Historical voices

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

In all mutations (if mutations must be) the circumstance which will serve most to blunt the edge of their mischief, and to promote what good may be in them, is, that they should find us with our minds tenacious of justice and tender of…

In many others there is a hollow murmuring under ground; a confused movement is felt, that threatens a general earthquake in the political world.

I am sure that the principles predominant in France extend to very many persons, and descriptions of persons, in all countries, who think their innoxious indolence their security.

Revolutions are favorable to confiscation; and it is impossible to know under what obnoxious names the next confiscations will be authorized.

If they find the old governments effete, worn out, and with their springs relaxed, so as not to be of sufficient vigor for their purposes, they may seek new ones that shall be possessed of more energy; and this energy will be derived, not…

If they do not provide for them, they will be undone by the efforts of the most dangerous of all parties: I mean an extensive, discontented moneyed interest, injured and not destroyed.

If governments provide for these debts by heavy impositions, they perish by becoming odious to the people.

Public debts, which at first were a security to governments, by interesting many in the public tranquillity, are likely in their excess to become the means of their subversion.

Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because of all enemies it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource.

But you, who began with refusing to submit to the most moderate restraints, have ended by establishing an unheard-of despotism.

We entertain a high opinion of the legislative authority; but we have never dreamt that Parliaments had any right whatever to violate property, to overrule prescription, or to force a currency of their own fiction in the place of that…

Flushed with the insolence of their first inglorious victories, and pressed by the distresses caused by their lust of unhallowed lucre, disappointed, but not discouraged, they have at length ventured completely to subvert all property of…

I see the confiscators begin with bishops, and chapters, and monasteries; but I do not see them end there.

If prescription be once shaken, no species of property is secure, when it once becomes an object large enough to tempt the cupidity of indigent power.

With the National Assembly of France possession is nothing, law and usage are nothing.

I see, in a country very near us, a course of policy pursued, which sets justice, the common concern of mankind, at defiance.

But it is in the principle of injustice that the danger lies, and not in the description of persons on whom it is first exercised.

They begin more and more plainly to discern that we have all a common cause, as against a common enemy.

They would reverently and affectionately protect all religions, because they love and venerate the great principle upon which they all agree, and the great object to which they are all directed.

They tolerate, not because they despise opinions, but because they respect justice.

The species of benevolence which arises from contempt is no true charity.

Impious men do not recommend themselves to their communion by iniquity and cruelty towards any description of their fellow-creatures.

They do not forget that justice and mercy are substantial parts of religion.