By nature's law, every man has a right to seize and retake by force his own property taken from him by another, by force of fraud. Nor is this natural right among the first which is taken into the hands of regular government after it is instituted. It was long retained by our ancestors. It was a part of their common law, laid down in their books, recognized by all the authorities, and regulated as to circumstances of practice.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead ofpersuading. Speeches measured by the hour, die by the hour.

It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.

His [Calvin's] religion was demonism. If ever man worshiped a false God, he did. The being described in his five points is ... a demon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin

Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission.

We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities. Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we had hoped that our distance and our dispositions would have left us free, in the example and indulgence of peace with all the world.