A Single Step: The Historical Knowledge that Gained American Independence
“A single step” beyond the limits of the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson warned that just one solitary act lays the foundation for unlimited power.
Consider the road to 1776. It wasn’t about a tiny tax on tea; it was about the claimed authority to levy it. From the Revolution back to ancient Greece, the Founders knew the score: once government seizes power, it keeps growing and it never gives it back.
THE PRINCIPLE, NOT THE PRICE
John Adams described this relentless expansion of power as a deadly disease.
“The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour.”
In late 1774, 19-year-old Alexander Hamilton cut through the noise to the only question that mattered.
“What then is the subject of our controversy with the mother country?”
He attacked the motives of those trying to fool the public into thinking this was a dispute over pocket change.
“What can actuate those men, who labour to delude any of us into an opinion, that the object of contention between the parent state and the colonies is only three pence duty upon tea?”
Focusing on the cost was absurd – a trap. The real battle was against a government claiming the power to do whatever it wanted.
“The parliament claims a right to tax us in all cases whatsoever: Its late acts are in virtue of that claim. How ridiculous then is it to affirm, that we are quarrelling for the trifling sum of three pence a pound on tea; when it is evidently the principle against which we contend.”
Decades later, James Madison traced American Independence back to that specific wisdom. The people spotted the massive danger hidden inside that tiny tax.
“The people of the U. S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprized in the precedent.”
Madison insisted we apply that same wisdom to spot the evil lurking behind even the most innocuous government acts. And he invoked an ancient warning that went back thousands of years.
“Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching agst. every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings. Obsta principiis.”
THE ANCIENT WISDOM
Madison was quoting a maxim from Roman poet Ovid: Stop the disease at the start. If you wait, even if you find a cure, it might be too late.
“Principiis obsta; sero medicina paratur, Cum mala per longas convaluere moras.”
“Resist beginnings; too late is the medicine prepared, when the disease has gained strength by long delay.”
James Otis Jr. made this the primary directive of the American Revolution. You cannot wait for the fire to spread. You must stomp out the spark the moment it appears.
“It is my countrymen of the utmost consequence that we boldly oppose the least infraction of our charter, and rights as men. Obsta Principiis is a maxim never to be forgot: If we do not resist at the first attack, it may soon be too late.”
Jonathan Mayhew brought this maxim to the pulpit in his famous sermon, The Snare Broken. He warned that you cannot maintain freedom on autopilot. You must block the first move, or eventually it’ll be game over.
“For those who would preserve and perpetuate their liberties, to guard them with a wakeful attention; and in all righteous, just and prudent ways, to oppose the first encroachments on them. ‘Obsta principiis.’ After a while it will be too late.”
He cited the well-known biblical parable of the wheat and the tares to warn that apathy creates a permanent trap. The corruption becomes so entangled with the system that you cannot extract the poison without killing the patient.
“For in the states and kingdoms of this world, it happens as it does in the field or church, according to the well-known parable, to this purpose; That while men sleep, then the enemy cometh and soweth tares, which cannot be rooted out again till the end of the world, without rooting out the wheat with them.”
THE PATH TO RUIN
To the Founders, this wasn’t just a Latin slogan. It was a history lesson written in the wreckage of nations. John Dickinson pointed to a well-known example from Spain.
“Spain was once free. Their cortes resembled our parliaments. No money could be raised on the subject, without their consent. One of their Kings having received a grant from them, to maintain a war against the Moors, desired, that if the sum which they had given, should not be sufficient, he might be allowed, for that emergency only, to raise more money without assembling the Cortes.”
The good guys fought against it – but they lost. And that single step – the precedent – is what set the stage for unlimited power in the future.
“The request was violently opposed by the best and wisest men in the assembly. It was, however, complied with by the votes of a majority; and this single concession was a PRECEDENT for other concessions of the like kind, until at last the crown obtained a general power of raising money, in cases of necessity.”
They never recovered from that fatal mistake. One single step in an “emergency” and freedom was permanently destroyed.
“From that period the Cortes ceased to be useful – the people ceased to be free.”
Samuel Adams identified the same pattern in France. The “fatal moment” came in 1439.
“France afterwards fell into the same snare.”
In Cato’s Letters, Thomas Gordon showed how France replicated Spain’s mistake. King Charles VII asked the legislature, the Estates General, for emergency power to unilaterally fund a standing army for war against the British. They granted it, believing it was temporary. But as Gordon documented, once government could define “great necessity,” every subsequent problem became one.
“I have read somewhere, of the States of a country, who having wildly granted to their prince a power of raising money by his own authority, in cases of great necessity; every case, ever afterwards, was a case of great necessity; and his necessities multiplied so fast, that the whole wealth of the country was swallowed up to supply them.”
Samuel Adams traced how quickly things progressed across generations. Charles VII started with modest sums. His son Louis XI tripled the revenue. Their successors kept expanding the tax burden until they confiscated everything.
“Charles the seventh, who began them, never rais’d annually more than one hundred and eighty thousand Pounds. His Son Lewis the eleventh almost trebled the Revenue; and since then, all that the Kingdom and People had, even to their Skins, has hardly been thought sufficient for their Kings.”
James Lovell found the pattern running back to ancient Athens in his 1771 Massacre Day oration.
“Athens once was free; a citizen, a favorite of the people, by an artful story gained a trifling guard of fifty men; ambition taught him ways to enlarge that number; he destroyed the commonwealth and made himself the tyrant of the Athenians.”
Pisistratus was the tyrant Lovell referenced. David Hume documented the specific deception: he inflicted wounds on his own body, blamed his political enemies for the attack, and used the manufactured threat to justify a new armed guard.
“Pisistratus, the Athenian, who cut and wounded his own body; and making the people believe, that his enemies had committed the violence, obtained a guard for his person.”
As Thomas Gordon detailed, it started with a seemingly pathetic force: just fifty men, armed only with wooden clubs. And that single step was the foundation for total tyranny.
“Pisistratus, having procured from the city of Athens fifty fellows armed only with cudgels, for the security of his person from false and lying dangers, improved them into an army, and by it enslaved that free state.”
These aren’t random tragedies separated by centuries. They’re the same story repeating. Because, as Dickinson explained, power operates on one iron principle. What they take – they never give back.
“Power is of a tenacious nature: What it seizes it will retain.”
THE RIGHT TO RECLAIM
Knowing this history, it’s easy to understand why George Washington called unconstitutional power a weapon that destroys freedom in the long run – even if you like the short-term results.
“Let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”
That brings us full circle back to Thomas Jefferson. He understood that even one small step beyond the limits of the constitution? That’s the foundation for unlimited power.
“To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”
Obviously that’s the bad news, since that first step was taken a long, long time ago. But here’s the good news from St. George Tucker. It’s never truly game over.
“The acquiescence of the people of a state under any usurped authority for any length of time, can never deprive them of the right of resuming the sovereign power into their own hands, whenever they think fit, or are able to do so, since that right is perfectly unalienable.”
Ultimately, these warnings about a single step might be the most important constitutional lesson there is. The founders saw, as James Madison described, “the magnitude of the evil” in the smallest of precedents. And when they exercised their right to “alter or abolish,” they won independence by doing exactly what Tucker described.
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