On this day 250 years ago in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Mercy Otis Warren wrote to her good friend John Adams:

How much Longer sir do you think the political scale Can Hang in Equilibrium. Will not justice and Freedom soon preponderate till the partizans of Corruption and Venality (Even Backed with the Weight of Ministerial power) shall be Made to kick the Beam.
. . .

Let me add my Fervant Wishes that you and the other Gentlemen of the Ensuing Congres may be Endowed With Wisdom and Resolution Equal to the Difficulties of the Day and if you Attempt to Repair the shattered Constitution or to Erect a New one May it be Constructed with such symetry of Features, such Vigour of Nerves, and such strength of sinew that it May Never be in the power of Ambition or Tyrany to shake the Durable Fabrick.

Source: To John Adams from Mercy Otis Warren, 30 January 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-02-02-0074. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 2, December 1773 – April 1775, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, pp. 388–391.]

For the last 250 years of American history the symmetry of features and strength of sinew of the new Constitution constructed by our Founding Fathers have held, but I fear that the power of Ambition and Tyranny can “shake the Durable Fabrick” of our Constitution today.

Also on January 30, 1775, in Providence, Rhode Island, John Carter published broadsides of the Kings Speech to Parliament on November 30, 1774 coupled with Carter’s commentary:

Good GOD! What Spirit of Folly and Precipitation Persists in British Councils! — The Dye seems to be cast. . . . May the united Colonies be directed to such Measures as will eventually terminate in the Defeat of Tyrants, and the Redemption of this devoted Country.

Source: Norton at 312; see my blog for January 29, 1775