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“Are we not better for what we have hitherto abolished of the feudal system? Has not every restitution of the ancient Saxon laws had happy effects? Is it not better now that we return at once into that happy system of our ancestors, the wisest and most perfect ever yet devised by the wit of man, as it stood before the eighth century?”
(Thomas Jefferson, to Edmund Pendleton to convince him that Virginia must abolish the remnants of feudalism and return to the “ancient principles.” Letter to Edmund Pendleton, August 13, 1776.)
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