Date: 1783

"The enemy fight in chains, invisible chains, but heavy; / Their minds are fetter'd; then how can they be free, / While, like the mounting flame, / We spring to battle o'er the floods of death?"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1784

"Had I the dread necessity explained, / That with resistless force my freedom chained; / Tore the sweet bands, by virtuous passion tied, / And stampt our constancy with parricide."

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1785

"If different religions be professed in the same country, and the minds of men remain unfettered and unawed by intimidations of law, that religion which is founded in maxims of reason and credibility, will gradually gain over the other to it."

— Paley, William (1743-1805)

Date: 1785

"Heav'ns! of how cynnical a Nature / The school-taught Race of ALMA MATER! / Who, of cramp'd Mind and clouded Brain / Bind GENIUS in a Gothic Chain."

— Polwhele, Richard (1760-1838)

Date: 1785

"While affection fond as fair, / Forms a chain of every hair, / A chain, which round the willing mind, / Sensibility shall bind."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: December 8, 1785, 1786

"And I from my purpose will never depart, / To bind faster those bonds in which Love holds your heart."

— Cobb, James (1756-1818)

Date: 1785

"In fetters confined Our body complains, / Oppress'd is our mind , With heavier chains."

— Wesley, Charles (1707-1788)

Date: 1786

"Add to this, that, whenever you sell the liberty of a man, you have the power only of alluding to the body: the mind cannot be confined or bound: it will be free, though its mansion be beset with chains."

— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)

Date: February 17, 1786

"The bonds of Hymen o'er my mind, / My constant soul must ever bind."

— O'Keeffe, John (1747-1833)

Date: 1787

"What force can free the mind that Vice has chain'd, / Or clear the current if the fountain's stain'd?"

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)