Herein indeed consists the excellence of the English government, that all parts of it form a mutual check upon each other.

By marriage the husband and wife are one person in law, that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage.

The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights.

Men was formed for society, and is neither capable of living alone, nor has the courage to do it.

The law rarely hesitates in declaring its own meaning; but the Judges are frequently puzzled to find out the meaning of others.

Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.

The law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind.