...it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, to decide by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.

Happy will it be if our choice should be decided by a judicious estimate of our true interests, uninfluenced and unbiased by considerations foreign to the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished for than seriously to be expected. The plan offered to our deliberations affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects extraneous to its merits, and of view, passions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth.

This circumstance [“wise and good men” on both sides of a controversy], if duly attended to, would always furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are engaged in any controversy however well persuaded of being in the right.

...the noble enthusiasm of liberty is too apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust.