If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready, at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while I do live, let me have a country, and that a free country!

[A] republic . . . [is] a government, in which the property of the public, or people, and of every one of them was secure and protected by law . . . implies liberty; because property cannot be secured unless the man be at liberty to acquire, use or part with it, at his discretion, and unless he have his personal liberty of life and limb, motion and rest, for that purpose.

A government of laws, and not of men.

Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in the scale of moral excellence than virtue. Indeed the former is part of the latter, and consequently has not equal pretensions to support a frame of government productive of human happiness.

The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?

The rights of Englishmen are derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured by the study of history, law, and tradition.

There never was yet a people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity of the state.