Mankind have lived to very little purpose,
if, at this period of the world, they must go two or three thousand
years back for lessons and examples. We do great injustice to
ourselves by placing them in such a superior line. We have no just
authority for it, neither can we tell why it is that we should suppose
ourselves inferior.
Could the mist of antiquity be cleared away, and men and things be
viewed as they really were, it is more than probable that they would
admire us, rather than we them. America has surmounted a greater
variety and combination of difficulties, than, I believe, ever fell to
the share of any one people, in the same space of time, and has
replenished the world with more useful knowledge and sounder maxims of
civil government than were ever produced in any age before. Had it not
been for America, there had been no such thing as freedom left
throughout the whole universe. England has lost hers in a long chain
of right reasoning from wrong principles, and it is from this country,
now, that she must learn the resolution to redress herself, and the
wisdom how to accomplish it.
The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of
liberty but not the principle, for at the time that they were
determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to
enslave the rest of mankind. But this distinguished era is blotted
by no one misanthropical vice. In short, if the principle on which the
cause is founded, the universal blessings that are to arise from it,
the difficulties that accompanied it, the wisdom with which it has
been debated, the fortitude by which it has been supported, the
strength of the power which we had to oppose, and the condition in
which we undertook it, be all taken in one view, we may justly style
it the most virtuous and illustrious revolution that ever graced the
history of mankind.
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