who, by, their conspiracies, assassinations, and murders, serve only to
plunge the pacific inhabitants still deeper in the horrors of fear or
despair. Scattered in the provinces, unarmed, unacquainted with the
sentiments of union and confederacy, restricted by habit to a wretched
economy, and dragging a precarious life on those possessions which the
extortions of government have left; the people can nowhere, under these
circumstances, assume the spirit of a community, nor form any liberal
combination for their own defence. The injured may complain; and while he
cannot obtain the mercy of government, he may implore the commiseration of
his fellow subject. But that fellow subject is comforted, that the hand of
oppression has not seized on himself: he studies his interest, or snatches
his pleasure, under that degree of safety which obscurity and concealment
bestow.

The commercial arts, which seem to require no foundation in the minds of
men, but the regard to interest; no encouragement, but the hopes of gain,
and the secure possession of property, must perish under the precarious
tenure of slavery, and under the apprehension of danger arising from the
reputation of wealth. National poverty, however, and the suppression of
commerce, are the means by which despotism comes to accomplish its own
destruction. Where there are no longer any profits to corrupt, or fears to
deter, the charm of dominion is broken, and the naked slave, as awake from
a dream, is astonished to find he is free. When the fence is destroyed, the
wilds are open, and the herd breaks loose. The pasture of the cultivated
field is no longer preferred to that of the desert. The sufferer willingly
flies where the extortions of government cannot overtake him; where even
the timid and the servile may recollect they are men; where the tyrant may
threaten, but where he is known to be no more than a fellow creature; where
he can take nothing but life, and even this at the hazard of his own.