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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 16, 1993                   TAG: 9304160452
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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IN JEFFERSON'S OWN, FEW (?) WORDS

THOMAS Jefferson, addressing Samuel Kercheval in 1816, said:

"If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessities and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers . . . The bulk of society is reduced to be mere automations of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering."

If Jefferson were alive today, he would realize his worst fears have come true. PEGGY NELSON WISE COUNTY

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