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Despotism tempered by assassination, that is our Magna Carta.

Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness we bring A Church without a bishop, a State without a King.

A government of laws, and not of men.

Fear is the foundation of most governments.

The declaration that our People are hostile to a government made by themselves, for themselves, and conducted by themselves, is an insult.

Yesterday the greatest question was decided which was ever debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, that those United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.

. . . The manners of women are the surest criterion by which to determine whether a republican government is practicable in a nation or not.

Not stones, nor wood, nor the art of artisans make a state; but where men are who know how to take care of themselves, these are cities and walls.

States are great engines moving slowly.

So that every wand or staff of empire is forsooth curved at top.

It established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king.

Yet if thou didst but know how little wit governs this mighty universe.

"Whatever is, is not," is the maxim of the anarchist, as often as anything comes across him in the shape of a law which he happens not to like.

And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.

Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

England is the mother of parliaments.

I am for Peace, for Retrenchment, and for Reform,--thirty years ago the great watchwords of the great Liberal Party.

Well, will anybody deny now that the Government at Washington, as regards its own people, is the strongest government in the world at this hour? And for this simple reason, that it is based on the will, and the good will, of an instructed people.

So then because some towns in England are not represented, America is to have no representative at all. They are "our children"; but when children ask for bread we are not to give a stone.

All government--indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act--is founded on compromise and barter.