Limits.

Otis, Thomas Jefferson, 1817

I abandon politics, and accomodate myself chearfully to things as they go; confident in the wisdom of those who direct them, and that they will be better and better directed in the progressive course of knolege and experience. our successors start on our shoulders. they know all that we know, and will add to that stock the discoveries of the next 50. years; and what will be their amount we may estimate from what the last 50. years have added to the science of human concerns. the thoughts of others, as I find them on paper, are my amusement and delight; but the labors of the mind in abstruse investigations are irksome, and writing itself is become a slow and painful operation, occasioned by a stiffened wrist, the consequence of a former dislocation. I will however essay the two definitions which you say are more particularly interesting at present: I mean those of the terms Liberty & Republic, aware however that they have been so multifariously applied as to convey no precise idea to the mind. of Liberty then I would say that, in the whole plenitude of it’s extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will: but rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law"; because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

Thomas Jefferson, from his letter to Isaac H. Tiffany, April 4. 1819