Benjamin Franklin on State Power

In my literary peregrinations I happened to run across a response Ben Franklin wrote to a scornful letter about the United States published by anonymous minions of the British crown back in 1778. An excerpt:

We propose, if possible, to live in peace with all mankind; and after you have been convinced to your cost, that there is nothing to be got by attacking us, we have reason to hope that no other power will judge it prudent to quarrel with us… The weight, therefore, of an independent empire, which you seem certain of our inability to bear, will not be so great as you imagine; the expense of our civil government we have always borne, and can easily bear, because it is small. A virtuous and laborious people may be cheaply governed, determining, as we do, to have no offices of profit, nor any sinecures, or useless appointments, so common in ancient or corrupted states. We can govern ourselves a year for the sum you pay in a single department, for what one jobbing contractor, by the favor of a minister, can cheat you out of in a single article.

Apparently it didn’t take us all too long to become an ancient and corrupted state.