Specie [gold and silver coin] is the most perfect medium because it will preserve its own level; because, having intrinsic and universal value, it can never die in our hands, and it is the surest resource of reliance in time of war.

The people of every country are the only safe guardians of their own rights.

The same facts impress us differently.

Taxation is, in fact, the most difficult function of government and that against which their citizens are most apt to be refractory.

I apprehend... that the total abandonment of the principle of rotation in the offices of President and Senator will end in abuse.

Principle will, in... most... cases open the way for us to correct conclusion.

The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These covering our land with officers, and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which, once entered, is scarcely to be restrained from reaching successively every article of produce and property.