[Translated]: The tree of liberty only grows when watered by the blood of tyrants.

Macaulay's English version was: "The tree of Liberty, as an ancient author remarks, flourishes when it is watered with the blood of all classes of tyrants," viz. Barère ascribed the sentiment to a classical author. But there is no such quotation in classical literature, writes Macaulay, himself widely read in Latin and Greek, but perhaps not in Americana. The sentiment has been ascribed to Thomas Jefferson earlier than the French Revolution (in a letter of 13 November 1787) so might have been coined by him. By 1919 it appeared in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.