There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

If the Government say they are going to ram through this measure to reduce the power of the Commons it would be scandalous. It is one of the most shameful frauds ever perpetrated. It would break the control between government and the people and this would inflict serious injury on our democratic institutions. If they do that we will be nearer the day when people will say 'All right, let us settle things by violence'.

Fraud involving the public purse is all the more reprehensible, and must be severely punished, in that it cannot take place other than with the involvement of politicians and public officials, i.e. those who are entrusted essentially with defending and promoting the public interest. Their dishonesty undermines trust in the State, in the country's institutions and in democracy.

If one were to rob human beings of the power to do and say what they please, that would be to take away, and to curtail the first principle of independence.

From a deficiency in this particular, one of two evils must ensue; either the people must be subjected to continual plunder, as a substitute for a more eligible mode of supplying the public wants, or the government must sink into a fatal atrophy, and, in a short course of time, perish.

If people are stealing the resources of this nation, if people are taking bribes - if judges or persons in authority, whether they are judges or whoever they may be in government, ministers, whoever, if they are taking bribes - it attacks the fundament of our existence as a society.

Let us show the people how it is swindled out of its labor force by country and city capitalists; how it is euchered out of its meagre wages by the house, store, and other lords; how priests of pulpit, press, and party seek to destroy its intellect; how a brutal police is ever ready to maltreat and tyrannize it, and with a soldiery to spill its blood. Patience, at last must forsake it! The people will rebel and crush its foes.

It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery.

The State ... is evidently nothing more nor less than the political organization of a horde of swindlers and spoliators, who without the tyrannizing machinery could not exist for one day before the just wrath and condemnation of the oppressed and plundered people.

Indeed, in a free government, almost all other rights would become utterly worthless, if the government possessed an uncontrollable power over the private fortune of every citizen.

My opinion is, that power should always be distrusted, in whatever hands it is placed.

By this means the government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.