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Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.

William Cobbett

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William Cobbett
Age: 72 †
Born: 1763
Born: March 9
Died: 1835
Died: June 18
Biographer
Farmer
Journalist
Pamphleteer
Political Writer
Politician
Farnham
Surrey
Dick Retort
Peter Porcupine
System
Torpor
Death
Calculated
Wells
Extended
Well
Taxation
Nothing
Debt
Country
National
Great
Taxes
Like
Produce

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Never esteem men on account of their riches or their station. Respect goodness, find it where you may.
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It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.
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All Middlesex is ugly, notwithstanding the millions upon millionswhichit iscontinuallysucking up fromtherestof the kingdom.
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The truth is that the fall of Napoleon is the hardest blow that our taxing system ever felt. It is now impossible to make people believe that immense fleets and armies are necessary.
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If the people of Sheffield could only receive a tenth part of what their knives sell for by retail in America, Sheffield might pave its streets with silver.
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The ancient nobility and gentry of the kingdom... have been thrust out of all public employment... a race of merchants, and manufacturers and bankers and loan-jobbers and contractors have usurped their place.
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Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.
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I defy you to agitate any fellow with a full stomach.
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Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of speculation but which ought to be called Gambling.
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But I do not remember ever having seen a newspaper in the house and, most certainly, that privation did not render us less industrious, happy, or free.
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Grammar, perfectly understood, enables us not only to express our meaning fully and clearly, but so to express it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give to our words any other meaning than that which we ourselves intend them to express.
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Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed.
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To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous.
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Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada are the horns, the head, the neck, the shins, and the hoof of the ox, and the United States are the ribs, the sirloin, the kidneys, and the rest of the body.
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The tendency of taxation is, to create a class of persons, who do not labour: to take from those who do labour the produce of that labour, and to give it to those who do not labour.
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Praise the child, and you make love to the mother.
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You never know what you can do till you try.
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The power which money gives is that of brute force it is the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet.
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A full belly to the labourer was, in my opinion, the foundation of public morals and the only source of real public peace.
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Norwich is a very fine city, and the castle, which stands in the middle of it, on a hill, is truly majestic.
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