4701. LIBERTY, Preparation for.—
A
full measure of liberty is not now perhaps
to be expected by your nation, nor am I confident
they are prepared to preserve it. More
than a generation will be requisite, under the
administration of reasonable laws favoring
the progress of knowledge in the general mass
of the people, and their habituation to an
independent security of person and property,
before they will be capable of estimating the
value of freedom, and the necessity of a
sacred adherence to the principles on which
it rests for preservation. Instead of that liberty
which takes root and growth in the
progress of reason, if recovered by mere
force or accident, it becomes, with an unprepared
people, a tyranny still, of the many, the
few, or the one.—
To Marquis Lafayette. Washington ed. vi, 421.
Ford ed., ix, 505.
(M.
Feb. 1815)
