John Adams, July 6, 1774

Falmouth,¹ 6 July, 1774.

Mobs are the trite topic of declamation and invective among all the ministerial people far and near. They are grown universally learned in the nature, tendency, and consequences of them, and very elegant and pathetic in descanting upon them. They are sources of all kinds of evils, vices, and crimes, they say. They give rise to profaneness, intemperance, thefts, robberies, murders, and treason. Cursing, swearing, drunkenness, gluttony, lewdness, trespasses, maims, are necessarily involved in them and occasioned by them. Besides, they render the populace, the rabble, the scum of the earth, insolent and disorderly, impudent and abusive. They give rise to lying, hypocrisy, chicanery, and even perjury among the people, who are driven to such artifice and crimes to conceal themselves and their companions from prosecutions in consequence of them.

This is the picture drawn by the Tory pencil; and it must be granted to be a likeness. But this is declamation. What consequence is to be drawn from this description? Shall we submit to Parliamentary taxation to avoid mobs? Will not Parliamentary taxation, if established, occasion vices, crimes, and follies infinitely more numerous, dangerous, and fatal to the community? Will not Parliamentary taxation, if established, raise a revenue unjustly and wrongfully? If this revenue is scattered by the hand of corruption among the public officers and magistrates and rulers in the community, will it not propagate vices more numerous, more malignant and pestilential among them? Will it not render magistrates servile and fawning to their vicious superiors, and insolent and tyrannical to their inferiors? Are insolence, abuse, and impudence more tolerable in a magistrate than in a subject? Are they not more constantly and extensively pernicious? And does not the example of vice and folly in magistrates descend and spread downwards among the people?

Besides, is not the insolence of officers and soldiers and seamen, in the army and navy, as mischievous as that of porters, or of sailors in the merchant service? Are not riots raised and made by armed men as bad as those by unarmed? Is not an assault upon a civil officer, and a rescue of a prisoner from lawful authority, made by soldiers with swords or bayonets, as bad as if made by tradesmen with staves?

Are not the killing of a child by R.,² and the slaughter of half a dozen citizens by a party of soldiers, as bad as pulling down a house or drowning a cargo of tea, even if both should be allowed to be unlawful? Parties may go on declaiming, but it is not easy to say which party has excited most riots, which has published most libels, which has propagated most slander and defamation? Verbal scandal has been propagated in great abundance by both parties; but there is this difference, that one party have enjoyed almost all public offices, and therefore their defamation has been spread among the people more secretly, more maliciously, and more effectually. It has gone with greater authority, and been scattered by instruments more industrious. The ministerial newspapers have swarmed with as numerous and as malicious libels as the antiministerial ones. Fleet's paper, “Mein's Chronicle,” etc., etc., have been as virulent as any that was ever in the province. These bickerings of opposite parties, and their mutual reproaches, their declamations, their sing-song, their triumphs and defiances, their dismals and prophecies, are all delusion.

We very seldom hear any solid reasoning. I wish always to discuss the question without all painting, pathos, rhetoric, or flourish of every kind. And the question seems to me to be, whether the American colonies are to be considered as a distinct community so far as to have a right to judge for themselves when the fundamentals of their government are destroyed or invaded, or whether they are to be considered as a part of the whole British empire, the whole English nation, so far as to be bound in honor, conscience, or interest by the general sense of the whole nation. However, if this was the rule, I believe it is very far from the general sense of the whole nation, that America should be taxed by the British parliament. If the sense of the whole of the empire could be fairly and truly collected, it would appear, I believe, that a great majority would be against taxing us against or without our consent. It is very certain that the sense of parliament is not the sense of the empire, nor a sure indication of it.

But, if all other parts of the empire were agreed unanimously in the propriety and rectitude of taxing us, this would not bind us. It is a fundamental, inherent, and unalienable right of the people, that they have some check, influence, or control in their supreme legislature. If the right of taxation is conceded to Parliament, the Americans have no check or influence at all left.

This reasoning never was nor can be answered.

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¹ The ancient name of Portland, in Maine, at this period a part of the province of Massachusetts Bay.

² Ebenezer Richardson. The affair happened on the 22d February, 1770, a few days before the other and more serious disturbance here alluded to, commonly known as the Boston massacre. A man of the government side, by the name of Lillie, who kept a shop in Hanover Street, finding the non-importation agreement not universally observed, ventured to offer his stock of goods for sale. As a consequence, his shop was at once marked out in the street as infringing the agreement, and a board set up on which a hand was drawn for the purpose of arresting attention and deterring all persons from purchasing. Richardson, well known as an informer attached to the custom house, who lived close by, came out and attempted to get rid of the board. A struggle took place. The mob drove him back to his house, and attacked it with stones. He then fired a musket twice, killing a German boy eleven years old, by the name of Christopher Snyder, and wounding another very severely.

SOURCE: Charles Francis Adams, Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail Adams, During the Revolution, p. 14-16

Grover Cleveland’s Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1893

My Fellow Citizens, — In obedience to the mandate of my countrymen, I am about to dedicate myself to their service under the sanction of a solemn oath. Deeply moved by the expression of confidence and personal attachment which has called me to this service, I am sure my gratitude can make no better return than the pledge which I now give before God and these witnesses of my unreserved and complete devotion to the interests and welfare of those who have honoured me.

I deem it fitting on this occasion, while indicating the opinion I hold concerning public questions of present importance, to refer briefly also to the existence of certain conditions and tendencies among our people which seem to menace the integrity and usefulness of their Government. While every American citizen must contemplate with the utmost pride and enthusiasm the growth and expansion of our country, the sufficiency of our institutions to stand against the rudest shocks, the wonderful enterprise of our people, and the demonstrated superiority of our free government, it behoves us constantly to watch for every symptom of insidious infirmity that threatens our national vigour. It cannot be doubted that our stupendous achievements as a people and our country's robust strength have given rise to a heedlessness of those laws governing our national health which we can no more evade than human life can escape the laws of God and nature. Manifestly nothing is more vital to our supremacy as a nation and to the beneficent purposes of our government than a sound and stable currency. Its exposure to degradation should at once arouse to activity the most enlightened statesmanship, and the danger of depreciation in the purchasing power of the wages paid to toil should furnish the strongest incentive to prompt and conservative precaution. In dealing with our present embarrassing situation as related to this subject, we shall be wise if we temper our confidence and faith in our national strength and resources with the frank concession that even these will not permit us to defy with impunity the inexorable laws of finance and trade.

Closely related to the exaggerated confidence in our country's greatness which tends to the disregard of the rules of national safety another danger confronts us not less serious — I refer to the prevalence of a popular disposition to expect from the operation of our Government especial and direct individual advantages. The verdict of our voters which condemned the injustice of maintaining protection for protection's sake enjoins upon the people's servants the duty of exposing and destroying the brood of kindred evils which are the unwholesome progeny of paternalism. This is the bane of Republican institutions and a constant peril of our government by the people. It degrades to purposes of wily craft the plan of rule which our fathers established and bequeathed to us as an object of our love and veneration. It perverts the patriotic sentiment of our countrymen and tempts them to a pitiful calculation of the sordid gain to be derived from their Government's maintenance. It undermines the self-reliance of our people and substitutes in its place dependence upon governmental favouritism. While the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government, its functions do not include support of the people. The acceptance of this principle leads to a refusal of bounties and subsidies which burden the labour and thrift of a portion of our citizens to aid ill-advised or languishing enterprises in which they have no concern. It leads also to a challenge of wild and reckless pension expenditure which overleaps the bounds of grateful recognition of patriotic service and prostitutes to vicious uses the people's prompt and generous impulse to aid those disabled in their country's defence. Every thoughtful American must realise the importance of checking at its beginning any tendency, in public or private station, to regard frugality and economy as virtues which we may safely outgrow. The toleration of this idea results in the waste of the people's money by their chosen servants and encourages prodigality and extravagance in the home life of our countrymen. Under our scheme of government the waste of public money is a crime against the citizens, and the contempt of our people for economy and frugality in their personal affairs deplorably saps the strength and sturdiness of our national character.

To secure the fitness and competency of appointees to office and to remove from political action the demoralising madness for spoils, civil service reform has found a place in our public policy and laws. The benefits already gained through this instrumentality and the further usefulness it promises entitle it to the hearty support and encouragement of all who desire to see our public service well performed. The existence of an immense aggregation of kindred enterprises and combinations of business interests, formed for the purpose of limiting production and fixing prices, is inconsistent with the fair field which ought to be open to every independent activity. Legitimate strife in business should not be superseded by an enforced concession to the demands of combinations that have the power to destroy, nor should the people to be served lose the benefit of the cheapness which usually results from wholesome competition. These aggregations and combinations frequently constitute conspiracies against the interest of the people, and in all their phases they are unnatural and opposed to our American sense of fairness. To the extent that they can be reached and restrained by the Federal power, the general Government should relieve our citizens from their interference and exactions. Loyalty to the principles upon which our Government rests positively demands that the equality before the law which it guarantees to every citizen should be justly and in good faith conceded in all parts of the land. The enjoyment of this right follows the badge of citizenship wherever found; and, unimpaired by race or colour, it appeals for recognition to American manliness and fairness. Our relations with the Indians located within our borders impose upon us responsibilities we cannot escape. Humanity and consistency require us to treat them with forbearance, and in our dealings with them to honestly and considerately regard their rights and interests.

The people of the United States have decreed that on this day the control of their Government, in its legislative and executive branches, shall be given to the political party pledged in the most positive terms to the accomplishment of tariff reform. They have thus determined in favour of a more just and equitable system of Federal taxation. The agents they have chosen to carry out their purposes are bound by their promises, not less than by the command of their masters, to devote themselves unremittingly to this service. While there should be no surrender of principle, our task must be undertaken wisely, without vindictiveness. Our mission is not punishment, but the rectification of wrongs. If in lifting the burdens from the daily life of our people we reduce inordinate and unequal advantages too long enjoyed, this is but a necessary incident of our return to right and justice. When we tear aside the delusions and misconceptions which have blinded our countrymen to their condition under vicious tariff laws, we but show them how far they have been led away from the paths of contentment and prosperity. When we proclaim that necessity for revenue to support Government furnishes the only justification for taxing the people, we announce a truth so plain that its denial would seem to indicate the extent to which judgment may be influenced by familiarity with inversions of taxing power; and when we seek to reinstate the self-confidence and business enterprise of our citizens by discrediting abject dependence upon governmental favour, we strive to stimulate those elements of American character which support the hope of American achievement. I shall, to the best of my ability and within my sphere of duty, preserve the constitution by loyally protecting every grant of Federal power it contains, by defending all its restraints when attacked by impatience and restlessness, and by enforcing its limitations and reservations in favour of the States and the people. Fully impressed with the gravity of the duties that confront me, and mindful of my weakness, I should be appalled if it were my lot to bear unaided the responsibilities which await me. I am, however, saved from discouragement when I remember that I shall have the support, counsel, and co-operation of wise and patriotic men who will stand at my side in Cabinet places, or will represent the people in their legislative halls. I find, also, much comfort in remembering that my countrymen are just and generous, and in the assurance that they will not condemn those who by sincere devotion to their service deserve their forbearance and approval. Above all, I know there is a Supreme Being who rules the affairs of men and whose goodness and mercy have always followed the American people, and I know He will not turn from us now if we humbly and reverently seek His powerful aid.

SOURCE: Aberdeen University Press, Publisher, The Annual Register: A Review of Public Events at Home and Abroad for the Year 1893, p. 455-8