On November 14, 1774, Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet published an eloquent paean by an anonymous (and still unknown) author to American democracy:

The history of kings is nothing but the history of the folly and depravity of human nature.
. . . We read now and then, it is true, of a good King; so we read likewise of a Prophet escaping unhurt from a lion’s den, and of three men walking in a fiery furnace without having even their garments singed. The order of nature is as much inverted in the first as it was in the last two cases. A good King is a miracle.
The American Congress derives all its power, wisdom, and justice, not from scrolls of parchment signed by kings but from the People. A more august and a more equitable Legislative body never existed in any quarter of the globe. It is founded upon the principles of the most perfect liberty.  . . .

We are now laying the foundation of an American Constitution. Let us therefore hold up every thing we do to the eye of posterity. They will probably measure their liberties and happiness by the most careless of our footsteps. Let no unhallowed hand touch the precious seed of Liberty. Let us form the glorious tree in such a manner, and impregnate it with such principles of life, that it shall last forever.  . . . Let us not avail ourselves of the just spirit of the times, but bind up posterity to be freemen. 

. . .

I almost wish to live to hear the triumphs of the Jubilee in the year 1874; to see the medals, pictures, fragments of writings, &c˙, that shall be displayed to revive the memory of the proceedings of the Congress in the year 1774. . . . Do not, illustrious Senators, avail yourselves of the gratitude and veneration of your countrymen. You have, we trust, made them free. But a nobler task awaits you. Instruct them, instruct posterity in the great science of securing and perpetuating Freedom.

I am sure the anonymous author would have been pleased to live another hundred years to join the United States of America celebrating its Bicentennial from 1974 through 1976. But I shudder to think of his (or her) view of America 250 years after he wrote the “Political Observations . . . Addressed to the People of America.”

Sources: “Political Observations, Without Order, Addressed to the People of America” available at https://digital.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-amarch%3A93413; https://www.sfponline.org/departments/socialstudies/amwk/ch4wkps.pdf