Sunday

A Random Passage

I've been tipping my reading toe into the works of the Anti-Federalists, those nervous souls who saw much mischief behind the proposed U.S. Constitution. I've been favorably impressed by some of it, like this passage from the Maryland Farmer:

I have either read or heard this truth, which the Americans should never forget: That the silence of historians is the surest record of the happiness of a people. The Swiss have been four hundred years the envy of mankind, and there is yet scarcely an history of their nation. What is history, but a disgusting and painful detail of the butcheries of conquerors, and the woeful calamities of the conquered?