But after the spirit of conquest had changed the first governments, all the succeeding ones have, in general, proved one continued series of injustice, which has reigned in all countries for almost four thousand years.

The right of conscience and private judgment is unalienable, and it is truly the interest of all mankind to unite themselves into one body for the liberty, free exercise, and unmolested enjoyment of this right.

The United States are under peculiar obligations to become a holy people unto the Lord our God.

But Connecticut and Rhode Island have originally realized the most perfect polity as to a legislature.

The Lord shall have made his American Israel high above all nations which he hath made.

All the forms of civil polity have been tried by mankind, except one, and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America. Most of the states, of all ages ...have been founded in rapacity, usurpation, and injustice; so that in the contests recorded in history ...the military history of all nations being but a description of the wars and invasions of the mutual robbers and devastators of the human race.

With the people, especially a people seized of property, resides the aggregate of original power.