Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. To be more safe, [nations] at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.

The [president] has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction. . . .

[W]e must extend the authority of the Union to the persons of the citizens - the only proper objects of government.

The practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.

There are still to be found visionary or designing men, who stand ready to advocate the paradox of perpetual peace between the states, though dismembered and alienated from each other.... The genius of republics, say they, is pacific; the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men, and to extinguish those inflammable humours which have so often kindled into wars. Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual amity and concord.

Ambition without principle never was long under the guidance of good sense.

Nothing is more natural to men in office, than to look with peculiar deference towards that authority to which they owe their official existence.