societies formed for talking on any subject however government may dislike them, come in any way under the head of force or violence. I think that associations conducted in the spirit of sobriety, regularity, and thought, are one of the best and most efficient of those means which I would recommend for the production of happiness, liberty, and virtue.
Are you slaves, or are you men? if slaves, then crouch to the rod, and lick the feet of your oppressors, glory in your shame, it will become you if brutes to act according to your nature. But you are men, a real man is free, so far as circumstances will permit him. Then firmly, yet quietly resist. When one cheek is struck, turn[1] the other to the insulting coward. You will be truly brave; you will resist and conquer. The discussion of any subject, is a right that you have brought into the world with your heart and tongue. Resign your heart's-blood, before you part with this inestimable privilege of man. For it is fit that the governed should enquire into the proceedings of Government, which is of no use the moment it is conducted on any other principle but that of safety. You have much to think of.—Is war necessary to your happiness and safety. The interests of the poor gain nothing from the wealth or extension of a nation's boundaries, they gain nothing from glory, a word that has often served as a cloak to the ambition or avarice of Statesmen. The barren victories of
- ↑ In the original edition we read here turn in the other. The word in has been transferred to its proper place a few lines above,—glory in your shame,—whence it is missing in the original. Probably it was inserted as a correction in the margin of a proof, and was put in by the printer in the wrong place.
