The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people with arms. If they did, the people would certainly shake off the yoke of tyranny, as America did.

there ought always to be a constitutional method of giving efficacy to constitutional provisions. What for instance would avail restrictions on the authority of the state legislatures, without some constitutional mode of enforcing the observance of them? . . . This power must either be a direct negative on the state laws, or an authority in the federal courts, to over-rule such as might be in manifest contravention of the articles of union.

Our country, if it does justice to itself, will be the workshop of liberty to the civilized world.

In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the disease incident to republican government.

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

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. To guard a man's house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man's conscience, which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection for which the public faith is pledged by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.

Security against foreign danger is one of the primitive objects of civil society. It is an avowed and essential object of the American Union.