Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, & deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. they ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well: I belonged to it,...
each generation is as independant of the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. it has then, like them, a right to chuse for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of it’s own happiness.
you will have learnt that an act for internal improvement, after passing both houses, was negatived by the President. the act was founded avowedly on the principle that the phrase in the constitution which authorises Congress ‘to lay taxes to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare’ was...
the revolution of 1800 ... was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76. was in it’s form; not effected indeed by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.
each of the three departments has equally the right to decide for itself what is it’s duty under the constitution, without any regard to what the others may have decided for themselves under a similar question.But you intimate a wish that my opinion should be known on this subject. no, dear Sir....
if there be anything amiss therefore in the present state of our affairs, as the formidable deficit lately unfolded to us indicates, I ascribe it to the inattention of Congress to it’s duties, to their unwise dissipation & waste of the public contributions. they seemed, some little while ago...
on every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, & instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was past.
In the disposition of these unfortunate people, there are two rational objects to be distinctly kept in view. 1. the establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa, which may introduce among the Aborigines the arts of cultivated life, and the blessings of civilisation and science. by doing this...
the Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, the dead are not even things. not to mere matter, unendowed with will. the dead are not even things. the particles of matter which composed their bodies, make part now of the...