There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are. Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest.

It is by far the safer course to lay [considerations of the future] altogether aside; and to confine our attention wholly to the nature and extent of the powers as they are delineated in the constitution. Everything beyond this, must be left to the prudence and firmness of the people; who, as they will hold the scales in their own hands, it is to be hoped, will always take care to preserve the constitutional equilibrium between the General and State governments.

If the exercise of power of internal taxation by the Union should be discovered on experiment to be really inconvenient, the federal government may then forbear the use of it . . .

To attempt to enumerate the complicated variety of mischiefs in the whole system of the social economy, which proceed from a neglect of the maxims that uphold public credit, and justify the solicitude manifested by the House on this point, would be an improper intrusion on their time and patience.

Though a wide ocean separates the United States from Europe, yet there are various considerations that warn us against an excess of confidence or security.

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.

[T]here is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution.