Founding Brothers

compare/contrast jefferson and adam's views on social equality and the role of elites

ch 6: the friendship

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Jefferson: " I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind."

Adams: "That all men are born to equal rights is true. Every being has a right to his own, as clear, as moral, as sacred, as any other being has. This is an indubitable as a moral government in the universe. But to teach that all men are born with equal powers and faculties, to equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through life, is as gross a fraud, as glaring an imposition on the credulity of the people, as ever was practiced by monks, by Druids, by Brahmins, by priests of the immortal Lama, or by the self-styled philosophers of the French revolution."