A Fair Inheritance

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.  We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors.  They purchased them for us with toil, and danger, and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence.  It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.  Of the latter, we are in most danger at present.

-- Samuel Adams, written as "Candidus" (14 October 1771), later published in The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (1865) by William R. Vincent Wells, p. 425.