That God forbid that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand the account of hours to crave …

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Records are destroyed. Histories are annihilated, or interpolated, or prohibited. Sometimes by popes, sometimes by emperors, sometimes by aristocratic and sometimes by democratic assemblies, … such had been and such is the world we live in. . . .

JOHN ADAMS