That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.
Ministers and merchants love nobody.
As government grows, freedom recedes.
The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.
A republic will avoid war unless the avoidance might create conditions that are worse than warfare itself. Sometimes, the dispositions of those who choose to make themselves our enemies leaves us no choice.
Error is to be pitied and pardoned: it is the weakness of human nature. But vice is a foul blemish, not pardonable in any character.
Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.
I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make.
I am already sensible of decay in the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful as it used to be. This may be partly owing to the incessant current of new matter flowing constantly through it; but I ascribe to years their share in it also.
I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier.
I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it.
I have much confidence that we shall proceed successfully for ages to come. My hope of its duration is built much on the enlargement of the resources of life going hand in hand with the enlargement of territory.
It is proof of sincerity, which I value above all things; as, between those who practice it, falsehood and malice work their efforts in vain.
Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.
Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power.
Never throw off the best affections of nature in the moment when they become most precious to their object; nor fear to extend you hand to save another, lest you should sink yourself.
No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will.
One imputation in particular has been repeated till it seems as if some at least believed it: that I am an enemy to commerce. They admit me a friend of agriculture, and suppose me an enemy to the only means of disposing of its produce.
Our fellow-citizens think they have a right to full information, in a case of such great concernment to them. It is their sweat which is to earn all the expenses of the war, and their blood which is to flow in expiation of the causes of it.
Our minds were circumscribed within narrow limits by an habitual belief that it was our duty to be subordinate to the mother country.