There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.
The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.
The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.
The internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.
What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?
Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.
Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.
What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
