Maryland independent. [volume] (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1874-current, 1931-06-26
Jefferson and
Times Change

Thomas Jefferson was distinguished
among his contemporaries for an un-
canny capacity to plumb the future.
Times without number the foresight Of
Jefferson enabled him to predict the
course Of history. And yet, it is doubt
full if even his prophetic vision could
have enabled him to imagine the pres
ent-day offspring of the national gov
eminent in the creation of which he
played so large part.
A sturdy individualism was the ideal
Of Jefferson. His beliefs and those of
his party were the doctrines of agri-
eHturists, and particularists, devoted
to their own localities, their own
states and their individual rights and
liberties. The power of the state in
any form was thing of evil and to be
resisted. THAT country is governed
best which is governed least" aptly
summarized their code. Out of such
sentiments there emerged the founda-
tons of the national character. Men
felt that "the law swept around each
citizen a wide circle of individual
rights into which no government, state
or federal, could intrude except at its
peril"
Feared Capitalization.
Such was the political faith of a
country rural in its habits and
thought. Jefferson mistrusted large
cehters of population and esteemed
society composed of planters, farmers
and small traders, as the bulwark Of
republican government
Jefferson may have foreseen that
the Colonies could not forever remain
essentially agricultural in industry or
society. But it is doubtful if he or
the others who labored with him i'm
agined that industry would ever so
largely predominant the interests of
the United States.
To cope with this condition the func-
tions of the state have been multiplied
and rights and liberties Of the indi-
vidual citizen have been successfully
narrowed to conform to new condi-
ton of society. These changes, the in
cidence of which has been confined
largely to the years after the Civil
war, have so altered American govern
ment as to make 1t hardly recognlz-
able as the same fabric that was once
so frequently and plainly marked by
Jeffersonian individualism and oppoSi-
ton to centralized authority.
The difficulties Of unemployment and
depression, multiplied in our large cen
tiers of population and peculiar to an
industrialized community, confirm JEFF
ferson's apprehensions as to the evils
of urban society. But, however the
transformation from rural to an in
dustrial state may be deplored, its
problems are not to be solved by re-
GREETING their existence. The change
has been inevitable and the colonies
Of the Atlantic coast with their thirteen
million people could not have been ex-
banded into a nation stretching across
the continent and populated by one
hundred and twenty millions without
abandoning the social structure of an
agricultural community.
Philosophy Justified.
And tremendous as the revolution
has been 1t by no means has outlawed
the political philosophy of the Sage of
Monticello. There is need today as
there was in 1776 for men who esteem
the sovereignty of the people; freedom
of thought and speech; local self rule;
and economy in government. And if
time has altered the social structure
he believed in, it has confirmed his
passion for human liberty, his faith in
democratic principles, his program of
national expansion and has proved him
not only one of the worlds greatest