Jefferson Review.Com

March 5th, 2001

104 Days until Cost of Government Day 2001

Thomas Jefferson

"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between
economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such
debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our
necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily
expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we
must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers."

--Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816.

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