Wednesday, March 26, 2008

One Of Those "Quotes" From Jefferson


This quote is all over the Internet--including in some places that you might expect had checked its accuracy, purportedly from Thomas Jefferson:
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
But I can't find this quote in the Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress, at the University of Virginia's Jefferson digital archive, or by searching through books.google.com anywhere in the 19th century. The closest that I can find is this quote:
History, in general, only informs us what bad government is. But as we have employed some of the best materials of the British constitution in the construction of our own government, a knowledge of British history becomes useful to the American politician. There is, however, no general history of that country which can be recommended. [Thomas Jefferson, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Works of Thomas Jefferson (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1905), 10:416]
Maybe somewhere the quote above appears in Jefferson's writings. It is something that Jefferson could easily have thought, but there's something about the style that doesn't really sound like Jefferson. If you can find a verifiable source for this quote, let me know.

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