[Illustration: INTERIOR OF FANEUIL HALL]
_Ancient Despotism_
One would expect to find the cradle of liberty in the cradle of
the civilized human race, that is in that once wealthy valley of
Mesopotamia. Whatever the previous organization of family or tribe or
clan, the earliest organized states of which we have a record were the
mighty empires of Babylon and Assyria, the closest-knit monarchies
of history, whose kings compared themselves with divinities and were
worshiped as gods. What opportunity was there for the individual?
The Great King lived in one world and all his subjects in another.
The Assyrian sculptures tell how Sargon and Assurbanipal relieved the
oppressed that ventured to strive for home rule! Shattered, pierced,
impaled, these aspirants for liberty served to illustrate the absolute
power of their masters. Yet despotism proved then, as it will in future
prove, that when liberty is strangled, power departs; for all those
vast empires fell before the armies of other invaders and conquerors.
[Illustration: OLD STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, MASS.
Erected in 1748, and now under the guardianship of the Bostonian
Society]
Throughout later history the same effort has been made to corral human
beings into a nation controlled over their heads by self-appointed
rulers. Many dynasties began their power by seizing the citadel,
destroying the freedom of their subjects, raising an army that should
depend on them for pay and honors, and thus founding a lineage of
sovereigns, who presently began to call themselves “Kings by the grace
of God.” What mattered it that Dionysius, self-appointed Tyrant of
Syracuse, built temples to the gods, offered splendid prizes for horse
races, and rewarded sculptors? Did he not at the same time plunder
and oppress his fellow-citizens, and murder his critics? With all his
splendor he was a paltry adventurer, a thief, a usurper, a robber of
liberty!
_Beginnings of Liberty_
The spirit of the tyrant has infuriated thousands of chieftains,
despots, princes, dukes, sultans, monarchs, sovereigns and emperors,
all the way through history; and all the way there has been the
counterbalancing force of men who would rather die than submit to an
absolute master; men who did die to keep their families and friends
and countrymen from bondage. The original cradle of liberty was in the
hearts of free men and women, in the villages of the Slavs, among the
turbulent Goths, in the republics of Greece and Rome, in the mountains,
where it is easy for small groups to defend their own valleys and
upland plateaus. Even in those communities part of the people often
claimed superior privileges, and many free groups changed into the form
that passed for liberty during medieval times, when a small top stratum
of nobles and landowners claimed to be a master group, and trampled on
the dependent races or men of their own race who furnished them with
their daily bread.
[Illustration: THE BOSTON MASSACRE, MARCH 5, 1770