We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

These are not vague inferences . . . but they are solid conclusions drawn from the natural and necessary progress of human affairs.

Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred.

What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws.

We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

Nothing can be more evident, than that an exclusive power of regulating elections for the National Government, in the hands of the State Legislatures, would leave the existence of the Union entirely at their mercy . . . . It is to little purpose to say that a neglect or omission of this kind [not letting the feds have elections], would be unlikely to take place. The constitutional possibility of the thing, without an equivalent for the risk, is an unanswerable objection.

It is of the greatest consequence that the debt should, with the consent of the creditors, be remoulded into such a shape as will bring the expenditure of the nation to a level with its income. Till this shall be accomplished, the finances of the United States will never wear a proper countenance. Arrears of interest, continually accruing, will be as continual a monument, either of inability, or of ill faith and will not cease to have an evil influence on public credit.