The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. I think it would be well to provide in our constitutions that there shall always be a twelve-month between the ingross-ing a bill & passing it: that it should then be offered to its passage without changing a word: and that if circum-stances should be thought to require a speedier passage, it should take two thirds of both houses instead of a bare majority.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

My construction of the constitution is very different from that you quote. It is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal.

A room without books is like a life without meaning.

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself.

Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.