Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants

by James Vincent

The text starts as a dry overview of the geography and resources of Jefferson’s home state, but, like the lord of the manor admiring his plat, Jefferson is enthralled by the idea of the land and begins to rhapsodise over America’s natural bounty and its potential to nurture a particular sort of liberty. The latter, he thought, would be achieved through the development of the land, an activity that Jefferson elevated to the status of religious virtue. ‘Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God,’ he writes, ‘if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.’16 Europe could keep its dirty metropolises and crowded workshops, thought Jefferson; America would till the soil, cultivating in its ‘immensity of land’ a vigorous, moral, and independent citizenry. These men – these white men – would own the land they stood on, making them impervious to bribery, debt, or other economic threats.