Jefferson and Decentralization

It's getting rough, off the cuff
I've got to say enough's enough
Bigger, the harder he falls
--The Fixx

Previously we noted that many of the nation's founding group, including Thomas Jefferson, had developed a sense that the limited government design expressed in Constitution would not work out.

In his later years, Jefferson was particularly concerned with the principle of decentralization. In 1821 he wrote:

"It is not by the consolidation, or concentration, of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected."

The Constitution enumerated a limited set of federal powers with the remainder reserved for the states. But Jefferson saw the limited scope of "real Constitution" being overrun by political factions who saw great benefit in centralized power.

Jefferson saw early Supreme Court decisions, such as Marbury v Madison, as instrumental in "the annihiliation of constitutional State rights."

The reasoning behind decentralized government is straightforward. Bringing more power to state and local governments permits representatives familiar with the community to focus on local needs. Closeby government is also much easier for citizens to monitor than is complex bureaucracy thousands of miles away.

Centralized government, wrote Jefferson, is liable to be subject to "the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface."

That the Constitution would ultimate drive consolidation of power was one of the chief objections of the Anti-Federalists during the ratification process. Almost 50 years later, Jefferson acknowledged that the Anti-Federalists were right in their "fear of [consolidation] which produced the whole of the opposition to the Constitution at its birth."

Jefferson was pessimistic that the centralization process in motion by the 1820s could be reversed. In 1825 he wrote:

"I see...with deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power."

If this is what he saw in 1825, then what would Jefferson be saying today?