Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself?

They are not rules prescribed by the sovereign to the subject, but agreements between sovereign and sovereign.

In the main it will be found that a power over a man's support [salary] is a power over his will.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

The honor of a nation is its life. Deliberately to abandon it is to commit an act of political suicide.

Wherever indeed a right of property is infringed for the general good, if the nature of the case admits of compensation, it ought to be made; but if compensation be impracticable, that impracticability ought to be an obstacle to a clearly essential reform.

The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws.