An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

It is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and i…

And the final event to himself (Mr. Burke) has been, that, as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.

It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresi…

The law which attempts a man's life [capital punishment] is impractical, unjust, inadmissible. It has never repressed crime-for a second crime is every day com…

If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.

An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.