That a joint stock company should be able to carry on successfully any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all experience.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.

Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.

The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.

Beneficence is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.

The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave toward him as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability.