[Oppose] with manly firmness [any] invasions on the rights of the people.

It is my disposition to maintain peace until its condition shall be made less tolerable than that of war itself.

We think, in America, that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government, as far as they are capable of exercising it, and that this is the only way to ensure a long continued and honest administration of its powers.

It should be our endeavor to cultivate the peace and friendship of every nation . . . . Our interest will be to throw open the doors of commerce, and to knock off all its shackles, giving perfect freedom to all persons for the vent to whatever they may choose to bring into our ports, and asking the same in theirs.

It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.

Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature.

Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one.