"Is is not extraordinary that persons who can know so little on the subject, should be thus indiscreet and positive?"
"It is not extraordinary in America. Look about you, Ned, and you will see adventurers uppermost everywhere; in the government, in your towns, in your villages, in the country, even. We are a nation of changes. Much of this, I admit, is the fair consequence of legitimate causes, as an immense region, in forest, cannot be peopled on any other conditions. But this necessity has infected the entire national character, and men get to be impatient of any sameness, even though it be useful. Everything goes to confirm this feeling, instead of opposing it. The constant recurrences of the elections accustom men to changes in their public functionaries; the great increase in the population brings new faces; and the sudden accumulations of property place new men in conspicuous stations. The architecture of the country is barely becoming sufficiently respectable to render it desirable to preserve the buildings, without which we shall have no monuments to revere. In short, everything contributes to produce such a state of things, painful as it may be to all of any feeling, and little to oppose it."
"You colour highly, Jack; and no picture loses in tints, in being retouched by you."
"Look into the first paper that offers, and you will see the young men of the country hardily invited to meet by themselves, to consult concerning public affairs, as if they were impatient of the counsels and experience of their fathers. No country can prosper, where the ordinary mode of transacting the business connected with the root of the government, commences with this impiety."
"This is a disagreeable feature in the national character, certainly; but we must remember the arts employed by the designing to practise on the inexperienced."
"Had I a son, who presumed to denounce the wisdom and experience of his father, in this disrespectful mariner, I would disinherit the rascal!"
"Ah, Jack, bachelor's children are notoriously well educated, and well mannered. We will hope, however, that time will bring its changes also, and that one of them will be a greater constancy in persons, things, and the affections."
"Time will bring its changes, Ned; but all of them that are connected with individual rights, as opposed to popular caprice, or popular interests, are likely to be in the wrong direction."
"The tendency is certainly to substitute popularity for the right, but we must take the good with the bad; Even you, Jack, would not exchange this popular oppression for any other system under which you have lived."
"I don't know that--I don't know that. Of all tyranny, a vulgar tyranny is to me the most odious."