Jefferson: The Betrayal of Liberty (Part 4)

**Tom Holland** (0:01)
This episode is brought to you by the Lloyds 5K house deposit. And this is something that was last seen in 1996

**Dominic Sandbrook** (0:11)
Yeah, so the 1990s looks now like a lost golden age of prosperity and positivity, doesn't it? Think of the sort of the advent of the Blair administration in 1997, all the enthusiasm and excitement that surrounded that, the economic growth of the time, the technological developments, the sort of sense of an endless golden summer where everybody's listening to Blair and Oasis and looking forward to buying their first houses. And that of course takes us to mortgages. Now the good news is that in a nod to the 1990s, Lloyds are offering 5K deposit mortgages to first-time buyers. So search 5K first-time buyer.

**Tom Holland** (0:49)
1996 average first-time buyer deposits are based on ONS data subject to status your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments and conditions apply.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (1:02)
Introducing Meta Glasses. You have questions, they've got answers.

**Tom Holland** (1:08)
Hey Meta, what's the capital of Peru? Lima.

**Tabby Syrett** (1:11)
How do you say where's the restroom in Spanish?

**Al Murray** (1:15)
Dónde está el baño?

**Tabby Syrett** (1:16)
Hey Meta, is a hot dog a sandwich?

**Tom Holland** (1:20)
Technically no.

**James Holland** (1:21)
Spiritually, yes.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (1:22)
Hey Meta, what should I do with my life? That's one of life's biggest questions.
What do you think?

**Tabby Syrett** (1:29)
Ask anything with the new Meta Glasses.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (1:43)
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain enalible rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it's the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
So that was the Declaration of Independence. Now, those words, our American listeners, many of them will have started crying with pride and joy.
Because this is, of course, the most celebrated document in all American history. Americans learn in school, though they're told in school, that it's one of the great masterpieces of English prose. They regard it as a statement of principles, that's a symbol of the country, and a testament to the power of the American dream.
Even though, of course, as Samuel Johnson pointed out at the time, many of the people who were endorsing the Declaration of Independence themselves owned other human beings. Of course, we won't go into that, Tom, just yet. So, this is one of the landmark documents in all human history. We have been marking its 250th anniversary and the anniversary of the tax revolt for which it was a press release by looking at the lives of four of the most notable founding fathers. And today, we turn our attention to the man who wrote those words. And that man is, of course, Thomas Jefferson.

**Tom Holland** (3:35)
It is. And that is the document for which he is best known. A document which, as you said, is one of the very few documents to have changed history. But I think his status as the author of the Declaration of Independence kind of barely scratches the surface of his remarkable range of achievements. So you can see from the declaration itself, which he wrote when he was only 33, that this is a man of remarkable intellectual gifts. Kenneth Clarke in Civilization, the landmark BBC series, in the episode on the Revolutionary Era, he described Jefferson as the emblematic genius of the age. He described him as a universal man. And when you look at the range of Jefferson's accomplishments, you can see what Clarke was on about. So Jefferson was a scholar whose learning embraced classical scholarship. He was a brilliant classical scholar. He was fascinated in history and natural history, in agriculture, in philosophy, in architecture. Very enthusiastic architect.
Music, philosophy, law, meteorology, palliance. I mean, basically, there is no limit to the range of his interests. He knew Latin, he knew Greek, he knew Italian, he knew French, he knew Spanish. He was also a very keen gardener.
He was a pioneer in the culture of the tomato.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (5:00)
Wow.

**Tom Holland** (5:00)
Which at this time, Americans viewed the tomato with great suspicion. As far as I know, he's the only founding father to have written down a recipe for ice cream.