"Permit me Sir to add another circumstance in our colonies which contributes no mean part toward the growth and effect of this intractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. All who read, and most do read, endeavor to obtain some smattering of that science. I've been told by an eminent book seller that in no branch of his business after tracks of popular devotion were so many books as those on lahe colonies have now fallen into a way of printing them for their own use. I hear they have sold as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage states that all the people in his government are lawyers or smatterers in law, and that in Boston they have been enabled by successful chicane wholly to evade many parts of your capital penal constitution.
"The smartness of debate will say that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the penalties of rebellion, but my honorable and learned friend, the attorney general, will disdain that ground. He has heard as well as I that when great honors and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a considerable adversary to a government. If the spirit is not tamed and broken by these happy means, it is stubborn and litigious. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dextrous, prompt in their attack, ready in defense, full of resources. In other countries the people are more simple and are of a less mercurial cast. They judge of an ill principle only in government only by an actual grievance. Here they anticipate the evil and judge the pressure the of the evil by the badness of the principle. They honor misgovernment from a distance and snuff out the approach of tyranny in every tainted brief."
-- Sir Edmond Burke