. Their reformation then was to be taken
up ab incunabulis. Their minds were to be informed by
education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of
virtue, and deterred from those of vice by the dread of punishments,
proportioned indeed, but irremissible; in all cases, to follow truth
as the only safe guide, and to eschew error, which bewilders us in one
false consequence after another, in endless succession. These are the
inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the
structure of order and good government. But this would have been an
operation of a generation or two, at least, within which period would
have succeeded many Neros and Commoduses, who would have quashed the
whole process. I confess then, I can neither see what Cicero, Cato,
and Brutus, united and uncontrolled, could have devised to lead their
people into good government, nor how this enigma can be solved, nor
how further shown why it has been the fate of that delightful country
never to have known, to this day, and through a course of five and
twenty hundred years, the history of which we possess, one single day
of free and rational government. Your intimacy with their history,
ancient, middle and modern, your familiarity with the improvements in
the science of government at this time, will enable you, if anybody,
to go back with our principles and opinions to the times of Cicero,
Cato, and Brutus, and tell us by what process these great and virtuous
men could have led so unenlightened and vitiated a people into freedom
and good government, et eris mihi magnus Apollo. Cura ut valeas,
et tibi persuadeas carissimum te mihi esse.
to John Adams, 10 December 1819
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