There are two distinct classes of men - those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.

What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.

The times that tried men's souls are over-and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished.

It is for the good of nations, and not for the emolument or aggrandizement of particular individuals, that government ought to be established, and that mankind are at the expense of supporting it. The defects of every government and constitution both as to principle and form, must, on a parity of reasoning, be as open to discussion as the defects of a law, and it is a duty which every man owes to society to point them out.

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.

Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage than any victory with all its expence.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.