Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power.

Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.

Peace is our passion.

What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate.

We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.

Although we are free by the law, we are not so in practice.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.