The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men to each govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience.

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

All virtue which is impracticable is spurious.

I cannot help concurring with the opinion that an absolute democracy, no more than absolute monarchy, is to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government.

Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.