Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things.
It is just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good.
It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend they always reason right about the means of promoting it.
It was remarked yesterday that a numerous representation was necessary to obtain the confidence of the people. This is not generally true. The confidence of the people will easily be gained by a good administration. This is the true touchstone.
A nation has a right to manage its own concerns as it thinks fit.
An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.
Every nation ought to have a right to provide for its own happiness.
Its objects are CONTRACTS with foreign nations which have the force of law, but derive it from the obligations of good faith.
They are not rules prescribed by the sovereign to the subject, but agreements between sovereign and sovereign.
This power ought to be coextensive with all the possible combinations of such circumstances; and ought to be under the direction of the same councils which are appointed to preside over the common defense.
In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.
The loss of liberty to a generous mind is worse than death.
CREDIT supposes specific and permanent funds for the punctual payment of interest, with a moral certainty of a final redemption of the principal.
The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master.
The increasing remoteness of consanguinity is everyday diminishing the force of the family compact between France and Spain. And politicians have ever with great reason considered the ties of blood as feeble and precarious links of political connection.
Though a wide ocean separates the United States from Europe, yet there are various considerations that warn us against an excess of confidence or security.
There can be no limitation of that authority which is to provide for the defense and protection of the community in any matter essential to the formation, direction, or support of the NATIONAL FORCES.
If there are such things as political axioms, the propriety of the judicial power of a government being co-extensive with its legislative, may be ranked among the number.
Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.
Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed?
Establish that a Government may decline a provision for its debts, though able to make it, and you overthrow all public morality, you unhinge all the principles that must preserve the limits of free constitutions.