Jonathan Shipley

“Paul H. Smith (ed.) English Defenders of American Freedoms, 1774–1778 (1972), pp. 22–23”

“Henry Leigh Bennett, "Shipley, Jonathan", Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 52 (1897), p. 111”

“I look upon North America as the only great nursery of freemen left on the face of the earth.”

“The people are certainly the best judges whether they are well governed; and the Crown can have no rights inconsistent with the happiness of the people.”

“The idea of governing provinces and colonies by force is visionary and chimerical. The experiment has often been tried, and it has never succeeded. It ends infallibly in the ruin of one country or the other.”

“Arbitrary taxation is plunder authorized by law.”

“It has always been a most arduous task to govern distant provinces, with even a tolerable appearance of justice.”

“The true art of government consists in not governing too much.”