Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government. - Edmund Burke

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private speculations, or can spare to them from his own private interests. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.

Never did a state . . . enrich itself by the confiscations of the citizens. . . . Every honest mind, every true lover of liberty and humanity must rejoice to find that injustice is not always good policy, nor rapine the high road to riches.