If the slightest rumor of public commotion intrudes into the petty pleasures of private life, they are aroused and alarmed by it.

The fear of anarchy perpetually haunts them, and they are always ready to fling away their freedom at the first disturbance.
I readily admit that public tranquillity is a great good; but at the same time I cannot forget that all nations have been enslaved by being kept in good order.

Certainly it is not to be inferred that nations ought to despise public tranquillity; but that state ought not to content them.

A nation which asks nothing of its government but the maintenance of order is already a slave at heart--the slave of its own well-being, awaiting but the hand that will bind it.

By such a nation the despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism of an individual.