Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CCLX.—­TO GIDEON GRANGER, August 13, 1800

TO GIDEON GRANGER.

Monticello, August 13, 1800.

Dear Sir,

I received with great pleasure your favor of June the 4th, and am much comforted by the appearance of a change of opinion in your State; for though we may obtain, and I believe shall obtain a majority in the legislature of the United States, attached to the preservation of the federal constitution according to its obvious principles, and those on which it was known to be received; attached equally to the preservation to the States of those rights unquestionably remaining with them; friends to the freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury, and to economical government; opposed to standing armies, paper systems, war, and all connection, other than commerce, with any foreign nation; in short, a majority firm in all those principles which we have espoused and the federalists have opposed uniformly; still, should the whole body of New England continue in opposition to these principles of government, either knowingly or through delusion, our government will be a very uneasy one.  It can never be harmonious and solid, while so respectable a portion of its citizens support principles which go directly to a change of the federal constitution, to sink the State governments, consolidate them into one, and to monarchize that.  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 the public agents to corruption, plunder, and waste.  And I do verily believe, that if the principle were to prevail, of a common law being in force in the United States, (which principle possesses the General Government at once of all the powers of the State governments, and reduces us to a single consolidated government) it would become the most corrupt government on the earth.  You have seen the practices by which the public servants have been able to cover their conduct, or, where that could not be done, delusions by which they have varnished it for the eye of their constituents.  What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building, and office-hunting Would be produced by an assumption of all the State powers into the hands of the General Government.  The true theory of our constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the States are independent as to every thing within themselves, and united as to every thing respecting foreign nations.  Let the General Government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except