"The bank mania... is raising up a moneyed aristocracy in our country which has already set the government at defiance, and although forced at length to yield a little on this first essay of their strength, their principles are unyielded and unyielding. These have taken deep root in the hearts of that class from which our legislators are drawn ... and thus those whom the Constitution had placed as guards to its portals, are sophisticated or suborned from their duties."
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Josephus B. Stuart, May 10, 1817
Kings By Any Other Name
Thomas Jefferson's fears about the potential capture of government by a wealthy minority mirrored his experiences in Europe where, acting as the American ambassador to France before and during the French Revolution, he saw at first hand the effect of government under the control of the rich and the powerful, where hereditary monarchs ruled by divine right: by the will of God. In Jefferson's view the American constitution needed to ensure that the state was prevented from setting aside its revenues for a favoured few: because otherwise the difference between the actual aristocracies that governed Europe in their own interests and the "moneyed aristocracies" overseeing the United States would differ in no way meaningful at all.
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