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Saturday, April 21, 2012

Jefferson On Taxation And Debt

"I am not among those who fear the people.They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.And to preserve their independence,We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.We must make our election between economy and libertyor profusion and servitude.
If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat andin our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors andour amusements, for our calling and our creedsas the people of England are, our people, like them,must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four,give the earnings of fifteen of theseto the government for their debts and daily expenses;and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread,we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes;have no time to think,no means of calling our miss-managers to accountbut be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselvesto rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.
Our land-holders, too, like theirs,retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirsbut held really in trust for the treasury,must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries,and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile,and the glory of the nation.
This example reads to us the salutary lesson,that private fortunes are destroyed by publicas well as by private extravagances.
And this is the tendency of all human governments.A departure from principle in one instancebecomes a precedent for the second;that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery,to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering.
Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia  [war of all against all - Ed.] ,which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world,have mistaken for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man.
And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt.Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression."-- Thomas Jefferson(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US PresidentSource: Letter to Samuel Kercheval, Monticello, July 12, 1816

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like Thomas Jefferson is warning us about the schoolteachers pension shift - (debt), and the Maintenance of Effort.

Anonymous said...

Well...what he just described is that when those things come to pass that bring us to where we are, the freedom and liberty that our founders fought and died for no longer exists. Stripped away from us by tyrants. What does that leave us with? How should we get it back?