We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

If justice, good faith, honor, gratitude and all the other qualities which enoble the character of a nation, and fulfill the ends of Government be the fruits of our establishments, the cause of liberty will acquire a dignity and lustre, which it has never yet enjoyed, and an example will be set, which can not but have the most favorable influence on the rights of Mankind.

There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermingle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation.

A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

Our opinions agree as to the evil, moral, political, and economical, of slavery.

[The human mind] finds more facility in assenting to the self-existence of an invisible cause possessing infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, than in the self-existence of the universe, visibly destitute of these attributes, and which may be the effect of them.