[A]lthough a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible.

That paper money has some advantages is admitted. But that its abuses also are inevitable and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery of all private property, cannot be denied.

Without books, I would certainly die.

The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections.

One never really knows how much one has been touched by a place until one has left it.

The purpose of establishing different houses of legislation is to introduce the influence of different interests or different principles.

A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.