r estimation, as
sacred as the monarch's crown; with inflexible integrity they adjudge to
every man his own. Your property under their protection is secure. If
your personal liberty be unjustly restrained, though but for an hour,
and that by the highest servants of the crown, the crown cannot screen
them; the throne cannot hide them; the law, with an undaunted arm,
seizes them, and drags them with irresistible might to the judgment of
whom?--of your equals--of twelve of your neighbours. In such a
constitution as this, what is there to complain of on the score of
liberty?

The greatest freedom that can be enjoyed by man in a state of civil
society, the greatest security that can be given him with respect to the
protection of his character, property, personal liberty, limb, and life,
is afforded to every individual by our present constitution.

The equality of men in a state of nature does not consist in an equality
of bodily strength or intellectual ability, but in their being equally
free from the dominion of each other. The equality of men in a state of
civil society does not consist in an equality of wisdom, honesty,
ingenuity, industry, nor in an equality of property resulting from a due
exertion of these talents; but in being equally subject to, equally
protected by the same laws. And who knows not that every individual in
this great nation is, in this respect, equal to every other? There is
not one law for the nobles, another for the commons of the land--one for
the clergy, another for the laity--one for the rich, another for the
poor. The nobility, it is true, have some privileges annexed to their
birth; the judges, and other magistrates, have some annexed to their
office; and professional men have some annexed to their
professions:--but these privileges are neither injurious to the liberty
or property of other men. And you might as reasonably contend, that the
bramble ought to be equal to the oak, the lamb to the lion, as that no
distinctions should take place between the members of the same society.
The burdens of the State are distributed through the whole community,
with as much impartiality as the complex nature of taxation will admit;
every man sustains a part in proportion to his strength; no order is
exempted from the payment of taxes. Nor is any order of men exclusively
entitled to the enjoyment of the lucrative offices of the State. All
cannot enjoy them, but all enjoy a capacity of acquiring them. The