With nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.

The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.

The right of self-government does not comprehend the government of others.

The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.

There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him.

We do not mean to count or weigh our contributions by any standard other than that of our abilities.

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste.