In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.

Where a majority are united by a common sentiment, and have an opportunity, the rights of the minor party become insecure.

I wish not to be regarded as an advocate for the particular organizations of the several state governments . . . they carry strong marks of the haste, and still stronger marks of the inexperience, under which they were framed.

Experience has instructed us that no skill in the science of government has yet been able to discriminate and define, with sufficient certainty, its three great provinces the legislative, executive, and judiciary; or even the privileges and powers of the different legislative branches.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.