You will perceive by my preaching that I am growing old: it is the privilege of years, and I am sure you will pardon it from the purity of it's motives.

I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern.

Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people.

Still we did not expect to be without rubs and difficulties; and we have had them. First the detention of Western posts: then the coalition of Pilnitz, outlawing our commerce with France, and the British enforcement of the outlawry. In your day French depredations; in mine English, and the Berlin and Milan decrees: now the English orders of council, and the piracies they authorize. When these shall be over, it will the impressment of our seamen, or something else; and so we have gone on, and so we shall go on, puzzled and prospering beyond example in the history of man.

The law of self-preservation is higher than written law.

It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt.

Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people; they fix too for the people the principles of their political creed.