Bernard Bailyn Quotes & Sayings

What Americans were really objecting to had nothing to do with constitutional principles. their objection was not to Parliament's constitutional right to levy certain kinds of taxes as opposed to others, but to its effort to collect any. — Bernard Bailyn

At first the relevance of chattel slavery to libertarian ideals was noted only in individual passages of isolated pamphlets. — Bernard Bailyn

For "as great a blessing as government is," the Rev. Peter Whitney explained, "like other blessings, it may become a scourge, a curse, and severe punishment to a people." What made it so, what turned power into a malignent force, was not its own nature so much as the nature of man - his susceptibility to corruption and his lust for self-aggrandizement. — Bernard Bailyn

It was an elevating, transforming vision: a new, fresh, vigorous, and above all morally regenerate people rising from the obscurity to defend the battlements of liberty and then in triumph standing forth, heartening and sustaining the cause of freedom everywhere. — Bernard Bailyn

Power always and everywhere had had a pernicious, corrupting effect upon men. It "converts a good man in private life to a tyrant in office." It acts upon men like drink: it "is known to be intoxicating in its nature" - "too intoxicating and liable to abuse." And nothing within man is sufficiently strong to guard against these effects of power - certainly not "the united considerations of reason and religion," for they have never "been sufficiently powerful to restrain these lusts of men. — Bernard Bailyn

But are we to accept a form of government which we do not entirely approve of, merely in hopes that it will be administered well? Does not every man know, that nothing is more liable to be abused than power. Power, without a check, in any hands, is tyranny; — Bernard Bailyn

Whatever deficiencies the leaders of the American Revolution may have had, reticence, fortunately, was not one of them. — Bernard Bailyn

at the height of the British slave trade, in the 1790s, one large slave vessel left England for Africa every other day. — Bernard Bailyn

The idea of sovereignty current in the English speaking world of the 1760's was scarcely more than a century old. It had first emerged during the English Civil War, in the early 1640's, and had been established as a canon of Whig political thought in the Revolution of 1688. — Bernard Bailyn

Independence was enriching, but most often it meant loss, isolation, and cultural deprivation, — Bernard Bailyn

In England the practice of "virtual" representation provided reasonably well for the actual representation of the major interests of the society, and it raised no widespread objection. — Bernard Bailyn

Never had Parliament or the crown, or both together, operated in actuality as theory indicated sovereign powers should. — Bernard Bailyn

Incorporating in their colorful, slashing, superbly readable pages, the major themes of the "left" opposition under Walpole, these libertarian tracts, emerging first in the form of denunciations of standing armies in the reign of William III, left an indelible imprint on the "country" mind everywhere in the English-speaking world. — Bernard Bailyn

The categories within which the colonists thought about the social foundations of politics were inheritances from classical antiquity, reshaped by seventeenth century English thought. — Bernard Bailyn

Up and down the the still sparsely settled coast of British North America, groups of men-intellectuals and farmers, scholars and merchants, the learned and the ignorant-gathered for the purpose of constructing enlightened governments. — Bernard Bailyn

The wielders of power did not speak for it, nor did they naturally serve it. Their interest was to use and develop power, no less natural and necessary than liberty but more dangerous. — Bernard Bailyn

In effect the people were present through their representatives, and were themselves, step by step and point by point, acting in the conduct of public affairs. No longer merely an ultimate check on government, they were in some sense the government. — Bernard Bailyn

The ideas that the colonists put forward, rather than creating a new condition of fact, expressed one that has long existed; they articulated and in so doing generalized, systematized, gave moral sanction to what had emerged haphazardly, incompletely and insensibly, from the chaotic factionalism of colonial politics. — Bernard Bailyn

What were once felt to be defects-isolation, institutional simplicity, primitiveness of manners, multiplicity of religions, weaknesses in the authority of the state-could now be seen as virtues, not only by Americans themselves but by enlightened spokesmen of reform, renewal and hope wherever they may be-in London coffeehouses, in Parisian salons, in the courts of German princes. — Bernard Bailyn

Every major feature of the modern United States - from racial equality to Social Security, from the Pentagon to the suburb - represents a repudiation of Jeffersonianism. — Bernard Bailyn

The classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but thet are everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of thought — Bernard Bailyn

The theory of politics that emerges from the political literature of the pre-Revolutionary years rests on the belief that what lay behind every political scene, the ultimate explanation of every political controversy, was the disposition of power. — Bernard Bailyn

many of these excellent young people could not, as a general rule, either read or write, as these activities are understood in our best universities. — Bernard Bailyn

All sorts of efforts were made to populate the Floridas - with anyone: Huguenots, Bermudians, Irish, Germans, Swiss, Scottish Highlanders, even some of the prostitutes being rehabilitated in London's Magdalen House. Sir Alexander Grant, who dreamed up the idea of transporting the prostitutes to Florida, confessed, with not exactly stunning insight, "Tis true they are not virgins"; nevertheless, he said, they would surely make splendid wives and mothers for such as were likely to live in a place like Florida.5 — Bernard Bailyn

If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No body will be argued into slavery. — Bernard Bailyn

What gave transcendent importance to the aggressiveness of power was the fact that its natural prey, its necessary victim, was liberty, or law, or right. — Bernard Bailyn

The primary function of a constitution was to mark out the boundaries of governmental powers-hence in England, where there was no constitution , there were no limits (save for the effect of trail by jury) to what the legislature might do. — Bernard Bailyn

That by 1774 the final crisis of the constitution, brought on by political and social corruption, had been reached was, to most informed colonists, evident; ... — Bernard Bailyn

That is to say, their thoughts came higglety-pigglety out of the big, buzzing, booming confusion of their minds, too many pouring out chaotically in the same instant. — Bernard Bailyn

The most powerful presentations were based on legal precedents, especially Calvin's Case (1608), which, it was claimed, proved on the authority of Coke and Bacon that subjects of the King are by no means necessarily subjects of Parliament. — Bernard Bailyn

Even toward the middle of the century, there were occasions when the London mailbag for Edinburgh was found to contain only a single letter. — Bernard Bailyn

we don't live in Plato's Commonwealth, and when we can't have perfection we ought to comply with the measure that is least remote from it. — Bernard Bailyn

slave rebellions occurred on approximately 10 percent of all slave ships, — Bernard Bailyn

The fact that the ministerial conspiracy against liberty had risen from corruption was of the utmost importance to the colonists. — Bernard Bailyn

The number of slave voyages included in the database has now risen to thirty-five thousand, accounting for the forced migration of more than twelve million Africans between 1514 and 1866, a million more than were estimated at the time of the conference in 1998. — Bernard Bailyn

In no obvious sense was the American Revolution undertaken as a social revolution. — Bernard Bailyn

For the primary goal of the American Revolution which transferred American life and introduced a new era in human history, was not the overthrow or even the alteration of the existing social order but the preservation of political liberty threatened by the apparent corruption of the constitution, and the establishment in principle of the existing conditions of liberty. — Bernard Bailyn

Rhode Island, a colony that the mainstream Puritans denounced as "a cesspool of vile heresies and irreligion, — Bernard Bailyn

They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No body will be argued into slavery.6 — Bernard Bailyn

Defiance to constituted authority leaped like a spark from one flammable area to another, growing in heat as it went. — Bernard Bailyn

Instantly available without continuous presence is probably the best role a mother can play. — Bernard Bailyn

it is a fact that eleven million Africans were forcibly carried abroad, more than nine million of them to the Americas. — Bernard Bailyn

The full bibliography of pamphlets relating to the Anglo-American struggle published in the colonies through the year 1776 contains not a dozen or so items but over four hundred; ... — Bernard Bailyn

Everyone knew that democracy-direct rule by all the people-required such spartan, sel denying virtue on the part of all the people that it was likely to survive only where poverty made upright behavior necessary for the perpetuation of the race. — Bernard Bailyn