Gazette Of The United States

Opinions on government, especially those which are novel, should be scrutinized before they are received as truths; if on examination they turn out to be merely dogmatisms, unsupported by facts or experience—nor justly deducible from either the positive or relative situation of society, manners or things under any form of government whatever, it is to be presumed that they will not be swallowed like a quack nostrum, lest we thereby take poison instead of wholesome medicine.

There are opinions sported now a days which are so extremely right, that they are attended with all the pernicious consequences of the reverse.

Just and equal laws have been considered as the only competent guardians of right and liberty; but an opinion has been lately set up, that any definite ideas of liberty, tho sanctioned by the voice of the people, whether contained in written laws, or any other instrument, are not so safe a depositum, as that general sense of the rights of man which is impressed on human nature—and which supercedes the use or necessity of all expressed social agreements, covenants or charters whatever.