The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

For an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

In every country where man is free to think and to speak, difference of opinion will arise from difference of perception, and the imperfection of reason; but these differences, when permitted, as in this happy country, to purify themselves by free discussion, are but as passing clouds overspreading our land transiently, and leaving our horizon more bright and serene.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

Turning, then, from this loathsome combination of church and state, and weeping over the follies of our fellow men, who yield themselves the willing dupes and drudges of these mountebanks, I consider reformation and redress as desperate, and abandon them to the Quixotism of more enthusiastic minds.

I have come to a resolution myself as I hope every good citizen will, never again to purchase any article of foreign manufacture which can be had of American make, be the difference of price what it may.