It is not to the moderation and justice of others we are to trust for fair and equal access to market with out productions, or for our due share in the transportation of them; but to our own means of independence, and the firm will to use them.

Nothing but a necessity invincible by any other means can justify ... a prostitution of laws, which constitute the pillars of our whole system of jurisprudence.

Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.

To be really useful, we must keep pace with the state of society, and not dishearten it by attempts at what its population, means, or occupations will fail in attempting.

The people are not always well-informed, but is better that they have misconceptions that make them restless than that they be lethargic-for lethargy in the people means death for republics.

Although our prospect is peace, our policy and purpose are to provide for defense by all those means to which our resources are competent.

You know well that government always kept a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, invented and put into the papers whatever might serve the [government] ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.

All the capital employed in paper speculation is barren and useless, producing, like that on a gaming table, no accession to itself, and is withdrawn from commerce and agriculture where it would have produced addition to the common mass It nourishes in our citizens habits of vice and idleness instead of industry and morality It has furnished effectual means of corrupting such a portion of the legislature as turns the balance between the honest voters whichever way it is directed.

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.