7849. SHAYS'S REBELLION, Unalarmed by.—[continued].
The late rebellion in
Massachusetts has given more alarm than I
think it should have done. Calculate that one
rebellion in thirteen States in the course of
eleven years, is but one for each State in a
century and a half. No country should be so
long without one. Nor will any degree of
power in the hands of government prevent insurrections.
France, with all its despotism,
and two or three hundred thousand men always
in arms, has had three insurrections in
the three years I have been here, in every one
of which greater numbers were engaged than in
Massachusetts, and a great deal more blood was
spilt. In Turkey, which Montesquieu supposes
more despotic, insurrections are the events of
every day. In England, where the hand of
power is lighter than here, but heavier than
with us, they happen every half dozen years.
Compare again the ferocious depredations of
their insurgents with the order, the moderation,
and the almost self-extinguishment of ours.—
To James Madison. Washington ed. ii, 331.
Ford ed., iv, 479.
(P.
1787)
