three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are
very good articles in it, and 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; and 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 and 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, and 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
honorably conducted? I say nothing of its 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, 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 a lethargy, the forerunner of death to
the public liberty. We have had thirteen States independent for eleven
years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a
century and a half, for each State. What country before, ever existed a
century and a half without a rebellion? 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 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. Our convention has been too much impressed by
the insurrection of Massachusetts; and on 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 anything transpires here on the subject of South America?
Not a word. I know that the