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

A share in the sovereignty of the state, which is exercised by the citizens at large, in voting at elections is one of the most important rights of the subject, and in a republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law...That portion of the sovereignty, to which each individual is entitled, can never be too highly prized. It is that for which we have fought and bled.

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

In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects.

The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right.

To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.

There is nothing absurd or impracticable in the idea of a league or alliance between independent nations for certain defined purposes precisely stated in a treaty regulating all the details of time, place, circumstance, and quantity; leaving nothing to future discretion; and depending for its execution on the good faith of the parties.