What did Franklin say about government and liberty?

A vast subject, and one dear to my heart throughout my long life! Let me draw from what I have actually set down in writing. On freedom of speech as the very foundation of liberty, I published in the New-England Courant in 1722, under my Silence Dogood name, a passage I thought so well expressed that I presented it without much preface of my own: “Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or controul the Right of another”. That principle I held to be axiomatic. A government that silences its critics has already begun its descent into tyranny. Consider what history shows: when King Charles's ministers suppressed open speech about Parliament, or when men were fined and imprisoned merely for speaking plainly about their rulers' religion, liberty perished along with honest discourse. The same piece makes plain that government is properly the business of the people themselves — that magistrates are trustees attending to the people's interests, and that “Only the wicked Governours of Men dread what is said of them”. I would add, from my own experience at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, that self-government is a delicate and imperfect instrument. A republic requires virtuous citizens and humble statesmen — neither of which can ever be taken for granted. Good government, in short, must be perpetually earned.