"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add “within the limits of the law,” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual. It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately. Liberty is the great parent of science and of virtue; and a nation will be great in both in proportion as it is free. He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others. To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. In a government bottomed on the will of all, the...liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all. I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one. " T.J. ----
Posted on: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 01:52:51 +0000
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