The Architects of America: Freemasons and the Growth of the United States

What Archimedes said of the mechanical powers may be
applied to Reason and Liberty: “Had we,” said he, “a place to
stand upon, we might raise the world.”

The revolution of America presented in politics what
was only theory in mechanics. So deeply rooted were all the
governments of the old world, and so effectually had the
tyranny and the antiquity of habit established itself over the
mind, that no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa, or
Europe, to reform the political condition of man. Freedom
had been hunted around the globe; reason was considered
as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to
think.

—Thomas Paine, Introduction to The Rights of Man, 1792,
part 2

As the Christmas of 1733 approached and winter tightened its grip on the new colony of Georgia, James Oglethorpe wound up the preamble of his letter to the enterprise’s Trustees with the observation that providence itself seems visible in all things to prosper your Designs calculated for the Protection of the persecuted, the relief of the poor and the Benefit of mankind’. Of course, in accordance with the standards of the time, some literary license should have been expected of Oglethorpe, a Member of Parliament of ten years standing, and his attempt to ‘sell’ his philanthropic idea to anyone who would listen, especially people back in

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