Sir, sorrow is inherent in humanity. As you cannot judge two and two to be either five, or three, but certainly four, so, when comparing a worse present state with a better which is past, you cannot but feel sorrow. It is not cured by reason, but by the incursion of present objects, which bear out the past.

For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws.

Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.

Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions

Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained

Those that have done nothing in life, are not qualified to judge of those that have done little