The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares.

Every nation ought to have a right to provide for its own happiness.

The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.

The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded.

I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons entrusted with the administration of the general government could ever feel to divest the States of the authorities of that description. The regulation of the mere domestic police of a State appears to me to hold out slender allurements to ambition.

CREDIT supposes specific and permanent funds for the punctual payment of interest, with a moral certainty of a final redemption of the principal.

Experience teaches, that men are often so much governed by what they are accustomed to see and practice, that the simplest and most obvious improvements . . . are adopted with hesitation, reluctance, and slow gradations.