Historical voices

I rather suspect that vices are feigned or exaggerated, when profit is looked for in their punishment.

It is not with much credulity I listen to any, when they speak evil of those whom they are going to plunder.

It is no soothing news to my ears, that great bodies of men are incurably corrupt.

I do not like to see anything destroyed, any void produced in society, any ruin on the face of the land.

It is a sour, malignant, envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long nourished in splendor and in honor.

He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart, who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion and permanence to fugitive esteem.

The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him, and to distinguish him, is one of the securities against injustice and despotism implanted in our nature.

I do not pretend to know France as correctly as some others; but I have endeavored through my whole life to make myself acquainted with human nature,--otherwise I should be unfit to take even my humble part in the service of mankind.

He never sought to be loved without putting himself first in a condition to be feared.

He possessed, indeed, great humanity and mildness, but an humanity and mildness that never stood in the way of his interests.

The triumph of the victorious party was over the principles of a British Constitution.

All the struggle, all the dissension, arose afterwards, upon the preference of a despotic democracy to a government of reciprocal control.

I shall always, however, consider that liberty as very equivocal in her appearance, which has not wisdom and justice for her companions, and does not lead prosperity and plenty in her train.

But before the price of comfort and opulence is paid, one ought to be pretty sure it is real liberty which is purchased, and that she is to be purchased at no other price.

A brave people will certainly prefer liberty accompanied with a virtuous poverty to a depraved and wealthy servitude.

It is but cold, and no very flattering justice to that fallen monarchy, to say, that, for many years, it trespassed more by levity and want of judgment in several of its schemes than from any defect in diligence or in public spirit.

Rather too much countenance was given to the spirit of innovation, which soon was turned against those who fostered it, and ended in their ruin.

I must think such a government well deserved to have its excellences heightened, its faults corrected, and its capacities improved into a British Constitution.

Nor do I discern the character of a government that has been on the whole so oppressive, or so corrupt, or so negligent, as to be utterly unfit for all reformation.

Causes thus powerful to acquire and to retain cannot be found in discouraged industry, insecure property, and a positively destructive government.

The wealth of a country is another, and no contemptible standard, by which we may judge whether, on the whole, a government be protecting or destructive.

I never will suppose that fabric of a state to be the worst of all political institutions which by experience is found to contain a principle favorable (however latent it may be) to the increase of mankind.

No country in which population flourishes, and is in progressive improvement, can be under a very mischievous government.

Among the standards upon which the effects of government on any country are to be estimated, I must consider the state of its population as not the least certain.