This study will examine the political theories of Thomas Jefferson. Specifically, the study will investigate Jefferson's arguments for constitutionalism (although he was in some senses skeptical even of that form of government) and his arguments against competing forms of government and types of state. The study will also include consideration of Jefferson's views on liberty and citizen rights as normative political concepts in his political theory.
Jefferson's political theory was notable for its flexibility, for the ability and willingness of the theorist to change his political philosophy according to new experience and wisdom. There is much data in the sources consulted for this study which refer to the contrast between Jefferson's ideas and those of George Mason.
Jefferson himself noted the shortcomings in both his own and in Mason's proposals. As we read in Mapp (1987):
The constitution drafted by Mason poured the heady brew of revolution into the old bottles of established oligarchy. But there was no great loss to democratic government because Jefferson's draft was not adopted. His work did not differ radically from Mason's nor, for that matter, from constitutions adopted shortly afterwards in other states. As Jefferson later explained: "In truth, the abuses of monarchy had so much filled all the space of political contemplation that we imagined everything republican which was not monarchy. We had not yet penetrated to the mother principle, that 'governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of the people and execute it'" (p. 108).
Bottorff (1968) in Midcontinent American Studies Journal emphasizes the point that Jefferson's political philosophy was an ever-evolving entity and the point that Jefferson was not an ideologue who stuck to a theoretical position without consideration for the changing circumstances of real politics. Jefferson recognized that the American situation was ...