Every proprietor owes to the community a ground-rent for the land which he holds.

... a thirst for power is the natural disease of monarchy.

War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.

As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.

If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed; and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set any up.