The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
REPUBLICANISM / INTERNAL ATTACKS ON
What an effort, my dear Sir, of bigotry in politics and religion have
we gone through! The barbarians really flattered themselves they
should be able to bring back the times of Vandalism, when ignorance
put everything into the hands of power and priestcraft. All advances
in science were proscribed as innovations. They pretended to praise
and encourage education, but it was to be education of our ancestors.
We were to look backwards, not forwards, for improvements; the
President himself declaring, in one of his answers to addresses, that
we were never to expect to go beyond them in real science. This was
the real ground of all the attacks on you. . . . It is with heartfelt
satisfaction that, in the first moments of my public action, I can
hail you with welcome in our land, tender to you the homage of its
respect and esteem, cover you under the protection of those laws which
were made for the wise and good like you, and disdain the legitimacy
of that libel on legislation, which, under the form of a law, was for
some time placed among them.
As the storm is now subsiding, and the horizon becoming serene, it is
pleasant to consider the phenomenon with attention. We can no longer
say there is nothing new under the sun. For this whole chapter in the
history of man is new. The great extent of our republic is new. Its
sparse habitation is new. The mighty wave of public opinion which has
rolled over it Is new. But the most pleasing novelty is, its so
quietly subsiding over such an extent of surface to its true level
again. The order and good sense displayed in this recovery from
delusion, and in the momentous crisis which lately arose, really
bespeak a strength of character in our nation which augurs well for
the duration of our republic; and I am much better satisfied now of
its stability than I was before it was tried. I have been, above all
things, solaced by the prospect which opened on us, in the event of a
non-election of a President; in which case, the federal government
would have been in the situation of a clock or watch run down. There
was no idea of force, nor of any occasion for it. A convention,
invited by the republican members of Congress, with the virtual
President and Vice-President, would have been on the ground in eight
weeks, would have repaired the Constitution where it was defective,
and wound it up again.
to Joseph Priestly, 21 March 1801
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