Jefferson notes on Virginia, Query 19 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, it is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistence, depend for it on casualties and caprice of customers. Dependence begets sub servienceand venality suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any State to that of its husbandman, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption. While we have land to labor then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench, or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry; but, for the general operations of manufacture, let our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles. The loss by the transportation of commodities across the Atlantic will be made up in happiness and permanence of government. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body.
No comments:
Post a Comment