John Adams to the Continental Congress
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EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
let it be known. The british liberties are not the grants of princes or parliaments. Many of our rights are inherent and essential agreed on as maxims and establishes preliminaries before parliament existed. We have a right to them derived from our maker. Our forefathers have earned and bought liberty for us at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasures and their blood. Liberty is not based on the doctrine that a few nobles have the right to inherit the earth. No, no stands on this principle that the meanest and lowest of the people are by the unalterable indie feasible laws of God and nature as well entitled to the air, to breathe food, to eat, like to see, and clothes to wear on their backs as the nobles or the cake that is liberty and liberty will reign in America objects of the most stupendous magnitude measures which will affect the lives of millions born and unborn are now before us. We must expect a great expense of blood to obtain. But we must always remember that a free constitution of civil government cannot be purchased at too dear a rate, as there is nothing on this side of Jerusalem of greater importance to mankind. My worthy colleague from pennsylvania has spoken with great ingenuity and eloquent. He has given you a brim prognostication of our national future, but where he foresees apocalypse, I see hope, I see a new nation ready to take its place in the world, not an empire by the republic and a republic of laws, not men gentlemen. We are in the very midst of revolution. the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of the world. How few of the human race have ever had an opportunity of choosing a citizen of government for themselves and the Children? I am not without apprehensions, gentlemen, but the end we have in sight is more than worth all the means. I believe, Sirs, The hour has come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it all that I have, all that I am, and all that I hope in this life. I am now ready to stake upon it while I live. Let me have a country, a free country.