The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ... ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined ... with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men ... who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public.

The division of labour was limited by the extent of the market

In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.

The game women play is men.

Sugar, rum and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.

This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.

I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.