The executive power in our government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.

I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance

I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it.

It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.

The government you elect is the government you deserve.