To collect a multiplicity of particulars under general heads, and to refer a variety of operations to their common principle, is the object of science. #
If, in reasoning on the increase of mankind in general, we overlook their freedom and their happiness, our aids to population become weak and ineffectual. They only lead us to work on the surface, or to pursue a shadow, while we neglect the substantial concern; and in a decaying state, make us tamper with palliatives, while the roots of evil are suffered to remain.#
Like most arguments from analogy, [this] tends rather to amuse the fancy than to give any real information on the subject to which it refers.#
When fear is suggested as the only motive for duty, every heart becomes rapacious or base.#
Our very praise of unanimity, therefore, is to be considered as a danger to liberty.#
He whose office it is to govern a supine or an abject people, cannot, for a moment, cease to extend his powers. Every execution of law, every movement of the state, every civil and military operation, in which his power is exerted, must serve to confirm his authority, and present him to the view of the public as the sole object of consideration, fear, and respect. Those very establishments which were devised, in one age, to limit or to direct the exercise of an executive power, will serve, in another, to remove obstructions, and to smooth its way; they will point out the channels in which it may run, without giving offence, or without exciting alarms, and the very councils which were instituted to check its incroachments, will, in a time of corruption, furnish an aid to its usurpations.#
Liberty is never in greater danger than it is when we measure national felicity by the blessings which a prince may bestow.#