Experience has instructed us that no skill in the science of government has yet been able to discriminate and define, with sufficient certainty, its three great provinces the legislative, executive, and judiciary; or even the privileges and powers of the different legislative branches.

The preservation of a free government requires not merely that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority and are Tyrants. The people who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves.

We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.

A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species.

The primary function of government is to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority of the poor.

A distinction of property results from that very protection which a free Government gives to unequal faculties of acquiring it.

The most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome.