“The
furnace of affliction produces refinement, in states as well as individuals.
And the new governments we are assuming, in every part, will require a
purification from our vices and an augmentation of our virtues or they will be
no blessings. The people will have unbounded power. And the people are
extremely addicted to corruption and venality, as well as the great. I am not
without apprehensions from this quarter, but I must submit all my hopes and
fears to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the faith may be,
I firmly believe.”—John Adams, signer of (and prime mover behind) the
Declaration of Independence, letter to his wife Abigail, July 3, 1776
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