The laws are the sole guardians of right, and when the magistrate dares not act, every person is insecure.

A national language is a band of national union.

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.

Almost all the civil liberty now enjoyed in the world owes its origin to the principles of the christian religion.

[T]he Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis, or rather the source of all genuine freedom in government. . . . and I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of that religion have not a controlling influence.

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.

The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws . . . The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and his Apostles . . . This is genuine Christianity and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.