
(from vol 2, letter 67: 6 Jun 1780, to J___ S___ esq).
This instant about two thousand liberty boys are swearing and swaggering by with large sticks
(from vol 2, letter 67: 6 Jun 1780, to J___ S___ esq).
(from vol 2, letter 67: 6 Jun 1780, to J___ S___ esq).
“Our toast in general is,—Magna Charta, the British Constitution,—PITT and Liberty forever!”
"A Son of Liberty in Bristol County, Mass.", Newport Mercury (19 May, 1766) on the repeal of the Stamp Act.
C. Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic (New York, 1953), p. 360.
About William Pitt
James Burnham (1987) The Machiavellians, Defenders of Freedom. p. 280
“By the word "liberty" they meant liberty for property, not liberty for persons.”
Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 2, Protocols of Wealth, p. 33
“Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.”
1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)
Context: The Constitution and laws of our country are adopted and enacted through the direct action of the people, or through their duly chosen representatives. They reflect the enlightened conscience of our country. They ought always to speak with the true and conscientious voice of the people. Such voice has from time immemorial had the authority of divine sanction. In their great fundamentals they do not change. As new light arrives they may be altered in their details, but they represent the best that we know at any given time. To support the Constitution, to observe the laws, is to be true to our own higher nature. That is the path, and the only path, towards liberty. To resist them and violate them is to become enemies to ourselves and instruments of our own destruction. That is the path towards servitude. Obedience is not for the protection of someone else, but for the protection of ourselves. It needs to be remembered that it has to be secured not through the action of others, but through our own actions. Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.
"The California Question" (10 June 1850), as quoted in The Selected Works of Thaddeus Stevens http://books.google.com/books?id=A0Fs655TKfsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.
1850s
Context: There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion – in the bloody religions of the heathen. There are fanatics in superstition. But there can be no fanatic, however warm their zeal, in the true religion, even although you sell your goods and bestow your money on the poor, and go on and follow your Master. There may, and every hour shows around me, fanatics in the cause of false liberty – that infamous liberty which justifies human bondage, that liberty whose ‘corner-stone is slavery.’ But there can be no fanaticism however high the enthusiasm, in the cause of rational, universal liberty – the liberty of the Declaration of Independence.
1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)
Context: If the young aspirant is not rich enough for Parliament, and is deterred by the basilisks or otherwise from entering on Law or Church, and cannot altogether reduce his human intellect to the beaverish condition, or satisfy himself with the prospect of making money,—what becomes of him in such case, which is naturally the case of very many, and ever of more? In such case there remains but one outlet for him, and notably enough that too is a talking one: the outlet of Literature, of trying to write Books. Since, owing to preliminary basilisks, want of cash, or superiority to cash, he cannot mount aloft by eloquent talking, let him try it by dexterous eloquent writing. Here happily, having three fingers, and capital to buy a quire of paper, he can try it to all lengths and in spite of all mortals: in this career there is happily no public impediment that can turn him back; nothing but private starvation—which is itself a finis or kind of goal—can pretend to hinder a British man from prosecuting Literature to the very utmost, and wringing the final secret from her: "A talent is in thee; No talent is in thee." To the British subject who fancies genius may be lodged in him, this liberty remains; and truly it is, if well computed, almost the only one he has.
In Ladies Home Journal, May 1958