Thomas Jefferson is surely among the most original, complex, and important of American political thinkers. He wrote the Declaration of Independence, served two terms as President, founded the Library of Congress and the University of Virginia, and was also an architect, inventor, scientist, and – amongst his many other complexities – a slave-owner who advocated the abolition of slavery. There is in American political thought a distinctly “Jeffersonian” strain – “small-l” libertarian, democratic, participatory, and agrarian–republican – that has long locked horns with an alternative “Hamiltonian” vision (nationalist, commercial and credit-based, and relying on a strong central government). This tension, sometimes described as “Main Street vs. Wall Street,” has been a staple of American political thought for more than two centuries. The purpose of the present volume is to give the former a full and fair hearing by letting its main proponent speak at length for himself.

To edit Jefferson's political writings is no easy task. Indeed it is doubly difficult. First, Jefferson was a prolific writer. His complete Papers, edited by Julian P. Boyd et al. (Princeton, 1950–), have so far taken up twenty-seven fat volumes, bringing that series up to 1793 with no end in sight – he was to live another thirty-three years, during eight of which he was President of the United States. Second, Jefferson wrote no systematic treatise on politics.

From the Autobiography

In giving this account of the laws of which I was myself the mover & draughtsman, I by no means mean to claim to myself the merit of obtaining their passage. I had many occasional and strenuous coadjutors in debate, and one most steadfast, able, and zealous; who was himself a host. This was George Mason, a man of the first order of wisdom among those who acted on the theatre of the revolution, of expansive mind, profound judgment, cogent in argument, learned in the lore of our former constitution, and earnest for the republican change on democratic principles. His elocution was neither flowing nor smooth, but his language was strong, his manner most impressive, and strengthened by a dash of biting cynicism when provocation made it seasonable.

Mr. [George] Wythe, while speaker in the two sessions of 1777 between his return from Congress and his appointment to the Chancery, was an able and constant associate in whatever was before a committee of the whole. His pure integrity, judgment and reasoning powers gave him great weight. Of him see more in some notes inclosed in my letter of August 31. 1821, to Mr. John Saunderson.

Mr. [James] Madison came into the House in 1776 a new member and young; which circumstances, concurring with his extreme modesty, prevented his venturing himself in debate before his removal to the Council of State in Nov. 77.

From the Autobiography

Our first essay in America to establish a federative government had fallen, on trial, very short of it's object. During the war of Independance, while the pressure of an external enemy hooped us together, and their enterprises kept us necessarily on the alert, the spirit of the people, excited by danger, was a supplement to the Confederation, and urged them to zealous exertions, whether claimed by that instrument, or not. But when peace and safety were restored, and every man became engaged in useful and profitable occupation, less attention was paid to the calls of Congress. The fundamental defect of the Confederation was that Congress was not authorized to act immediately on the people, & by it's own officers. Their power was only requisitory, and these requisitions were addressed to the several legislatures, to be by them carried into execution, without other coercion than the moral principle of duty. This allowed in fact a negative to every legislature, on every measure proposed by Congress; a negative so frequently exercised in practice as to benumb the action of the federal government, and to render it inefficient in it's general objects, & more especially in pecuniary and foreign concerns. The want too of a separation of the legislative, executive, & judiciary functions worked disadvantageously in practice.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) wrote no systematic treatise on political theory. And yet there is order and system in his unsystematic observations and reflections as found in his only book, in parliamentary manuals, legislative reports, public addresses, executive orders and a voluminous correspondence consisting of some 18,000 letters. It is from these disparate sources that we must glean his political philosophy. He, like the fox, knew a great many things; but, like the hedgehog, he knew and was guided by one big thing – his unswerving belief that people are by nature, and ought to be by law, free to govern themselves. Everything else is either a means or an obstacle to this single overriding end. Tyrannies deny and virtuous republics promote it; ignorance undermines and education encourages it; censorship obscures and a free press reveals it; invasive government negates and self-rule affirms it – but when all is said and done the truth and value of this end is so obvious as to be “self-evident.” Jefferson changed his mind about many things; but on this single point his conviction never wavered.

Life and times

Jefferson was born at Shadwell, in Albemarle County, Virginia, in 1743. His father, Peter, a self-educated man of many talents and interests, made his living as a surveyor, map-maker, and farmer. He was also an amateur scientist and musician who passed his love of these and other interests to his son Tom.

A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1777)

Section 1. Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet choose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to exalt it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislature and ruler, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; […]

To Anne Willing Bingham

Paris, February 7, 1787

I know, Madam, that the twelve month is not yet expired; but it will be, nearly, before this will have the honor of being put into your hands. You are then engaged to tell me, truly and honestly, whether you do not find the tranquil pleasures of America, preferable to the empty bustle of Paris. For, to what does that bustle tend? At eleven o'clock, it is day, chez madame. The curtains are drawn. Propped on bolsters and pillows, and her head scratched into a little order, the bulletins of the sick are read, and the billets of the well. She writes to some of her acquaintance, and receives the visits of others. If the morning is not very thronged, she is able to get out and hobble round the cage of the Palais Royal; but she must hobble quickly, for the coiffeur's turn is come; and a tremendous turn it is! Happy, if he does not make her arrive when dinner is half over! The torpitude of digestion a little passed, she flutters half an hour through the streets, by way of paying visits, and then to the spectacles. These finished, another half hour is devoted to dodging in and out of the doors of her very sincere friends, and away to supper. After supper, cards; and after cards, bed; to rise at noon the next day, and to tread, like a mill horse, the same trodden circle over again.

Report of Government for the Western Territory

[March 22, 1784]

The Committee to whom was recommitted the report of a plan for a temporary government of the Western territory have agreed to the following resolutions.

Resolved, that so much of the territory ceded or to be ceded by individual states to the United States as is already purchased or shall be purchased of the Indian inhabitants & offered for sale by Congress, shall be divided into distinct states, in the following manner, as nearly as such cessions will admit; that is to say, by parallels of latitude, so that each state shall comprehend from South to North two degrees of latitude beginning to count from the completion of thirty-one degrees North of the Equator; and by meridians of longitude, one of which shall pass thro' the lowest point of the rapids of Ohio, and the other through the Western Cape of the mouth of the Great Kanhaway, but the territory Eastward of this last meridian, between the Ohio, Lake Erie, & Pennsylvania shall be one state, whatsoever may be its comprehension of latitude. That which may lie beyond the completion of the 45th degree between the s[ai]d. meridians shall make part of the state adjoining it on the South, and that part of the Ohio which is between the same meridians coinciding nearly with the parallel of 39° shall be substituted so far in lieu of that parallel as a boundary line.

[Introduction]

Germany is no longer a state. The older teachers of constitutional law had the idea of a science in mind when they dealt with the constitutional law of Germany, and they accordingly set out to specify a concept of the German constitution. But they could not reach agreement on this concept, and their modern counterparts finally gave up looking for it. The latter no longer treat constitutional law as a science, but as a description of what is present empirically without conforming to a rational Idea; and they believe that it is only in name that they can describe the German state as an empire or body politic.

There is no longer any argument about which concept the German constitution falls under. What can no longer be related to a concept [begriffen] no longer exists. If Germany were supposed to be a state, we could only describe the present condition of the state's dissolution as anarchy (as a foreign scholar of constitutional law did), were it not that the parts have reconstituted themselves into states which have retained a semblance of unity, derived not so much from a bond which still exists as from the memory of an earlier one. In the same way, fallen fruit can be seen to have belonged to a particular tree because it lies beneath its branches; but neither its position beneath the tree nor the shade which the tree casts over it can save it from decomposition and from the power of the elements to which it now belongs.

The primary intention of the Reform Bill now before the English Parliament is to bring justice and fairness into the way in which the various classes [Klassen] and sections of the populace are allowed to participate in the election of Members of Parliament. This is to be achieved by introducing a greater degree of symmetry in place of the most bizarre and informala irregularity and inequality which prevail at present. It is numbers, localities, and private interests which are to be rearranged; but in fact, the change in question also impinges on the noble internal organs of Great Britain, on the vital principles of its constitution and condition. It is this aspect of the present Bill which merits particular attention, and the aim of this essay will be to bring together those higher points of view which have hitherto come up for discussion in the parliamentary debates. It is not surprising that so many voices were raised in opposition to the Bill in the Lower House, and that it gained its second reading only by the accident of a single vote; for it is precisely those interests of the aristocracy which are powerful even in the Lower House that are to be challenged and reformed. If the Bill were opposed by all those who stand to lose (or whose sponsors stand to lose) their former privileges and influence, it would most decidedly have the majority against it at once.

Gentlemen,

Since today marks my first appearance at this university in that official capacity as a teacher of philosophy to which I was graciously appointed by His Majesty the King, permit me to say by way of introduction that I considered it particularly desirable and gratifying to take up a position of wider academic influence both at this particular moment and in this particular place.

As far as the particular moment is concerned, those circumstances appear to have arisen in which philosophy may once again expect to receive attention and love, and in which this science, which had almost fallen silent, may once more lift up its voice. For not long ago, the urgency of the times on the one hand conferred such great importance on the petty interests of everyday life, and on the other hand, the high interests of actuality, the interest and conflicts involved simply in restoring and salvaging the political totality of national life and of the state, placed such great demands on all [our] mental faculties and on the powers of all [social] classes [Stände] – as well as on external resources – that the inner life of the spirit could not attain peace and leisure; and the world spirit was so bound up with actuality and forced to turn outwards that it was prevented from turning inwards upon itself and enjoying and indulging itself in its proper home.

It is true that the science of natural law, like other sciences such as mechanics and physics, has long been recognised as an essentially philosophical science and – since philosophy must have parts – as an essential part of philosophy. But it has shared the fate of the other sciences in that the philosophical element in philosophy has been assigned exclusively to metaphysics, and the sciences have been allowed little share in it; instead, they have been kept completely independent of the Idea, within their own special principle. The sciences cited as examples have finally been compelled more or less to confess their remoteness from philosophy. They consequently acknowledge as their scientific principle what is commonly called experience, thereby renouncing their claim to be genuine sciences; they are content to consist of a collection of empirical knowledge [Kenntnisse] and to make use of the concepts of the understanding as postulates [bittweise], without claiming to make any objective assertion. If whatever has called itself a philosophical science has been excluded from philosophy and from the category of science in general, at first against its will but in eventual acceptance of this situation, the reason for this exclusion is not that these so-called sciences did not originate in philosophy itself and did not maintain a conscious connection with it. For every part of philosophy is individually capable of being an independent science and attaining complete inner necessity, because it is the absolute which makes it a genuine science.