Taxation is, in fact, the most difficult function of government and that against which their citizens are most apt to be refractory.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

A little rebellion is a good thing.

If our legislature does not heartily push our University [of Virginia] we must send our children for education to Kentucky [Transylvania College] or Cambridge [Harvard College]. The latter will return them to us as fanatics and tories, the former will keep them to add to their population.

Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.

With your talents and industry, with science, and that steadfast honesty which eternally pursues right, regardless of consequences, you may promise yourself every thing-but health, without which there is no happiness. An attention to health then should take place of evey other object. The time necessary to secure this by active exercises, should be devoted to it in preference to every other pursuit.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.