Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.

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

A gardener who cultivates his own garden with his own hands, unites in his own person the three different characters, of landlord, farmer, and labourer. His produce, therefore, should pay him the rent of the first, the profit of the second, and the wages of the third.

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

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.

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.