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Front Page  Quotations Other Quotes Week of 1 January, 2013
About this Quotation:
This quotation is part of a series for “The Twelve Days of Christmas” on the theme of “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will towards men.” [Luke 2:14]
In the economic depression which followed the ending of hostilities against Napoleon in 1815 Jefferson was convinced that the bankrupt British government was ripe for revolution. It had undertaken all manner of “follies & frauds” which had lead to massive national debt and high taxation which were squandered in “fomenting and paying the wars of the world.” Jefferson likened the warlike British state to the frog in Aesop’s fable of the frog and the ox, in which the arrogant frog blew itself up in order to become as big as the ox. The British system of war, empire, and national debt was now so large that “their bloated system has burst” and the oppressed English people would soon seek a solution to their problems in abolishing their government of “kings, lords, & borough-commons.” Only with a more moderate and cheaper republican government could the English people “enjoy the fruits of their own labors in peace” and live in peace with the rest of the world. Jefferson also amusingly speculates what might happen to the King of England and the Prince Regent after the English revolution. He fantasizes with some relish how the King might be exiled to Indostan (India) and the Prince Regent to Botany Bay in Australia, where “imbecility might be governed by imbecility, and vice by vice; all in suit.” Jefferson concludes his letter with the hope that the whole world would pray for such a revolution in England so “that at length there may be ‘on earth peace, and good will towards men’.”
Other quotes from this week:Other quotes about War & Peace:- 2013: The 10th Day of Christmas: Richard Cobden on public opinion and peace on earth (c. 1865)
- 2012: The 7th Day of Christmas: Madison on “the most noble of all ambitions” which a government can have, of promoting peace on earth (1816)
- 2012: The 4th Day of Christmas: Dante Alighieri on human perfectibility and peace on earth (1559)
- 2012: The 3rd Day of Christmas: Erasmus stands against war and for peace on earth (16th century)
- 2012: The 2nd Day of Christmas: Petrarch on the mercenary wars in Italy and the need for peace on earth (1344)
- 2012: The 1st Day of Christmas: Jan Huss’ Christmas letters and his call for peace on earth (1412)
- 2012: The evangelist Luke “on earth peace, good will toward men” (1st century)
- 2012: Molinari on the elites who benefited from the State of War (1899)
- 2012: John Bright calls British foreign policy “a gigantic system of (welfare) for the aristocracy” (1858)
- 2012: James Madison on the necessity of separating the power of “the sword from the purse” (1793)
- 2012: Sumner’s vision of the American Republic was a parsimonious government which had little to do (1898)
- 2012: Sumner’s vision of the American Republic as a confederation of free and peaceful industrial commonwealths (1898)
- 2012: Cobden argues that the British Empire will inevitably suffer retribution for its violence and injustice (1853)
- 2012: John Bright on war as all the horrors, atrocities, crimes, and sufferings of which human nature on this globe is capable (1853)
- 2011: Cobden on the complicity of the British people in supporting war (1852)
- 2011: The City of War and the City of Peace on Achilles’ new shield (900 BC)
- 2011: Cobden on the principle of non-intervention in the affairs of other countries (1859)
- 2011: Cobden urges the British Parliament not to be the “Don Quixotes of Europe” using military force to right the wrongs of the world (1854)
- 2011: James Mill likens the expence and economic stagnation brought about by war to a “pestilential wind” which ravages the country (1808)
- 2011: The Duke of Burgundy asks the Kings of France and England why “gentle peace” should not be allowed to return France to its former prosperity (1599)
- 2011: Grotius on Moderation in Despoiling the Country of one’s Enemies (1625)
- 2011: Sumner and the Conquest of the United States by Spain (1898)
- 2010: Trenchard on the dangers posed by a standing army (1698)
- 2010: John Jay on the pretended as well as the just causes of war (1787)
- 2010: Vicesimus Knox on how the aristocracy and the “spirit of despotism” use the commemoration of the war dead for their own aims (1795)
- 2010: Milton warns Parliament’s general Fairfax that justice must break free from violence if “endless war” is to be avoided (1648)
- 2009: Madison argued that war is the major way by which the executive office increases its power, patronage, and taxing power (1793)
- 2009: Thomas Jefferson on the Draft as "the last of all oppressions" (1777)
- 2009: Daniel Webster thunders that the introduction of conscription would be a violation of the constitution, an affront to individual liberty, and an act of unrivaled despotism (1814)
- 2008: Alexander Hamilton warns of the danger to civil society and liberty from a standing army since “the military state becomes elevated above the civil” (1787)
- 2008: John Trenchard identifies who will benefit from any new war “got up” in Italy: princes, courtiers, jobbers, and pensioners, but definitely not the ordinary taxpayer (1722)
- 2008: Adam Smith observes that the true costs of war remain hidden from the taxpayers because they are sheltered in the metropole far from the fighting and instead of increasing taxes the government pays for the war by increasing the national debt (1776)
- 2007: James Madison on the need for the people to declare war and for each generation, not future generations, to bear the costs of the wars they fight (1792)
- 2007: Thomas Gordon on standing armies as a power which is inconsistent with liberty (1722)
- 2007: James Madison argues that the constitution places war-making powers squarely with the legislative branch; for the president to have these powers is the “the true nurse of executive aggrandizement” (1793)
- 2007: St. Thomas Aquinas discusses the three conditions for a just war (1265-74)
- 2006: A.V. Dicey noted that a key change in public thinking during the 19thC was the move away from the early close association between “peace and retrenchment” in the size of the government (1905)
- 2006: J.M. Keynes reflected on that “happy age” of international commerce and freedom of travel that was destroyed by the cataclysm of the First World War (1920)
- 2006: John Jay in the Federalist Papers discussed why nations go to war and concluded that it was not for justice but “whenever they have a prospect of getting any thing by it” (1787)
- 2005: Thomas Gordon gives a long list of ridiculous and frivolous reasons why kings and tyrants have started wars which have led only to the enslavement and destruction of their own people (1737)
- 2005: Hugo Grotius states that in an unjust war any acts of hostility done in that war are “unjust in themselves” (1625)
- 2005: Hugo Grotius discusses the just causes of going to war, especially the idea that the capacity to wage war must be matched by the intent to do so (1625)
- 2005: Herbert Spencer argued that in a militant type of society the state would become more centralised and administrative, as compulsory education clearly showed (1882)
- 2005: William Graham Sumner denounced America’s war against Spain and thought that “war, debt, taxation, diplomacy, a grand governmental system, pomp, glory, a big army and navy, lavish expenditures, political jobbery” would result in imperialsm (1898)
- 2005: Erasmus has the personification of Peace come down to earth to see with dismay how war ravages human societies (1521)
- 2004: Ludwig von Mises laments the passing of the Age of Limited Warfare and the coming of Mass Destruction in the Age of Statism and Conquest (1949)
- 2004: Thomas Hodgskin on the Suffering of those who had been Impressed or Conscripted into the despotism of the British Navy (1813)
- 2004: Robert Nisbet on the Shock the Founding Fathers would feel if they could see the current size of the Military Establishment and the National Government (1988)
- 2004: Adam Smith on the Sympathy one feels for those Vanquished in a battle rather than for the Victors (1762)
- 2004: Hugo Grotius on sparing Civilian Property from Destruction in Time of War (1625)
- 2004: Bernard Mandeville on how the Hardships and Fatigues of War bear most heavily on the “working slaving People” (1732)
1 January, 2013Read the full quote in context here. In the immediate aftermath of the end of the war against Napoleon Jefferson believed that the national debt and the serious economic recession in England would lead inevitably to the English people rising up and overthrowing their government as the Americans had done 40 years before. Only after this revolution had succeeded would the world finally be able to enjoy “on earth peace, and good will towards men”:
I turn, however, with some confidence to a different auxiliary, a revolution in England, now, I believe unavoidable. The crisis so long expected, inevitable as death, altho’ uncertain like that in it’s date, is at length arrived. Their government has acted over again the fable of the frog and the ox; and their bloated system has burst. They have spent the fee simple of the island in their inflated enterprises on the peace and happiness of the rest of mankind. Their debts have consequently accumulated by their follies & frauds, until the interest is equal to the aggregate rents of all the farms in their country. All these rents must go to pay interest, and nothing remains to carry on the government….
Our wish for the good of the people of England, as well as for our own peace, should be that they may be able to form for themselves such a constitution & government as may permit them to enjoy the fruits of their own labors in peace, instead of squandering them in fomenting and paying the wars of the world. But during these struggles, their artists are to become soldiers. Their manufactures to cease, their commerce sink and our intercourse with them be suspended. This interval of suspension may revive and fix our manufactures, wean us from British aperies, and give us a national & independent character of our own. I cannot say that all this will be, but that it may be; and it ought to be supplicated from heaven by the prayers of the whole world that at length there may be “on earth peace, and good will towards men.” No country, more than your native one, ought to pray & be prepared for this. I wish them success, and to yourself health and prosperity.
The full passage from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):TO WILLIAM SAMPSON, Monticello, Jan. 26, 1817.
Dear Sir,
—I have read with great satisfaction the eloquent pamphlet you were so kind as to send me, and sympathise with every line of it. I was once a doubter whether the labor of the Cultivator, aided by the creative powers of the earth itself, would not produce more value than that of the manufacturer, alone and unassisted by the dead subject on which he acted? In other words, whether the more we could bring into action of the energies of our boundless territory, in addition to the labor of our citizens, the more would not be our gain? But the inventions of latter times, by labor-saving machines, do as much now for the manufacturer, as the earth for the cultivator. Experience too has proved that mine was but half the question. The other half is whether Dollars & cents are to be weighed in the scale against real independence? The whole question then is solved; at least so far as respects our wants.
I much fear the effect on our infant establishments, of the policy avowed by Mr. Brougham, and quoted in the pamphlet. Individual British merchants may lose by the late immense importations; but British commerce & manufactures, in the mass, will gain by beating down the competition of ours, in our own markets against this policy, our protecting duties are as nothing, our patriotism less. I turn, however, with some confidence to a different auxiliary, a revolution in England, now, I believe unavoidable. The crisis so long expected, inevitable as death, altho’ uncertain like that in it’s date, is at length arrived. Their government has acted over again the fable of the frog and the ox; and their bloated system has burst. They have spent the fee simple of the island in their inflated enterprises on the peace and happiness of the rest of mankind. Their debts have consequently accumulated by their follies & frauds, until the interest is equal to the aggregate rents of all the farms in their country. All these rents must go to pay interest, and nothing remains to carry on the government. The possession alone of their lands is now in the nominal owner; the usufruct in the public creditors. Their people too taxed up to 14. or 15. out of 16. hours of daily labor, dying of hunger in the streets & fields. The survivors can see for themselves the alternative only of following them or of abolishing their present government of kings, lords, & borough-commons, and establishing one in some other form, which will let them live in peace with the world. It is not easy to foresee the details of such a revolution, but I should not wonder to see the deportation of their king to Indostan, and of their Prince Regent to Botany Bay. There, imbecility might be governed by imbecility, and vice by vice; all in suit. Our wish for the good of the people of England, as well as for our own peace, should be that they may be able to form for themselves such a constitution & government as may permit them to enjoy the fruits of their own labors in peace, instead of squandering them in fomenting and paying the wars of the world. But during these struggles, their artists are to become soldiers. Their manufactures to cease, their commerce sink and our intercourse with them be suspended. This interval of suspension may revive and fix our manufactures, wean us from British aperies, and give us a national & independent character of our own. I cannot say that all this will be, but that it may be; and it ought to be supplicated from heaven by the prayers of the whole world that at length there may be “on earth peace, and good will towards men.” No country, more than your native one, ought to pray & be prepared for this. I wish them success, and to yourself health and prosperity.
[More works by Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826) and on The Founding Fathers of the U.S. Constitution] |
