The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
FOREIGN RELATIONS / LATIN AMERICA
Those countries are beginning to be interesting to the whole world.
They are now becoming the scenes of political revolution, to take
their stations as integral members of the great family of nations. All
are now in insurrection. In several, the Independents are already
triumphant, and they will undoubtedly be so in all. What kind of
government will they establish? How much liberty can they bear without
intoxication? Are their chiefs sufficiently enlightened to form a
well-guarded government, and their people to watch their chiefs? Have
they mind enough to place their domesticated Indians on a footing with
the whites? All these questions you can answer better than any other.
I imagine they will copy our outlines of confederation and elective
government, abolish distinction of ranks, bow the neck to their
priests, and persevere in intolerantism. Their greatest difficulty
will be in the construction of their executive. I suspect that,
regardless of the experiment of France, and of that of the United
States in 1784, they will begin with a directory, and when the
unavoidable schisms in that kind of executive shall drive them to
something else, their great question will come on whether to
substitute an executive elective for years, for life, or an hereditary
one. But unless instruction can be spread among them more rapidly
than experience promises, despotism may come upon them before they are
qualified to save the ground they will have gained.
to Alexander von Humboldt, 14 April 1811
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