Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.

Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.

What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.... [Instead] reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?

I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances.

Take painsto write a neat round, plain hand, and you will find it a great convenience through life to write a small and compact hand as well as a fair and legible one.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

Perseverance in object, though not by the most direct way, is often more laudable than perpetual changes, as often as the object shifts light.