A Freedom Clinic in One Paragraph, II

"I am a farmer, settled, after a variety of fortunes, near the banks of the river Delaware, in the province of Pennsylvania. 

"I received a liberal education, and...am now convinced, that a man may be as happy without bustle, as with it. 

"My farm is small....I have a little money at interest; I wish for no more; my employment in my own affairs is easy.... 

"Being generally master of my time, I spend a good deal of it in the library, which I think the most valuable part of my small estate." 

-John Dickinson

This is a good summary of the role of a free citizen: entrepreneurial mindset, well read, involved in influencing society. 

In fact, this quote comes from Dickinson's Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer, written to influence American colonial thinking against the growing abuses of the British empire. 

They were printed and reprinted across the colonies, and are considered the most influential revolutionary writings next to Thomas Paine's Common Sense. 

The quote above is the beginning of the first letter. 

Dickinson was later an influential member of the Constitutional Convention.

This quote is an insight into one of the great framers of America in his life and citizen role in 1767, nine years before the Revolutionary War brought the whole society into conflict. 

******