I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.

The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery.-Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.

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.

I wish I was a despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees that are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners, or the necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder.