Human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

I consider trial by jury to be the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of the constitution.

Thus, today, brethren, we are in danger of actually surrendering our personal and property rights. This development, if it does occur in full form, will be a sad tragedy for our people. We must recognize that PROPERTY RIGHTS ARE ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN LIBERTY.

Former United States Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland, from our own state, carefully stated it as follows:

"It is not the right of property which is protected, but the right TO property. Property, per se, has no rights; but the individual — the man — has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference; the RIGHT TO HIS LIFE, the RIGHT TO HIS LIBERTY, and the RIGHT TO HIS PROPERTY. The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially ONE right. To give a man his life, but deny him liberty, is to take from him all that makes life worth living. To give him liberty but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave."

On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

This supposed crime is referred to as “tax evasion.” We learn everything we need to know about our political system from this fact: Helots who refuse to surrender their wealth to government are prosecuted as criminals; criminals in public office who plunder that wealth and spend it illegally cannot be prosecuted as “Constitution evaders.”

When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.