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SCI LIBRARY

The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson

By Subject


CONSTITUTION / UNITED STATES / PRESERVATION OF



I do then, with sincere zeal, wish an inviolable preservation of our present federal Constitution, according to the true sense in which it was adopted by the States, that in which it was advocated by its friends, and not that which its enemies apprehended, who therefore became its enemies; and I am opposed to the monarchizing its features by the forms of its administration with a view to conciliate a first transition to a President and Senate for life and from that to a hereditary tenure of these offices, and thus to worm out the elective principle.

to Elbridge Gerry, 26 January 1799