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 The result of an encounter between a British sentry and the crowd From the engraving by Paul Revere] [Illustration: THE BOSTON TEA PARTY] From the fall of the Roman Empire to the French Revolution--a space of thirteen centuries--the only real republican governments were mountain peoples and independent trading cities, in which again the voting class was in small proportion. The only factors that ardently strove for liberty were the knights and noblemen, who did their best to weaken the power of the kings, so that they might have the more authority over their own vassals. The Middle Ages and even the period of the Restoration, with its appeal to the right to choose one’s own religion and to achieve one’s own salvation, did little to relieve the serf, the peasant, and the poor workman. [Illustration: TABLET CELEBRATING THE BOSTON TEA PARTY