a volatile one in every category and that only a flexible political approach to that situation would create a constitution which would ensure both liberty for the people and a reasonable stability in government. He recognized, as more ideological theorists did not, that the Americans were learning as they went, creating a new form of government in a kind of on-the-job training system.
With respect to the specific issues to be covered in this study (what government Jefferson favored, what government he disavowed, and liberty and citizen rights as normative political concepts at the heart of his political philosophy), it is clear that Jefferson was determined to help create a government and a state which was strong but which did not ultimately interfere with the rights and liberties of the people. These rights and liberties also clearly included the right of the people to engage in the activity of revolution now and then. As much as he believed in a constitutional republic, Jefferson did not see the government as a sacred entity which should be preserved at any cost to the rights of the people. The government was for the people rather than vice-versa.
Jefferson certainly "appreciated the written guarantees of the United States Constitution" but at the same time he remained "skeptical about the sanctity of the document itself. 'No society,' he wrote to Madison in 1789, 'can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. I hold that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing.'" Such statements identify the radical strain in Jefferson; they reflect his distrust of power arbitrarily used or of government badly administered (Bottorff, 1968, p. 6).
Jefferson, with respect to the question of liberty, argued not only that the people had the right t...