Money, not morality, constitutes the principle of commercial nations.

I have much confidence that we shall proceed successfully for ages to come. My hope of its duration is built much on the enlargement of the resources of life going hand in hand with the enlargement of territory.

For the power given to Congress by the Constitution does not extend to the internal regulation of the commerce of a State (that is to say, of the commerce between citizen and citizen,) which remain exclusively with its own legislature; but to its external commerce only, that is to say, its commerce with another State, or with foreign nations, or with the Indian tribes.

The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.

Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers but by their distribution that good government is effected.