Perish commerce. Let the constitution live!
Unnecessary taxation is unjust taxation.
No sooner does he hear any of his brothers mention reform or retrenchment, than up he jumps.
There was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was petticoat government.
Of the various executive abilities, no one excited more anxious concern than that of placing the interests of our fellow-citizens in the hands of honest men, with understanding sufficient for their stations. No duty is at the same time more difficult to fulfill. The knowledge of character possessed by a single individual is of necessity limited. To seek out the best through the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect.
The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.
Excise, a hateful tax levied upon commodities.
What constitutes a state?
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Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain.
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And sovereign law, that state's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate,
Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill.
The Americans equally detest the pageantry of a king and the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop.
Salus populi suprema lex.
The safety of the State is the highest law.
This end (Robespierre's theories) was the representative sovereignty of all the citizens concentrated in an election as extensive as the people themselves, and acting by the people, and for the people in an elective council, which should be all the government.
Misera contribuens plebs.
The poor taxpaying people.
The Congress of Vienna does not walk, but it dances.
I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females.
A house divided against itself cannot stand—I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free.
If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view, justify revolution—certainly would if such a right were a vital one.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
