Kristin Shrader-Frechette (2002), 'Distributive Justice, Participative Justice, and the Principle of Prima Facie Political Equality', in Environmental Justice: Creating Equality, Reclaiming Democracy, New York: Oxford University Press, pp.23-47.

When Thomas Jefferson served as ambassador to France from 1784 to 1787, the plight of the people there troubled him. He wrote to James Madison that France had "enormous inequality" that produced "misery at the bottom and mischief at the top." In a letter to his Italian friend Bernardo Bellini, Jefferson observed that such radical inequality of property forced every French person to be "either the hammer or the anvil." Instead Jefferson argued for distributive justice, for a more equal sharing of goods and resources, especially land. He also argued for participative justice, for equal rights in democratic decision-making. A decade earlier, after Jefferson wrote A Summruy View of the Rights of British America, the British government had charged him with treason, condemned him, and denied his civil liberties. His fellow Americans often did not treat him much better. From 1790 through 1793, when Jefferson served as secretary of state, many Americans shunned him for being too egalitarian. Only three families in class-conscious, aristocratic Philadelphia would even dare invite him into their homes.1