James Monroe It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and a usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties. We must support our rights or lose our character, and with it, perhaps, our liberties. In a representative republic, the education of our children must be of the utmost importance! How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism. The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil. A free, virtuous, and enlightened people must know full well the great principles and causes upon which their happiness depends.

The emigrants although of different parties and different religious sects all flew from persecution in pursuit of liberty. The earth was given to mankind to support the greatest number of which it is capable, and no tribe or people have a right to withhold from the wants of others more than is necessary for their own support and comfort. Our country may be likened to a new house. We lack many things, but we possess the most precious of all - liberty! The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals. There is a price tag on human liberty. That price is the willingness to assume the responsibilities of being free men. Payment of this price is a personal matter with each of us. It is better to spread trust all around than to hand out money! The liberty, prosperity, and the happiness of our country will always be the object of my most fervent prayers to the Supreme Author of All Good. If America wants concessions, she must fight for them. We must purchase our power with our blood.

A little flattery will support a man through great fatigue. Let us by wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties. If it was wise, manly, and patriotic for us to establish a free government, it is equally wise to attend to the necessary means of its preservation. While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe, the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to them whose minds have not yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. National honor is the national property of the highest value. It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Preparation for war is a constant stimulus to suspicion and ill will. I regret that I should leave this world without again beholding him. [In a republic,] it is not the people themselves who make the decisions, but the people they themselves choose to stand in their places.

Republics demanded virtue. Monarchies could rely on coercion and dazzling splendor to suppress self-interest or factions; republics relied on the goodness of the people to put aside private interest for public good. The imperatives of virtue attached all sorts of desiderata to the republican citizen: simplicity, frugality, sobriety, simple manners, Christian benevolence, duty to the polity. Republics called on other virtues-- spiritedness, courage--to protect the polity from external threats. Tyrants kept standing armies; republics relied on free yeomen, defending their own land.