There was a time when we were told . . . that a sense of common interest would preside over the conduct of the respective members...This language at the present day would appear as wild as that great part of what we now hear from the same quarter will be thought, when we shall have received further lessons from that best oracle of wisdom, experience.

The obscurity is much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject.

[S]ound policy condemns the practice of accumulating debts.

The Christian Constitutional Society, its object is first: The support of the Christian religion. Second: The support of the United States.

It has been observed, [that for the federal government] to coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised.

If the end be clearly comprehended within any of the specified powers, and if the measure have an obvious relation to that end, and is not forbidden by any particular provision of the Constitution, it may safely be deemed to come within the compass of the national authority.

Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities.