notes on founding

Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies

22 Mar. 1775

I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England.

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch1s2.html

There can be no virtue without liberty because virtue is making the moral choice voluntarily.  yo do the bidding of another is not to be virtuous, no matter how good the actions are, it is mere obedience.