I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.

Bad men cannot make good citizens. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience are incompatible with freedom.

Is it not amazing that at a time when the rights of humanity are defined and understood with precision, in a country, above all others, fond of liberty-that in such an age and in such a country we find men professing a religion the most humane, mild, gentle and generous, adopting a principle as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible, and destructive to liberty?

Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.

I look on that paper (the Constitution) as the most fatal plan that could possibly be conceived to enslave a free people.

Liberty ought to be the direct end of your government.

O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical, no longer a democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all?