of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honour and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter – with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens – 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 labour the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
To us, wearied by repetition at a time when democracy can feel old and worn, a claim to American superiority sounds arrogant. But in early American speeches this was a claim of hopeful naivety and youthful excitement in an era when democracy was a novel experiment at home and a rarity anywhere else. So look past that claim towards the really suggestive words here, which are ‘to close the circle of our felicities’. As well as begging the listener to pay attention, the phrase concludes a profound point: wise government is defined more by what it prevents than either what it does or what it permits. This passage could be read as the origin of the American suspicion of the encroachment of the federal government, and it is that too, but the point runs deeper. Perhaps the greatest achievement of democratic politics is that public authority is limited to create the space for private autonomy. It closes the circle of our felicities.
The circle closes here, though, over a dark question. It is inconceivable surely, as he drafted the speech in the two weeks before the Inauguration, that Jefferson did not reflect on his slaves. Not for them the bread they have earned. The fellow-feeling and empathy of the rest of this passage hardly seems consistent with such a blind spot, although we can also hear a vocabulary of politics that seems lost to us now. It would be a brave politician today who would wish for happiness and blessings, but it was an idiom that came easily to Jefferson and his peers. Political conversations are drier than they were and Jefferson has something to teach us. Blessings and happiness should find their way back into our rhetoric.
About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigour, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people – a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labour may be lightly burdened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.
This passage is the last word on democratic liberties. Try editing it. Try cutting. It is all but impossible to take out a single phrase without doing grievous harm to the whole. Jefferson provides the most comprehensive spoken list since Pericles of the attributes of democracy. This is democracy’s evergreen. It is a checklist of institutions and a standard against which to measure how close a nation approximates to the ideal of popular power. The most resonant phrase in the speech – ‘equal and exact justice for all men’ – is almost a direct quotation from the Funeral Oration of Pericles. The quotation is almost lost in the litany of virtues, but this is a supreme definition of minority rights which shines in the text today as much as it did then. Of course, it wasn’t exactly true. Not every person in America was a bearer of rights. But that does not mean this passage should be thought of as hypocritical. It’s not; it’s a statement of an ideal, a foundation myth and a utopian aspiration. As he did in the Declaration of Independence, when he simply asserted that all men were created equal and were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Jefferson is setting a standard. America didn’t meet it then; no nation does now. But the claim that liberal democracy represents the terminus of political philosophy rests on the list of popular freedoms contained in this passage. The political battle to instantiate them in existing societies goes on but, philosophically, this is the last word.
I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favour which bring him into it … I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts … Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will, I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make. And may that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favourable issue for your peace and prosperity.
There is a crucial wisdom about politics as a career here which is also captured in Enoch Powell’s less accurate axiom that all political careers end in failure. Some careers do pass through success but no success is ever final; politics must go on. The point Jefferson is making here is that the political capital of a leader is at its highest at the beginning of his tenure, when experience is least, and statecraft at its least developed. The statesman’s learning and his popularity run counter to each other. As wisdom gathers, popularity declines. See Tony Blair’s A Journey for a dramatic recent example of the process. Barack Obama is an example of a swell of general hope giving way to specific disappointment. Donald Trump will be subject to the same law of political inflation and deflation.
Jefferson makes a plea that sounds today all too contemporary. He asks forgiveness for his mistakes, and appeals to those who may not be able to see the whole picture to forbear from judgement. Perhaps the most corrosive aspect of modern political culture is the rush to judge on the assumption that every error must be self-serving. Elegantly, Jefferson asks here for a lost art of democratic politics: patience and understanding. It is a lesson we would do well to heed, though we have forgotten how to do so.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Government of the People, by the People, for the People
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