Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1 (wikilinked).djvu/158

1800. world should be led by interest to respect and at length to imitate. As he conceived a true American policy, war was a blunder, an unnecessary risk; and even in case of robbery and aggression the United States, he believed, had only to stand on the defensive in order to obtain justice in the end. He would not consent to build up a new nationality merely to create more navies and armies, to perpetuate the crimes and follies of Europe; the central government at Washington should not be permitted to indulge in the miserable ambitions that had made the Old World a hell, and frustrated the hopes of humanity.

With these humanitarian ideas which passed be­yond the bounds of nationality, Jefferson held other views which seemed narrower than ordinary provin­cialism. Cities, manufactures, mines, shipping, and accumulation of capital led, in his opinion, to corrup­tion and tyranny.


 * "Generally speaking," said he, in his only elaborate work, the Notes on Virginia, "the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any State to that of its husbandmen is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good enough barom­eter whereby to measure its degree of corruption. . . . Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue."

This doctrine was not original with Jefferson, but its application to national affairs on a great scale