To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

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.

Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigalityand misconduct. By what a frugal man annually saves he not onlyaffords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands?but?he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.

Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the State.