Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.

Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

It may indeed be doubted whether butchers' meet is anywhere a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil where butter is not to be had, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet. Decency nowhere requires that any man should eat butchers' meat.

It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.

An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.

There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.