The tendency of taxation is, to create a class of persons, who do not labour: to take from those who do labour the produce of that labour, and to give it to those who do not labour.

The truth is that the fall of Napoleon is the hardest blow that our taxing system ever felt. It is now impossible to make people believe that immense fleets and armies are necessary.

He who writes badly thinks badly

Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.

You never know what you can do till you try.

To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved; to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous.

It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.