We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them.

It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail. The religion and public liberty of a people are intimately connected; their interests are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For this reason, it is always observable, that those who are combin'd to destroy the people's liberties, practice every art to poison their morals.

Before the formation of this Constitution it had been affirmed as a self evident truth, in the Declaration of Independence, very deliberately made by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled that 'all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights' This declaration of Independence was received and ratified by all the States in the Union & has never been disannuled. May we not from hence conclude, that the doctrine of Liberty and Equality is an article in the political creed of the United States.

What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a manly and glorious struggle in opposition to the lawless power of rebellious kings and princes.

If virtue & knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslav'd. This will be their great security.

The next step may be fatal to us. Let us then act like wise men, calmly look around us and consider what is best to be done...Let associations and combinations be everywhere set up to consult and recover our just rights.

Man's rights are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.