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.

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.

to keep in all things...

if we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

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...

it is pleasant for those who have just escaped threatened shipwreck, to hail one another when landed in unexpected safety.

What the government is, if it be not a tyranny, which the men of our choice have conferred on our President, and the President of our choice has assented to, & accepted over the friendly strangers, to whom the mild spirit of our country, & it’s laws had pledged hospitality &...

politics & party hatreds destroy the happiness of every being here. they seem, like salamanders, to consider fire as their element.

I do not think it for the interest of the general government itself, & still less of the Union at large, that the state governments should be so little respected as they have been. however I dare say that in time all these as well as their central government, like the planets revolving round...

as to myself I sincerely wish that the whole Union may accomodate their interests to each other, & play into their hands mutually as members of the same family, that the wealth & strength of any one part should be viewed as the wealth & strength of the whole.