The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.

We have had so many years of prosperity, we have passed through so many difficulties and dangers without the loss of liberty - that we begin to think that we hold it by divine right from heaven itself ... It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.

Of all earthly blessings, I place Liberty in the first rank, and of course, consider the obligation to defend and preserve it, as the most sacred of all our civil and social duties... It is not in the power of any single, or few individuals to preserve liberty. It can only be effected by the people themselves; by their intelligence, virtue, courage, and patriotism.

The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.

Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail.

The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledgment of inferiority.

The object of a Constitution is to restrain the Government, as that of laws is to restrain individuals.