What were Thomas Jefferson's view on central government?

Answer 1

Thomas Jefferson actually practiced the politics of what we would properly define as a Classical Liberal as opposed to the liberal ideology of today. Thomas Jefferson was great friends with James Madison who was one of the Primary authors of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.

When Thomas Jefferson was elected as the third president of the Independent but United States of America, he did everything within his powers to destroy the Federalist government in order that the central of federal government should only have enough power to unite the states in order to provide for the common good. In this manner, he believed that the centralized federal government should only have what limited power was necessary in order to provide a central position that would be favorable to all of the Individual but United States of America. (See his Tenth Amendment in the Bill of Rights)

Thomas Jefferson's concerns about a centralized federal government can be seen in the Declaration of Independence in this quote directly from the Declaration itself which Thomas Jefferson penned.

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

His abject fear that our Constitutional Republic would lead to a centralized form of government was clarified even further in one of his later pieces written in 1821 where he says ...

" ... the Federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scarecrow), working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one.

When all government... in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."

- Thomas Jefferson (1821)

Whatever else he may have believed, it is very clear that Thomas Jefferson hated the idea of a centralized federal government and accurately saw that it would likely destroy the independence of these Independent but United States of America.