Our public credit is good, but the abundance of paper has produced a spirit of gambling in the funds, which has laid up our ships at the wharves as too slow instruments of profit, and has even disarmed the hand of the tailor of his needle and thimble. They say the evil will cure itself. I wish it may; but I have rarely seen a gamester cured, even by the disasters of his vocation.

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree.

Defend our liberties and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindred and tongues.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reform and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable.

I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.

A lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools.