13. The Tree of Liberty Needs Blood

113. “L’arbre de la liberté . . . croît lorsqu’il est arrosé du sang de toute espèce de tyrans,” Archives Parliamentaires de 1787 à 1860, vol. 57 (1900): 368. Barère, although he claims to have been quoting an ancient author, was probably drawing on widespread contemporary imagery already invoked by Thomas Jefferson in 1787, writing from Paris and justifying the Shayes Rebellion in a letter to William Stevens Smith, 13 November 1787: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure,” The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), 12:356. MacCaulay, despite his knowledge of the classics, could think of no one to whom one might attribute such a quote: “In the course of our own small reading among the Greek and Latin writers, we have not happened to fall in with trees of liberty and watering-pots full of blood, nor can we, such is our ignorance of classical ambiguity, even imagine an Attic or Roman orator employing imagery of that sort” (Edinburgh Review, April 1844); see Connor Cruise O’Brien, “Liberals and Terrorism,” National Review, 22 April 1996, online, 8 March 2010.