We Still Hold These Truths

Foreword By William J. Bennett

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Thomas Jefferson - [I]t is not by the consolidation

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Thomas Jefferson Autobiography

Categories: Federalism

Date: 1821

[I]t is not by the consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected. Were not this great country already divided into states, that division must be made, that each might do for itself what concerns itself directly, and what it can so much better do than a distant authority. Every state again is divided into counties, each to take care of what lies within its local bounds; each county again into townships or wards, to manage minuter details; and every ward into farms, to be governed each by its individual proprietor . . . . It is by this partition of cares, descending in gradation from general to particular, that the mass of human affairs may be best managed for the good and prosperity of all.

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