Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Jean Nicolas Démeunier
| [26 June 1786] |
What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment or death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him thro’ his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
PrC (DLC). Published in PTJ, 10:61–4.
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June 26, 1786
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