The citizens of America have too much discernment to be argued into anarchy. And I am much mistaken, if experience has not wrought a deep and solemn conviction in the public mind, that greater energy of government is essential to the welfare and prosperity of the community.
The idea of restraining the legislative authority, in the means of providing for the national defense, is one of those refinements which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.
It is a general principle of human nature, that a man will be interested in whatever he possesses, in proportion to the firmness or precariousness of the tenure by which he holds it...
Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions.
Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society.
The passions of a revolution are apt to hurry even good men into excesses.
We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.
The same state of the passions which fits the multitude, who have not a sufficient stock of reason and knowledge to guide them, for opposition to tyranny and oppression, very naturally leads them to a contempt and disregard of all authority.
Ambition without principle never was long under the guidance of good sense.
Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.
There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are. Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest...
No person that has enjoyed the sweets of liberty can be insensible of its infinite value, or can reflect on its reverse without horror and detestation.
Remember civil and religious liberty always go together: if the foundation of the one be sapped, the other will fall of course.
Take mankind in general, they are vicious-their passions may be operated upon.
There is a contagion in example which few men have sufficient force of mind to resist.
The practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.
If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.
Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself?
The people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.
To look for a continuation in harmony between a number of independent unconnected sovereignties, situated in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.