“Which is better -- to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants one mile away?”-- Rev. Mather Byles (1706-1788) Does it really matter if the instrument curtailing liberty is a monarch or a popularly elected legislature? This conundrum, along with the witty version of it put to a Boston crowd in 1775 by a little-known colonial-era preacher, addresses the age-old question of whether liberty can long survive in a democracy. Byles was a loyalist, who, along...
