Liberty did not spring "full armed" like
Minerva from the head of Jove. The liberty possessed by the world has
been gradually secured, and it was left for our country first to
incorporate in its foundation a recognition of individual rights. A
hundred years before the revolutionary war, Massachusetts and Virginia
resisted English tyranny. Massachusetts, in 1664, called herself a
"perfect republic." She preserved a neutral harbor by force of arms
against opposing English factions; she enacted laws against the
supremacy of the English parliament, and she established her own mint.
This last is noticeable, as in the progress of liberty, rights of
property, of which money is the exponent, have always been one of the
foremost. Bancroft says Virginia was always a land of liberty; that
Virginia placed the defense of liberty not in municipal corporations,
_but in persons_, and that the liberty of the individual was ever highly
prized. The difference between a monarchy and a republic is the
difference between force and consent; it is the difference between being
governed and governing yourself; it is the difference between the _men_
of Russia and the _men_ of the United States; it is the difference
between the political rights of one man as the government and the
political rights of the people as the government.
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