This statement is true. Throughout his extensive political career, and as third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson adhered to a view of federal government with limited and restricted powers, and of local and state governments with extended rights - as he already demonstrated in the the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which he secretly wrote together with Madison and which granted the states the right to nullify a federal law if this was deemed to be unconstitutional. Already in his inaugural speech he promised "a wise and frugal government," and, instead of riding in a horse-drawn carriage, he walked to and from the inauguration.