A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America/Extract

PARIS, 22 March, 1778.

BUT it appeared that you imputed to me the indiscretion of having flown in the face of the general opinion of my nation; and there I think you neither did justice to me nor to my nation, which is much more enlightened than is generally supposed among you, and in which perhaps it is easier than even with you, to call the public attention to ideas of reason. I judge so from the infatuation of the British in the prospect of conquering America, which continued until the adventure of Burgoyne made them, in some degree, open their eyes. I judge so from the system of monopoly and exclusion, which governs all your political writers upon commerce, except Mr. Adam Smith and Dean Tucker, a system which is the true prime cause of your separation from your colonies. I judge so from all your polemic writings upon questions which have been agitated for twenty years back, and in which, before yours appeared, I do not recollect to have read a single piece in which the true point in dispute has been rightly taken up. I have been unable to conceive how a nation which hath so successfully cultivated every branch of the natural sciences, can have continued so much beneath herself in the most interesting science of the whole, that of the public good; a science wherein the liberty of the press, which she alone enjoys, must have given her a mighty advantage over all the rest of Europe. Is it national pride which hath hindered you from making the utmost of that advantage? Is it because you were something better off than others, that you have turned all your speculations towards persuading yourselves that you were quite happy? Is it the spirit of party, and the wish to form self-support out of popular opinions, which hath retarded your progress by leading your politicians to treat as empty metaphysics all those speculations which tend to establish some fixed principles respecting the rights and true interests of individuals and of nations? How comes it to pass that you are almost the first among your writers who have given just notions of liberty, and who have exposed the falsehood of that threadbare sentiment of the greatest class of even the most republican writers, that liberty consists in being subject only to laws, as if a man oppressed by an unjust law was free? This would not be true, even if we suppose all the laws to be the work of the entire nation assembled; because, in fact, the individual has certain rights which the nation cannot take from him, but by violence, and an illegal use of force. Although you have had regard to this truth, and have explained yourself thereon, yet perhaps it merits your care to develop it more at large, considering the little attention which hath been paid to it by even the most zealous partisans of liberty.

It is also a strange thing that it should not be counted in England a trifling observation to say that one nation can never have a right to govern another; and that such a government could have no foundation but that of force, upon which also are supported robbery and tyranny. That the tyranny of a people is, of all known in the world, the most cruel and intolerable, leaving no remedy for the oppressed; whereas a single despot is at length stopped in his career by self-interest; he has the check of remorse, or that of public opinion; but a multitude makes no calculations, feels no remorse, and decrees to itself glory, when, in fact, it deserves the utmost disgrace.

Events are to the English nation a terrible commentary upon your book. For some months they have been falling headlong with accelerated rapidity. The knot is untied in regard to America. Lo! she is independent irrecoverably. Will she be free and happy? Will this new people, situated so advantageously to give the world the example of a constitution wherein man may enjoy all his rights, exercise freely his whole faculties, and be governed only by nature, by reason, and by justice, know how to form such a constitution—know how to fix it upon everlasting foundations, by guarding against all causes of division and corruption, which would sap it by degrees and overturn it?

I am not satisfied, I own, with any constitutions which have as yet been framed by the different American States. You blame with reason that of Pennsylvania, for exacting a religious test upon admission into the representative body. It is much worse in others. There is one of them, I think that of the Jerseys, which requires ....

I see in the greatest number an unreasonable imitation of the usages of England. Instead of bringing all the authorities into one, that of the nation, they have established different bodies, a house of representatives, a council, a governor, because England has a house of commons, a house of lords, and a king. They undertake to balance these different authorities, as if the same equilibrium of powers which has been thought necessary to balance the enormous preponderance of royalty, could be of any use in republics, formed upon the equality of all the citizens; and as if every article which constitutes different bodies, was not a source of divisions. By striving to prevent imaginary dangers, they have created real ones. They wish to have nothing to fear from the clergy, and yet unite them under the barrier of a common proscription. By rendering them ineligible, they become formed into a body, and such a one as is foreign to the state. Why should one citizen, who has the same interest as others in the common defence of liberty and property, be excluded from contributing towards it his genius and virtues, because he is of a profession in which genius and virtue are essentials? The clergy are only dangerous when they compose a body in the state, when they conceive themselves to have rights and interests as a body; or when it has been devised to have a religion established by law, as if men could have any right or any interest in regulating each other's consciences; as if an individual could sacrifice to civil society those opinions to which he thinks his eternal salvation depends, or as if mankind were to be saved or damned by the lump. Wherever true toleration, that is to say, the absolute incompetency of government over the conscience of individuals, is established, there an ecclesiastic, when he is admitted into the national assembly, is but a citizen; when he is excluded from it, he becomes again an ecclesiastic.

I do not perceive that there has been sufficient care to reduce to the lowest possible number the kinds of business which the government of each state is to manage; or to separate the object of legislation from those of the general and from those of the particular and local assemblies, which, by performing all the functions of detail in government, may free the general assemblies from engaging therein, and so to take from the members of these latter all means, and, perhaps, all desire to abuse an authority, which would only be occupied about objects general in their nature, and, therefore, unconnected with the little passions which agitate mankind.

Nor do I perceive that due attention has been paid to the great distinction, and the only one founded in nature, between two classes of men. I mean those who are proprietors in lands and those who are not; to their interests, and, consequently, to their different rights, with respect to legislation, to the administration of justice and of the police, to the contribution for public expenses, and to their employments.

No fixed principle is established in regard to imposts. Each state is supposed to be at liberty to tax itself at pleasure, and to lay its taxes upon persons, consumptions, or importations, that is to say, to erect an interest contrary to that of the other states.

They suppose in all the states, that they have a right to regulate commerce. They even authorize the executive bodies or the governors to prohibit the exportation of certain products upon particular occasions; so far are they from seeing that the law of entire liberty of all commerce is a corollary of the right of property; so far are they still involved in the mists of European illusions.

In the general union of the states with one another, I do not see a coalition, a melting of all the parts together, so as to make the body one and homogeneous. It is only an aggregate of parts, always too separate, and which have a continual tendency to divide themselves, from the diversity of their laws, their manners, their opinions ; from the inequality of their future progress. It is only a copy of the republic of Holland, and this had no occasion, like that of America, to dread the possible growth of any one of its provinces. This whole edifice has been supported, until now, upon the false basis of very ancient and very vulgar policy; upon the prejudice which nations, which provinces may have, concerning interests as a province or a nation, different from those which individuals have of being free, and defending their properties against robbers and conquerors;—a pretended interest in carrying on more commerce than others, not in buying merchandise of foreigners, but in forcing these to consume our productions and the works of our manufacturers; a pretended interest in having more extensive territory, in acquiring such and such a province, such and such an island, such and such a town; an interest in inspiring other nations with dread ; an interest in excelling them in the glory of arms, or that of arts and sciences.

Each of these prejudices is cherished in Europe, because the ancient rivalry of nations and the ambition of princes obliges all states to be in arms, for defence against their armed neighbors, and to regard a military force as the principal object of government. Such is the good fortune of America, that she cannot have, for a long time, an external enemy to fear, if she does not become self-divided; therefore she may and ought to estimate at their true value those pretended interests, those grounds of discord, which are all that endanger her liberty. The sacred principle of freedom of commerce being considered as the necessary consequence of the right of property, all the pretended interests of trade vanish before it. The pretended interest of possessing more or less territory vanishes also, when the territory is justly considered as not belonging to nations, but to the individual proprietors of the soil; and when the question, whether such a canton or such a village ought to belong to such a province, or such a state, is not decided by the pretended interest of that province or that state, but by the interest which the inhabitants of the canton or village have in assembling themselves to transact their affairs in places the most convenient of access; when that interest, being measured by the length or shortness of the way which a man can go to manage his most important, without too much injury to his common concerns, becomes the natural and physical measure of the extent of the jurisdiction of states, and establishes throughout an equilibrium of extent and power, which annihilates all the danger of inequality, and all pretensions of superiority.

The interest of being dreaded becomes null, when we make no demands, and when we are in a situation not to be attacked, even by a considerable force, with any hope of success.

The glory of arms cannot compare with the felicity of living in peace. The glory of arts and sciences belongs to every one who has spirit to acquire it. There is a harvest of this kind abundantly sufficient for everybody; the field of discoveries cannot be over-tilled, and ALL profit by the discoveries of all.

I imagine that the Americans have not felt these truths so strongly as they ought to be felt by them, for the security of the happiness of their posterity. I blame not their leaders. There was a necessity of providing against the exigencies of the moment, by some sort of union, against an enemy actually present and formidable; there was not time to correct the defects in constitutions, or in the models of the different states. But there should be a dread of perpetuating them, and an application to the means of uniting opinions and interests, and of reducing them to uniform principles throughout all the states.