I acknowledge, in the ordinary course of government, that the exposition of the laws and Constitution devolves upon the judicial. But I beg to know upon what principle it can be contended that any one department draws from the Constitution greater powers than another in marking out the limits of the powers of the several departments.

All power in human hands is liable to be abused.

America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Our opinions agree as to the evil, moral, political, and economical, of slavery.

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.

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, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one.