"It gives me pleasure to find that public liberty is effectually secured in each and all the policies of the United States, though somewhat differently modeled"
About this Quote
A clergyman praising “public liberty” is never just admiring a political design choice; he’s trying to domesticate a new experiment into something morally legible. Ezra Stiles writes like a man taking the nation’s pulse and reporting, with measured relief, that the patient is stable. The key phrase is “effectually secured”: liberty here isn’t romance or rebellion, it’s a system of locks. Stiles is signaling that freedom is only trustworthy when it’s engineered, guarded, and embedded in policy rather than entrusted to mood or virtue.
Then comes the shrewd concession: “though somewhat differently modeled.” In the 1780s and early 1790s, the United States is less a single machine than a workshop of competing blueprints - states with distinct constitutions, religious establishments or disestablishments, and clashing ideas about representation and authority. Stiles grants pluralism without celebrating chaos. “Modeled” is a craftsman’s verb; it flatters political variety as design, not drift, and it frames disagreement as compatible with a shared goal.
The subtext is pastoral and political at once: unity must be asserted without denying difference. As a New England Congregationalist navigating a post-Revolution world where old civic-religious arrangements are loosening, Stiles is also reassuring his own class that liberty won’t dissolve order, piety, or hierarchy overnight. Pleasure, here, is a public emotion with a purpose: to normalize the new republic as safe, coherent, and governable - even when its parts don’t match.
Then comes the shrewd concession: “though somewhat differently modeled.” In the 1780s and early 1790s, the United States is less a single machine than a workshop of competing blueprints - states with distinct constitutions, religious establishments or disestablishments, and clashing ideas about representation and authority. Stiles grants pluralism without celebrating chaos. “Modeled” is a craftsman’s verb; it flatters political variety as design, not drift, and it frames disagreement as compatible with a shared goal.
The subtext is pastoral and political at once: unity must be asserted without denying difference. As a New England Congregationalist navigating a post-Revolution world where old civic-religious arrangements are loosening, Stiles is also reassuring his own class that liberty won’t dissolve order, piety, or hierarchy overnight. Pleasure, here, is a public emotion with a purpose: to normalize the new republic as safe, coherent, and governable - even when its parts don’t match.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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