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.

The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.

...that standing army can never be formidable (threatening) to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in the use of arms.

Our countrymen have all the folly of the ass and all the passiveness of the sheep.

But the greatest obstacle of all to the successful prosecution of a new branch of industry in a country, in which it was before unknown, consists . . . in the bounties, premiums, and other aids which are granted, in a variety of cases, by the nations, in which the establishments to be imitated are previously introduced.

It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of violent love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is too apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten, that the vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty.

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