If the General Government should be left dependent on the State Legislatures, it would be happy for us if we had never met in this room.
John DickinsonLet our government be like that of the solar system. Let the general government be like the sun and the states the planets, repelled yet attracted, and the whole moving regularly and harmoniously in several orbits.
John DickinsonLet us take care of our rights and we therein take care of our prosperity. Slavery is ever preceded by sleep
John DickinsonThe rights essential to happiness. . . . We claim them from a higher source - from the King of kings and Lord of all the earth.
John DickinsonHonor, justice, and humanity, call upon us to hold, and to transmit to our posterity, that liberty which we received from our ancestors. It is not our duty to leave wealth to our children, but it is our duty to leave liberty to them.
John DickinsonNo free people ever existed, or can ever exist, without keeping the purse strings in their own hands. Where this is the case, they have a constitutional check upon the administration, which may thereby by brought into order without violence. But when such a power is not lodged in the people, oppression proceeds uncontrolled in its career, till the governed, transported into rage, seek redress in the midst of blood and confusion.
John Dickinson