I consider biennial elections as a security that the sober, second thought of the people shall be law.

[the framers of the Constitution] intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism.

Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism.

A large portion of our citizens, who will not believe, even on the evidence of facts, that any public evils exist, or are impending. They deride the apprehensions of those who foresee, that licentiousness will prove, as it ever has proved, fatal to liberty.

Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits . . . it is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers.

I consider biennial elections as a security that the sober, second thought of the people shall be law.

I have heard it remarked that men are not to be reasoned out of an opinion they have not reasoned themselves into.