- I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush
in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already
to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to
the laws of our country. - Thomas Jefferson
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- Here is the entire Jefferson letter...
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- "I received your favor of Oct. 16, at this place,
where I pass much of my time, very distant from Monticello. I am quite
astonished at the idea which seems to have got abroad; that I propose publishing
something on the subject of religion, and this is said to have arisen from
a letter of mine to my friend Charles Thompson, in which certainly there
is no trace of such an idea.
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- When we see religion split into so many thousands of
sects, and I may say Christianity itself divided into its thousands also,
who are disputing, anathematizing and where the laws permit burning and
torturing one another for abstractions which no one of them understand,
and which are indeed beyond the comprehension of the human mind, into which
of the chambers of this Bedlam would a [torn] man wish to thrust himself.
The sum of all religion as expressed by it's best preacher, "fear
god and love thy neighbor" contains no mystery, needs no explanation.
But this wont do.
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- It gives no scope to make dupes; priests could not live
by it. Your idea of the moral obligations of governments are perfectly
correct. The man who is dishonest as a statesman would be a dishonest man
in any station. It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human
beings collected together are not under the same moral laws which bind
each of them separately. It is a great consolation to me that our government,
as it cherishes most it's duties to its own citizens, so is it the most
exact in it's moral conduct towards other nations.
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- I do not believe that in the four administrations which
have taken place, there has been a single instance of departure from good
faith towards other nations. We may sometimes have mistaken our rights,
or made an erroneous estimate of the actions of others, but no voluntary
wrong can be imputed to us. In this respect England exhibits the most remarkable
phenomenon in the universe in the contrast between the profligacy of its
government and the probity of its citizens. And accordingly it is now exhibiting
an example of the truth of the maxim that virtue & interest are inseparable.
It ends, as might have been expected, in the ruin of its people, but this
ruin will fall heaviest, as it ought to fall on that hereditary aristocracy
which has for generations been preparing the catastrophe.
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- I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush
in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already
to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to
the laws of our country. Present me respectfully to Mrs. Logan and accept
yourself my friendly and respectful salutations."
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- Thomas Jefferson in a letter to George Logan dated
12 November 1816
- http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=
show.php%3Ftitle=808&layout=html#chapter_88352
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