Compiled by London Swaminathan

Post No.7692

Date uploaded in London – 14 March 2020

Contact – swami_48@yahoo.com

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Value of Freedom

You do not know what you are advising us to do, replied the Spartans to a Persian envoy who urged them to submit to Xerxes, for you know what is to be a slave but the sweet ness of freedom you have never tasted. If you felt it, you would tell us to fight for it, not with spears only, but with axes.

Xxx

Abraham Lincoln ‘hesitated’ twice!

When the Emancipation Proclamation was taken to Lincoln by Secretary Seward, for the President’s signature, Lincoln took a pen, dipped it in ink, moved his hand to the place for the signature, held it a moment, then removed his hand and dropped the pen. After a little hesitation, he again took up the pen and went through the same movement as before. Lincoln then turned to Seward and said,

I have been shaking hands since nine o clock this morning, and my right arm is almost paralysed. If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it. If my hand trembles when I sign the Proclamation, all who examine the document hereafter will say, “He hesitated”.

Xxxx

Insurrection in Massachusetts

Years ago there was an insurrection in Massachusetts. There were thousands of men in arms against the state authorities. One of the Leaders, Luke Shay, spoke thus at Springfield,

“My boys, said he, they talk to you about liberty; they tell you liberty means the right to do what you have a mind to. That is not liberty. Liberty is the right to make other folks do what you want to have them do”.

Xxx

Catherine the Great on Freedom

Having been subordinated and suppressed for eighteen years, Catherine the Great revelled in doing what she pleased.

“O Freedom”, she wrote,

“The soul of all things: without thee there is no life”. But when the miners and other serfs of the land rebelled, she decided that freedom was too precious to be scattered around, and she wrote to Vyazemsky, who had quelled the revolt with the canon:

“The Russian empire is so vast that any other form of government than that of an autocratic emperor would be detrimental, for every other form fulfils itself more slowly and embodies passions which dissipate its strength.”

Xxxxx Subham xxxx