Subject:
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The Blood of Patriots & Tyrants (was Re: Sticking my gun...etc.)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 23 Sep 2003 17:14:02 GMT
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Viewed:
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776 times
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From Thomas Jefferson to William Smith
Paris, November 13, 1787
Dear Sir, -- I am now to acknowledge the receipt of your favors of October the
4th, 8th, & 26th. In the last you apologise for your letters of introduction to
Americans coming here. It is so far from needing apology on your part, that it
calls for thanks on mine. I endeavor to show civilities to all the Americans who
come here, & will give me opportunities of doing it: and it is a matter of
comfort to know from a good quarter what they are, & how far I may go in my
attentions to them. Can you send me Woodmason’s bills for the two copying
presses for the M. de la Fayette, & the M. de Chastellux? The latter makes one
article in a considerable account, of old standing, and which I cannot present
for want of this article. -- I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr.
Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave
through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall
receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: & very bad. I do
not know which preponderate. 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 20 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 a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.
We have had 13. states independent 11. 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
it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their
people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to
set them right as to facts, pardon & 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 & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention
has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusetts: and in the
spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen-yard in order. I
hope in God this article will be rectified before the new constitution is
accepted. -- You ask me if any thing transpires here on the subject of S.
America? Not a word. I know that there are combustible materials there, and that
they wait the torch only. But this country probably will join the extinguishers.
-- The want of facts worth communicating to you has occasioned me to give a
little loose to dissertation. We must be contented to amuse, when we cannot
inform.
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Sticking my gun where it doesn't belong...
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| In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Marchetti wrote: <snip all good links that I'll spend time readig...> (...) You'd think that if the 'equalizer' is the 'final check and balancer of the system', then the system would have that mandated somewhere, (...) (21 years ago, 23-Sep-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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