eye95
Well-known member
It is also good from time to time to post the actual quotes in their context.
http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/The_tree_of_liberty...(Quotation)
Jefferson was saying that even if a rebellion is started in error, it is a good thing. I must disagree with him there. If anyone enters into a rebellion, they need to be damned sure that they are essentially right in the facts. King George abused us for years and repeated attempts were made to remedy the situation before the Founders watered that tree. At the time of the watering, they pledged their lives and fortunes to what was illegal until and unless they won. Thank God they won.
When posters here call for revolution, explicitly or implicitly, they need to remember that.
http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/The_tree_of_liberty...(Quotation)
"I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.[1] The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted." - Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787
Jefferson was saying that even if a rebellion is started in error, it is a good thing. I must disagree with him there. If anyone enters into a rebellion, they need to be damned sure that they are essentially right in the facts. King George abused us for years and repeated attempts were made to remedy the situation before the Founders watered that tree. At the time of the watering, they pledged their lives and fortunes to what was illegal until and unless they won. Thank God they won.
When posters here call for revolution, explicitly or implicitly, they need to remember that.