Thomas Jefferson’s Enlightened Views on Immigration

VDare took the opportunity upon the release of Lin Manuel Miranda’s great monument to cultural appropriators to point out that if Alexander Hamilton had gotten his way, Miranda would probably have lived as a nameless street-rat in Puerto Rico rather than the pampered son of one of Ed Koch’s diversity hires. In doing so, they published a rather scathing take-down written by Hamilton attacking his chief political enemy and favorite object of hatred, President Thomas Jefferson. It was quite a lot of fun and brilliantly executed on VDare’s part.

The attack was against Jefferson’s proposed plan on naturalization of immigrants (this being long before the abomination of birth-right citizenship was made to sit upon the high place with the Fourteenth Amendment). The great Southern philosophe, however, was not permitted to defend himself against the attack, though a defense was ready-made, waiting in his Notes on the State of Virginia – a work that ought to occupy a high place on any Dixian’s reading list, if only to acquaint himself with the thought of one of the great minds to have been produced by the South.

Let’s let Jefferson speak for himself first, since it’s a relatively short excerpt, and then we’ll reflect briefly on it:

Here I will beg leave to propose a doubt.  The present desire of America is to produce rapid population by as great importations of foreigners as possible.  But is this founded in good policy? The advantage proposed is the multiplication of numbers. Now let us suppose (for example only) that, in this state, we could double our numbers in one year by the importation of foreigners; and this is a greater accession than the most sanguine advocate for emigration has a right to expect.  Then I say, beginning with a double stock, we shall attain any given degree of population only 27 years and 3 months sooner than if we proceed on our single stock.  If we propose four millions and a half as a competent population for this state, we should be 54 1/2 years attaining it, could we at once double our numbers; and 81 3/4 years, if we rely on natural propagation…

I have taken the term of four millions and a half of inhabitants for example’s sake only.  Yet I am persuaded it is a greater number than the country spoken of, considering how much inarrable land it contains, can clothe and feed, without a material change in the quality of their diet.  But are there no inconveniences to be thrown into the scale against the advantage expected from a multiplication of numbers by the importation of foreigners?  It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possible in matters which they must of necessity transact together. Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent.  Every species of government has its specific principles.  Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe.  It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason.  To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchies. Yet, from such, we are to expect the greatest number of emigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another.  It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.  These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children.  In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation.  They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.

I may appeal to experience, during the present contest, for a verification of these conjectures.  But, if they be not certain in event, are they not possible, are they not probable? Is it not safer to wait with patience 27 years and three months longer, for the attainment of any degree of population desired, or expected?  May not our government be more homogeneous, more peaceable, more durable?  Suppose 20 millions of republican Americans thrown all of a sudden into France, what would be the condition of that kingdom?  If it would be more turbulent, less happy, less strong, we may believe that the addition of half a million of foreigners to our present numbers would produce a similar effect here.  If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all the rights of citizenship: but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements.

Let’s contextualize first. It is 1781; America has just won its independence, and American moneyed elites are eager to import as many foreigners as possible to swell the population and increase economic output (wait… this sounds familiar.) Preceding this, Jefferson has discussed how Virginia’s population has doubled itself once every 27 years or so; and this has indeed had very salubrious effects on Virginian economy and society. The problem is not with population growth, but the mode of growth. This is a purely practical concern.

What Jefferson says about government is of far greater interest, however. He opens his digression with a typical statement of Enlightenment universalism, namely that all government derives from consent of the governed.  Then, however, he takes what is a typical Southern articulation of human governance: not only that there are multiple species of government, but that these species of government have a clear and explicit tie to the discrete population from which they arise. America has a distinctly and explicitly American government, which does not apply to other discrete population groups; it is for this reason that Jefferson spoke in his inaugural address that he would honor fellow Virginian Washington’s call to avoid “entangling alliances”, and fellow Virginian Monroe’s formal condemnation of Imperialism as a doctrine of foreign policy, decidedly rejecting Alexander Hamilton’s assertion in his Camillus essays that “we are the embryo of a great empire.” More than this, though, it also asserts that nations produce governments, and not the other way around.

What nation produced the American government, this unique entity in the world? The English nation – the Anglo-Saxon people upheld as the racial basis for the whole of the South by every vocal defender of the South from Calhoun to Davis right up to Governor Wallace and Sam Dickson. What happens if this people is displaced? What is the result of importing en masse a foreign horde from a part of the world in which despotism is the only experienced reality they have? Precisely what history has demonstrated, precisely the result Jefferson predicts: a nation that has been warped, rendered into a “heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass”.

This is what we must escape: the result of Jefferson’s advice for Virginia being ignored, and our people thereby suffering under a regime of immigration reform, which provided precisely those “extraordinary encouragements” which have flooded our nation with masses of peoples from lands more despotic and more foreign to the spirit of our Anglo-Celtic folk than Jefferson might ever have found in his most febrile nightmares. If even a man as moderate—indeed, as liberally-minded—as Jefferson could see this most basic truth of demographic change and exchange, how utterly foreign to the spirit of our people is the support for mass unmonitored immigration, state-sponsored refugee resettlement, and indeed the entire (((narrative))) of the “melting-pot”.

-By Leon Pantera and originally published at Identity Dixie.

22 Comments

  1. There were just a little over 3 million White people in the US in 1790. Maybe 3.25 million White Americans of both genders? Hard to believe, huh?

  2. Thomas Jefferson was either the most dishonest man who ever lived or someone who made a statement, then forgot what he originally said and reversed the decision later. Jefferson’s emotional involvement with France changed him into MR. OPEN BORDERS. Remember Jefferson supported the Jacobins murdering Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette having the unmitigated gall to call it Liberty and prattle on about the Tree of Liberty being watered with the blood of tyrants.

    The problem with Jefferson was that Jefferson saw everything through the Rose-Colored glasses of Jeffersonian Equality and by that I mean White Male Equality which is obviously just as false as Human Racial Equality. The difference between the Normano-English and the Scottish or Welsh personality and cultural habits was once as wide as the difference between an Englishman and a Jew! The Scots were seen as ignorant barbarians when the Union with Scotland came to be in 1603, but after James I instituted a program of cultural unity, where Scottish nobles sons were brought to England to be educated at Eton and then Cambridge or Oxford and these Scots were encouraged to take Noble English brides, the Nobility of both nations unified but it took a couple centuries for a common Scotsman and an Englishman to have anything in common. Remember when Jefferson was alive, it hadn’t even been fifty years since the Scottish Highlands attempted to declare themselves independent of England.

    Alexander Hamilton on the other hand was much more correct and in a sense more Aristocratic in his outlook than Jefferson was. Hamilton was horrified by the Social Equality Movement, and while he himself said that Americans were once sympathetic with the French for seeking a Constitutional Monarchy such as Britain’s that by the mass murder of the Jacobins the French Revolution had completely spun out of control. HAMILTON The French Revolution is a political convulsion that in a great or less degree shakes the whole civilized world and it is of real consequence to the principles and of course to the happiness of a Nation to estimate it rightly.

    Thomas Jefferson employed his friends in the press following the passage of the JAY TREATY in 1794 which placed the USA in a tenuous alliance with England against the Jacobins to attack George Washington and call him a traitor. The attacks were so bad, Martha Washington said that Jefferson’s brief stay at Mount Vernon on his way to Washington City for the inaguration in 1801 was the SECOND WORST DAY OF HER LIFE, the FIRST WORST DAY BEING LOSING GENL WASHINGTON

  3. Thomas Jefferson was indeed a brilliant man. But his idea of all me equal only works when the country only contains white men. Otherwise, it devolves to chaos. In his book “Notes on the State of Virginia”, Jefferson argued for the removal from the U.S. (via deportation or frontier settlement) of the Negro race after their emancipation. This was less than a decade after the declaration in 1776. Jefferson specifically did not think the two races could ever dwell together in one land in peace. The Declaration of Independence must be read with Notes on the State of Virginia to make sense -and avoid the proposition nation nightmare.

  4. For anyone to properly understand Thomas Jefferson and his Schitzo writings on Immigration know this. The Immigration Act of 1790 established Free White and 21 for citizenship, but remember WHITE in 1790 only means those not of Negro or Chinese parentage. The first Immigration Act required a 3 year waiting period, which was unenforceable as states handled naturalization. The Act of 1795 extended it to 5 years.

    Following the Negro uprising in Haiti and in France the collapse of both the Girdonists in 1792 and the Jacobins in 1795 French Revolutionaries had swarmed New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore. All of these people many Proto-Communists followers of Francois Noel Babeuf and Robespierre, began immediately establishing political clubs and publishing broadsides. Uprisings became common and General Washington and Secretary Hamilton, both by this time retired, agreed that the USA was under attack. Both men supported President John Adams who phased in the Alien and Sedition Acts.

    The Naturalization Act of 1798 extended the waiting period to 14 years and placed all Immigration under Federal Oversight. Any screwups by an immigrant during those 14 years, he got deported or imprisoned. The Alien Enemies act allowed for roundups of seditious non citizens if war was declared and their mass imprisonment. The Alien Friends Act allowed for the President to demand the deportation of any foreigner publishing seditious literature. The Sedition Acts were passed to curtail the Jeffersonian Press trying to antagonize England.

    Thomas Jefferson and James Madison decried these laws calling them Unconstitutional. When Jefferson became President, most of them were repealed excluding the Alien Enemies Act. The Naturalization Act of 1802 ended Federal Enforcement of the Borders until the 1870’s and placed naturalization solely on the local level, and lowered the official waiting period to five years. This was done by Jefferson to grow the Democratic Party as IMMIGRANTS=DEMOCRATS. Southern Democrats ignorantly supported Immigration seeing it as a Yankee concern, after all Immigrants didnt go south of the Potomac or Ohio much. They bought into the lie, grow the Democrats with Immigrants. Well thats exactly what caused the War For Southern Independence, uncontrolled Immmigration giving the North too much political clout.

    From 1802 until 1924 the US Border was a porous sieve. Between 1802-1924 something like 11-12 million Jews came here. Now you know why we are %$#@*&

  5. THOMAS JEFFERSONS AUTOBIOGRAPHY ON THE VIRGINIA STATUTE FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 1786.

    The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read, “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan (MOSLEM), the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.”

    DEFINATELY NOT SOUTHERN VALUES

  6. I’m related a couple of different distant ways to Muhlenberg who was the Speaker of the House when the Immigration bill of 1790 was passed. He and his brother were both big fans of George Washington from what little I know of them. There are much more direct descendants of the Muhlenberg brothers kicking around. I met a couple of them years ago. It would be interesting to know where they are on these immigration issues?

  7. First, we let in large numbers of Roman Catholics & Marxist socialists from Ireland and Germany in the 1850’s. It was all down hill from there.

  8. @Billy Ray…

    ‘Thomas Jefferson was either the most dishonest man who ever lived or someone who made a statement, then forgot what he originally said and reversed the decision later. ‘

    ///////////////////////////////////////////////

    I think neither. He was a deeply conflicted man who never became mindful of these conflicts, and, hence, never worked to develop an integrated self.

    At his core Jefferson was a plantation brat, who, having hot and cold runnin’ negresses, who waited on his every desire, including sexual, dreamed similar feel- good dreams that the Bush family have dreamt.

    With that fragmented state of mind, we have often been stuck – the oligarchs ruling us in such a way.

  9. spahnranch1969
    JUNE 16, 2017 AT 10:00 PM
    @BillyRay: The Acts of Union between England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland did not formally take place until 1707.

    Spahn

    You’re right, From 1603 until 1649 and 1660-1707 it was what was called a Personal Union under the House of Stuart. Scotland was briefly independent in 1649 and 1650 but was conquered by Cromwell in 1651 and held until 1660. However the formation of the United Kingdom of England Wales and Scotland didn’t take place until 1707 and official union with Ireland didn’t happen until 1801. Thats why the Flag of Great Britain that flew over the 13 Colonies only possessed the Saint Georges Cross and Saint Andrews Cross. the 1801 flag joined the red cross of Saint Patrick which is the present flag of the UK today.

    Though the UK wasn’t officially formed until 1707 Scotland and England had already been in theory one nation since 1603

  10. I think the real causes of the civil war was that the Constitution was a hodgepodge of diverse and incompatible ideas and- as the Anti-Federalists warned- would erode state power, lead to uncontrollable taxation, and elevate the Judicial power above the other two branches. Right on all counts! Had the delegates done what they were elected to do- reform the Articles of Confederation and make it stronger- then the civil war would not have happened. But they threw out the baby with the bathwater, swore everybody to secrecy, and gave us the Constitution. A document that has insufficient safeguards against governmental abuse and allowed the supreme court to be the final arbitrator. Today the Constitution is worshipped as holy writ when it is the ethnicity of your people, not written frameworks of government, that really determines a nation’s productivity and sustainability. Let us not forget the science of DNA, genetics,and heredity did not exist in the days of our Founding Fathers. A lot of the egalitarian Enlightenment philosophy has been rendered null and void by science.

  11. Most of you forget that in Jefferson’s day the only means of transportation between Europe and America was by sail, and that was risky. We forget that the death rate between Europe and America, and Africa, and America was about the same. The old ship records have been studied, and re-studied. That in itself limited immigration to America.

  12. The Bretwalda predates all this. London is the engine of power. That’s why Khan must die.

  13. Krafty Wurker
    JUNE 17, 2017 AT 1:49 AM
    Most of you forget that in Jefferson’s day the only means of transportation between Europe and America was by sail, The old ship records have been studied, and re-studied. That in itself limited immigration to America.

    Krafty

    Steamships were plying the seas between Europe and the USA by the 1830’s the SS Great Western hit the ocean in 1838. The SS Savannah was a steam/sailing hybrid ship that crossed the ocean in 1819. Travel by sailing ship sped up dramatically during the early 1800’s with better ships and better understanding of ocean currents. After 1815, the US Immigration Rate began to explode, lots of these were refugees from Germany and German Jews who had supported Napoleon, but once the Congress of Vienna re-established the old duchies, Bonapartists were hunted down like dogs. The Irish Potato Famine of 1822 also did a lot of increase our immigration. Great Britain in the 1820’s had a higher birthrate averaging 8 children per family while the USA only averaged about 4.5. The growth rate in England was so high, the average family could lose 4 babies and still have a +4 gain.

    Jefferson KNEW the mudslide immigration was going to happen as it happened in his lifetime, however he sanctioned it because to Democrats IMMIGRANTS=VOTES. It doesnt matter whether its 1824 or 2024 the same MO for Democrats is the same. Flood the country with Immigrants so we can become a one party system. What Jefferson didn’t count on was the REVOLUTION OF 1848 sending thousands of German Protestants and indigent German Jews to the USA. These folks symapthised with the Whigs and later the Republicans as they were commerce minded. The Catholics were almost always Democrats.

    The ship records of who actually came here are very incomplete, as there was NO enforcement at our ports, all you had to do to come to the USA was jump ship or in the case of England, get to Canada and cross the border. Thats what President Chester A Arthur’s Daddy did.

  14. spahnranch1969
    JUNE 17, 2017 AT 12:49 PM
    If only TJ could see what the bad guys have done to America since his day, including his beloved University of Virginia and the town of Charlottesville!

    Spahn he’d probably call it liberty, Remember he said this.

    The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read, “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan (MOSLEM), the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.”


    Thomas Jefferson was fine and dandy with Mahometans (MUSLIMS) having civil rights and their own houses of worship just as he was with all of the other worthless religions. He actually admitted fighting AGAINST the will of the People of Virginia on the matters of religion.

  15. ethnostatist
    JUNE 17, 2017 AT 1:35 AM
    I think the real causes of the civil war was that the Constitution was a hodgepodge of diverse and incompatible ideas and- as the Anti-Federalists warned- would erode state power, lead to uncontrollable taxation, and elevate the Judicial power above the other two branches.

    The real cause was definately UNCONTROLLED IMMIGRATION causing quick demographic shifts. Jefferson and the Anti-Federalist losers idea that each state should limit immigration was a fools errand. Most of the states and their ports were so horribly corrupt, New York and Baltimore wouldnt limit Sheyitt. Mathematics prove this out. If your electoral power is POPULATION+ TWO SENATORS and in 1816 the South’s population was only growing a bit less than the Northern one, which was growing solely because of Immigration, Northern family size had been dropping like a rock since the 1700’s and the coming of universal female education. Southern Whites had more children. Obviously mathematically to retain power, it would be in your best interest to RESTRICT the population growth in areas that you didn’t want to get too powerful. However the IGNORANT MORONIC SOUTHERN DEMOCRAT POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT of the ANTEBELLUM DAYS had bought into Jeffersons lie that Immigration was necessary to grow the Democratic Party. They never asked what would happen if one area of the country became exponentially larger than the other. However it did and the War was exactly what happened. In a low-immigration scenario, Virginia dominates the US Politically until the 20th Century.

  16. Silas, NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA was written some years before Jefferson’s term in office. His policy on Immigration and his beliefs on Religion bordered on Cultural Genocide and Heresy once he took office. JEFFERSON WAS NOT OUR GUY. He was the ILLUMINATI’s GUY.

    The next exceptionable feature in the Message [from President Jefferson], is the proposal to abolish all restriction on naturalization, arising from a previous residence.2 In this the President is not more at variance with the concurrent maxims of all commentators on popular governments, than he is with himself. The Notes on Virginia are in direct contradiction to the Message, and furnish us with strong reasons against the policy now recommended. The passage alluded to is here presented: Speaking of the population of America, Mr. Jefferson there says, “Here I will beg leave to propose a doubt. The present desire of America, is to produce rapid population, by as great importations of foreigners as possible. But is this founded in good policy?”3 “Are there no inconveniences to be thrown into the scale, against the advantage expected from a multiplication of numbers, by the importation of foreigners? It is for the happiness of those united in society, to harmonize as much as possible, in matters which they must of necessity transact together. Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent. Every species of government has its specific principles: Ours, perhaps, are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English Constitution, with others, derived from natural right and reason.

    To these, nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchies. Yet from such, we are to expect the greatest number of emigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. Their principles with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us in the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass. I may appeal to experience, during the present contest, for a verification of these conjectures: but if they be not certain in event, are they not possible, are they not probable? Is it not safer to wait with patience for the attainment of any degree of population desired or expected? May not our government be more homogeneous, more peaceable, more durable? Suppose 20 millions of republican Americans, thrown all of a sudden into France, what would be the condition of that kingdom? If it would be more turbulent, less happy, less strong, we may believe that the addition of half a million of foreigners, to our present numbers, would produce a similar effect here.” Thus wrote Mr. Jefferson in 17814—Behold the reverse of the medal. The Message of the President contains the following sentiments, “A denial of citizenship under a residence of 14 years, is a denial to a great proportion of those who ask it, & controls a policy pursued from their first settlement, by many of these states, and still believed of consequence to their prosperity. And shall we refuse to the unhappy fugitives, from distress, that hospitality which the savages of the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in this land? Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe? Might not the general character and capabilities of a citizen, be safely communicated to every one manifesting a bona fide purpose of embarking his life and fortune permanently with us?”

    But if gratitude can be allowed to form an excuse for inconsistency in a public character, in The Man of the People; a strong plea of this sort may be urged in behalf of our President. It is certain that had the late election been decided entirely by native citizens, had foreign auxiliaries been rejected on both sides, the man who ostentatiously vaunts that the doors of public honor and confidence have been burst open to him, would not now have been at the head of the American nation. Such a proof then of virtuous discernment in the oppressed fugitives, had an imperious claim on him to a grateful return, and without supposing any very uncommon share of self-love; would naturally be a strong reason for a revolution in his opinions.

    The pathetic and plaintive exclamations by which the sentiment is enforced, might be liable to much criticism, if we are to consider it in any other light, than as a flourish of rhetoric. It might be asked in return, does the right to asylum or hospitality carry with it the right to suffrage and sovereignty? And what indeed was the courteous reception which was given to our forefathers, by the savages of the wilderness? When did these humane and philanthropic savages exercise the policy of incorporating strangers among themselves, on their first arrival in the country? When did they admit them into their huts, to make part of their families, and when did they distinguish them by making them their sachems? Our histories and traditions have been more than apocryphal, if any thing like this kind, and gentle treatment was really lavished by the much-belied savages upon our thankless forefathers. But the remark occurs, had it all been true, prudence inclines to trace the history farther, and ask what has become of the nations of savages who exercised this policy? And who now occupies the territory which they then inhabited? Perhaps a useful lesson might be drawn from this very reflection.

    But we may venture to ask what does the President really mean, by insinuating that we treat aliens coming to this country, with inhospitality? Do we not permit them quietly to land on our shores? Do we not protect them equally with our own citizens, in their persons and reputation; in the acquisition and enjoyment of property? Are not our Courts of justice open for them to seek redress of injuries? And are they not permitted peaceably to return to their own country whenever they please, and to carry with them all their effects? What then means this worse than idle declamation?

    The impolicy of admitting foreigners to an immediate and unreserved participation in the right of suffrage, or in the sovereignty of a Republic, is as much a received axiom as any thing in the science of politics, and is verified by the experience of all ages. Among other instances, it is known, that hardly any thing contributed more to the downfall of Rome, than her precipitate communication of the privileges of citizenship to the inhabitants of Italy at large. And how terribly was Syracuse scourged by perpetual seditions, when, after the overthrow of the tyrants, a great number of foreigners were suddenly admitted to the rights of citizenship? Not only does ancient but modern, and even domestic history furnish evidence of what may be expected from the dispositions of foreigners, when they get too early footing in a country. Who wields the sceptre of France, and has erected a Despotism on the ruins of a Republic? A foreigner. Who rules the councils of our own ill-fated, unhappy country? And who stimulates persecution on the heads of its citizens, for daring to maintan an opinion, and for exercising the rights of suffrage? A foreigner!5 Where is the virtuous pride that once distinguished Americans? Where the indignant spirit which in defence of principle, hazarded a revolution to attain that independence now insidiously attacked?

Comments are closed.