The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.

Effective resistance to usurpers is possible only provided the citizens understand their rights and are disposed to defend them.

The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same state, the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature, all those things in short which are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction . . . the attempt to exercise these powers would be as troublesome as it would be nugatory; and the possession of them, for that reason, would contribute nothing to the dignity, to the importance, or to the splendour of the national government.

States, like individuals, who observe their engagements, are respected and trusted: while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct.

The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge right or make good decision.

The increasing remoteness of consanguinity is everyday diminishing the force of the family compact between France and Spain. And politicians have ever with great reason considered the ties of blood as feeble and precarious links of political connection.

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