Such men, and such social coteries, are few in this country.  Fortunately, wealth which is only used as a means of ostentatious display is worthless to communities, and its possessor is contemptible.  “Wealth is power” is an adage, and is true where it is used to promote the general good.  Without it no people can be prosperous or intelligent, and the prosperity and intelligence of every people is greatest where there is most wealth, and where it is most generally diffused.  This is best effected by democratic institutions, where every preferment is open to all, and where the division of estates follows every death.  No large and overshadowing estates, creating a moneyed aristocracy, can accumulate, to control the legislation and the people’s destinies under such institutions.  No privileged class can be sustained under their operation; for such a class must always be sustained by wealth hereditary and entailed, protected from the obligations of debt, and prohibited from division or alienation.

Mr. Jefferson had studied the effects of governments upon their people most thoroughly, and understood their operation upon the social relations of society, and the character and minds of the people.  He was wont to say there was no hereditary transmission of mind; that this was democratic, and a Caesar, a Solon, or a Demosthenes was as likely to come from a cottage and penury as from a palace and wealth; that virtue more frequently wore a smock-frock than a laced coat, and that the institutions of every government should be so modelled as to afford opportunity to these to become what nature designed they should be—­models of worth and usefulness to the country.  Every one owes to society obligations, and the means should be afforded to all to make available these obligations for the public good.  Nature never designed that man should hedge about with law a favored few, until these should establish a natural claim to such protection, by producing all the intellect and virtue of the commonwealth.  This was common property, and wherever found, in all the gradations and ranges of society, should, under the operations of law, be afforded the same opportunities as the most favored by fortune.  “In all things nature should be teacher and guide.”

These doctrines are beautiful in theory, and are well calculated to fasten upon the minds of the many.  They have been, time and again, incorporated into the constitution of governments, and have uniformly produced the same disastrous results.  They are equally as fallacious as the declaration “that all men are born free and equal,” which, with those above, has won the public approbation in spite of experience.  The equality of intellect is as certainly untrue as the equality of stature; the one is not more apparent than the other.  Transcendent intellect is as rare as an eclipse of the sun.  It manifests itself in the control of all others—­in forming the opinions and shaping the destinies of all others.  This is a birthright—­is