The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.

The sentiment reflects a recurring Jeffersonian anxiety: that republican self-government can be hollowed out if financial power—banks, creditors, and chartered corporations—captures public policy and uses the state to secure private advantage. Read this way, “lending institutions” and “moneyed incorporations” stand for concentrated capital able to influence legislation, public debt, and monetary policy, shifting sovereignty from citizens to financiers. The warning also echoes early American debates over the Bank of the United States, public credit, and corporate charters, where Jefferson and his allies often framed finance as a potential engine of corruption and dependency. However, this exact formulation is widely circulated in modern collections without a reliable Jefferson source.