If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.

There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.

The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws.

The power of creating new funds upon new objects of taxation, by its own authority, would enable the national government to borrow as far as its necessities might require.

If it be said that the legislative body are themselves the constitutional judges of their own powers, and that the construction they put upon them is conclusive upon the other departments, it may be answered, that this cannot be the natural presumption, where it is not be collected from any particular provisions in the Constitution.

It is a well-known fact that in countries in which the national debt is properly funded, and an object of established confidence, it answers most of the purposes of money. Transfers of stock, or public debt, are there equivalent to payments in specie; or, in other words, stock, in the principal transactions of business, passes current as specie. The same thing would, in all probability, happen here, under the like circumstances.

To presume a want of motives for such contests . . . would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.