Bernhard Knollenberg on the Belief of many colonial Americans that Liberty was lost because the Leaders of the People had failed in their Duty (2003)
About this Quotation:
Unfortunately this book is no longer available online at the OLL website for reasons of copyright. Nevertheless, Knollenberg’s 2 volume history of the American Revolution is a classic which is still available in book form from Liberty Fund.
Other quotes from this week:
- 2009: Edward Gibbon called the loss of independence and excessive obedience the "secret poison" which corrupted the Roman Empire (1776)
- 2008: Thomas Hodgskin wonders how despotism comes to a country and concludes that the “first step” taken towards despotism gives it the power to take a second and a third - hence it must be stopped in its tracks at the very first sign (1813)
- 2007: David Hume on the origin of government in warfare, and the “perpetual struggle” between Liberty and Power (1777)
- 2007: Jeremy Bentham relates a number of “abominations” to the French National Convention urging them to emancipate their colonies (1793)
Other quotes about Politics & Liberty:
- 2009: The Abbé de Mably argues with John Adams about the dangers of a “commercial elite” seizing control of the new Republic and using it to their own advantage (1785)
- 2009: Samuel Smiles on how an idle, thriftless, or drunken man can, and should, improve himself through self-help and not by means of the state (1859).
- 2009: John Adams thought he could see arbitrary power emerging in the American colonies and urged his countrymen to “nip it in the bud” before they lost all their liberties (1774)
- 2009: Benjamin Constant distinguished between the Liberty of the Ancients (“the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community”) and that of the Moderns (“where individual rights and commerce are respected”) (1816)
- 2009: Edward Gibbon called the loss of independence and excessive obedience the "secret poison" which corrupted the Roman Empire (1776)
- 2009: Étienne de la Boétie provides one of the earliest and clearest explanations of why the suffering majority obeys the minority who rule over them; it is an example of voluntary servitude (1576)
- 2009: Sir William Blackstone differentiates between “absolute rights” of individuals (natural rights which exist prior to the state) and social rights (contractural rights which evolve later) (1753)
- 2009: John Stuart Mill on the need for limited government and political rights to prevent the “king of the vultures” and his “minor harpies” in the government from preying on the people (1859)
- 2009: Mercy Otis Warren asks why people are so willing to obey the government and answers that it is supineness, fear of resisting, and the long habit of obedience (1805)
- 2008: James Madison on the need for the “separation of powers” because “men are not angels,” Federalist 51 (1788)
- 2008: James Madison on the mischievous effects of mutable government in The Federalist no. 62 (1788)
- 2007: Viscount Bryce reflects on how modern nation states which achieved their own freedom through struggle are not sympathetic to the similar struggles of other repressed peoples (1901)
- 2007: Augustin Thierry laments that the steady growth of liberty in France had been disrupted by the cataclysm of the French Revolution (1859)
- 2007: Herbert Spencer concludes from his principle of equal freedom that individuals have the Right to Ignore the State (1851)
- 2006: Condorcet writes about the inevitability of the spread of liberty and prosperity while he was in prison awaiting execution by the Jacobins (1796)
- 2006: Catharine Macaulay supported the French Revolution because there were sound "public choice" reasons for not vesting supreme power in the hands of one’s social or economic "betters" (1790)
- 2006: Montesquieu was fascinated by the liberty which was enjoyed in England, which he attributed to security of person and the rule of law (1748)
- 2006: Edward Gibbon wonders if Europe will avoid the same fate as the Roman Empire, collapse brought on as a result of prosperity, corruption, and military conquest (1776)
- 2006: J.S. Mill was convinced he was living in a time when he would experience an explosion of classical liberal reform because “the sprit of the age” had dramatically changed (1831)
- 2005: The Australian radical liberal Bruce Smith lays down some very strict rules which should govern the actions of any legislator (1887)
- 2005: John Milton gave a speech before Parliament defending the right of freedom of speech in which he likened the government censors to an “oligarchy” and free speech to a “flowery crop of knowledge” (1644)
- 2005: David Hume ponders why the many can be governed so easily by the few and concludes that both force and opinion play a role (1777)
- 2005: William Emerson, in his oration to commemorate the Declaration of Independence, reminded his listeners of the “unconquerable sense of liberty” which Americans had (1802)
- 2005: Edmund Burke asks a key question of political theory: quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (how is one to be defended against the very guardians who have been appointed to guard us?) (1756)
- 2005: Andrew Fletcher believed that too many people were deceived by the “ancient terms and outwards forms” of their government but had in fact lost their ancient liberties (1698)
- 2004: David Hume argued that Individual Liberty emerged slowly out of the “violent system of government” which had earlier prevailed in Europe (1778)
- 2004: Adam Smith on the Dangers of sacrificing one’s Liberty for the supposed benefits of the “lordly servitude of a court” (1759)
- 2004: Richard Price on the true Nature of Love of One’s Country (1789)
- 2004: George Washington on the Difference between Commercial and Political Relations with other Countries (1796)
2 August, 2004
 | Bernhard Knollenberg on the Belief of many colonial Americans that Liberty was lost because the Leaders of the People had failed in their Duty (2003) |
In his magisterial history of the American Revolution, Bernhard Knollenberg remarks upon the problems facing the Continental Congress in September 1774:
One of the points particularly stressed in the writings in defense of liberty was that liberty, once enjoyed but lost, had commonly been lost because leaders of the people, who ought to have taken timely action to preserve it, had failed in their duty.
The full passage from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):
As brought out in the admirable studies of Clinton Rossiter, Caroline Robbins, H. Trevor Colbourn, Bernard Bailyn, and others, one of the powerful forces in unifying colonial sentiment was invocation of the writings of classical authors and earlier English writers in praise or defense of liberty. These were known to the reading public throughout the colonies at first hand or through the heavy borrowing from them in current pamphlets, newspapers, sermons, and almanacs. (The meager colonial stage apparently did not contribute significantly toward arousing and unifying the colonists in opposing the British threat to colonial liberty. But Addison’s popular play, Cato, evidently did. Patriotic songs also were a contributing influence.)
One of the points particularly stressed in the writings in defense of liberty was that liberty, once enjoyed but lost, had commonly been lost because leaders of the people, who ought to have taken timely action to preserve it, had failed in their duty. Would not the history of lost liberties repeat itself if the Congress, to whom the people of America now looked for the preservation of their liberty, failed to unite in taking effective action to this end?
But what should this action be? Here was the rub.