Among its other absurdities, the poster that Mark links to below misattributes to Thomas Jefferson a famous statement of Lord Bolingbrokeโs:
Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man: without liberty no happiness can be enjoyed by society. The obligation, therefore, to defend and maintain the freedom of such constitutions will appear most sacred to a Patriot King.
Itโs a nice sentiment, but itโs not Jeffersonโs, and in fact itโs worth noting that the Bolingbroke essay from which it is drawn (โThe Idea of a Patriot King,โ written in 1738) became, later in the eighteenth century, the great manifesto of that most un-Jeffersonian character, King George III.






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