The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities.

All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.

Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.

It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country.

Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.

A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural.

Man, an animal that makes bargains.