"A superfluity of wealth, and a train of domestic slaves, naturally banish a sense of general liberty, and nourish the seeds of that kind of independence that usually terminates in aristocracy"
About this Quote
The craft is in her pivot from “general liberty” to a counterfeit “independence.” Warren understands the rhetorical bait of the Revolution: everyone could speak the language of freedom while building private empires. Her “kind of independence” is pointedly not self-rule; it’s the insulated autonomy of elites who can ignore the common good because their labor, comfort, and status are outsourced to the unfree. That “usually terminates in aristocracy” is coldly probabilistic, as if she’s describing a political gravity. Accumulated wealth plus coerced labor doesn’t merely tempt aristocracy; it manufactures the habits and justifications that make hierarchy feel natural.
Context matters: writing in a revolutionary generation that distrusted hereditary power, Warren is also diagnosing how quickly republics reproduce what they claim to overthrow. The subtext is brutal: Americans can defeat a king and still build a kingly class at home, one parlor and one enslaved person at a time. Her warning lands because it refuses the comforting myth that liberty survives on slogans; it lives or dies in domestic arrangements, economic structures, and the daily psychology of who gets to command.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Warren, Mercy Otis. (2026, January 15). A superfluity of wealth, and a train of domestic slaves, naturally banish a sense of general liberty, and nourish the seeds of that kind of independence that usually terminates in aristocracy. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-superfluity-of-wealth-and-a-train-of-domestic-6788/
Chicago Style
Warren, Mercy Otis. "A superfluity of wealth, and a train of domestic slaves, naturally banish a sense of general liberty, and nourish the seeds of that kind of independence that usually terminates in aristocracy." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-superfluity-of-wealth-and-a-train-of-domestic-6788/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"A superfluity of wealth, and a train of domestic slaves, naturally banish a sense of general liberty, and nourish the seeds of that kind of independence that usually terminates in aristocracy." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-superfluity-of-wealth-and-a-train-of-domestic-6788/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2026.
