This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force.

I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old.

Were I to commence my administration again, the first question I would ask respecting a candidate would be, Does he use ardent spirits?

Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.

Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in Government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.

I discharge every person under punishment or prosecution under the Sedition Law, because I considered, and now consider, that law to be a nullity as absolute and palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image.

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.