The Meaning of Monticello
THE COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Literature, The Arts, ...
...tarians zealously hoped to produce...
...liberate the producer, to guarantee the stability of Circumstance and caste of mind-so runs the thread peasant farmers, and to make of the small manufac- of Mr...
...Chest,,rton says perti- of civic problems was derived by all that generation nently...
...Nock's reprint of statistics being loved as he did life a conviction that .;overnment must nicely illustrative of the point-but thereby, probably, suffer none of its subjects to be ground into servile he was saved from being two-thirds a sharp lawyer...
...He not only abhorred as flagrantly unjust of all because as an individual and citizen he him- any use of governmental power to foster great comself was a practising agriculturist, and secondly because binations of operative capital, but he actually did not -as is apparent from the words of the Declaration understand such combinations...
...But at this stage of the world's game it is salutary like Clarendon...
...the parliamentarism of the closing seventeenth shrine, is based upon manifold aspects of character century was no longer very sure about the rights and and achievement...
...and who had sufficient serenity of intelligence to tions of Adam Smith, Carlyle, and Sidney Webb were write, "A government regulating itself by what is just proposals which followed in order `.hough all were and wise for the many, uninfluenced by the local and mutually contradictory...
...Their than love for, autocracy...
...dation upon which a man can stand to think has been He knew as well as anybody else did that all men are so studiously neglected...
...Inalienable rights and duties, not numNow the interest of Jefferson for us, in this year bers or voting opinions, concerned the mediaeval docwhen Monticello is at length hallowed as a national tor...
...Jefferson was at least onenot equal in their endowments and capacities, but he third a pedant-Mr...
...and with John Stuart Mill he might to remember that he was these things, not out of have said, "The only one of the imaginative arts in envy or even fiery charity, but because he had trained which I had from childhood taken great pleasure, was himself to respect the rights of man...
...he was too revolutionary to be merely inert...
...his formative years an Englishman-largely from its It is one of the morbid peculiarities of democracy that classical reading...
...In this way he came very close, as a political fact that he was the kind of man the older parliamenphilosopher, to the conclusions of the mediaeval time...
...character...
...The whole modern tendency to skystable British temperament...
...a champion of what may be termed "the producer's Thomas Jefferson cast his lot with the French, first interests...
...Saint Thomas was indifferent to forms of govthey are right or not they count, and future political ernment...
...who earnestly believed that woman had The English gradually decided to seek the redemptive been designed for a fireside, a husband and children agency in trade itself...
...we appear to be more and more reverence Thomism, he did abide by the principles bereft of his kind...
...We have not yet realized sufficiently crowds do not hoist leaders upon their backs for very how deeply the renaissance of antique learning modilong-that the theory of equality does seem to produce fied the attitude of Europe toward political and ecoa tepid equalness...
...and it is refreshing to ingly a standard according to which men train themnote how frankly this trait of the Jeffersonian char- selves for public life, even if here and there an alteraacter is analyzed in a centenary bi bgraphy by Mr...
...Whether Law...
...He was too pacifistic to be really revolution- well seem to us all deplorable that so much really ary...
...But possibly the most pertinent duties, but it stood in awe of numbers and opinions...
...Here is a bravely personal book, behind in reasonable discussion of their difficulties, a trust- which one can see the things and qualities in which its worthy conclusion could be arrived at...
...and those who were left to anything else in the world, excepting government and flutter on the sandy bed could only wait impotently education...
...Largely been seen, perhaps, on earth...
...The idea that men in our own day because we deaine to look for "free and open discussion" was the saving solution them in our own day," Mr...
...tion of feature be found expedient...
...Everybody's hearsay is everybody's nomic problems, introducing at first only theories which say-so...
...We have not Though he would have been the last man on earth to often seen his equal...
...to believe nothmost important subject of controversy because of the ing than to believe what is wrong...
...We do not lack great makers of representative government...
...on the contrary we are looking for them all of Englishmen-and, of course, Jefferson was during day long...
...and the epoch-making sugges- only...
...We see the man Gargantuan rise of trade...
...The middleEuropean civic groups to turn their backs upon that ages had advanced very far toward an equable distrinotion of the state which is express °d practically in bution of authority and citizenship, but they had really universal suffrage...
...who judged others according to standards for someone to fish them out...
...Volume IV New York, Wednesday, July 21, 1926 Number i r CONTENTS The Meaning of Monticello 275 Communications 287 Week by Week 277 The Play and the Screen The Ambitions of Fiction 280 -R...
...Or if it existed for a because of the system of patronage organized under moment at the birth of ours, it would not be easy to Louis XIV, trade in France had been intricately bound fix the term of its continuance...
...The great need for direction, for what in are, however, as Charles Maurras has remarked, althe true sense is government, has induced a number of ways at the basis of reform and change...
...Still, I believe it does up with the regular political functions of government...
...and they ~,ee an enemy in thought was basically pastoral in character, being deparliamentarism because, as a recent critic has phrased signed to guarantee by an appeal to conscience the it, this is only an "empty formality" behind which exercise of all human rights derived from the Divine forces are silently and compactly organized...
...powder by exploiting forces which consider their The proper definition of his heroic quality would schemes and ambitions more important than the rights therefore include, it seems to us, a recognition of the of man...
...He had not a little of scrapers and bumptious monopolists was abhorrent to that safe abstractedness which so well became a man him...
...What was to be done, of strict justice, and could not palliate weaknesses of then, "for the greatest good of the greatest number...
...276 THE COMMONWEAL July 21, 1926 Only there was abroad an honest, hopeful belief that Albert J. Nock, which is briefly reviewed elsewhere if those who disagreed came together and engaged in this issue...
...Their motive is fear of, rather settled upon no definite concept of the state...
...Nock's discourse-made of the great Virginian turer an independent tradesman...
...With earnest contemporary intelligence has been wasted a lively interest in the processes of government, its upon the consideration of merely quantitative aspects combinations and effectives, Jefferson combined all the of human living-that the humanistic, reflective founreticence of an aristocrat only nominally homespun...
...author is especially interested...
...the classicist was attentive to nothing so history will to some extent be written Dy them...
...much as form...
...Dana Skinner 288 Woman in the Service of Society Poems John Saidmore, Elisabeth Randolph Shirley 281 John Hanlon, Winifred Welles, Isabel The Soul of Spain Robert Sencourt 283 Fiske Conant, Maire Nic Pilip 289 1NIam'selle Anastasie Erin Samson 284 Books Henry B. Fuller, Edwin Clark, Discovery and Occupation Helen Walker, Edward L. Keyes 290 Daniel J. McKenna 286 The Quiet Corner 293 THE MEANING OF MONTICELLO T HE memory of heroes is often as much a solace thing we can see in him is his stature as one of the as a subject for rejoicing...
...The underlying French idea selfish view of the few who direct their affairs, has not was, however, directed to a different end...
...THE COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Literature, The Arts, and Public Affairs...
...And it may music...
...Its Jefferson is not a In England the great parliamenta:-ians-Bentham, dreamer who writes political poetry, but a shrewd obBurke, John Stuart Mill among them-could not fail server whose guiding rule declares, "It is always betto realize that property was rapidly becoming the ter to have no ideas than false ones...
...By comparison his emphatic positivism hope that the Jeffersonian mind will become increasis far more easily discernible...
...And if the American ideal of established in the Thomistic code...
...Natively, however, he profited by a of human life...
...representative democracy is to remain beneficent and This is an aspect of his position which cannot be practicable, we shall have to rekindle the purposive stressed here...
...Commerce was, indeed, whose farm at Monticello concerned him more than drinking the rivers dry...
...We look indeed, and are disappointed...
...Abstractly he was initself-the utterances of French pamphleteers had terested far less in the power than in the happiness captivated him...
...exist here in a greater degree than anywhere else, and and when the revolution finally came, its effect was to for its growth and continuance I offer sincere prayers...
Vol. 4 • July 1926 • No. 11
