Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.

Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right.

I flatter myself [we] have in this country extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind.

The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.

A just government has no need for the clergy or the church.

If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare... they may appoint teachers in every state... The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.

I consider it…as subverting the fundamental and characteristic principle of the Government…and as bidding defiance to the sense in which the Constitution is known to have been proposed, advocated, and adopted. If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one.