Jefferson idealized the independent yeoman as the best exemplar of republican virtues, distrusted cities and financiers, and favored states' rights and a strictly limited federal government.
He suspended his qualms about exercising powers of federal government to buy Louisiana. Jefferson detested the European system of established churches and called for a wall of separation between church and state at the federal level. He helped disestablish the Anglican Church in Virginia after the Revolution, and wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779, 1786).
Historians credit him for leading Jeffersonian democracy; his Democratic-Republican Party dominated American politics for 25 years. Jefferson's republican political principles were strongly influenced by the 18th-century British opposition writers of the Country Party. He was also influenced by John Locke.
Jefferson disliked and distrusted banks and bankers; he opposed borrowing from banks because he believed it created long-term debt as well as monopolies, and inclined the people to dangerous speculation, as opposed to productive labor on the farm.
Jefferson believed that each man has "certain inalienable rights".
He defines the right of "liberty" by saying, "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others..."
A proper government, for Jefferson, is one that not only prohibits individuals in society from infringing on the liberty of other individuals, but also restrains itself from diminishing individual liberty.
