argue in regard to the love of liberty with the same
philosophy that philosophers do in regard to the state of nature; by
the things they see they judge of things very different which they
have never seen, and they attribute to men a natural inclination to
slavery, on account of the patience with which the slaves within their
notice carry the yoke; not reflecting that it is with liberty as with
innocence and virtue, the value of which is not known but by those who
possess them, though the relish for them is lost with the things
themselves. I know the charms of your country, said Brasidas to a
satrap who was comparing the life of the Spartans with that of the
Persepolites; but you can not know the pleasures of mine.

As an unbroken courser erects his mane, paws the ground, and rages at
the bare sight of the bit, while a trained horse patiently suffers
both whip and spur, just so the barbarian will never reach his neck to
the yoke which civilized man carries without murmuring but prefers the
most stormy liberty to a calm subjection. It is not therefore by the
servile disposition of enslaved nations that we must judge of the
natural dispositions of man for or against slavery, but by the
prodigies done by every free people to secure themselves from
oppression. I know that the first are constantly crying up that peace
and tranquillity they enjoy in their irons, and that _miserrimam
servitutem pacem appellant_: but when I see the others sacrifice
pleasures, peace, riches, power, and even life itself to the
preservation of that single jewel so much slighted by those who have
lost it; when I see free-born animals through a natural abhorrence of
captivity dash their brains out against the bars of their prison; when
I see multitudes of naked savages despise European pleasures, and
brave hunger, fire and sword, and death itself to preserve their
independency; I feel that it belongs not to slaves to argue concerning
liberty.

As to paternal authority, from which several have derived absolute
government and every other mode of society, it is sufficient, without
having recourse to Locke and Sidney, to observe that nothing in the
world differs more from the cruel spirit of despotism that the
gentleness of that authority, which looks more to the advantage of him
who obeys than to the utility of him who commands; that by the law of
nature the father continues master of his child no longer than the
child stands in need of his assistan