Every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes by force of the term a right to employ all the means requisite . . . to the attainment of the ends of such power.

I would die to preserve the law upon a solid foundation; but take away liberty, and the foundation is destroyed.

... for it is a truth, which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are commonly most in danger when the means of insuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.

I propose . . . . The conformity of the proposed Constitution to the true principles of republican government.

A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.

[A] power equal to every possible contingency must exist somewhere in the government . . .

What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statutes the next.