Caleb Cushing Quotes

24 quotes in 392 categories

• Men of Virginia, countrymen of Washington, of Patrick Henry, of Jefferson, and of Madison, will ye be true to your constitutional faith?
• Upon the Constitution, upon the pre-existing legal rights of the People, as understood in this country and in England, I have argued that this House…
• Here, again, as I conceive, gentlemen forget that this government is a republican one, resting exclusively in the intelligence and virtue of the People.
• And if this House is to be scared, by whatever influences, from its duty, to receive and hear the petitions of the People, then I…
• It is impossible, in my mind, to distinguish between the refusal to receive a petition, or its summary rejection by some general order, and the…
• I declare and protest in advance, that I do not intend, at this time at least; to be drawn or driven into the question of…
• The right of petition is an old undoubted household right of the blood of England, which runs in our veins.
• Entertaining these opinions of the course to be pursued, I beg of gentlemen to look at the question, as I have done, in a calm…
• Sir, I am a republican; and I desire to see this House observe the principles of that democracy which is ever on the lips of…
• You well know, sir, that when the Constitution was submitted to the People of the respective States for their adoption or rejection, it awakened the…
• I maintain that the House is bound by the Constitution to receive the petitions; after which, it will take such method of deciding upon them…
• The proceedings of this House in 1790, in reference to petitions on the matter of the slave trade, and of slavery in the States, have…
• The right of petition, I have said, was not conferred on the People by the Constitution, but was a pre-existing right, reserved by the People…
• We are laying the foundations of a government, which we hope may outlast the Pyramids.
• When we fled from the oppressions of kings and parliaments in Europe, to found this great Republic in America, we brought with us the laws…
• Men of New England, I hold you to the doctrines of liberty which ye inherit from your Puritan forefathers.
• Be the responsibility on their heads who raise this novel and extraordinary question of reception, going to the unconstitutional abridgment, as I conceive, of the…
• If there be any plausible reason for supposing that we have the right to legislate on the slave interests of the District, you cannot put…
• Some of them, in accepting the proposed plan of government, coupled their acceptance with a recommendation of various additions to the Constitution, which they deemed…
• The Normans came over, lance in hand, burning and trampling down every thing before them, and cutting off the Saxon dynasty and the Saxon nobles…

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