If the provisions of the constitution be not upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Liberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted.
It is necessary above all that the citizens, who have rallied round the constitution, should be assured that the rights it guarantees will be respected with such a scrupulous fidelity as will reduce to despair its enemies, hidden or avowed.
As a matter of traditional and sound constitutional doctrine, an amendment to the Constitution should be the last resort when all other measures have proved inadequate.
A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.
And therefore, for the sake of my mater, without any regard for my own, I hope all those that have a due regard for our constitution and for the rights and prerogatives of the crown, without which our constitution can not be preserved, will be against this motion.
If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy.
If the president is allowed to suspend constitutional rights on his own personal whims, our free republic has effectively ceased to exist.
Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.
Constitutional government, as designed by the framers, will survive only with a righteous people.
The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.