The import of the term republic

This is from my letter to John Taylor, May 28, 1816:

The purest republican feature in the government of our own state is the House of Representatives. The Senate is equally so the 1st year, less the 2nd and so on. The Executive still less, because not chosen by the people directly. The Judiciary seriously antirepublican because for life; and the national Arm wielded, as you observe by Military leaders, irresponsible but to themselves.

Add to this the vicious constitution of our county courts (to whom the justice, the executive administration, the taxation, police, the military appointments of the county, and nearly all our daily concerns are confided) self appointed, self continued, holding their authorities for life, and with an impossibility of breaking in on the perpetual succession of any faction once possessed of the bench. They are in truth the Executive, the Judiciary, and the Military of their respective counties, and the sum of the counties makes the State. And add also that one half of our brethren who fight and pay taxes, are excluded, like Helots, from the rights of representation; as if society were instituted for the soil, and not for the men inhabiting it; or one half of these could dispose of the rights, & the will, of the other half, without their consent.

‘What constitutes a state?

Not high-rais’d battlements, or labor’d mound,

   Thick wall, or moated gate:

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crown’d

   No: Men, high-minded men;

   Men, who their duties know;

But know their rights; and, knowing, dare maintain.

   These constitute a state.’

On this view of the import of the term republic, instead of saying, as has been said, that ‘it may mean anything or nothing,’ we may say, with truth and meaning, that governments are more or less republican as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition: & believing, as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights, & especially that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient. And I sincerely believe with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; & that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

Let me turn to a more engaging subject, the honest culture of the earth. It is a shame that I should ask you a 2nd time for a little seed of the Swedish turnip, if you still preserve it. My absences from home at a distant possession, which is almost a second home, occasioned a failure to save seed the last year; and the Rutabaga is so much preferable for the use of the table, that I wish to recover it again.