Jefferson Favors the Pursuit of Agriculture

and preserving it from the insidious schemes of enemies without or within. Every consideration of sound policy dictated that the country should maintain its ascendency.

Probably it was not known to the delegate who put forth these ideas that they have the authority of Jefferson's name; but had the speaker read the nineteenth query in Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, he would have felt strengthened. "Those who labor in the earth," writes Jefferson, " 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. *** Dependence begets subservience, and venality suffocates the germ of virtue and prepares for it tools for the designs of ambition. Thus, the natural progress and consequence of the arts have sometimes perhaps been retarded by accidental circumstances; but, generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any State to that of its husbandmen 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 on which to labor, then let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at the workshop or twirling the distaff. Carpenters, ma

sons, and smiths are needed in husbandry, but for

the general operations of manufacture let our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there than bring the latter to the 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 add to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of the people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in this is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitutions."

Among the dominating political ideas in American history few have received wider acceptation than those of Jefferson on the relative worth of agriculture and manufactures in the evolution of democracy. Accepted without modification, they would have held America in a purely agricultural condition. Agriculture and manufactures together have determined the evolution of our institutions. With agricultural institutions slavery was identified; but it could never be identified with manufactures. Varied economic interests ultimately compelled the abolition of slavery. The most eloquent defenders of slavery were fond of describing the agricultural condition as the ideal state of society. In slave-holding States the proportion of slaves to the white population was always smaller in cities than in the country. This difference was analogous to that which existed

Congested Power in Large Cities

between the highland and lowland regions of slave States-as in Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The slave-holding States steadily and successfully resisted all efforts to introduce manufactures among them, and as steadily sought to maintain an agricultural homogeneity, which, it must be admitted, was economically as inconsistent as it was unnatural. The economic variations determined by the conflicting interests of city and country, of highland regions and lowland regions, explain many provisions in the constitutions of the commonwealths.

So, on the 3d of February, Beatty, of La Fourche Interior, in defending the federal apportionment, claimed that it was demanded by the industrial condition of Louisiana, as seen in the almost antagonistic interests of New Orleans and the country. True, the city by such an apportionment would possess less influence than by an apportionment according to the number of white electors exclusively. In all countries the influence of large cities had been detrimental to the States in which they were situated. Paris had controlled the destinies of France. It was by the motley and excitable population of that city that the horrors of the French Revolution had been perpetrated. There, revolution had been succeeded by revolution until Napoleon had placed the imperial crown upon his own head. Paris had followed the precedent of Rome, which aspired to govern the world. The slightest convulsion in the imperial city was felt in the remotest province. At last, by her over

grown and pampered weight, Rome fell to the lowest scale of degradation and impotence. Had the power of the Roman Republic been diffused throughout the empire, instead of being concentrated in the city of Rome, the republic would have possessed a recuperative energy capable of withstanding the shock of the Northern barbari

Louisiana should profit by the experience of the past. The country should be placed beyond the corroding influence of the city. The republics of ancient Greece, controlled by their cities, had fallen a prey to luxury and licentiousness. Louisiana should pursue any system that would diffuse power throughout the State, instead of concentrating it in any one part, especially in the city. It was dangerous to republican liberty to place power in the hands of the few. On the basis of the free white population, New Orleans would elect one-third of the Assembly, and at the rate of increase of that class of population, in a few years would choose one-half of it. Under these circumstances, the federal basis was the correct one. Slaves were not merely property, but a portion of the population as well as labor of the State. the laboring element, they were the exclusive source of wealth. If the free white population was adopted as the basis, taking into consideration the fact that the slave population of New Orleans was fast diminishing, it was not impossible that in a few years, without detriment to her own interests, New Orleans might, perhaps, carry the abolition of slavery. The number of Representatives chosen on the

As

The Negro Beyond the Pale of Politics

federal basis should be fixed every ten years by the State Legislature, and never be fewer than thirty nor more than one hundred.

To this proposition it was objected that representation should be equal and uniform throughout the State, and be forever regulated by the number of qualified electors, using the language of the constitution of 1812. The people have a right to govern themselves, and by the people was meant the free white males past twenty-one years of age. This excluded slaves, because, from necessity as well as from choice, slaves were regarded as property. They had never been enumerated as political persons. Policy also compelled the exclusion of free persons of color from participation in political rights, and it might compel their exclusion from the State. It was wholly irrelevant to cavil against the exclusion of negroes, because minors and women were excluded. These were represented by their actual or selected protectors, just as the Legislature represented the will of the people, the executive their power, and the judiciary their reason and justice. It had been urged that taxation should regulate representation; the parish paying the greatest amount of taxes to have the most Representatives. But taxation being laid on property and profitable professions, it was difficult to determine accurately who paid the tax. Certainly they who paid the money into the hands of the tax-collector were not the only ones who suffered the burdens of government. All classes of society contributed to the treasury. Property afforded no