If the public safety be provided, liberty and propriety secured, justice administered, virtue encouraged, vice suppressed, and the true interest of the nation advanced, the ends of government are accomplished . . .

Everyone sees they cannot well live asunder, nor many together, without some rule to which all must submit.

Laws and constitutions ought to be weighed... to constitute that which is most conducing to the establishment of justice and liberty.

Tis hard to comprehend how one man can come to be master of many, equal to himself in right, unless it be by consent or by force.

Fruits are always of the same nature with the seeds and roots from which they come, and trees are known by the fruits they bear: as a man begets a man, and a beast a beast, that society of men which constitutes a government upon the foundation of justice, virtue, and the common good, will always have men to promote those ends; and that which intends the advancement of one man's desire and vanity, will abound in those that will foment them.

[I]f vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.

That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed.