Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present generation, to preserve your Freedom! — I hope you will make a good use of it. — if you … - John Adams

Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.

The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own.

But of all the words in all languages, perhaps there has been none so much abused in this way as the words republic, commonwealth,and popular state. In the Rerum-Publicarum Collectio, of which there are fifty and odd volumes, and many of them very incorrect, France, Spain, and Portugal, the four great empires, the Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman, and even the Ottoman, are all denominated republics. If, indeed, a republic signifies nothing but public affairs, it is equally applicable to all nations; and every kind of government, despotisms, monarchies, aristocracies, democracies, and every possible or imaginable composition of them are all republics.

Tacitus appears to have been as great an enthusiast as Petrarch for the revival of the republic and universal empire. He has exerted the vengeance of history upon the emperors, but has veiled the conspiracies against them, and the incorrigible corruption of the people which probably provoked their most atrocious cruelties. Tyranny can scarcely be practised upon a virtuous and wise people.