Were it possible so to accelerate the intercourse between every part of the globe that all its inhabitants could be united under the superintending authority of an ecumenical Council, how great a portion of human evils would be avoided.
Man is known to be a selfish, as well as a social being.
For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power?
It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object.
Freedom arises from a multiplicity of sects, which pervades America, and is the best and only security for religious liberty in America.
The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.
Landholders ought to have a share in the government to support these invaluable interests and check the other many. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.
Nothing could be more irrational than to give the people power, and to withhold from them information without which power is abused.
A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself.
The security intended to the general liberty consists in the frequent election and in the rotation of the members of Congress.
Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded.
The free system of government we have established is so congenial with reason, with common sense, and with a universal feeling, that it must produce approbation and a desire of imitation, as avenues may be found for truth to the knowledge of nations.
The danger of disturbing the public tranquillity by interesting too strongly the public passions, is a still more serious objection against a frequent reference of constitutional questions to the decision of the whole society.
At cheaper and nearer seats of Learning parents with slender incomes may place their sons in a course of education putting them on a level with the sons of the Richest.
The political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free Government, and as they become incorporated with national sentiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion.
The power of taxing people and their property is essential to the very existence of government.
Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.
The nation which reposes on the pillow of political confidence, will sooner or later end its political existence in a deadly lethargy.
The American people are too well schooled in the duty and practice of submitting to the will of the majority to permit any serious uneasiness on that account.
Nor is any evidence to be found, either in History or Human Nature, that nations are to be bribed out of a spirit of encroachment and aggression, by humiliations which nourish their pride, or by concessions that extend their resources and power.