These considerations and many others that might be mentioned prove, and experience confirms it, that artisans and manufacturers will commonly be disposed to bestow their votes on merchants.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

The better proof of reverence for that holy name would be not to profane it by making it a topic of legislative discussion.

In republican government the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this . . . is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them by different modes of election, and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions, and their common dependence on the society, will admit.

Can it be of less consequence that the meaning of a Constitution should be fixed and known, than a meaning of a law should be so?

The real difference of interests, lay not between large and small, but between the Northern and Southern states. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed a line of discrimination.