...shared by his American contemporaries even before he spelled them out in Notes on the State of Virginia. "The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government," he thundered, "as sores do to strength of the human body."36 Revolutionary soldiers had been paid off...

...our workshops remain m Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and materials, and with...much to the support of pure government, as sores do the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic...

...large cities as pestilence to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man," he wrote at one point. "The mobs of great cities add just so much to the...government as sores do to the strength of the human body," he wrote at another. Jefferson simply could not see how the free and dignified community life diat...

...Americans recalled Thomas Jefferson's aversion to cities and their impact on the political system: "[T]he mobs of great cities add just so much to the...government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. A degeneracy in these...

...from the face of the earth." His fear of commerce and city life is expressed in the same paragraph: "The mobs of great cities add just so much to the...government, as sores do to the strength of the human body" (Thomas Jefferson, The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Adrienne Koch and William...

...peaceably expressed ... by the common reason" of all citizens, he also saw them as objects to be feared: "The mobs of great cities add just so much to the...government, as sores do to the strength of the human body." For Tocqueville, "the strength of free peoples resides in the local community," giving them both the...

...virtue," and he establishes the superiority of agrarian life to urban sophistication by adding that "The mobs of great cities add just so much to the...government, as sores do to the strength of the human body" (164-65). A sentiment similar to Jefferson's is expressed in The Pioneers (1823), the first novel of...

...family of any size." 2 Democracy, he fervently believed, derived from the countryside, not the city: "The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government," he wrote in his Notes on Virginia, "as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners...

...class strife attendant with urbanization. "The mobs of great cities," he claimed, "add just so much support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body."32 But Jefferson's agrarian republic had quickly been displaced by the forces of expansive commercialism...

...from a state of preeminence and grace to one of decadence. "The mobs of great cities," he declared, "add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores to the strength of the human body."" Tocqueville explained America's exceptionalism in less graphic...