Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them.

We love and we value peace; we know its blessings from experience. We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities.

I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than the breaking of the Union into two or more parts.

Reason and free inquiry are the only effective agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error and error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free inquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free inquiry been indulged at the era of the Reformation, the corruption of Christianity could not have been purged away.

Never use one word when two will do.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.