Reflections on the Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution

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Excerpt from Reflections on the Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution: And the Means of Making It a Benefit to the World From the august assembly of the continental congress nothing ever can be feared. Its members will always be wisely elected, for a free people never err in the choice of their representatives. The short, the perhaps too short, period of its administration leaves no room for jealousy. The nature of their functions, which are foreign from the internal government of each particular state, forms a sufficient barrier to ambition. They never can conceive the design of usurping the sovereignty, or employing the forces of the confederation against the liberty of any single state. Its Powers to be Enlarged. Repose confidence, therefore, in the congress, and enlarge its powers. Be judged by the delegates of all your provinces, or in other words, be your own judges. Nothing will resist: the decisions of an impartial justice. Arm, however, your judges with such a power as cannot be dangerous, arm them with your whole strength to enforce their sentences. Thus will your decrees, pronounced by the lips of your judges, be executed by yourselves. No free man, undoubtedly, will ever think of entrusting mercenaries with the defence of that country, which has been dyed with your blood. The time, thank heaven! is now arrived, when patriotism will cease to be a hatred of human kind, when the prosperity of a free state will cease to be founded on the lust of empire, as it was at Rome, or on the love of war, as was the case at Sparta. But human nature is still the same. Nothing great ever was, or ever will be, achieved without urgent motives, and some degree of enthusiasm. Reason alone, and ideas of order and justice, without the art to convert them into passions, will never keep alive that activity which is essential to liberty. Liberty cannot long survive the moment when it ceases to be the highest and most sensible of enjoyments. In order that it may be preserved, your passion for it must never abate. Enjoyment must never weaken its charms, but every day must revive in your souls that sentiment of intoxication, which you felt at the first shout of victory. Education. Would you obtain this great effect, address yourselves to the senses : address them perpetually: place constantly before the sight, the deplorable scenes of your servitude, and the enchanting picture of your deliverance. Begin with the infant in his cradle: let the first word he lisps be the name of Washington. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.