A Manual of Parliamentary Practice

by Thomas Jefferson

It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that this slender, concise, enormously influential volume was the work of a lifetime for American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson. From his student days at William and Mary College through his experience amidst the disarray of the colonial legislatures and the Continental Congress and an exasperating term presiding over the Senate as U.S. vice president, Jefferson studied centuries of parliamentary law and culled the best practices into a notes that he finally organized into this manual. Based on centuries of tradition codified for the first time by Jefferson, this work remains the basis for the rules of order of the U.S. House of Representatives, and offers some surprisingly revealing insight into one of the towering intellects who helped create America and her cultural personality. American politician and political philosopher THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826) was the third president of the United States, though he is perhaps even better remembered as the author of the Declaration of Independence.

164 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1993

About the author

Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. Following the American Revolutionary War and prior to becoming president in 1801, Jefferson was the nation's first U.S. secretary of state under George Washington and then the nation's second vice president under John Adams. Jefferson was a leading proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, and produced formative documents and decisions at the state, national, and international levels. His writings and advocacy for human rights, including freedom of thought, speech, and religion, served as substantial inspirations to the American Revolution and subsequent Revolutionary War in which the Thirteen Colonies succeeded in breaking from British America and establishing the United States as a sovereign nation.
During the American Revolution, Jefferson represented Virginia at the Second Continental Congress and served as the second governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781. In 1785, Congress appointed Jefferson U.S. minister to France, where he served from 1785 to 1789. President Washington then appointed Jefferson the nation's first secretary of state, where he served from 1790 to 1793. During this time, in the early 1790s, Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the nation's First Party System. Jefferson and Federalist John Adams became both friends and political rivals. In the 1796 U.S. presidential election between the two, Jefferson came in second, which made him Adams' vice president under the electoral laws of the time. Four years later, in the 1800 presidential election, Jefferson again challenged Adams, and won the presidency. In 1804, Jefferson was reelected overwhelmingly to a second term.
As president, Jefferson assertively defended the nation's shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies, promoted a western expansionist policy with the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the nation's geographic size, and was able to reduce military forces and expenditures following successful negotiations with France. In his second presidential term, Jefferson was beset by difficulties at home, including the trial of his former vice president Aaron Burr. In 1807, Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act to defend the nation's industries from British threats to U.S. shipping, limiting foreign trade and stimulating the birth of the American manufacturing industry. Presidential scholars and historians praise Jefferson's public achievements, including his advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance, his peaceful acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France, and his leadership in supporting the Lewis and Clark Expedition; they give radically differing interpretations of his views on and relationship with slavery.
Jefferson is ranked by both scholars and in public opinion among the upper-tier of American presidents.

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read if you are a political theory and legal nerd, but very boring overall, his autobiography was infinitely better. The passage I liked the most said that legislators could sit in and observe any committee, but personally I want a camera on all committee meetings that broadcasts on C-SPAN so the people can observe too. It is cool that the house still uses this manual as a guidebook on procedure. I love jefferson and strongly agree with his Jeffersonian democracy as a left libertarian perspective on a minimal State with extensive decentralized government, but this book was not about that, it was about the procedures within the Hamiltonian oligarchical government that we got instead. All together I disagreed with this book though, cause I see representative democracy for what it is in reality, an oligarchical form of government where the only political freedom the People wield is the right to elect which corrupt and evil elite is going to rule them for a term of years. We need anarchism, the bottom up decentralized democratic federalism of the People where the people self govern themselves through direct democracy and local and regional councils as the organizing brains, instead of the elite enslaving us with the centralized State hierarchy. As Benjamin Tucker says, anarchists are nothing more than unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats.

[Erica L Drayton]

This book will probably be my most treasured of all the books I own in my vast collection. It only serves to solidify that which I feel is my calling, my destiny, my legend...

[Nourajf · Rating 3 out of 5]

one of the most significant refrences in my thesis research ..