Language is the expression of ideas, and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas they cannot retain an identity of language.

A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.

The freedom of the press is a valuable privilege, but the abuse of it in this country is a frightful evil. The licentiousness of the press is a deep stain upon the character of the country; and in addition to the evil of calumniating good men and giving a wrong direction to public measures, it corrupts the people by rendering them insensible to the value of truth and of reputation.

When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country.

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.

Nothing has a greater tendency to lessen the reverence which mankind ought to have for the Supreme Being, than a careless repetition of his name upon every trifling occasion . . . . To prevent this profanation, such passages are selected from scripture, as contain some important precepts of morality and religion, in which that sacred name is seldom mentioned. Let sacred things be appropriated to sacred purposes.

The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good and the best corrector of all that is evil in human society; the best book for regulating the temporal [secular] concerns of men.