Interviews With The Founders

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.” — The Federalist Number 51

“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast view beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating His laws.” — John Adams

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” — Gerald Ford, The 38th United States President

Thomas Jefferson: I stated in my first inaugural address that a vital premise of government is “economy in the public expense.” In my second inaugural address, I directly addressed the issue of public debt, stating that it is “encroaching on the rights of future generations, by burdening them with the debts of the past.”

Also, in my first inaugural address, after many years in public service and after having spent many years overseas as a diplomat for the American cause, I told my fellow citizens that “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 [happiness].”

President Thomas Jefferson: I once told James Madison “no generation may contract debts greater than may be paid during its own existence... with respect to future debts, would it not be wise & 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”

I was a champion of cutting government waste, and I pointed out my efforts in my second inaugural address: “The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These, covering our land with officers and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which once entered is scarcely to be restrained from reaching successively every article of property and produce. If among these taxes some minor ones fell which had not been inconvenient, it was because their amount would not have paid the officers who collected them, and because, if they had any merit, the State authorities might adopt them instead of others less approved.”

“The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.”

"And I sincerely believe...that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity in the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes, a principle which, if acted on, would save one half the wars of the world.”

“I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.”

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude [emphasis added].”

President Thomas Jefferson: Please allow me to cite from a letter I wrote to Mr. Joseph Cabell that outlines my ideas on the division of state and federal powers: “Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.”

I expressed further my concerns about an ever-growing federal government: “What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate.”

“Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste."

“Were we directed from Washington when to sow, & when to reap, we should soon want bread. It is by this partition of cares, descending in gradation from general to particular, that the mass of human affairs may be best managed for the good and prosperity of all.”

.....Finally, near the end of my natural life, I restated my position on the role of the federal government in my 1825 “Draft Declaration and Protest of the Commonwealth of Virginia, on the Principles of the Constitution of the United States of America, and on the Violations of them" when I wrote that one of the greatest calamities that could befall the USA would be “submission to a government of unlimited powers.”

President Thomas Jefferson: Oh yes, most definitely because “it is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected. Were not this great country already divided into States, that division must be made that each might do for itself what concerns itself directly and what it can so much better do than a distant authority. Every state again is divided into counties, each to take care of what lies within its local bounds; each county again into townships or wards, to manage more minute details; and every ward into farms, to be governed each by its individual proprietor."

“The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.”

Should we “commit to the governor and council the management of all our farms, our mills and merchants' stores? No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to. One method of assault may be to effect in the forms of the Constitution alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown... Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian.”

“If, in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the constitution designates.—But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.—The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield [emphasis added].”

“If Congress can apply money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may establish teachers in every State, county, and parish, and pay them out of the public Treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post roads. In short, everything, from the highest object of State legislation, down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare.”

James Madison: Oh, most definitely yes!

“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general.”