provided a link to www.JeffersonLeadership.com is included.
Category Archives: Natural rights
Thomas Jefferson on capital punishment
… capital punishments, which exterminate instead of reforming … should be the last melancholy resource against those whose existence is become inconsistent with the safety of their fellow citizens … cruel and sanguinary [bloodthirsty] laws defeat their own purpose …no crime shall be henceforth punished by deprivation of life or limb except …
If a man do levy war against the Commonwealth or be adherent to the enemies of the commonwealth giving to them aid or comfort … the person so convicted shall suffer death by hanging, and shall forfeit his lands and goods to the Commonwealth.
If any person commit Petty treason, or a husband murder his wife, a parent his child, or a child his parent, he shall suffer death by hanging, and his body be delivered to Anatomists to be dissected.
Whosoever committeth murder by poisoning shall suffer death by poison.
Whosoever committeth murder by way of duel, shall suffer death by hanging; and if he were the challenger, his body, after death, shall be gibbeted [displayed publicly] …Whosoever shall commit murder in any other way shall suffer death by hanging.… Whenever sentence of death shall have been pronounced against any person for treason or murder, execution shall be done on the next day …
You can read the full Bill here.
A Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, 1779
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
Jefferson spent the Revolutionary War years helping revise Virginia’s colonial statutes into ones more suited for a modern, free and independent state. These excerpts come from his “A Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments.”
Though I can’t find the documentation now, I have read that Virginia had many capital offenses, perhaps two dozen for which a man could be put to death. Jefferson’s proposal restricted that harshest punishment for just two crimes, treason and murder.
The remainder of the bill outlined lesser offenses and their penalties. As the title of the bill described, the purpose was to make the punishment fit the crime.
Traitors would forfeit all their estate to the government. A murderer’s estate was to divided, half the the victim’s family, half to his heirs.
Jefferson’s bill was considered too lenient and not adopted. Nearly 20 years later, the Virginia legislature did restrict capital punishment to these two offenses.
Learn more about justice & Thomas Jefferson.
(Or almost anything else & Thomas Jefferson!)
Invite him to speak to your audience.
Call Patrick Lee, 573-657-2739
Thomas Jefferson on “laws of necessity”
A strict observance of the written law is … one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.
Thomas Jefferson to J. B. Colvin, 1810, 5797
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
Jefferson was a strong supporter of written laws, equally applied to all. Obeying those laws was a compelling obligation of its citizens and necessary for the preservation of a civil and republican society.
Even so, self-preservation or national preservation (laws of necessity) were more important. Taking another’s life in self-defense might be an example of the first, defying the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 an example of the second.
Jefferson is often criticized for going beyond the Constitution in his purchase of Louisiana. He admitted doing so but claimed the future good of the country and its citizens demanded it (NOT having France strangle trade at New Orleans, interfere with traffic on the Mississippi, or be our western neighbor forever). He might have called that action a law of necessity.
Speaking of New Orleans, on this date, February 27, 1827, just months after Jefferson’s death, the first celebration of Mardi Gras was held in that city.
Reprint: Thomas Jefferson on a free black man
In recognition of yesterday’s Martin Luther King Day, please allow me to reprint this post from last July, about Benjamin Banneker.
We have now in the United States a negro [Benjamin Banneker], the son of a black man born in Africa, and a black woman born in the United States, who is a very respectable mathematician. I procured him to be employed under one of our chief directors in laying out the new Federal city on the Potomac, and in the intervals of his leisure, while on that work, he made an almanac for the next year, which he sent me in his own handwriting, and which I enclose to you. I have seen very elegant solutions of geometrical problems by him. Add to this that he is a very worthy and respectable member of society. He is a free man. I shall be delighted to see these instances of moral eminence so multiplied as to prove that the want of talents, observed in them, is merely the effect of their degraded condition, and not proceeding from any difference in the structure of the parts on which intellect depends.
Thomas Jefferson to Marquis De Condorcet, 1791, 744
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
In his book, Notes on Virginia, written nine years earlier, Jefferson noted a number of limitations among his servants at Monticello. Banneker was unlike any of them. Seeing Banneker’s potential, Jefferson provided for his employment in the design of the new national capital, Washington City.
Jefferson hoped to see more talented people like this surveyor and mathematician, as proof that any weaknesses among the African race stemmed from the degradation of slavery and not on any natural limitations.
An added note:
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in his autobiography of watching all three of his children graduate from the College of William and Mary, the same school Jefferson attended 250 years before. He wondered what Jefferson would think of that in the late 20th century.
Powell called the former President “an uneasy slaveholder.” That is the best, shortest and most even-handed description I’ve read about Jefferson and the slavery that conflicted him.
Hear Thomas Jefferson speak on race and slavery. You may be greatly surprised!
Call Patrick Lee, 573-657-2739
Thomas Jefferson on equal rights vs. favoritism
Is a little favoritism OK? Does it lead to a lot?
The general law prescribes an open sale, where all citizens may compete, on an equal footing for any lot of land which attracts their choice. To dispense with that, in any particular case, requires a special law of Congress, and to special legislation, we are generally averse, lest a principle of favoritism should creep in, and prevent that of equal rights. It has been done however, on some occasions, where a special national advantage has been expected to outweigh that of adherence to the general rule.
To George Flower, 1817, http://1.usa.gov/s68JFV
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
Today’s post is from the same letter as the last post on December 12, about non-English speaking immigrants. Buried in the text of that 2 ½ page handwritten letter was this interesting nugget.
Apparently, Flower inquired of Jefferson about some special consideration for Illinois land he hoped to purchase for a colony of English farmer immigrants. Jefferson declined to get involved and referred Flower to the federal land office. Then, the former President wrote the comments above. Let’s summarize those comments:
1. The law allows all land purchasers to compete on equal footing.
2. Going beyond that law requires an act of Congress.
3. Americans tend not to favor special legislation, because
a. It opens the door to showing favoritism.
b. It subverts the principle of equal rights.
4. However, if a “special national advantage” (not an individual or group advantage but one that could benefit the nation, i.e. all its citizens) outweighed the general principle of the law, a Congressional exception by law could be granted.
Jefferson cited an agricultural exception given to Swiss immigrants on the Ohio River and another for Frenchmen on the Tombigbee River. He didn’t know whether Flower’s “improved system of farming” would merit similar treatment.
Items 1, 2, & 3 summarize what Jefferson would call “republican” principles: equal opportunity and treatment for all, no favoritism and the rule of law. Item 4 recognizes Jefferson’s practical side: We are prepared to change the law if it will benefit everyone to do so.
Mr. Jefferson will regard each of your audience members equally and with respect,
be they paupers or kings!
Call Patrick Lee, 573-657-2739
Thomas Jefferson on four ways to defeat aristocracy
How would you have removed “privilege” from American society in 1780?
I considered four of these bills [of the Revised Code of Virginia] … as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of ancient or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican.
- The repeal of the laws of entail would prevent the accumulation and perpetuation of wealth, in select families …
- The abolition of primogeniture, and equal partition of inheritances removed the feudal and unnatural distinctions which made one member of every family rich, and all the rest poor …
- The restoration of the rights of conscience relieved the people from taxation for the support of a religion not theirs; for the Establishment was truly of the religion of the rich, the dissenting sects being entirely composed of the less wealthy people …
- the bill for a general education, would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government …
All this would be effected without the violation of a single natural right of any one individual citizen.
Thomas Jefferson’s Autobiography, 1821, 479
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
As a revisor of statutes in Virginia in the late 1770s, Jefferson envisioned laws “truly republican,” ones that would remove artificial distinctions between individuals, facilitate a society of opportunity, and secure a government chosen by a well-educated citizenry
A summary of these four points:
1. Repeal laws of entail, which dictated how family estates could be passed on
2. Abolish primogeniture, which allowed the firstborn to receive the entire inheritance
3. Eliminate state-supported religion
4. Public funding of a general education for all free children, leading to a well-informed citizenry
Thomas Jefferson on class distinctions in Europe
What happens when human dignity is trampled?
A due horror of the evils which flow from these distinctions could be excited in Europe only, where the dignity of man is lost in arbitrary distinctions, where the human species is classed into several stages of degradation, where the many are crushed under the weight of the few, and where the order established can present to the contemplation of a thinking being no other picture than that of God Almighty and his angels trampling under foot the host of the damned.
Thomas Jefferson to M. de Meunier, 1786, 469
Patrick Lee’s explanation
During his five years as Ambassador to France (1784-1789), Jefferson became keenly aware of the oppression throughout Europe of the many by a favored few . He couldn’t have described his revulsion in more vivid terms. He opposed anything in America that even hinted of class distinction.
Thomas Jefferson on limiting natural rights
Can your God-given natural rights ever be limited?
Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will; collections of men by that of their majority; for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men … This, like all other natural rights, may be abridged or modified in its exercise by their own consent, or by the law of those who depute them, if they meet in the right of others; but as far as it is not abridged or modified, they retain it as a natural right, and may exercise it in what form they please, either exclusively by themselves, or in association with others, or by others altogether, as they shall agree.
Thomas Jefferson’s “Opinion on the Residence Bill,” 1790, 107
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
In simpler words, natural rights are bestowed by nature and belong to everyone. They include the right to self-government. Natural rights may be modified only when a majority of representatives in free assembly agree to do so. Even then, those modifications cannot be in violation of the Constitution. If not modified, the right to self-government remains with the individual.
The Residence Bill provided for moving the national capital from its 1790 location in New York to Philadelphia for 10 years. In 1800, the capital was to be moved to its permanent location, a site to be determined along the Potomac River. Jefferson wrote this opinion as Secretary of State for President Washington.
