The sun of her [Great Britain] glory is fast descending to the horizon. Her philosophy has crossed the Channel, her freedom the Atlantic, and herself seems passing to that awful dissolution, whose issue is not given human foresight to scan.

It is a [disputed] question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie [gold and silver coin], is a good or an evil I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin.

It will take a thousand years for the frontier to reach the Pacific

Excessive taxation . . . will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.

The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.