That this privilege of giving or of withholding our monies is an important barrier against the undue exertion of prerogative, which if left altogether without control may be exercised to our great oppression; and all history shews how efficacious is its intercession for redress of grievances and re-establishment of rights, and how improvident would be the surrender of so powerful a mediator

I hope that we have not labored in vain, and that our experiment will still prove that men can be governed by reason.

In the constitution of Spain as proposed by the late Cortes, there was a principle entirely new to me:... that no person born after that day should ever acquire the rights of citizenship until he could read and write. It is impossible sufficiently to estimate the wisdom of this provision. Of all those which have been thought of for securing fidelity in the administration of the government, constant reliance to the principles of the constitution, and progressive amendments with the progressive advances of the human mind or changes in human affairs, it is the most effectual.

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

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

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

The issuing power [of money] should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.