“… government is best which governs least;

and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.”

Henry David Thoreau

I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, – “That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure. Continue reading →

Frederic Bastiat’s “The Law,” written near the end of his life in 1850 France, is a symphony of ideas.

My high school economic students are reading their first book of the year, one that is close to the hearts of liberty lovers: Frederic Bastiat’s The Law, written near the end of his life in 1850 France. This is my third year teaching it to freshmen, and I find it more and more excellent every time I read it. The words and arguments come off the pages like notes and melodies, and it feels like a symphony of ideas.

Natural Law
Its first movement is powerful and audacious, beginning with a blasting fanfare of our natural, God-given rights. From nature we are granted life—physical, intellectual, and moral. Life alone cannot sustain itself, so we must apply the talents and faculties given to us by nature to develop, preserve, and perfect our lives. Continue reading →

“Think of your forefathers and of your posterity.”

~ Prologue ~
Plymouth, Massachusetts, December 22, 1802 – “Man lives his highest destiny in the continuity of his interests as a unit within his family, his community and his country,” said Senator-elect John Quincy Adams in an oration marking the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims here almost two centuries ago.

It seemed as though Mr. Adams, from his vantage point of political privilege as son of the incumbent President, was voicing alarm at a general tone of self-seeking among our States and ourselves as individuals. He indicated strongly that perhaps we are falling into the pit of older societies, of using our great heritage for individual gain. Instead, he constrained his hearers to make their present activities a mark of devotion to the past and a foundation for the future of the whole of America. Continue reading →

WASHINGTON, D. C., March 4, 1801 – Thomas Jefferson took the oath of office as President of the United States in an atmosphere which prompted him to devote all of his eloquence to restoring unity among the country’s leaders lest they fall into the divisions of parties against which President Washington warned.

The words of his Inaugural Address were hopeful expressions of unity. The facts were greatly different, for John Adams today sulked in anger against the open revolt led by Mr. Jefferson himself which started the movement called popularly the Republicans, that won the majority of the electoral vote for Mr. Jefferson and lobbed Mr. Adams of a second term.

In fact, until the very hour of the clock arrived last night that ended the administration of President Adams, he occupied himself in filling vacancies in public offices with hard-shell Federalists who might be expected to thwart the more radical tendencies of the new men following Mr. Jefferson under the Republican banner.

Chief among these appointees is Mr. John Marshall, who within the past twenty-four hours was named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court-a conservative Virginian counted upon to check, at the bench of ultimate appeal for all laws, such radicalism as may be written by the new Administration into the country’s laws.

          President Thomas Jefferson

During the contest of opinion through which we have passed, the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely, and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will of course arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All too will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression.

Let us then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind, let us re- store to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect, that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little, if we countenance a political intolerance, as despotic, as wicked, and as capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some, and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety; but every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names, brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety I with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong; that this government is not strong enough. But would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear, that this government, the world’s best hope, may, by possibility, want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he then be trusted with the government of others? Or, have we found angels in the form of kings, to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Let us then, with courage and confidence, pursue our own federal and republican principles; our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradation of the others, possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation, entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisition of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them, enlightened by a benign religion, professed in deed and practised in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man, acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which, by all its dispensations, proves that it delights in the happiness of man here, and his greater happiness hereafter; with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government; and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

Postlogue:

                  Chief Justice John Marshall

This Inaugural Address by President Jefferson did not close the gap in political ranks. In fact, his election I marked the birth of the two-party system which, while he could not know it and despite Washington’s warnings, against such a decision, has become one of the great strengths of the American form of politics. For more than a century and a half, American politics have been planted upon the basic idea of responsible leadership by a majority party and the exercise of checks and balances by a responsible minority party; never a pluralty of parties that make possible grasp of leadership by a minority spokesman on the basis of deals with a host of minor parties. Such a system wrecked the French Fourth Republic.

As an echo of the Adams – Jefferson division, the United States won the service of John Marshall as Chief Justice for 35 years, in which time he made the reputation of probably the greatest man to hold that office.

His appointment as a result of John Adams temporary spite became perhaps the most notable action by that stern old New Englander.

            Inaugural Address, [March 4, 1801], reading copy, in Jefferson’s hand. | Library of Congress