In starting a new government, how does one proceed? With
attention to precedent, using an existing framework as a guide?
From scratch?
This was the question facing the newly formed Virginia
Assembly in the autumn of 1776. Jefferson's draft constitution
had been received but dismissed, not out of malice but out of a
desire to reach policy decisions by a fuller consensus. Nonetheless,
Jefferson was put in charge of a committee to revise the existing
laws of Virginia, making deletions where necessary and additions
where appropriate. Significantly, one of his closest associates
in the enterprise was a James Madison, a first term legislator
eight years Jefferson's junior. It was the beginning of a political
alliance that would last for fifty years.
Jefferson, Madison, and company gradually laid out a plan
for the constitution of Virginia involving several proposals to
create greater freedoms and opportunities for less privileged males
of European descent. Under existing British laws, the right to
vote was predicated on a man's property holdings, and the right
to inherit property was predicated on one's place in the family
line. Thus, the ruling class of colonial Virginia was essentially
a fraternity of eldest brothers.
Jefferson attacked this system by helping abolish primogeniture and
entail, two long-standing traditions that directed inheritances to
a single heir. Under the new system, a more equal distribution
of lands was encouraged. Since only landowners were eligible to
vote, an increase in the number of landowners would increase the
number of eligible voters. Further, by making immigration a less
complicated and exclusive process, new families arrived in droves
and began to settle along the frontier. Eventually, Jefferson reasoned,
these measures would help to efface the influence of the long-standing
oligarchy of large landowners.
In these early reforms, Jefferson's underlying devotion
to democracy is made plain. Believing in the virtues of talent
above the virtues of association, he envisioned a society founded
on meritocracy rather than on aristocracy. To fully achieve the
dream of a meritocracy, Jefferson recognized the necessity of overhauling
the existing educational system. Unique to his day, he believed
that the state should take up the task of schooling in order to
best cultivate the most talented minds from all social classes.
Jefferson's views on universal public education were unprecedented
and far too progressive for his associates at the time. But while
Jefferson's plans to create free public schools did not succeed at
first, many of his proposals on education later became law, and
as such laid the groundwork for the labor of his later life, the
founding of the University of Virginia.
