Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete F.
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.
Most of us would agree with Jefferson that the Constitution is not a religious document. But he also believed that until a Constitution is replaced, it is the law of the land or it is worthless.
They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.
Jefferson is being a bit hyperbolic here. I don't know of anyone with an acceptable amount of intelligence who ascribes anything to previous generations as being more than human. And if he is implying that the wisdom of a previous generation is not relevant to the next, then how much credence should be placed on what he says here by the generations following him? And the Constitution does have a provision for amendment.
I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects.
Hence, the amendment clause in the Constitution and the provision for a constitutional convention to change it.
But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.
Institutions do change. And more and more rapidly with advancing technology and "the progress of the human mind." So fast now, indeed, that new constitutions would have to be drawn every decade and soon after in single digit years if they had to be discarded because of Jefferson's noted changes. But basic human nature changes far more slowly than surface societal changes. The history and experience Jefferson admires tells us it takes thousands of years for it to change (if it ever has), so the principles founded on that nature will still apply. And they should be applicable and even in small ways adaptable to institutional and circumstantial changes. The Constitution as written still applies to human liberty.
Of course, if liberty, individual freedom itself, has become defunct, as some would have it, then a benevolent dictatorship might be better. But then, if human beings have any integrity of self, the nature of the dictators had well better be evolved into some immutable and selfless honesty, honor, and patriarchal/matriarchal protector and nurturer of the people or there will be more revolutions. Or we might somehow evolve into fully libertarian societies with no government structures at all
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We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
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The style and function of the coat may change, but it still will be a coat. We have not yet evolved to the point where we no longer need or wear coats.
Jefferson also said: The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. Which seems to contradict the surface context (and your silently implied interpretation) of the Jefferson quote.
He also said these very interesting things about government which, after the over two centuries since he said them, they, contrary to how some would interpret your Jefferson quote, still apply and to which our Constitution has answers:
When all government ...in little as in great things... shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years.
Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.
I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.
No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.
What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.
Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.
The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.
“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”