Independent states internally, united states externally

[This is a letter to Gideon Granger, dated August 13, 1800, regarding the ineffectiveness and corruption of a single consolidated central government — as compared to governments managed by independent states — because our country has become too large to service the needs and wants of all constituents nationally, except for foreign concerns.]

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, & from under the eye of their constituents, will, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer & overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizen; and the same circumstance by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder & waste: and I do verily believe that if the principle were to prevail of a common law being in force in the US. (Which principle possesses the general government at once of all the powers of the state governments, and reduces us to a single consolidated government) it would become the most corrupt government on the face of the earth.

You have seen the practices by which the public servants have been able to cover their conduct, or, where that could not be done, the delusions by which they have varnished it for the eye of their constituents. What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building & office hunting, would be produced by an assumption of all the state powers into the hands of the general government.

The true theory of our constitution is surely the wisest & best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves, & united as to everything respecting foreign nations. Let the general government be once reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, & a very unexpensive one: a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.