An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.

In a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.

Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.

The institution of Masonry ought to be abandoned as one capable of much evil, and incapable of producing any good which might not be affected by safe and open means.

The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right.

A legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law.

When a law is in its nature a contract, when absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of the law cannot divest those rights.