A superfluity of wealth, and a train of domestic slaves

The words of Mercy Otis Warren, spoken in the fiery age of revolution and reflection, carry the wisdom of one who saw the delicate balance between liberty and corruption. When she wrote, “A superfluity of wealth, and a train of domestic slaves, naturally banish a sense of general liberty, and nourish the seeds of that kind of independence that usually terminates in aristocracy,” she was not only warning her generation—she was warning all who would come after. Her insight pierces through time, for it reminds us that freedom, though noble, can decay from within when luxury dulls the moral senses and power is built upon the subjugation of others.

To understand her meaning, we must first understand the woman who spoke it. Mercy Otis Warren, one of the great minds of the American Revolution, was both a poet and a political thinker—a rare voice of intellect and courage in an age when women’s words were often dismissed. She lived through the birth of a nation and saw with clear eyes the dangers that followed victory. When others rejoiced at America’s newfound independence, she looked deeper, warning that wealth and inequality could corrupt the very spirit that had won freedom. Her words sprang from the paradox of her time: a nation proclaiming liberty while keeping others in bondage.

In this quote, Warren draws a powerful connection between luxury and decay. A superfluity of wealth, she says, weakens the collective sense of virtue. When a society becomes obsessed with comfort and accumulation, its citizens lose the vigor that once fueled their fight for freedom. The more wealth becomes concentrated, the more distant the privileged grow from the hardships of common life. They begin to mistake their comfort for independence, forgetting that true liberty is shared or it ceases to exist. Out of this moral blindness grows aristocracy—a hierarchy of power where the few dominate the many, all while calling themselves free.

She also invokes the shadow of slavery, both literal and spiritual. In her time, the contradiction was stark: the colonies that cried out against tyranny from across the sea still held human beings in chains within their borders. Warren understood that such hypocrisy would poison the republic from its foundation. For how can a people speak of liberty while denying it to others? The presence of domestic slaves, she wrote, banishes “a sense of general liberty,” for it teaches the privileged that domination is natural, that some are born to rule and others to serve. From this seed of injustice, she warned, would grow the tree of aristocracy—a society divided not by virtue but by power and inheritance.

History has proved her warning true, again and again. Consider the fall of Rome, once a republic born of courage and civic duty. As wealth flowed into the city from its conquests, luxury replaced labor, and a vast class of slaves sustained the comfort of the elite. The citizens, once fierce defenders of liberty, grew complacent, trading virtue for indulgence. The republic rotted from within and gave birth to an empire ruled by emperors, not by citizens. The spirit of freedom, once the lifeblood of Rome, was buried beneath marble palaces and silken robes. In Warren’s words, that is the natural end of a society that forgets the moral foundation of its independence.

In the voice of the ancients, we may say: liberty is a flame that must be fed by virtue, not wealth. A nation that forgets this truth becomes enslaved by its own prosperity. Warren understood that the true danger to democracy is not always invasion or tyranny from without, but corruption from within—a slow erosion of character, a surrender to comfort, a willingness to let others bear the burden of one’s ease. Her warning remains a mirror for our age, when abundance is mistaken for success and moral complacency is dressed in the language of progress.

The lesson of her words is timeless: that freedom must walk hand in hand with humility. Wealth, when used without conscience, becomes poison; independence, when sought without justice, becomes domination. A society that prizes equality and virtue must guard against the arrogance of privilege and the indifference that wealth can bring. Every citizen must remember that liberty, to survive, must belong to all—or it will soon belong to none.

And so, the practical path is this: live with gratitude, but not with greed. Let your independence never come at the expense of another’s freedom. Use wealth, if you have it, to uplift and not to divide. Teach your children that liberty is not comfort, but character; not privilege, but participation in the well-being of all. For as Mercy Otis Warren reminds us, when freedom becomes the servant of wealth and pride, it ceases to be freedom at all—and the republic, however noble its birth, begins its slow march back into the chains it once broke.