Founding Father

JEFFERSON HIMSELF--Bernard Mayo--Houghfon Mifflin ($4).

Conspicuous as a missing front tooth is the gap in U.S. biography caused by the lack of a definitive life of Thomas Jefferson.* This book represents an attempt to span the gap with a kind of footbridge woven from the cables of Jefferson's own thought. Says the author, University of Virginia's young, Maine-born historian Bernard Mayo: "This [is the] story of Thomas Jefferson, told in his own words." Those who begin by testing Author Mayo's footbridge warily, wishing for a more orthodox structure, will soon come to respect his biographical engineering.

Many-sided Thomas Jefferson, like his contemporary Benjamin Franklin, forever suggests Renaissance man. New acquaintances will be dumfounded by the scope of his interests: science, music, horticulture, architecture, belles-lettres, astronomy, etc. But readers in the ominous glare of World War II are bound to be most absorbed by the most famous spokesman of American democracy when he speaks on his most famous subject.

Wrote Jefferson: "This was the object of the Declaration of Independence: Not to find out new principles or new arguments never before thought of ... but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent. ... It was intended to be an expression of the American mind."

Three months after writing the Declaration Jefferson was back in Virginia fighting for religious freedom, coming to some of his most notable conclusions regarding the relationship of state and people:

> "The legitimate powers of Government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others."

> "Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error."

> "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

> "Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men, men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature. . . ."

Relentless foe of the monolithic state, ever suspicious of a concentration of power, Jefferson was on a constant crusade for the people and against ignorance. Said he: "In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover. . . . Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree. . . . Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. ..."

Son of a pioneer father, child of a frontier society, Jefferson could be best described as an agrarian democrat. Readers who turn to him for a political program applicable to the machine age will be disappointed. They will also find some of the harshest words ever spoken against U.S. labor:

"Let our workshops remain in Europe. The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the human body. ... I consider the class of artificers [workmen] as the panders of vice, and the instruments by which the liberties of a country are generally overturned."

Such passages have plagued many a Jeffersonian, worried many a historian. Wrote Charles A. Beard: "Today nearly half of us belong to the 'mobs of the great cities'--sores on the body politic. What message has the sage of Monticello for us?" The conclusion may well be that Jefferson's mind would have changed with changing American circumstance. And, as it is, Jefferson has great things to say to a new generation of Americans, fighting against tyranny to which he swore eternal hostility. Writes Author Mayo: "Wherever the reader dips into this book he will find that Jefferson, whether speaking of politics, religion, economics, science, or education, is concerned with one great objective: the freedom and happiness of man."

Certain of Jefferson's words ring with the tone of a great, clear bell above the hellish din of war:

"Our cause is just. . . . Our internal resources are great. . . . The arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume we will, in defiance of every hazard . . . employ for the preservation of our liberties . . . resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves. . . ."

* Most nearly definitive is Henry S. Randall's three-volume The Life of Thomas Jefferson, published in 1858.

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