Thomas Jefferson Quotes
I have a right to nothing, which another has a right to take away; and Congress will have a right to take away trials by jury in civil cases. Let me add, that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth.
Note the use of the phrase “against the government.” One of the unique aspects of the American Constitution and The Bill of Rights is that the government is considered a potential and even probable infringer on the liberties of the people. It is almost as though the government was the potential enemy. Modern libertarians state this very explicitly and it is ever present in the views of both the right and left wings of American politics. Most centrists recoil at the thought that some citizens see the government as the enemy, but even in America there have been times where the government has infringed on the rights of citizens only to have the courts or future administrations and Congresses correct the error.
Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826, 3rd President of the United States (Democratic Republican, VA), Letter to James Madison, 1787
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
See {587703} for a similar statement by a Supreme Court Justice.
This is probably the first known use of the Bill of Rights phrase in the English language. For the earliest American use, see Edward Rutledge.
See George Mason for the contrary view. {606646}
Hayward claimed that Wilson was the first American President who ever criticized the American Constitution. Many do not agree as Madison and Jefferson in part, along with most other Americans, found the Constitution so wanting that it was ratified only on condition of the passage of the Bill of Rights. Jackson, was distressed by the limitations on the President and many others had their objections, but Wilson, before he became a politician was a prominent academic political scientist and wrote voluminously and had an intellectual following so his criticism was not considered so “political” as others.
The call for individual liberty and the right of personal property by clergy is surprising to many. This Cahier was the consensus of the Clergy of Blois in 1789. There were cahiers of several provinces of France—some by the clergy, some by the nobles. What is fascinating is the emergence of many of the pre-Revolutionary French concepts. The example of the American revolution and its principles was known throughout the educated classes of France.
Hamilton acknowledged that the major public objection to the new U. S. Constitution was its lack of a Bill of Rights, which Hamilton argued was unnecessary.
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He had previously served as the second vice president of the United States under John Adams between 1797 and 1801. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation; he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national levels.
