Patriotic taxpayers doubtless exist: prophetic ones, provident ones, do not.

At least we show that we are wanting in them.

The taxpayer of a free land taxes himself, and his disinclination for the bitter task, save under circumstances of screaming urgency--as when the night-gear and bed-linen of old convulsed Panic are like the churned Channel sea in the track of two hundred hostile steamboats, let me say--is of the kind the gentle schoolboy feels when death or an expedition has relieved him of his tyrant, and he is entreated notwithstanding to go to his books.
Will you not own that the working of the system for scaring him and bleeding is very ingenious?
But whether the ingenuity comes of native sagacity, as it is averred by some, or whether it shows an instinct labouring to supply the deficiencies of stupidity, according to others, I cannot express an opinion.

I give you the position of the country undisturbed by any moralizings of mine.

The youth I introduce to you will rarely let us escape from it; for the reason that he was born with so extreme and passionate a love for his country, that he thought all things else of mean importance in comparison: and our union is one in which, following the counsel of a sage and seer, I must try to paint for you what is, not that which I imagine.