Democracy is the most vile form of government.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

We have the self-evident right to regulate our trade according to our own will and our own interest . . . . This right can be denied to no independent nation.

It is possible that these may all be insufficient to control the caprice and wickedness of man. But are they not all that government will admit, and all that human prudence can devise?

The real wonder is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted [in the federal convention], and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.

Every new and successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance.

[Exchange] the galling burden of bachelorship for the easy yoke of matrimony.