still one thing more, fellow citizens. a wise & frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, & shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. this is the...

I sincerely wish with you we could see our government so secured as to depend less on the character of the person in whose hands it is trusted. bad men will sometimes get in, & with such an immense patronage, may make great progress in corrupting the public mind & principles. this is a...

our citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation as to others, and several states as among themselves. to the United nation belongs our external & mutual relations: to each state severally the care of our persons, our property, our reputation, and religious freedom. this wise...

Of the various Executive duties, no one excites more anxious concern than that of placing the interests of our fellow citizens in the hands of honest men, with understandings sufficient for their station. no duty at the same time, is more difficult to fulfill.

Nero wished all the necks of Rome united in one, that he might sever them at a blow. so our ex-federalists, wishing to have a single representative of all the objects of their hatred, honour me with that post, and exhibit against me such atrocities as no nation has ever before heard or endured. I...

to keep in all things...

we are firmly convinced and we act on that conviction, that, with nations, as with individuals, our interests, soundly calculated, will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.

aware of the tendency of power to degenerate into abuse, the worthies of our own country have secured it’s independence by the establishment of a constitution & form of Government for our nation calculated to prevent as well as to correct abuse.

The question you propose, Whether circumstances do not sometimes occur which make it a duty in officers of high trust to assume authorities beyond the law, is easy of solution in principle, but sometimes embarrasing in practice. a strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high...

the happiness & prosperity of our citizens ... I believe is the only legitimate object of government, and the first duty of governors, and not the slaughter of men, & devastation of the countries placed under their care, in pursuit of a fantastic honor, unallied to virtue or happiness;...

an honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens ... this is my belief of it; it is that on which I have acted; and had it been a mere contest who should be permitted to administer the government according to it’s genuine republican principles, there has never...

our government has not, as yet, begun to act on the rule of loans & taxation going hand in hand. had any loan taken place in my time, I should have strongly urged a redeeming tax. for the loan which has been made since the last session of Congress, we should now set the example of...