Americans across the political spectrum share a deep concern about the growing and glaring inequalities in wealth and income, even as our economy starts to surge.
While Congress turns a deaf ear to this crisis, we might well lament: if only, at our nation's founding, we'd taken Thomas Jefferson's lead.
If Thomas Jefferson had had his way, even the poorest of his fellow Virginians -- white male Virginians -- would have been on a far more equal footing with the wealthiest at the birth of our nation.
If the vision of the principal crafter of the Declaration of Independence had been realized, it \ likely would have had a revolutionary ripple effect in the other states.
And in ensuing generations, with what Jefferson called "the progress of the human mind" -- and heart -- his progressive prescription for land reallocation surely would have been applied to everyone, regardless of race or gender.
Jefferson was named to head a committee charged with the task of revising Virginia's statutes. He wrote that he and his fellow "Revisors," had a one-of-a-kind opportunity "to take up the whole body of statutes and Virginia laws, to leave out everything obsolete or improper, insert what was wanting, and reduce the whole within as moderate a compass as it would bear, and to the plain language of common sense."
Jefferson's five-man committee, after two years of painstaking work, proposed legislation that would see to it that each male Virginian had a sufficient amount of the most important currency of their day: land.
Why was land such a great equalizer? Why was it such a key component to democratic inclusiveness?
Because, to Jefferson, land promoted autonomy, liberty and sociopolitical equality. Virginians could not vote if they didn't own land, much less take direct part in political decision making; and the vast majority of males at the time were 'nonfreeholders,' meaning they did not own land.
To that end, Jefferson and his fellow Revisors introduced a bill calling for the allotment of a modest amount of land to all Virginia males "of full age neither owning nor having owned acres of land." He wanted to do away with the concentration of land in the hands of a few, lest Virginia become for all intents and purposes a Britain-like feudal system. Most and best of all, distributing a modicum of arable land to nonfreeholders would provide them entrée to the political sphere.
To Jefferson, as I note in Constitution Cafe: Jefferson's Brew for a True Revolution, there were other clear-cut benefits to society as well: having a piece of land enabled people to be close to the earth, and in this way helped them become ideal democrats. The operating premise was that ties to land left people "tied to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests, by the most lasting bonds."
While Jefferson didn't think that everyone should be a farmer, he did hold that everyone should appreciate the practice of growing some of their own food on their own land, since this nurtured such key agrarian-type values as self-sufficiency and industry. Jefferson further maintained that cultivating the soil brought one into close touch with nature, and as a result nurtured the virtues of "honor, manliness, self-reliance, courage, moral integrity, and hospitality." In his Notes on Virginia, Jefferson extols farmers as the "cultivators of the earth," and as such "the most virtuous and independent citizens."
To Jefferson, allocating land to the landless was a no-brainer. After all, there was abundant public property available in the commonwealth. And so he recommended that 50 acres be allotted to each landless male. He maintained that it was by no means "too soon to provide by every available means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land." Indeed, he contended, it was precisely when the nation was just coming into being that the Commonwealth's legislators should complement the revolution in the battlefield with revolutionary legislation that would give all Americans a vital stake in the democratic experiment.
Jefferson's bill for distributing land was soundly defeated by the Virginia legislature. Those with the most political clout were the landed gentry, who knew that meting out land to all males would dilute their power. So, while they might have been as euphoric as the next person to be rid of the British monarchy, they weren't keen on ridding themselves of the privileged social and political distinctions that came with their wealth.
What might our constitutional republic have become early on if Jefferson's proposal had won the day in the commonwealth of Virginia? For one big thing, so many more would have been able to participate in the political process from the outset. How might their ideas and input have changed the course of our nation? What type of economy (or types of economies) would have emerged in the United States, as a result of land redistribution?
In modern times, land reform efforts in emerging democracies that have focused, as Jefferson himself attempted to do, on giving modest land holding titles to individuals, as occurred in Taiwan and South Korea soon after World War II, have led to some signal advances in evolving democratic societies with fewer economic disparities.
What happens to an aspiring open society over time when a preponderance of its citizens lack the necessary means, like property, to fully pursue happiness?
Should we all have the right to property?
The Virginia-born African American Hilary Teague took his cue from John Locke when he composed the Declaration of Independence for Liberia, a nation of former American slaves (human beings who were tragically considered the property of others). That nation's declaration, issued on July 16, 1847, enshrines the recognition of "certain inalienable rights among these are life, liberty, and the right to acquire, possess, enjoy, and defend property."
In America today, home ownership is increasingly out of reach of ordinary Americans. It is impossible to enjoy and defend this kind of property when it is impossible to own.
Jefferson believed that the common good and the individual good are interlaced. If so, then society itself suffers right along with the individuals that comprise it when they are left out.
After Jefferson's failed attempt to distribute public land in Virginia, there would be other admirable efforts to allocate land to settlers in U.S. territories. Of particular note is the Homestead Act of 1862, by which Abraham Lincoln distributed unsettled land in the west to nonfreeholders.
But the far more typical pattern was for state legislatures and members of Congress to sell public land to speculators -- themselves foremost among them -- and to railroad and cattle barons. Poorer Americans remained without land.
As I write in Constitution Cafe,
The predictable outcome was that the landless poor drifted to cities, where they often lived in abject poverty. To Jefferson, democracy itself paid the highest price for this failure to provide citizens the basics needed to pursue happiness, because it ensured that political power remained in the hands of a few.