It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be tomorrow.

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

Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed?

Allow a government to decline paying its debts and you overthrow all public morality-you unhinge all the principles that preserve the limits of free constitutions. Nothing can more affect national prosperity than a constant and systematic attention to extinguish the present debt and to avoid as much as possibly the incurring of any new debt.

I will venture to assert that no combination of designing men under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular which is in its principles a wise and good one, and vigorous in its operations.

Great Ambition, unchecked by principle, or the love of Glory, is an unruly Tyrant.

Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society.