The education of youth should be watched with the most scrupulous attention. [I]t is much easier to introduce and establish an effectual system ... than to correct by penal statutes the ill effects of a bad system. ... The education of youth ... lays the foundations on which both law and gospel rest for success.

The principles of all genuine liberty, and of wise laws and administrations are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority. The man therefore who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that book may be assessory to all the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer.

Knowledge, learning, talents are not necessarily connected with sound moral and political principles.... And eminent abilities, accompanied with depravity of heart, render the possessor tenfold more dangerous in a community.

As a general rule, it may be affirmed that the man who never intrigues for office may be most safely entrusted with office...Such a man cannot desire promotion unless he received it from the respectable part of the community, for he considers no other promotion to be honorable.

But while property is considered as the basis of the freedom of the American yeomanry, there are other auxiliary supports; among which is the information of the people. In no country, is education so general - in no country, have the body of the people such a knowledge of the rights of men and the principles of government. This knowledge, joined with a keen sense of liberty and a watchful jealousy, will guard our constitutions and awaken the people to an instantaneous resistance of encroachments.

In some countries the common people are not permitted to read the Bible at all. In ours, it is as common as a newspaper and in schools is read with nearly the same degree of respect.

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