What a
retrograde movement has liberty made in this country in the last fifty
years!
"Whilst a majority of your citizens are accustomed to rule with the
authority of despots, within particular limits--while your youths are
reared in the habit of thinking that the great rights of human nature
are not so sacred, but they may with innocence be trampled on, can it be
expected, that the public mind should glow with that generous ardor in
the cause of freedom, which can alone save a government, like ours, from
the lurking demon of usurpation? Do you not dread the contamination of
principle? Have you no alarms for the continuance of that spirit, which
once conducted us to victory and independence, when the talons of power
were unclasped for our destruction? Have you no apprehension left, that
when the votaries of freedom sacrifice also at the gloomy altars of
slavery, they will, at length, become apostates from them for ever? For
my own part, I have no hope, that the stream of general liberty will
flow for ever, unpolluted, through the foul mire of partial bondage, or
that they, who have been habituated to lord it over others, will not be
base enough, in time, to let others lord it over them.
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