LETTERS OF "JEFFERSON"-No. 1

[August 10, 1846]

MESSRS. EDITORS: The Whigs hold these truths to be selfevident: "That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiThat to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

ness.

In our transmigration from a territorial form of government to an independent state sovereignty, the people should sedulously and cautiously guard against every encroachment upon their natural and inherent rights.

The right to select their servants (for I eschew the term "rulers') should be brought home to the electors as near as possible. The election district should be so arranged that each individual elector can know for whom he is giving his support. For it is folly to call upon men to elect those of whom they have no knowledge. With a view of securing this privilege, I should advocate that the single district system should be adopted as far as practicable.

This mode of electing officers will give more general satisfaction than ony other, and is peculiarly adapted to a democratic form of government. Each voter can then know the candidate who there claims his support, and can investigate his fitness to hold the trust which is to be reposed in him.

Our party may not have so strong a representative from a county, perhaps, where they hold a large majority over the other, as they would by the general ticket system; but what they lose in such a county they will be able to gain in another county where they are in the minority. Besides, the present

A letter in the Wisconsin Banner. September 5, 1846, shows these letters by "Jefferson" to have been written by Mr. B. Butterfield, of Milwaukee.

dominant party may, the next year, be in the minority and their opponents will be in the ascendant. And then they may save to themselves some part in the administration of the government, which otherwise would have been wholly lost.

The duty of each officer should be simply and clearly defined. The executive officer should not be embarrassed by the nominating or appointing power. His whole business would be to carry out the will of the people. Why should the governor be called upon to appoint the surrogate, the notary public, the clerk, or the judiciary? Can he know better than the people of Milwaukee County who will best serve them? If he cannot know as well as the people, who are proper candidates for office, why should he be invested with the appointing power, or the right to nominate? Cannot the people of the county of Milwaukee, for instance, better select their servants of trust than the executive who resides in Madison, and who is dependent entirely upon the representations of others as to the fitness of the candidates for office? And why should the executive officer be troubled with such matters, which can better be done at home and by those who are immediately interested in them? Where the right to nominate or appoint is vested in a single individual or in a small body of men, it often happens that the people are forced to accept the services of men who could not have been elected by the people.

This is not the way that men transact their own ordinary business. If a man wishes to employ a hand to perform an important private trust for him, he chooses to know personally his qualifications to discharge the duties to be confided to his care, and the inquiry whether he is worthy and well qualified is diligently made. Should it not be equally so with public as well as private servants?

But aside from all these objections, there is one still greater. Whenever the power to nominate and to appoint public servants is removed from the people and given to an individual, or to a few men, it tends to create a central power,

around which all the corruption of office seekers is centered, and produces aristocratical dictation and favoritism, and is used too often for base and selfish purposes. The honest man is too often overlooked, and the mere tool of party is exalted to posts of honor and responsibility, to the manifest injury of the people and the public good. For these reasons, I hold the people should retain in their own hands the sacred right of nominating and electing every public officer. And that all officers shall be accountable to the people for their stewardship.

JEFFERSON.

LETTERS OF "JEFFERSON"-No. 2

[August 14, 1846]

MESSRS. EDITORS: I trust that I have sufficiently shown in my previous numbers the importance of withholding from the executive the nominating and appointing power. I now propose to show that this power ought not to be given to the legislature.

The power of the legislator is the most elevated and important that can be bestowed upon man in any civil society. To exercise this power requires a high degree of wisdom, a perfection of knowledge, and a clearness of judgment, which few are happy enough to possess. To manage one's own private affairs, to regulate all one's actions so as to produce the best results, requires all the sagacity of the most talented. But to manage the destinies of a whole people, to lay down the rules of action for a state or a nation, justly requires a sagacity more exalted, more discriminating and penetrating than falls to the lot of most men. And before a man should take upon him so great a responsibility he should search well his own heart to see that he is actuated altogether by the love for, and good of the people, to see his own capability, and that he is better fitted to promote the public good than any other individual. He should be well skilled in all human knowledge. Men and things should be as familiar to him as the keys of an

instrument to the most skillful performer. He should know the wants of the people he is to serve, and the best manner to satisfy those wants. He should be a lover of man and possess a strong desire to render his constituents happy. He should vanquish all selfishness in himself and act singly to promote the public welfare. His soul should blaze with patriotism, and his life should be his country's. He ought to be such as Washington, Jefferson, or Franklin. He should be endowed with such wisdom and foresight as will enable him to comprehend the past, the present, and the future; he should be able to act with that perspicuity of forethought that falls little short of prophetic. For on him depends the good or the evil of generations to come. Though the act at the time it springs into notice may be but small, yet it may be as a single cog in the vast machinery of human events which will entirely change the destiny of nations for the better or for the worse. Though Brutus gave the last stab to Rome's assassinated and dying tyrant, and though a nation was already avenged by the blood of its oppressor, still that stab was the most fatal to all tyrants, and carried with it more power than all that preceded it. It controlled the destiny of the nation. Without it, Caesar would have expired. But without it Rome would not have been suitably avenged. The receiving of thirty pieces of silver for the base turpitude of a traitor was in itself but a trifle, but on that act hung the destiny of the world of mankind. The levying a duty of three pence upon a pound of tea was of itself unworthy of notice; but it ignited a fire whose flame can never be quenched so long as nations shall people the earth.

Who then, let me ask, is capable of executing this high trust of dictating to a free people the rule of civil action? Let him stand aloof from all contaminating influences-let him be guided by one all-controlling desire of benefiting his constituents with his whole might and mind. Let him leave all patronage with the people and give his whole efforts to legislation; and when he has performed his trust, let him return to the people to enjoy with them the fruit of his labors. JEFFERSON.

UNIVERSAL EDUCATION

[August 22, 1846]

The convention to revise the constitution of New York, which is now in session at Albany, has adopted the following article on the subject of education:

6. The legislature shall, at its first session after the adoption of this constitution, and from time to time thereafter, as shall be necessary, provide by law for the free education and instruction of every child between the ages of four and sixteen years, whose parents, guardians, or employers shall be residents of the state, in the common schools now established, or which shall hereafter be established therein. The expenses of such education and instruction, after applying the public funds as above provided, shall be defrayed by taxation at the same time and in the same manner as may be provided by law for the liquidation of town and county charges.

We should rejoice to see a similar article incorporated in the constitution of Wisconsin. We consider it to be one of the paramount duties of government, to provide the means of education for every child in the state. This can be done and only done through the medium of free schools, maintained at the public expense and open to all who may choose to seek these fountains of light and knowledge. Free schools are to be found in the New England states and in some portions of New York. If the provision we have quoted shall be adopted by the people they will become general in the Empire State. But they are more necessary in Wisconsin than in any of the older states. It is only by means of free schools that our heterogeneous population can be made to assimilate, and that the children of the German, French, Irish, and Norwegian emigrants who are flocking hither in such large numbers can be thoroughly Americanized. Let the people, then, instruct their delegates to the convention to engraft such a provision upon the constitution of Wisconsin as shall secure to every child within our territorial