What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter
on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a chief
magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed
towards one: & what we have always read of the elections of Polish
kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for
life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent & persevering lying. The
British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and
model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world
has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the
ministers themselves have come to believe them, & what is more
wonderful, we have believed them ourselves.
Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except
in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an
instance of rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's
motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid
we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people
cannot be all, & 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. We have had
thirteen states independent eleven years. There has been one
rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each
state. What country before ever existed a century & a half without a
rebellion? & what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers
are not warned from time to time that his 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.