Jefferson and the Aristocracy
How Cicero’s Writing Influenced Jefferson’s View of Hereditary Power
Historians attribute the majority of the ideological roots of America’s founders to European Enlightenment thought as well as English opposition party writings. However, in at least one place, it is difficult to connect the founders’ ideals and modern European thought – Thomas Jefferson’s strong statements regarding the dangers of a hereditary American aristocracy. The idea of noble birth rite and hereditary power were firmly entrenched in 17th and 18th century European thought and to advocate against them would have been controversial if not outright dangerous. Jefferson however, experiences no reticence in condemning the institution and introduced laws aimed at destroying it. Stating in an 1813 letter to John Adams, “These laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the root of Pseudoaristocracy.”
Jefferson: What I saw at the Forum
Jefferson, as with the other founders, had studied the history of Rome almost from the time he started his earliest education. The fact that the American government today looks much like the mixed constitution state (executive, senate and a representative lower house) of republican Rome should not be surprising given the founders ardent study of it.
But still, the Roman republic fell and was replaced by a dictatorship. The cause of this democratic failure would certainly need to be addressed so as to prevent it from happening in the United States. When Jefferson looked for answers, he found Cicero. Marcus Tullius Cicero was one of Rome’s most influential politicians in the late republic and its most prolific writer.
Jefferson’s interrogation of Cicero was revealing. Although Cicero does put some of the blame for the fall of the republic on Julius Caesar, he delivers the brunt to the aristocratical Senate. Men of birth and wealth, possessing a sense of entitlement, corrupted by greed, allowed themselves to be bribed into complicity with a dictator. Cicero repeated this theme in his letters, speeches and in his late philosophical works.
Not in this Republic
Well, if a corrupted aristocracy helped bring down the Roman Republic, it was not something Jefferson wanted in his new republic. After signing the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson returned to Virginia where he had been elected to the state legislature. In one of his first acts there he introduced a bill to end the laws of primogeniture and entails. Primogeniture – Latin for first born – required that all of a man’s wealth be passed to his eldest son upon his death. Entails stipulated that this requirement applied to the land in perpetuity. Over time this practice ensured the slow accumulation of great wealth by a few the families who had lived in the state the longest. These families formed what was a called a ‘Patrician Order” by Jefferson. And where the King picked his advisors to administer the colony. This system established the conditions favorable for the formation of a permanent aristocracy in Virginia.
Jefferson was successful in getting his bill passed. And, while today it is a little noted event, to Jefferson it was an important act in his political life. In his autobiography he wrote:
"To annul this privilege, and instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger, than benefit, to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society, & scattered with equal hand through all it's conditions, was deemed essential to a well ordered republic."
Cicero would have been proud.
Sources:
The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams. Edited by Lester J. Cappon. 2 vols. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1959.
Syme, Ronald. The Roman Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
MacKendrick, Paul. Karen Lee Singh coll. The Philosophical Books of Cicero. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd., 1989.
The Works of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Paul Leicester Ford. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1904.
The Jefferson Memorial
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