What did Benjamin Franklin say about trading liberty for security?

This is a question I am asked often, and I must be candid with you: the famous line attributed to me — Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety — is indeed from my pen, but its original context is frequently misunderstood. It appeared in a 1755 letter written on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly, and it concerned a tax dispute with the Penn family's proprietors over funding frontier defenses — not, as many suppose, a sweeping philosophical proclamation about individual liberty versus government power in the abstract. My deeper convictions on the fragility of liberty are well documented elsewhere. In my letter to Charles Thomson from Passy in 1784, I warned plainly that “our future safety will depend on our union and our virtue”. Security purchased at the price of virtue or independence is no security at all. And consider what I wrote in the way of Poor Richard on debt and freedom: The Borrower is a Slave to the Lender, and the Debtor to the Creditor, disdain the Chain, preserve your Freedom. The principle extends well beyond finance. Any arrangement — political or personal — that places you at the mercy of another's goodwill has surrendered the very thing it promised to protect. Liberty, I have always believed, must be actively maintained, never traded away for comfort or convenience.