| Jefferson Quotes ~~ Table of Contents | ||
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States, was this nation’s greatest champion of representative democracy and the rights of man. He was our most eloquent spokesman on the founding principles of American self-government. As he himself said, "I know my own principles to be pure and therefore am not ashamed of them. On the contrary, I wish them known and therefore willingly express them to everyone. They are the same I have acted on from the year 1775 to this day, and are the same, I am sure, with those of the great body of the American people." (letter to Samuel Smith, 1798)
Now with over 2,700 excerpts from Jefferson’s writings, this site contains much more than just a collection of quotations arranged by topic. It provides a fair statement of the complete political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson. The excerpts were chosen, not for their historical significance, but as an expression of Jefferson’s PRINCIPLES of government that have relevance for us today. Much of Jefferson’s thought is highly quotable, and a special download section is made available for those selections most useful for writing and speaking. Jefferson as much as any of the Founding Fathers expressed with eloquence the basic principles of our democracy, and the following description applies well to those principles as found in his own writings:
"The essential principles of our Government... form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety."
Visitors are invited to download the selection of quotations, to use them in speaking and writing, and to list this source on their own Web Site.
Compiled and Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, Sr.
Metairie, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana
This exposition of Jefferson’s principles of government attempts to fill the lack of "a good elementary work on the organization of society into civil government" which he recognized in the first quotation below. We have tried to include every point made by Jefferson in his voluminous writings addressing the "principles on which such an organization should be founded."
"I think there does not exist a good elementary work on the organization of society into civil government: I mean a work which presents in one full and comprehensive view the system of principles on which such an organization should be founded, according to the rights of nature. For want of a single work of that character, I should recommend Locke on Government, Sidney, Priestley’s Essay on the First Principles of Government, Chipman’s Principles of Government, and the Federalist. Adding, perhaps, Beccaria on crimes and punishments, because of the demonstrative manner in which he has treated that branch of the subject. If your views of political inquiry go further to the subjects of money and commerce, Smith’s Wealth of Nations is the best book to be read, unless Say’s Political Economy can be had, which treats the same subjects on the same principles, but in a shorter compass and more lucid manner."
"History, in general, only informs us what bad government is. But as we have employed some of the best materials of the British constitution in the construction of our own government, a knowledge of British history becomes useful to the American politician. There is, however, no general history of that country which can be recommended. The elegant one of Hume seems intended to disguise and discredit the good principles of the government, and is so plausible and pleasing in its style and manner, as to instil its errors and heresies insensibly into the minds of unwary readers."
"What is the best elementary book on the principles of government? None in the world equal to the Review of Montesquieu, printed at Philadelphia a few years ago. It has the advantage, too, of being equally sound and corrective of the principles of political economy; and all within the compass of a thin 8vo. Chipman’s and Priestley’s Principles of Government, and the Federalists, are excellent in many respects, but for fundamental principles not comparable to the Review."
Danger of Taking Quotes Out of Context
"We know how often a few words withdrawn from their place may seem to bear a general meaning, when their context would show that their meaning must have been limited to the subject with respect to which they were used."
A small number of quotations are followed by the sign, (*). This designates a quote that has been ’generalized.’ In its original form, the vital principle was stated in terms of a specific application. The form stated here has words added in brackets or phrases rearranged so as to give it a general, rather than a specific and, usually, dated reading. Of course, none of this is contrary to the underlying principle as expressed by Jefferson. The purpose is to extract that principle and to make available an important point that must otherwise be omitted. When this is done, more complete bibliographical information is provided so that the reader can easily verify the precise wording and context if desired.
Both the spelling and the punctuation of the quotations have been edited to conform with modern usage. Alterations to the punctuation consist mostly of fewer commas. The practice in Jefferson’s time was to set off almost every phrase with commas. Today, commas are used to convey the structure of a sentence more precisely, and too many commas undermine that depiction of structure and make the sentences more difficult for modern readers to understand.
The designation in the form, “Papers, 1:423,” is a reference to the location ofthe quote in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. The designation in the form, “ME, 12:345,” refers to the location in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors. “FE 9:234” refers to the Ford Edition of the writings. See the section “Recommended Collections and Sources” for further information.
The government of the United States is the result of a revolution in thought. It was founded on the principle that all persons have equal rights, and that government is responsible to, and derives its powers from, a free people. To Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers, these ideas were not just a passing intellectual fad, but a recognition of something inherent in the nature of man itself. The very foundation of government, therefore, rests on the inalienable rights of the people and of each individual composing their mass. The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, is the fundamental statement of what government is and from what source it derives its powers. It begins with a summary of those inalienable rights that are the self-evident basis for a free society and for all the powers to protect those rights that a just government exercises.
"We hold these truth3 to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
"[Our] principles [are] founded on the immovable basis of equal right and reason."
"An equal application of law to every condition of man is fundamental."
"The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens."
"To unequal privileges among members of the same society the spirit of our nation is, with one accord, adverse."
"In America, no other distinction between man and man had ever been known but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last, the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar."
"Of distinction by birth or badge, [Americans] had no more idea than they had of the mode of existence in the moon or planets. They had heard only that there were such, and knew that they must be wrong."
"[The] best principles [of our republic] secure to all its citizens a perfect equality of rights."
"The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for. It issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights."
"Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice."
"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."
"Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance."
"What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals."
"Nothing... is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man."
"The evidence of [the] natural right [of expatriation], like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness, is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but is impressed on the sense of every man. We do not claim these under the charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of Kings."
"Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established."
"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?"
"Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man."
"It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow their end."
"The right to use a thing comprehends a right to the means necessary to its use, and without which it would be useless."
"The Declaration of Independence... [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and of the rights of man."
"Some other natural rights... [have] not yet entered into any declaration of rights."
"I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties."
"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."
"Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ’within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual."
"That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone."
"In a government bottomed on the will of all, the life and liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all."
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
"Being myself a warm zealot for the attainment and enjoyment by all mankind of as much liberty as each may exercise without injury to the equal liberty of his fellow citizens, I have lamented that... the endeavors to obtain this should have been attended with the effusion of so much blood."
"The Giver of life gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness."
"If [God] has made it a law in the nature of man to pursue his own happiness, He has left him free in the choice of place as well as mode, and we may safely call on the whole body of English jurists to produce the map on which nature has traced for each individual the geographical line which she forbids him to cross in pursuit of happiness."
"Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it, is what I as steadfastly believe."
"The freedom and happiness of man... [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government."
"The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it."
"I sincerely pray that all the members of the human family may, in the time prescribed by the Father of us all, find themselves securely established in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happiness."
The purpose of government is to maintain a society which secures to every member the inherent and inalienable rights of man, and promotes the safety and happiness of its people. Protecting these rights from violation, therefore, is its primary obligation.
"To secure these [inalienable] rights [to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed... Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
"The principles of government... [are] founded in the rights of man."
"It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all."
"The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural right."
"[These are] the rights which God and the laws have given equally and independently to all."
"[Montesquieu wrote in Spirit of the Laws, VIII,c.3:] ’In the state of nature, indeed, all men are born equal; but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the laws.’"
"For the ordinary safety of the citizens of the several States, whether against dangers from within or without, reliance has been placed either on the domestic means of the individuals or on those provided by the respective States."
"[It is the obligation] of every government to yield protection to their citizens as the consideration for their obedience."
"The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest and ourselves united. From the conclusion of [their] war [for independence, a nation begins] going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of [that] war will remain on [them] long, will be made heavier and heavier, till [their] rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."
"What a cruel reflection that a rich country cannot long be a free one."
"[If] a positive declaration of some essential rights could not be obtained in the requisite latitude, [the] answer [is], Half a loaf is better than no bread. If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can."
"Circumstances sometimes require, that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with delicacy."
"In endeavors to improve our situation, we should never despair."
"The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, [and] we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good."
"Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one."
"Most [revolutions] have been [closed] by a subversion of that liberty [they were] intended to establish."
"All... natural rights may be abridged or regulated in [their] exercise by law."
"Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them."
"Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government... This, like all other natural rights, may be abridged or modified in its exercise by their own consent, or by the law of those who depute them, if they meet in the right of others."
"Were [a right] to be refused, or to be so shackled by regulations, not necessary for... peace and safety... as to render its use impracticable,... it would then be an injury, of which we should be entitled to demand redress."
"Measures against right should be mollified in their exercise, if it be wished to lengthen them to the greatest term possible."
"I had hoped that [nations were] familiarized to such a degree of liberty, that they might without difficulty or danger fill up the measure to its maximum; a term which, though in the insulated man, bounded only by his natural powers, must in society be so far restricted as to protect himself against the evil passions of his associates and consequently, them against him."
"Laws abridging the natural right of the citizen should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits."
"It had become an universal and almost uncontroverted position in the several States, that the purposes of society do not require a surrender of all our rights to our ordinary governors; that there are certain portions of right not necessary to enable them to carry on an effective government, and which experience has nevertheless proved they will be constantly encroaching on, if submitted to them; that there are also certain fences which experience has proved peculiarly efficacious against wrong, and rarely obstructive of right, which yet the governing powers have ever shown a disposition to weaken and remove. Of the first kind, for instance, is freedom of religion; of the second, trial by jury, habeas corpus laws, free presses."
"If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than one of his neighbors, or all of them put together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the bill of rights has made inviolable, and for the preservation of which our government has been charged."
"No one has a right to obstruct another exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature."
"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him."
"We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country."
"[As to] the question whether, by the laws of nature, one generation of men can, by any act of theirs, bind those which are to follow them? I say, by the laws of nature, there being between generation and generation, as between nation and nation, no other obligatory law."
"I may err in my measures, but never shall deflect from the intention to fortify the public liberty by every possible means, and to put it out of the power of the few to riot on the labors of the many."
"[Oppose] with manly firmness [any] invasions on the rights of the people."
Morality is intimately related to a nation’s government, for as James Madison wrote, "To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea." Morality refers to conduct that is proper between members of society. Respect for the equal rights of every citizen becomes the foundation of morality and justice in a free society. Rightful government necessarily reflects this proper relationship in its policies and in its dealings with its own citizens and with other nations.
"God... has formed us moral agents... that we may promote the happiness of those with whom He has placed us in society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own."
"Peace, prosperity, liberty and morals have an intimate connection."
"The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue."
"Without virtue, happiness cannot be."
"Liberty... is the great parent of science and of virtue; and... a nation will be great in both always in proportion as it is free."
"Truth is certainly a branch of morality, and a very important one to society."
"Truth is the first object."
"Follow truth as the only safe guide, and... eschew error, which bewilders us in one false consequence after another."
"Truth being as cheap as error, it is as well to rectify [an error of fact] for our own satisfaction."
"Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom."
"Honesty, disinterestedness and good nature are indispensable to procure the esteem and confidence of those with whom we live, and on whose esteem our happiness depends."
"He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one man of science, there are thousands who are not. What would have become of them? Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature, as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality... The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. This sense is submitted indeed in some degree to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call Common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules."
"How necessary was the care of the Creator in making the moral principle so much a part of our constitution as that no errors of reasoning or of speculation might lead us astray from its observance in practice."
"Morals were too essential to the happiness of man, to be risked on the uncertain combinations of the head. [Nature] laid their foundation, therefore, in sentiment, not in science."
"I believe... that [justice] is instinct and innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing; as a wise Creator must have seen to be necessary in an animal destined to live in society."
"I sincerely... believe... in the general existence of a moral instinct. I think it the brightest gem with which the human character is studded, and the want of it as more degrading than the most hideous of the bodily deformities."
"The moral sense [is] the first excellence of well-organized man."
"The moral law of our nature... [is] the moral law to which man has been subjected by his Creator, and of which his feelings or conscience, as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with which his Creator has furnished him."
"Conscience is the only sure clew which will eternally guide a man clear of all doubts and inconsistencies."
"Experience proves that the moral and physical qualities of man, whether good or evil, are transmissible in a certain degree from father to son."
"[It is a] general truth that great men will think alike and act alike, though without intercommunication."
"The true fountains of evidence [are] the head and heart of every rational and honest man. It is there nature has written her moral laws, and where every man may read them for himself."
"Assuming the fact that the earth has been created in time and consequently the dogma of final causes, we yield, of course, to this short syllogism: Man was created for social intercourse; but social intercourse cannot be maintained without a sense of justice; then man must have been created with a sense of justice."
"Egoism, in a broader sense, has been... presented as the source of moral action. It has been said that we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, bind up the wounds of the man beaten by thieves, pour oil and wine into them, set him on our own beast and bring him to the inn, because we receive ourselves pleasure from these acts... These good acts give us pleasure, but how happens it that they give us pleasure? Because nature hath implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses... The Creator would indeed have been a bungling artist had he intended man for a social animal without planting in him social dispositions. It is true they are not planted in every man, because there is no rule without exceptions; but it is false reasoning which converts exceptions into the general rule."
"That a man owes no duty to which he is not urged by some impulsive feeling... is correct, if referred to the standard of general feeling in the given case, and not to the feeling of a single individual."
"Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves, we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed, it is exactly its counterpart."
"I believe... that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another."
"The greatest honor of a man is in doing good to his fellow men, not in destroying them."
"The practice of morality being necessary for the well-being of society, [our Creator] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain."
"The want or imperfection of the moral sense in some men, like the want or imperfection of the senses of sight and hearing in others, is no proof that it is a general characteristic of the species."
"Nature has constituted utility to man the standard and test of virtue. Men living in different countries, under different circumstances, different habits and regimens, may have different utilities; the same act, therefore, may be useful and consequently virtuous in one country which is injurious and vicious in another differently circumstanced."
"The non-existence of justice is not to be inferred from the fact that the same act is deemed virtuous and right in one society which is held vicious and wrong in another; because as the circumstances and opinions of different societies vary, so the acts which may do them right or wrong must vary also; for virtue does not consist in the act we do, but in the end it is to effect."
"Circumstances must always yield to substance."
"If [an act] is to effect the happiness of him to whom it is directed, it is virtuous; while in a society under different circumstances and opinions the same act might produce pain and would be vicious. The essence of virtue is in doing good to others, while what is good may be one thing in one society and its contrary in another."
"My principle is to do whatever is right and leave the consequences to Him who has the disposal of them."
"Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us."
"A conviction that we are right accomplishes half the difficulty of correcting wrong."
"Everyone is bound to bear witness, where wrong has been done."
"The laws of [our] country... in offenses within their cognizance, compel those who have knowledge of a fact to declare it for the purposes of justice and of the general good and safety of society. And certainly, where wrong has been done, he who knows and conceals the doer of it makes himself an accomplice, and justly censurable as such."
"Perseverance in object, though not by the most direct way, is often more laudable than perpetual changes, as often as the object shifts light."
"A bold, unequivocal virtue is the best handmaid even to ambition, and would carry [one] further, in the end, than [the pursuit of a] temporizing, wavering policy."
"Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them."
"True wisdom does not lie in mere practice without principle."
"Principle will, in... most... cases open the way for us to correct conclusion."
"Principles conscientiously adopted [should] not be given up."
"When principles are well understood, their application is less embarrassing."
"A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sin and suffering."
"Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall be able I hope to do a great deal of good to the cause of freedom and harmony."
"I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one."
"The only exact testimony of a man is his actions, leaving the reader to pronounce on them his own judgment."
"Our Saviour... has taught us to judge the tree by its fruit, and to leave motives to Him who can alone see into them."
"The entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant... Everything is useful which contributes to fix us in the principles and practice of virtue. When any signal act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the contrary, when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity and conceive an abhorrence of vice. Now every emotion of this kind is an exercise of our virtuous dispositions; and dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise. But exercise produces habit, and in the instance of which we speak, the exercise being of the moral feelings, produces a habit of thinking and acting virtuously."
"Considering history as a moral exercise, her lessons would be too infrequent if confined to real life. Of those recorded by historians few incidents have been attended with such circumstances as to excite in any high degree this sympathetic emotion of virtue. We are, therefore, wisely framed to be as warmly interested for a fictitious as for a real personage. The spacious field of imagination is thus laid open to our use, and lessons may be formed to illustrate and carry home to the heart every moral rule of life. Thus a lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics and divinity that ever were written."
"History, in general, only informs us what bad government is."
"The sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also."
"Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively."
"Most virtues when carried beyond certain bounds degenerate into vices."
"It is reasonable that every one who asks justice should do justice."
"The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset."
"A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society."
"Moral duties [are] as obligatory on nations as on individuals."
"The laws of humanity make it a duty for nations, as well as individuals, to succor those whom accident and distress have thrown upon them."
"The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature accompany them into a state of society, and the aggregate of the duties of all the individuals composing the society constitutes the duties of that society towards any other; so that between society and society the same moral duties exist as did between the individuals composing them while in an unassociated state, and their Maker not having released them from those duties on their forming themselves into a nation. Compacts, then, between nation and nation are obligatory on them by the same moral law which obliges individuals to observe their compacts."
"We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals, our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties."
"Political interest [can] never be separated in the long run from moral right."
"Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality."
"So invariably do the laws of nature create our duties and interests, that when they seem to be at variance, we ought to suspect some fallacy in our reasonings."
"Good faith... ought ever to be the rule of action in public as well as in private transactions."
"I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man."
"It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately."
"If the morality of one man produces a just line of conduct in him acting individually, why should not the morality of one hundred men produce a just line of conduct in them acting together?"
"What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals."
"When we come to the moral principles on which the government is to be administered, we come to what is proper for all conditions of society... Liberty, truth, probity, honor, are declared to be the four cardinal principles of society. I believe... that morality, compassion, generosity, are innate elements of the human constitution; that there exists a right independent of force."
"[I consider] ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man."
"Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree (for all forbid us to murder, steal, plunder, or bear false witness), and that we should not intermeddle with the particular dogmas in which all religions differ, and which are totally unconnected with morality."
"Is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong, because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy."
"Our countrymen are in the precious habit of considering right as a barrier against all solicitation."
"It is rare that the public sentiment decides immorally or unwisely, and the individual who differs from it ought to distrust and examine well his own opinion."
From experience, we know that human beings do not always act in accordance with right and justice. Injustice in government undermines the foundations of a society. A nation, therefore, must take measures to encourage its members along the path3 of justice and morality.
"When [the moral sense] is wanting, we endeavor to supply the defect by education, by appeals to reason and calculation, by presenting to the being so unhappily conformed, other motives to do good and to eschew evil, such as the love, or the hatred, or the rejection of those among whom he lives, and whose society is necessary to his happiness and even existence; demonstrations by sound calculation that honesty promotes interest in the long run; the rewards and penalties established by the laws; and ultimately the prospects of a future state of retribution for the evil as well as the good done while here. These are the correctives which are supplied by education, and which exercise the functions of the moralist, the preacher, and legislator; and they lead into a course of correct action all those whose depravity is not too profound to be eradicated."
"That every man shall be made virtuous by any process whatever is, indeed, no more to be expected than that every tree shall be made to bear fruit, and every plant nourishment. The brier and bramble can never become the vine and olive; but their asperities may be softened by culture, and their properties improved to usefulness in the order and economy of the world."
"I know but one code of morality for men, whether acting singly or collectively. He who says I will be a rogue when I act in company with a hundred others, but an honest man when I act alone, will be believed in the former assertion, but not in the latter."
"The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love."
"Self-love... is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others. Accordingly, it is against this enemy that are erected the batteries of moralists and religionists, as the only obstacle to the practice of morality. Take from man his selfish propensities, and he can have nothing to seduce him from the practice of virtue. Or subdue those propensities by education, instruction or restraint, and virtue remains without a competitor."
"A regard for reputation and the judgment of the world may sometimes be felt where conscience is dormant."
"I fear, from the experience of the last twenty-five years, that morals do not of necessity advance hand in hand with the sciences."
"In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve."
"What institution is insusceptible of abuse in wicked hands?"
"Mankind soon learn to make interested uses of every right and power which they possess, or may assume."
"[Montesquieu wrote in Spirit of the Laws, III,c.3:] ’When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community."
"Cannibals are not to be found in the wilds of America only, but are reveling on the blood of every living people."
"[Algernon Sidney wrote in Discourses Concerning Government, Sect. II, Par. 8:] ’Those who have no sense of right, reason or religion, have a natural propensity to make use of their strength to the destruction of such as are weaker than they.’"
"The nation who [has] never admitted a chapter of morality into her political code,... [will] boldly [avow] that whatever power [she] can make hers is hers of right."
"It was not expected in this age, that nations so honorably distinguished by their advances in science and civilization, would suddenly cast away the esteem they had merited from the world and, revolting from the empire of morality, assume a character in history which all the tears of their posterity will never wash from its pages."
"I do not believe with the Rochefoucaults and the Montaignes that fourteen out of fifteen men are rogues. I believe a great abatement from that proportion may be made in favor of general honesty. But I have always found that rogues would be uppermost, and I do not know that the proportion is too strong for the higher orders and for those who, rising above the swinish multitude, always contrive to nestle themselves into the places of power and profit. These rogues set out with stealing the people’s good opinion, and then steal from them the right of withdrawing it, by contriving laws and associations against the power of the people themselves."
"Such is the moral construction of the world, that no national crime passes unpunished in the long run... Were your present oppressors to reflect on the same truth, they would spare to their own countries the penalties on their present wrongs which will be inflicted on them in future times. The seeds of hatred and revenge which they [sow] with a large hand will not fail to produce their fruits in time. Like their brother robbers on the highway, they suppose the escape of the moment a final escape and deem infamy and future risk countervailed by present gain."
"Crooked schemes will end by overwhelming their authors and coadjutors in disgrace, and... he alone who walks strict and upright, and who, in matters of opinion, will be contented that others should be as free as himself, and acquiesce when his opinion is fairly overruled, will attain his object in the end."
"If pride of character be of worth at any time, it is when it disarms the efforts of malice."
"There are various ways of keeping truth out of sight."
"Truth3 necessary for our own character must not be suppressed out of tenderness to its calumniators."
"In truth, I do not recollect in all the animal kingdom a single species but man which is eternally and systematically engaged in the destruction of its own species. What is called civilization seems to have no other effect on him than to teach him to pursue the principle ofbellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all] on a larger scale, and in place of the little contests of tribe against tribe, to engage all the quarters of the earth in the same work of destruction. When we add to this that as to the other species of animals, the lions and tigers are mere lambs compared with man as a destroyer, we must conclude that it is in man alone that nature has been able to find a sufficient barrier against the too great multiplication of other animals and of man himself, an equilibrating power against the fecundity of generation."
"When great evils happen, I am in the habit of looking out for what good may arise from them as consolations to us, and Providence has in fact so established the order of things, as that most evils are the means of producing some good."
"I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others."
"Force [is] the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism."
"I know that the passions of men will take their course, that they are not to be controlled but by despotism, and that this melancholy truth is the pretext for despotism."
"Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern government."
"Force cannot change right."
"With the laborers of England generally, does not the moral coercion of want subject their will as despotically to that of their employer, as the physical constraint does the soldier, the seaman, or the slave?"
"[When] the principle that force is right is become the principle of the nation itself, they would not permit an honest minister, were accident to bring such an one into power, to relax their system of lawless piracy."
"My observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth. In general, I believe the decisions of the people in a body will be more honest and more disinterested than those of wealthy men, and I can never doubt an attachment to his country in any man who has his family and peculium [i.e., private property] in it."
"I may further say that I have not observed men’s honesty to increase with their riches."
"Wealth, title, office, are no recommendations to my friendship. On the contrary, great good qualities are requisite to make amends for their having wealth, title, and office."
"There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents... There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency."
"A heavy aristocracy and corruption are two bridles in the mouth3 of [a people] which will prevent them from making any effectual efforts against their masters."
"To detail the real evils of aristocracy, they must be seen in Europe."
"Generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its husbandmen is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption."
"A due horror of the evils which flow from these distinctions [by birth or badge] could be excited in Europe only, where the dignity of man is lost in arbitrary distinctions, where the human species is classed into several stages of degradation, where the many are crushed under the weight of the few, and where the order established can present to the contemplation of a thinking being no other picture than that of God Almighty and His angels, trampling under foot the host of the damned."
"Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people."
"[Is] it best to put the pseudo-aristoi [of wealth and birth] into a separate chamber of legislation, where they may be hindered from doing mischief by their coordinate branches, and where, also, they may be a protection to wealth against the agrarian and plundering enterprises of the majority of the people? I think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief is arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil. For if the coordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they that of the coordinates. Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively... Nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislation to protect themselves."
"I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government, enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretense of governing, they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate... Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor."
"The sheep are happier of themselves than under the care of the wolves."
"[The European nations] are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property and lives of their people. On our part, never had a people so favorable a chance of trying the opposite system, of peace and fraternity with mankind, and the direction of all our means and faculties to the purpose of improvement instead of destruction."
"How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object -- the happiness of man -- to the selfish interest of kings, nobles, and priests."
The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, "In free governments the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns." The ultimate powers in a society, therefore, rest in the people themselves, and they should exercise those powers, either directly or through representatives, in every way they are competent and that is practicable.
"The whole body of the nation is the sovereign legislative, judiciary, and executive power for itself. The inconvenience of meeting to exercise these powers in person, and their inaptitude to exercise them, induce them to appoint special organs to declare their legislative will, to judge and to execute it. It is the will of the nation which makes the law obligatory; it is their will which creates or annihilates the organ which is to declare and announce it. They may do it by a single person, as an emperor of Russia (constituting his declarations evidence of their will), or by a few persons, as the aristocracy of Venice, or by a complication of councils, as in our former regal government or our present republican one. The law being law because it is the will of the nation, is not changed by their changing the organ through which they choose to announce their future will; no more than the acts I have done by one attorney lose their obligation by my changing or discontinuing that attorney."
"Every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it pleases, and to change these forms at its own will; and externally to transact business with other nations through whatever organ it chooses, whether that be a King, Convention, Assembly, Committee, President, or whatever it be. The only thing essential is, the will of the nation."
"[The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government."
"[It is] the people, to whom all authority belongs."
"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves in all cases to which they think themselves competent (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved), or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press."
"We think experience has proved it safer for the mass of individuals composing the society to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent and to delegate those to which they are not competent to deputies named and removable for unfaithful conduct by themselves immediately."
"The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union."
"I consider the people who constitute a society or nation as the source of all authority in that nation; as free to transact their common concerns by any agents they think proper; to change these agents individually, or the organization of them in form or function whenever they please; that all the acts done by these agents under the authority of the nation are the acts of the nation, are obligatory on them and enure to their use, and can in no wise be annulled of affected by any change in the form of the government or of the persons administering it."
"When, by the Declaration of Independence, [the nation of Virginia] chose to abolish their former organs of declaring their will, the acts of will already formally and constitutionally declared, remained untouched. For the nation was not dissolved, was not annihilated; its will, therefore, remained in full vigor; and on the establishing the new organs, first of a convention, and afterwards a more complicated legislature, the old acts of national will continued in force, until the nation should, by its new organs, declare its will changed."
"Louis XIV, having established the Coutumes de Paris as the law of Louisiana, this was not changed by the mere act of transfer; on the contrary, the laws of France continued and continues to be the law of the land, except where specially altered by some subsequent edict of Spain or act of Congress."
"Indeed in no case are the laws of a nation changed, of natural right, by their passage from one to another denomination. The soil, the inhabitants, their property, and the laws by which they are protected go together. Their laws are subject to be changed only in the case, and extent which their new legislature shall will."
"When a question arises, whether any particular law or appointment is still in force, we are to examine, not whether it was pronounced by the ancient or present organ, but whether it has been at any time revoked by the authority of the nation, expressed by the organ competent at the time."
"From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation."
"[If the] representative houses [are dissolved,]... the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, [return] to the people at large for their exercise."
"Necessities which dissolve a government do not convey its authority to an oligarchy or a monarchy. They throw back into the hands of the people the powers they had delegated, and leave them as individuals to shift for themselves."
"There is an error into which most of the speculators on government have fallen, and which the well-known state of society of our Indians ought, before now, to have corrected. In their hypothesis of the origin of government, they suppose it to have commenced in the patriarchal or monarchical form. Our Indians are evidently in that state of nature which has passed the association of a single family... The Cherokees, the only tribe I know to be contemplating the establishment of regular laws, magistrates, and government, propose a government of representatives, elected from every town. But of all things, they least think of subjecting themselves to the will of one man."
"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
"I consider the source of authority with us to be the Nation. Their will, declared through its proper organ, is valid till revoked by their will declared through its proper organ again also."
"Independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government."
"What government [a nation] can bear depends not on the state of science, however exalted, in a select band of enlightened men, but on the condition of the general mind."
"The government of a nation may be usurped by the forcible intrusion of an individual into the throne. But to conquer its will so as to rest the right on that, the only legitimate basis, requires long acquiescence and cessation of all opposition."
"Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law."
"I have such reliance on the good sense of the body of the people and the honesty of their leaders that I am not afraid of their letting things go wrong to any length in any cause."
"Whenever our affairs go obviously wrong, the good sense of the people will interpose and set them to rights."
"Our fellow citizens have been led hoodwinked from their principles by a most extraordinary combination of circumstances. But the band is removed, and they now see for themselves."
"Reflection,... with information, is all which our countrymen need, to bring themselves and their affairs to rights."
"The revolution of 1800... was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form; not effected indeed by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people."
"There is a steady, good sense in the Legislature, and in the body of the nation, joined with good intentions, which will lead them to discern and to pursue the public good under all circumstances which can arise, and... no ignis fatuus [misleading ideal] will be able to lead them long astray."
"I am sensible that there are defects in our federal government, yet they are so much lighter than those of monarchies, that I view them with much indulgence. I rely, too, on the good sense of the people for remedy, whereas the evils of monarchical government are beyond remedy."
"Time alone [will] bring round an order of things more correspondent to the sentiments of our constituents."
"My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses."
"Manfully maintain our good old principle of cherishing and fortifying the rights and authorities of the people in opposition to those who fear them, who wish to take all power from them and to transfer all to Washington."
"The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to."
"Ministers... cannot in any country be uninfluenced by the voice of the people."
"A court has no affections; but those of the people whom they govern influence their decisions, even in the most arbitrary governments."
"Public opinion... [is] a censor before which the most exalted tremble for their future as well as present fame."
"Public opinion [is the] lord of the universe."
"More attention should be paid to the general opinion."
"The advantage of public opinion is like that of the weather-gauge in a naval action."
"When public opinion changes, it is with the rapidity of thought."
"The opinions and dispositions of our people in general, which, in governments like ours, must be the foundation of measures, will always be interesting to me."
"Government being founded on opinion, the opinion of the public, even when it is wrong, ought to be respected to a certain degree."
"Opinions... constitute, indeed, moral facts, as important as physical ones to the attention of the public functionary."
"The people cannot be all, and always, well-informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty."
"The people have a right to petition, but not to use that right to cover calumniating insinuations."
"I like to see the people awake and alert. The good sense of the people will soon lead them back if they have erred in a moment of surprise."
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them."
"Governments, wherein the will of every one has a just influence... has its evils,... the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem. [I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude.] Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs."
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere."
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion... We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion?"
"Most codes extend their definitions of treason to acts not really against one’s country. They do not distinguish between acts against the government, and acts against the oppressions of the government. The latter are virtues, yet have furnished more victims to the executioner than the former, because real treasons are rare; oppressions frequent. The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries."
"If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman’s."
"The commotions that have taken place in America, as far as they are yet known to me, offer nothing threatening. They are a proof that the people have liberty enough, and I could not wish them less than they have. If the happiness of the mass of the people can be secured at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or even of a little blood, it will be a precious purchase. ’Malo libertatem periculosam quam quietem servitutem.’ Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights."
"The tumults in America I expected would have produced in Europe an unfavorable opinion of our political state. But it has not. On the contrary, the small effect of these tumults seems to have given more confidence in the firmness of our governments. The interposition of the people themselves on the side of government has had a great effect on the opinion here [in Europe]."
"The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections."
"[An occasional insurrection] will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies."
"Cherish... the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them."
"There are extraordinary situations which require extraordinary interposition. An exasperated people who feel that they possess power are not easily restrained within limits strictly regular."
"[The] uneasiness [of the people] has produced acts absolutely unjustifiable; but I hope they will provoke no severities from their governments. A consciousness of those in power that their administration of the public affairs has been honest may, perhaps, produce too great a degree of indignation; and those characters wherein fear predominates over hope, may apprehend too much from these instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily, that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience."
"The arm of the people [is] a machine not quite so blind as balls and bombs, but blind to a certain degree."
"I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is medicine necessary for the sound health of government."
"[No] degree of power in the hands of government [will] prevent insurrections."
"The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave."
"What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
"Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [i.e., securing inherent and inalienable rights, with powers derived from the consent of the governed], it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
"In no country on earth is [a disposition to oppose the law by force] so impracticable as in one where every man feels a vital interest in maintaining the authority of the laws, and instantly engages in it as in his own personal cause."
"In a country whose constitution is derived from the will of the people directly expressed by their free suffrages, where the principal executive functionaries and those of the legislature are renewed by them at short periods, where under the character of jurors they exercise in person the greatest portion of the judiciary powers, where the laws are consequently so formed and administered as to bear with equal weight and favor on all, restraining no man in the pursuits of honest industry and securing to every one the property which that acquires, it would not be supposed that any safeguards could be needed against insurrection or enterprise on the public peace or authority. The laws, however, aware that these should not be trusted to moral restraints only, have wisely provided punishments for these crimes when committed."
"As revolutionary instruments (when nothing but revolution will cure the evils of the State) [secret societies] are necessary and indispensable, and the right to use them is inalienable by the people; but to admit them as ordinary and habitual instruments as a part of the machinery of the Constitution, would be to change that machinery by introducing moving powers foreign to it, and to an extent depending solely on local views, and, therefore, incalculable."
"The paradox with me is how any friend to the union of our country can, in conscience, contribute a cent to the maintenance of anyone who perverts the sanctity of his desk to the open inculcation of rebellion, civil war, dissolution of government, and the miseries of anarchy."
"I acknowledge the right of voluntary associations for laudable purposes and in moderate numbers. I acknowledge, too, the expediency for revolutionary purposes of general associations coextensive with the nation. But where, as in our case, no abuses call for revolution, voluntary associations so extensive as to grapple with and control the government, should such be or become their purpose, are dangerous machines and should be frowned down in every well regulated government."
"Private associations... whose magnitude may rivalize and jeopardize the march of regular government [may become] necessary [in] the case where the regular authorities of the government [combine] against the rights of the people, and no means of correction [remains] to them but to organize a collateral power which, with their support, might rescue and secure their violated rights. But such is not the case with our government. We need hazard no collateral power which, by a change of its original views and assumption of others we know not how virtuous or how mischievous, would be ready organized and in force sufficient to shake the established foundations of society and endanger its peace and the principles on which it is based."
"Military assemblies will not only keep alive the jealousies and fears of the civil government, but give ground for these fears and jealousies. For when men meet together, they will make business if they have none; they will collate their grievances, some real, some imaginary, all highly painted; they will communicate to each other the sparks of discontent; and these may engender a flame which will consume their particular, as well as the general happiness."
"Where an enterprise is meditated by private individuals against a foreign nation in amity with the United States, powers of prevention to a certain extent are given by the laws; would they not be as reasonable and useful were the enterprise preparing against the United States?"
"The framers of our constitution certainly supposed they had guarded, as well their government against destruction by treason, as their citizens against oppression under pretence of it; and if these ends are not attained, it is of importance to inquire by what means, more effectual, they may be secured."
"Looking forward with anxiety to [the] future destinies [of my fellow citizens], I trust that, in their steady character unshaken by difficulties, in their love of liberty, obedience to law, and support of the public authorities, I see a sure guaranty of the permanence of our republic."
"Who will govern the governors?" There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government.
"Democrats... consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them, therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent."
"The mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights."
"The people of every country are the only safe guardians of their own rights."
"I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom."
"Aristocrats... fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society."
"The people...are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
"No government can continue good, but under the control of the people."
"Unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and their families selected for the trust."
"No other depositories of power [but the people themselves] have ever yet been found, which did not end in converting to their own profit the earnings of those committed to their charge."
"We fear that [violations of the Constitution] may produce insurrection. Nothing could be so fatal. Anything like force [used against the violators] would check the progress of the public opinion and rally them round the government. This is not the kind of opposition the American people will permit. But keep away all show of force and they will bear down the evil propensities of the government by the constitutional means of election and petition."
"Resort may be had to the people of the country, a more governable power from their principles and subordination; and rank and birth and tinsel-aristocracy will finally shrink into insignificance."
"The influence over government must be shared among all the people. If every individual which composes their mass participates of the ultimate authority, the government will be safe, because the corrupting the whole mass will exceed any private resources of wealth, and public ones cannot be provided but by levies on the people. In this case every man would have to pay his own price."
"If once [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions."
"[Montesquieu wrote in Spirit of the Laws, XI,c.4:] ’Constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go... To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.’"
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
"The people, especially when moderately instructed, are the only safe, because the only honest, depositaries of the public rights, and should therefore be introduced into the administration of them in every function to which they are sufficient; they will err sometimes and accidentally, but never designedly, and with a systematic and persevering purpose of overthrowing the free principles of the government."
"There is one provision [in the new constitution of Spain] which will immortalize its inventors. It is that which, after a certain epoch, disfranchises every citizen who cannot read and write. This is new, and is the fruitful germ of the improvement of everything good and the correction of everything imperfect in the present constitution. This will give you an enlightened people, and an energetic public opinion which will control and enchain the aristocratic spirit of the government."
"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government. Whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights."
"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty."
"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."
"I am among those who think well of the human character generally. I consider man as formed for society and endowed by nature with those dispositions which fit him for society."
"Everyone, by his property or by his satisfactory situation, is interested in the support of law and order. And such men may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control over their public affairs and a degree of freedom which, in the hands of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything public and private."
"Every man being at his ease feels an interest in the preservation of order and comes forth to preserve it at the first call of the magistrate."
"The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution."
"It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back."
"To the sincere spirit of republicanism are naturally associated the love of country, devotion to its liberty, its right and its honor."
"[It is the people’s] conviction that a solid Union is the best rock of their safety."
"The cement of this Union is in the heart-blood of every American. I do not believe there is on earth a government established on so immovable a basis."
"Possessed of the blessing of self-government and of such a portion of civil liberty as no other civilized nation enjoys, it now behooves us to guard and preserve them by a continuance of the sacrifices and exertions by which they were acquired, and especially to nourish that Union which is their sole guarantee."
The best form of government that has ever been devised for protecting the rights of the people has been found to be the republican form. While not perfect, it nevertheless gives a voice to the people and allows them to correct the course of government when they find it moving in a wrong direction.
"It must be acknowledged that the term republic is of very vague application in every language... Were I to assign to this term a precise and definite idea, I would say purely and simply it means a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally according to rules established by the majority; and that every other government is more or less republican in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of direct action of the citizens. Such a government is evidently restrained to very narrow limits of space and population. I doubt if it would be practicable beyond the extent of a New England township."
"A democracy [is] the only pure republic, but impracticable beyond the limits of a town."
"The first shade from this pure element which, like that of pure vital air cannot sustain life of itself, would be where the powers of the government, being divided, should be exercised each by representatives chosen either pro hac vice, or for such short terms as should render secure the duty of expressing the will of their constituents. This I should consider as the nearest approach to a pure republic which is practicable on a large scale of country or population. And we have examples of it in some of our State constitutions which, if not poisoned by priest-craft, would prove its excellence over all mixtures with other elements; and with only equal doses of poison, would still be the best."
"Societies exist under three forms, sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments, wherein the will of everyone has a just influence; as is the case in England, in a slight degree, and in our States, in a great one. 3. Under governments of force; as is the case in all other monarchies, and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem not clear in my mind that the first condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that, enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has its evils, too; the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing."
"The preeminence of representative government [is maintained] by showing that its foundations are laid in reason, in right, and in general good."
"We may say with truth and meaning that governments are more or less republican as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition; and believing as I do that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights, and especially that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient."
"The catholic principle of republicanism [is] that every people may establish what form of government they please and change it as they please, the will of the nation being the only thing essential."
"The mother principle [is] that ’governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.’"
"Independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government."
"I freely admit the right of a nation to change its political principles and constitution at will."
"It accords with our principles to acknowledge any government to be rightful which is formed by the will of the nation substantially declared."
"A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns: not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or small township, but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him at short periods."
"A representative government [is] a government in which the will of the people will be an effective ingredient."
"Action by the citizens in person, in affairs within their reach and competence, and in all others by representatives, chosen immediately, and removable by themselves, constitutes the essence of a republic... All governments are more or less republican in proportion as this principle enters more or less into their composition."
"Other shades of republicanism may be found in other forms of government, where the executive, judiciary and legislative functions, and the different branches of the latter, are chosen by the people more or less directly, for longer terms of years, or for life, or made hereditary; or where there are mixtures of authorities, some dependent on, and others independent of the people."
"The further the departure from direct and constant control by the citizens, the less has the government of the ingredient of republicanism; evidently none where the authorities are hereditary... or self-chosen... and little, where for life, in proportion as the life continues in being after the act of election."
"The hereditary branches of modern governments are the patrons of privilege and prerogative, and not of the natural rights of the people, whose oppressors they generally are."
"Hereditary bodies... always on the watch for their own aggrandizement, profit of every opportunity of advancing the privileges of their order, and encroaching on the rights of the people."
"There is no King, who, with sufficient force, is not always ready to make himself absolute."
"An hereditary aristocracy... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world. To know the mass of evil which flows from this fatal source, a person must be in France; he must see the finest soil, the finest climate, the most compact State, the most benevolent character of people, and every earthly advantage combined, insufficient to prevent this scourge from rendering existence a curse to twenty-four out of twenty-five parts of the inhabitants of this country."
"I was much an enemy of monarchies before I came to Europe. I am ten thousand times more so since I have seen what they are. There is scarcely an evil known in these countries which may not be traced to their king as its source, nor a good which is not derived from the small fibres of republicanism existing among them."
"Courts love the people always, as wolves do the sheep."
"The small and imperfect mixture of representative government in England, impeded as it is by other branches aristocratical and hereditary, shows yet the power of the representative principle towards improving the condition of man."
"I do not flatter myself with the immortality of our governments; but I shall think little also of their longevity, unless this germ of destruction [i.e., the aristocratical spirit] be taken out."
"We cannot open the mantle of republicanism to every government of laws, whether consistent or not with natural right."
"The principles of government... [are] founded in the rights of man."
"The equality among our citizens [is] essential to the maintenance of republican government."
"No Englishman will pretend that a right to participate in government can be derived from any other source than a personal right, or a right of property."
"The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind."
"[As Montesquieu wrote in Spirit of the Laws, VI,c.2:] ’In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former because they are everything; in the latter because they are nothing.’"
"I conscientiously believe that governments founded in [republican principles] are more friendly to the happiness of the people at large, and especially of a people so capable of self-government as ours."
"It is, indeed, of little consequence who governs us, if they sincerely and zealously cherish the principles of union and republicanism."
"From the moment that to preserve our rights a change of government became necessary, no doubt could be entertained that a republican form was most consonant with reason, with right, with the freedom of man, and with the character and situation of our fellow citizens."
"[To establish republican government, it is necessary to] effect a constitution in which the will of the nation shall have an organized control over the actions of its government, and its citizens a regular protection against its oppressions."
"[The first step is] to concur in a declaration of rights, at least, so that the nation may be acknowledged to have some fundamental rights not alterable by their ordinary legislature, and that this may form a ground work for future improvements."
"Where the citizens cannot meet to transact their business in person, they alone have the right to choose the agents who shall transact it; and... in this way a republican or popular government... may be exercised over any extent of country."
"A government by representation is capable of extension over a greater surface of country than one of any other form."
"I suspect that the doctrine, that small States alone are fitted to be republics, will be exploded by experience, with some other brilliant fallacies accredited by Montesquieu and other political writers. Perhaps it will be found that to obtain a just republic (and it is to secure our just rights that we resort to government at all) it must be so extensive as that local egoisms may never reach its greater part; that on every particular question a majority may be found in its councils free from particular interests and giving, therefore, a uniform prevalence to the principles of justice. The smaller the societies, the more violent and more convulsive their schisms."
"It seems that the smaller the society the bitterer the dissensions into which it breaks... I believe ours is to owe its permanence to its great extent, and the smaller portion comparatively which can ever be convulsed at one time by local passions."
"Our present federal limits are not too large for good government, nor will [an] increase of votes in Congress produce any ill effect. On the contrary, it will drown the little divisions at present existing there."
"The character which our fellow-citizens have displayed... gives us everything to hope for the permanence of our government. Its extent has saved us. While some parts were laboring under the paroxysm of delusion, others retained their senses, and time was thus given to the affected parts to recover their health."
"Every nation is liable to be under whatever bubble, design, or delusion may puff up in moments when off their guard."
"Montesquieu’s doctrine that a republic can be preserved only in a small territory [has been proved a falsehood]. The reverse is the truth. Had our territory been even a third only of what it is we were gone. But while frenzy and delusion like an epidemic gained certain parts, the residue remained sound and untouched, and held on till their brethren could recover from the temporary delusion; and that circumstance has given me great comfort."
"I know that the acquisition of Louisiana has been disapproved by some, from a candid apprehension that the enlargement of our territory would endanger its union. But who can limit the extent to which the federative principle may operate effectively? The larger our association, the less will it be shaken by local passions."
"If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface."
"I have much confidence that we shall proceed successfully for ages to come, and that, contrary to the principle of Montesquieu, it will be seen that the larger the extent of country, the more firm its republican structure, if founded, not on conquest, but in principles of compact and equality."
"My hope of [this country’s] duration is built much on the enlargement of the resources of life going hand in hand with the enlargement of territory, and the belief that men are disposed to live honestly if the means of doing so are open to them."
"I see our safety in the extent of our confederacy, and in the probability that in the proportion of that the sound parts will always be sufficient to crush local poisons."
"How may the territories of the Union be disposed of, so as to produce the greatest degree of happiness to their inhabitants? The ultramontane States... will not only be happier in States of moderate size, but it is the only way in which they can exist as a regular society. Considering the American character in general, that of those people particularly, and the energetic nature of our governments, a State of such extent as one hundred and sixty thousand square miles, would soon crumble into little ones. These are the circumstances which reduce the Indians to such small societies. They would produce an effect on our people similar to this. They would not be broken into such small pieces, because they are more habituated to subordination, and value more a government of regular law. But you would surely reverse the nature of things, in making small States on the ocean, and large ones beyond the mountains. If we could, in our consciences, say, that great States beyond the mountains will make the people happiest, we must still ask, whether they will be contented to be laid off into large States? They certainly will not; and, if they decide to divide themselves, we are not able to restrain them. They will end by separating from our confederacy, and becoming its enemies."
"A tractable people may be governed in large bodies; but, in proportion as they depart from this character, the extent of their government must be less. We see into what small divisions the Indians are obliged to reduce their societies."
"[If] we treat them as fellow citizens, they will have a just share in their own government; they will love us, and pride themselves in an union with us. [If] we treat them as subjects, we govern them, and not they themselves; they will abhor us as masters, and break off from us in defiance."
"The people through all the States are for republican forms, republican principles, simplicity, economy, religious and civil freedom."
"If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require. And this I ascribe, not to any want of republican dispositions in those who formed these constitutions, but to a submission of true principle to European authorities, to speculators on government, whose fears of the people have been inspired by the populace of their own great cities, and were unjustly entertained against the independent, the happy, and therefore orderly citizens of the United States. Much I apprehend that the golden moment is past for reforming these heresies. The functionaries of public power rarely strengthen in their dispositions to abridge it, and an unorganized call for timely amendment is not likely to prevail against an organized opposition to it."
"The great body of our native citizens are unquestionably of the republican sentiment. Foreign education, and foreign connections of interest, have produced some exceptions in every part of the Union, north and south, and perhaps other circumstances... may have thrown into the scale of exceptions a greater number of the rich. Still there, I believe, and here, I am sure, the great mass is republican... Our countrymen left to the operation of their own unbiased good sense, I have no doubt we shall see... our citizens moving in phalanx in the path3 of regular liberty, order, and a sacrosanct adherence to the Constitution."
"Our preference to [the republican] form of government has been so far justified by its success, and the prosperity with which it has blessed us. In no portion of the earth were life, liberty and property ever so securely held."
The only way a republican government can function, and the only way a people’s voice can be expressed to effect a practicable control of government, is through a process in which decisions are made by the majority. This is not a perfect way of controlling government, but the alternatives--decisions made by a minority, or by one person--are even worse and are the source of great evil. To be just, majority decisions must be in the best interest of all the people, not just one faction.
"The first principle of republicanism is that the lex majoris partis is the fundamental law of every society of individuals of equal rights; to consider the will of the society enounced by the majority of a single vote as sacred as if unanimous is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism."
"The will of the people... is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object."
"The measures of the fair majority... ought always to be respected."
"I subscribe to the principle, that the will of the majority honestly expressed should give law."
"All... being equally free, no one has a right to say what shall be law for the others. Our way is to put these questions to the vote, and to consider that as law for which the majority votes."
"[We acknowledge] the principle that the majority must give the law."
"This... [is] a country where the will of the majority is the law, and ought to be the law."
"Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent."
"The fundamental principle of [a common government of associated States] is that the will of the majority is to prevail."
"The voice of the majority decides. For thelex majoris partis is the law of all councils, elections, etc., where not otherwise expressly provided."
"It is the multitude which possess force, and wisdom must yield to that."
"Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will; collections of men by that of their majority; for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men."
"The Lex majoris partis, founded in common law as well as common right, [is] the natural law of every assembly of men whose numbers are not fixed by any other law."
"The people of [a] country [that have] never been in the habit of self-government [will] not [be] in the habit of acknowledging that fundamental law of nature by which alone self-government can be exercised by a society, I mean thelex majoris partis. Of the sacredness of this law, our countrymen are impressed from their cradle so that with them it is almost innate. This single circumstance may possibly decide the fate of [a nation]."
"If we are faithful to our country, if we acquiesce, with good will, in the decisions of the majority, and the nation moves in mass in the same direction, although it may not be that which every individual thinks best, we have nothing to fear from any quarter."
"On no question can a perfect unanimity be hoped."
"We cannot always do what is absolutely best. Those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice."
"[With a majority] having declared against [our proposal], we must suppose we are wrong, according to the fundamental law of every society, thelex majoris partis, to which we are bound to submit."
"And where else will [Hume,] this degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men, find the origin of just powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will it be in the minority? Or in an individual of that minority?"
"Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends, the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them."
"Absolute acquiescence in the decision of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism, I deem [one of] the principles of our Government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration."
"[Bear] always in mind that a nation ceases to be republican only when the will of the majority ceases to be the law."
"[A faction’s] newspapers say rebellion, and that they will not remain united with us unless we will permit them to govern the majority. If this be their purpose, their anti-republican spirit, it ought to be met at once. But a government like ours should be slow in believing this, should put forth its whole might when necessary to suppress it, and promptly return to the path3 of reconciliation. The extent of our country secures it, I hope, from the vindictive passions of the petty incorporations of Greece."
"This corporeal globe, and everything upon it, belong to its present corporeal inhabitants during their generation. They alone have a right to direct what is the concern of themselves alone, and to declare the law of that direction; and this declaration can only be made by their majority. That majority, then, has a right to depute representatives to a convention, and to make the constitution what they think will be the best for themselves."
"If this avenue [i.e., the expression of the voice of the whole people] be shut to the call of sufferance, it will make itself heard through that of force, and we shall go on as other nations are doing in the endless circle of oppression, rebellion, reformation; and oppression, rebellion, reformation again; and so on forever."
"That our Creator made the earth for the use of the living and not of the dead; that those who exist not can have no use nor right in it, no authority or power over it; that one generation of men cannot foreclose or burthen its use to another, which comes to it in its own right and by the same divine beneficence; that a preceding generation cannot bind a succeeding one by its laws or contracts; these deriving their obligation from the will of the existing majority, and that majority being removed by death, another comes in its place with a will equally free to make its own laws and contracts; these are axioms so self-evident that no explanation can make them plainer; for he is not to be reasoned with who says that non-existence can control existence, or that nothing can move something. They are axioms also pregnant with salutary consequences."
"The rights of one generation will scarcely be considered hereafter as depending on the paper transactions of another."
"We who have gone before have performed an honest duty by putting in the power of our successors a state of happiness which no nation ever before had within their choice. If that choice is to throw it away, the dead will have neither the power nor the right to control them."
"We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong."
"I readily... suppose my opinion wrong, when opposed by the majority... however, I should have done it with more complete satisfaction, had we all judged from the same position."
"It is my principle that the will of the majority should prevail. If they approve the proposed constitution in all its parts, I shall concur in it cheerfully, in hopes that they will amend it whenever they shall find it works wrong. This reliance cannot deceive us, as long as we remain virtuous."
"It is an encouraging observation that no good measure was ever proposed which, if duly pursued, failed to prevail in the end."
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
"Against such a majority we cannot effect [the gathering them into the fold of truth] by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments."
"If the measures which have been pursued are approved by the majority, it is the duty of the minority to acquiesce and conform."
"Every man’s reason [is] his own rightful umpire. This principle, with that of acquiescence in the will of the majority, will preserve us free and prosperous as long as they are sacredly observed."
"It is a rule in all countries that what is done by the body of a nation must be submitted to by all its members."
"Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals."
"Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society."
"Great innovations should not be forced on a slender majority."
"[Sometimes] the minorities are too respectable, not to be entitled to some sacrifice of opinion, in the majority."
"Those who bear equally the burthens of Government should equally participate of its benefits."
"A geographical division... is a most fatal of all divisions, as no authority will submit to be governed by a majority acting merely on a geographical principle."
"It is not probable that local discontents can spread to such an extent as to be able to faze the sound parts of so extensive a Union; and if ever they should reach the majority, they would then become the regular government, acquire the ascendency in Congress and be able to redress their own grievances by laws peaceably and constitutionally passed."
The object of the republican form of government and of the principles that are essential to that form, is to enable a people to govern themselves to the most practicable extent possible. Not every nation of people are capable of self-government, and many expected the experiment of the Founding Fathers to fail. But it did not fail, and the experiment proved that an educated and enlightened people are capable of self-government. The question remains, however, the extent to which government by the people themselves may be extended.
"The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. Modern times have the signal advantage, too, of having discovered the only device by which these rights can be secured, to wit: government by the people, acting not in person, but by representatives chosen by themselves, that is to say, by every man of ripe years and sane mind, who contributes either by his purse or person to the support of his country."
"Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government."
"Every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it pleases, and to change these forms at its own will."
"When forced to assume [self-government], we were novices in its science. Its principles and forms had entered little into our former education. We established, however, some, although not all its important principles."
"Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of justice; and... he [can] be restrained from wrong and protected in right, by moderate powers, confided to persons of his own choice, and held to their duties by dependence on his own will."
"Man is capable of living in society, governing itself by laws self-imposed, and securing to its members the enjoyment of life, liberty, property, and peace."
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
"At the formation of our government, many had formed their political opinions on European writings and practices, believing the experience of old countries, and especially of England, abusive as it was, to be a safer guide than mere theory. The doctrines of Europe were, that men in numerous associations cannot be restrained within the limits of order and justice, but by forces physical and moral, wielded over them by authorities independent of their will. Hence their organization of kings, hereditary nobles, and priests."
"We of the United States are constitutionally and conscientiously democrats. We consider society as one of the natural wants with which man has been created; that he has been endowed with faculties and qualities to effect its satisfaction by concurrence of others having the same want; that when, by the exercise of these faculties, he has procured a state of society, it is one of his acquisitions which he has a right to regulate and control, jointly indeed with all those who have concurred in the procurement, whom he cannot exclude from its use or direction more than they him."
"We exist, and are quoted as standing proofs that a government, so modeled as to rest continually on the will of the whole society, is a practicable government."
"The qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training."
"[Without becoming] familiarized with the habits and practice of self-government,... the political vessel is all sail and no ballast."
"[It is a] happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrant."
"We are a people capable of self-government, and worthy of it."
"[The] voluntary support of laws, formed by persons of their own choice, distinguishes peculiarly the minds capable of self-government. The contrary spirit is anarchy, which of necessity produces despotism."
"Their habits of law and order, their ideas almost innate of the vital elements of free government, of trial by jury, habeas corpus, freedom of the press, freedom of opinion, and representative government, make [a people], I think, capable of bearing a considerable portion of liberty."
"It is from the supporters of regular government only that the pledge of life, fortune and honor is worthy of confidence."
"[If a] people [are] so demoralized and depraved as to be incapable of exercising a wholesome control, their reformation must be taken up ab incunabulis. Their minds [must] be informed by education what is right and what wrong, [must] be encouraged in habits of virtue and deterred from those of vice by the dread of punishments, proportioned indeed, but irremissible. In all cases, [they must] follow truth as the only safe guide and eschew error which bewilders us in one false consequence after another in endless succession. These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure of order and good government."
"[We] believe in the improvability of the condition of man, and [we] have acted on that behalf, in opposition to those who consider man as a beast of burden made to be rode by him who has genius enough to get a bridle into his mouth."
"[Our] object is to secure self-government by the republicanism of our constitution, as well as by the spirit of the people; and to nourish and perpetuate that spirit. I am not among those who fear the people. They and not the rich are our dependence for continued freedom."
"No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will."
"The spirit of our people... would oblige even a despot to govern us republicanly."
"But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? Is it government? Is this the kind of protection we receive in return for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united."
"I am not discouraged by [a] little difficulty; nor have I any doubt that the result of our experiment will be, that men are capable of governing themselves without a master."
"I... consider the people as our children, and love them... as adults whom I freely leave to self-government."
"While the boasted energies of monarchy have yielded to easy conquest the people they were to protect, should our fabric of freedom suffer no more than the slight agitations we have experienced, it will be an useful lesson to the friends as well as the enemies of self-government."
"It is a blessing... that our people are reasonable; that they are kept so well informed of the state of things as to judge for themselves, to see the true sources of their difficulties, and to maintain their confidence undiminished in the wisdom and integrity of their functionaries."
"The steady character of our countrymen is a rock to which we may safely moor."
"The only point on which [General Washington] and I ever differed in opinion was, that I had more confidence than he had in the natural integrity and discretion of the people, and in the safety and extent to which they might trust themselves with a control over their government."
"It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back."
"I confess I was highly pleased with... proof of the innate good sense, the vigilance, and the determination of the people to act for themselves."
"Those who will come after us will be as wise as we are, and as able to take care of themselves as we have been."
"To secure [our inherent and inalienable] rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
"Circumstances denied to others but indulged to us have imposed on us the duty of proving what is the degree of freedom and self-government in which a society may venture to leave its individual members."
"We think in America that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government as far as they are capable of exercising it, and that this is the only way to insure a long-continued and honest administration of its powers."
"The right of representation in the legislature [is] a right inestimable to [the people], and formidable to tyrants only."
"The people, being the only safe depository of power, should exercise in person every function which their qualifications enable them to exercise consistently with the order and security of society... We now find them equal to the election of those who shall be invested with their executive and legislative powers, and to act themselves in the judiciary as judges in questions of fact... The range of their powers ought to be enlarged."
"The government which can wield the arm of the people must be the strongest possible."
"The suppression of the [Burr] conspiracy by the hand of the people, uplifted to destroy it whenever it reared its head, manifests their fitness for self-government, and the power of a nation, of which every individual feels that his own will is a part of the public authority."
"The hand of the people... has proved that government to be the strongest of which every man feels himself a part."
"The full experiment of a government democratical, but representative, was and is still reserved for us. The idea... has been carried by us more or less into all our legislative and executive departments; but it has not yet, by any of us, been pushed into all the ramifications of the system, so far as to leave no authority existing not responsible to the people; whose rights, however, to the exercise and fruits of their own industry can never be protected against the selfishness of rulers not subject to their control at short periods... My most earnest wish is to see the republican element of popular control pushed to the maximum of its practicable exercise. I shall then believe that our government may be pure and perpetual."
"It should be remembered as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only at first while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice as fast as that relaxes."
"I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries."
"We shall... secure the continuance of purity in our government by the salutary, peaceable, and regular control of the people."
"[General Washington] has often declared to me that he considered our new Constitution as an experiment on the practicability of republican government, and with what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good; that he was determined the experiment should have a fair trial, and would lose the last drop of his blood in support of it."
"I have no fear, but that the result of our experiment will be, that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master. Could the contrary of this be proved, I should conclude either that there is no God, or that He is a malevolent being."
"If ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those committed to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach, it is that to which our lives have been devoted."
Government should be judged by how well it meets its legitimate objectives. Good government is that which most effectively secures the rights of the people and the fruits of their labor, promotes their happiness, and does their will.
"The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government."
"The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it."
"The first object of human association [is] the full improvement of their condition."
"The happiness and prosperity of our citizens... is the only legitimate object of government and the first duty of governors."
"The energies of the nation... shall be reserved for improvement of the condition of man, not wasted in his destruction."
"Here... will be preserved a model of government, securing to man his rights and the fruits of his labor, by an organization constantly subject to his own will."
"The freedom and happiness of man... [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government."
"The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government."
"To preserve the peace of our fellow citizens, promote their prosperity and happiness, reunite opinion, cultivate a spirit of candor, moderation, charity and forbearance toward one another, are objects calling for the efforts and sacrifices of every good man and patriot. Our religion enjoins it; our happiness demands it; and no sacrifice is requisite but of passions hostile to both."
"All religions are equally independent here, our laws knowing no distinction of country, of classes among individuals and with nations, our [creed] is justice and reciprocity."
"Society is necessary to [man’s] happiness and even existence."
"It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government."
"Without society, and a society to our taste, men are never contented."
"It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that [a society without government, as among our Indians] is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population."
"Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and to say to all individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease."
"Individuals are parts only of a society, subject to the laws of a whole."
"Society [has] a right to erase from the roll of its members any one who rendered his own existence inconsistent with theirs; to withdraw from him the protection of their laws, and to remove him from among them by exile, or even by death if necessary."
"Every people may establish what form of government they please, and change it as they please, the will of the nation being the only thing essential."
"[The proposal to establish a new] form of government... is a work of the most interesting nature, and such as every individual would wish to have his voice in... Should a bad government be instituted for us in future, it had been as well to have accepted at first the bad one offered to us from beyond the water without the risk and expense of contest."
"The provisions we have made [for the support of civil government and the administration of justice] are such as please ourselves; they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered."
"The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it."
"Shall we mould our citizens to the law, or the law to our citizens? And in solving this question their peculiar character is an element not to be neglected."
"The laws... which must effect [a people’s happiness] must flow from their own habits, their own feelings, and the resources of their own minds. No stranger to these could possibly propose regulations adapted to them. Every people have their own particular habits, ways of thinking, manners, etc., which have grown up with them from their infancy, are become a part of their nature, and to which the regulations which are to make them happy must be accommodated."
"Such indeed are the different circumstances, prejudices, and habits of different nations, that the constitution of no one would be reconcilable to any other in every point."
"History, in general, only informs us what bad government is."
"I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to come here [to Europe]. The pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect, but the utility greater. It will make you adore your own country, its soil, its climate, its equality, liberty, laws, people and manners. My God! how little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy. I confess I had no idea of it myself. While we shall see multiplied instances of Europeans going to live in America, I will venture to say no man now living will ever see an instance of an American removing to settle in Europe and continuing there. Come then and see the proofs of this, and on your return add your testimony to that of every thinking American, in order to satisfy our countrymen how much it is their interest to preserve uninfected by contagion those peculiarities in their government and manners to which they are indebted for these blessings."
"Though there is less wealth [in my native country than in Europe], there is more freedom, more ease, and less misery."
"While the great mass of the people [in Europe] are thus suffering under physical and moral oppression, I have endeavored to examine more nearly the condition of the great, to appreciate the true value of the circumstances in their situation which dazzle the bulk of spectators, and especially to compare it with that degree of happiness which is enjoyed in America by every class of people. Intrigues of love occupy the younger, and those of ambition, the elder part of the great. Conjugal love having no existence among them, domestic happiness, of which that is the basis, is utterly unknown. In lieu of this are substituted pursuits which nourish and invigorate all our bad passions, and which offer only moments of ecstasy amidst days and month3 of restlessness and torment. Much, very much inferior this to the tranquil permanent felicity with which domestic society in America blesses most of its inhabitants, leaving them to follow steadily those pursuits which health and reason approve, and rendering truly delicious the intervals of these pursuits."
"It is difficult to conceive how so good a people, with so good a King [as Louis XVI of France], so well-disposed rulers in general, so genial a climate, so fertile a soil, should be rendered so ineffectual for producing human happiness by one single curse--that of a bad form of government. But it is a fact; in spite of the mildness of their governors, the people are ground to powder by the vices of the form of government. Of twenty millions of people supposed to be in France, I am of opinion there are nineteen millions more wretched, more accursed in every circumstance of human existence than the most conspicuously wretched individual of the whole United States."
"To constrain the brute force of the people, [the European governments] deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life."
"I am astonished at some people’s considering a kingly government as a refuge. Advise such to read the fable of the frogs who solicited Jupiter for a king. If that does not put them to rights, send them to Europe, to see something of the trappings of monarchy, and I will undertake that every man shall go back thoroughly cured. If all the evils which can arise among us from the republican form of government, from this day to the day of judgment, could be put into a scale against what [France] suffers from its monarchical form in a week, or England in a month, the latter would preponderate."
"A more rational government [is] one in which the will of the people should have... a moderating and salutary influence."
"[Ours is] a government founded in the will of its citizens, and directed to no object but their happiness."
"The only condition on earth to be compared with ours, in my opinion, is that of the Indian, where they have still less law than we. The European, are governments of kites over pigeons."
"It is a misfortune that [our countrymen] do not sufficiently know the value of their constitutions, and how much happier they are rendered by them, than any other people on earth by the governments under which they live."
"[Some] seem to think that [civilization’s] advance has brought on too complicated a state of society, and that we should gain in happiness by treading back our steps a little way. I think, myself, that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. I believe it might be much simplified to the relief of those who maintain it."
"Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions, and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people."
"When we consider that this government is charged with the external and mutual relations only of these States; that the States themselves have principal care of our persons, our property and our reputation, constituting the great field of human concerns, we may well doubt whether our organization is not too complicated, too expensive; whether offices and officers have not been multiplied unnecessarily and sometimes injuriously to the service they were meant to promote."
"It is not by the consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected."
"Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread."
"Anarchy [is] necessarily consequent to inefficiency."
"We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude."
"We are now vibrating between too much and too little government, and the pendulum will rest finally in the middle."
"A just mean [would be] a government of laws addressed to the reason of the people and not to their weaknesses."
"It has been said... that our governments, both federal and particular, want energy; that it is difficult to restrain both individuals and States from committing wrong. This is true, and it is an inconvenience. On the other hand, that energy which absolute governments derive from an armed force, which is the effect of the bayonet constantly held at the breast of every citizen, and which resembles very much the stillness of the grave, must be admitted also to have its inconveniences. We weigh the two together and like best to submit to the former. Compare the number of wrongs committed with impunity by citizens among us with those committed by the sovereign in other countries, and the last will be found most numerous, most oppressive on the mind, and most degrading of the dignity of man."
"I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. It places the governors indeed more at their ease, at the expense of the people."
"I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world’s best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the laws, would fly to the standard of the law and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern."
"Let this be the distinctive mark of an American that in cases of commotion, he enlists himself under no man’s banner, inquires for no man’s name, but repairs to the standard of the laws. Do this, and you need never fear anarchy or tyranny. Your government will be perpetual."
"Although a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible."
"A free government is of all others the most energetic."
"A good administration in a republican government,... securing to us our dearest rights and the practical enjoyment of all our liberties,... can never fail to give consolation to the friends of free government, and mortification to its enemies."
"A... chief [executive] strictly limited, the right of war vested in the legislative body, a rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive."
"A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in happiness. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy."
"To us [is committed] the important task of proving by example that a government, if organized in all its parts on the representative principle, unadulterated by the infusion of spurious elements, if founded not in the fears and follies of man but on his reason, on his sense of right, on the predominance of the social over his dissocial passions, may be so free as to restrain him in no moral right and so firm as to protect him from every moral wrong."
"This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force."
"The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest."
"With all [our] blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens--a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities."
"Our wish... is, that the public efforts may be directed honestly to the public good, that peace be cultivated, civil and religious liberty unassailed, law and order preserved, equality of rights maintained, and that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry, or that of his fathers."
We who have grown up in a democracy take for granted a government of the people based on reason and the people’s choice. But before our nation was founded, modern governments were based on authoritarian domination. The people in general were considered little more than cattle, to be governed and controlled by those possessing wealth, education and power, and kept under subjection lest they undermine the stability of the government. The Founding Fathers introduced the revolutionary idea that government could rest on the reasoned choice of the people themselves, which was thought absurd in other lands at that time.
"My hope [is] that we have not labored in vain, and that our experiment will still prove that men can be governed by reason."
"I have so much confidence in the good sense of man, and his qualifications for self-government, that I am never afraid of the issue where reason is left free to exert her force."
"I am satisfied the good sense of the people is the strongest army our government can ever have, and that it will not fail them."
"Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights."
"It is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles; and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions."
"[Our] principles [are] founded on the immovable basis of equal right and reason."
"We believed that men, enjoying in ease and security the full fruits of their own industry, enlisted by all their interests on the side of law and order, habituated to think for themselves and to follow their reason as their guide, would be more easily and safely governed than with minds nourished in error and vitiated and debased... by ignorance, indigence and oppression."
"A government of reason is better than one of force."
"The idea of establishing a government by reasoning and agreement, [the monarchists] publicly ridiculed as an Utopian project, visionary and unexampled."
"It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not."
"Our people in a body are wise because they are under the unrestrained and unperverted operation of their own understandings."
"This blessed country of free inquiry and belief has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests."
"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth."
"[God has bestowed] reason... as the umpire of truth."
"Truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail; however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical."
"Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. She seldom has received much aid from the power of great men to whom she is rarely known and seldom welcome. She has no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men."
"Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason."
"The opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds."
"I suppose belief to be the assent of the mind to an intelligible proposition."
"Our opinions are not voluntary. Every man’s own reason must be his oracle."
"Everyone, certainly, must form his judgment on the evidence accessible to himself."
"I am, myself, generally disposed to indulge and to follow reason."
"A patient pursuit of facts, and cautious combination and comparison of them, is the drudgery to which man is subjected by his Maker, if he wishes to attain sure knowledge."
"When we see two facts accompanying one another for a long time, we are apt to suppose them related as cause and effect."
"We certainly are not to deny whatever we cannot account for. A thousand phenomena present themselves daily which we cannot explain; but where facts are suggested bearing no analogy with the laws of nature as yet known to us, their verity needs proofs proportioned to their difficulty. A cautious mind will weigh well the opposition of the phenomenon to everything hitherto observed, the strength of the testimony by which it is supported, and the errors and misconceptions to which even our senses are liable."
"Proof is the duty of the affirmative side. A negative cannot be positively proved."
"The proof of a negative can only be presumptive."
"What has no meaning admits no explanation."
"By analyzing too minutely we often reduce our subject to atoms, of which the mind loses its hold."
"Shake off all the fears and servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."
"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way."
"It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified."
"If [my] opinions are sound, they will occur to others, and will prevail by their own weight, without the aid of names."
"It is not the name, but the thing which is essential."
"Lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision."
"In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance."
"Nothing is so desirable to me as that after mankind shall have been abused by such gross falsehoods as to events while passing, their minds should at length be set to rights by genuine truth. And I can conscientiously declare that as to myself, I wish that not only no act but no thought of mine should be unknown."
"There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world."
"There is not a truth on earth which I fear or would disguise. But secret slanders cannot be disarmed, because they are secret."
"Old heads as well as young may sometimes be charged with ignorance and presumption. The natural course of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism."
"Unlearned views... are, perhaps, the more confident in proportion as they are less enlightened."
"I think it is Montaigne who has said, that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head."
"Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck."
"It was more in our spirit to let things come to rights by the plain dictates of common sense than by the practice of any artifices."
"I can never fear that things will go far wrong where common sense has fair play."
"I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind in general."
"The Gothic idea that we were to look backwards instead of forwards for the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to the annals of our ancestors for what is most perfect in government, in religion and in learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion and government by whom it has been recommended, and whose purposes it would answer. But it is not an idea which this country will endure."
"I am for encouraging the progress of science in all its branches, and not for raising a hue and cry against the sacred name of philosophy; for awing the human mind by stories of raw-head and bloody bones to a distrust of its own vision, and to repose implicitly on that of others; to go backwards instead of forwards to look for improvement; to believe that government, religion, morality and every other science were in the highest perfection in the ages of the darkest ignorance, and that nothing can ever be decided more perfect than what was established by our forefathers."
"I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests or prejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science."
"Where thought is free in its range, we need never fear to hazard what is good in itself."
"One of the questions... on which our parties took different sides was on the improvability of the human mind in science, in ethics, in government, etc. Those who advocated reformation of institutions pari passu with the progress of science maintained that no definite limits could be assigned to that progress. The enemies of reform, on the other hand, denied improvement and advocated steady adherence to the principles, practices and institutions of our fathers, which they represented as the consummation of wisdom and acme of excellence, beyond which the human mind could never advance... [They predicted that] freedom of inquiry... will produce nothing more worthy of transmission to posterity than the principles, institutions and systems of education received from their ancestors... [But we] possess... too much science not to see how much is still ahead of [us], unexplained and unexplored. [Our] own consciousness must place [us] as far before our ancestors as in the rear of our posterity."
"What an effort... of bigotry in politics and religion have we gone through! The barbarians really flattered themselves they should be able to bring back the times of Vandalism, when ignorance put everything into the hands of power and priestcraft. All advances in science were proscribed as innovations. They pretended to praise and encourage education, but it was to be the education of our ancestors. We were to look backwards, not forwards, for improvement."
"I join [with others] in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advance. This is precisely the doctrine which the present despots of the earth are inculcating and their friends here re-echoing and applying especially to religion and politics: ’that it is not probable that anything better will be discovered than what was known to our fathers.’ We are to look backwards, then, and not forwards for the improvement of science and to find it amidst feudal barbarisms and the fires of Spital-fields. But thank heaven the American mind is already too much opened to listen to these impostures; and while the art of printing is left to us, science can never be retrograde. What is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost."
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
"Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government."
"I am... against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents."
"Every man’s reason [is] his own rightful umpire. This principle, with that of acquiescence in the will of the majority, will preserve us free and prosperous as long as they are sacredly observed."
"I hold it... certain, that to open the doors of truth and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent."
"Nor was it uninteresting to the world that an experiment should be fairly and fully made whether freedom of discussion, unaided by power, is not sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth: whether a government conducting itself in the true spirit of its constitution with zeal and purity and doing no act which it would be unwilling the whole world should witness can be written down by falsehood and defamation. The experiment has been tried; [we] have witnessed the scene; our fellow citizens have looked on, cool and collected. They saw the latent source from which these outrages proceeded; they gathered around their public functionaries, and when the Constitution called them to the decision by suffrage, they pronounced their verdict, honorable to those who had served them and consolatory to the friend of man who believes he may be intrusted with his own affairs."
"If virtuous, [the government] need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law, or politics."
"The Indian chief said he did not go to war for every petty injury by itself, but put it into his pouch, and when that was full, he then made war. Thank Heaven, we have provided a more peaceable and rational mode of redress."
"We shall have our follies without doubt. Some one or more of them will always be afloat. But ours will be the follies of enthusiasm, not of bigotry, not of Jesuitism. Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the return of ignorance and barbarism."
"[Let us] go on in doing with [the] pen what in other times was done with the sword, [and] show that reformation is more practicable by operating on the mind than on the body of man."
"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
In a free society with a government based on reason, it is inevitable that there will be no uniform opinion about important issues. Those accustomed to suppression and control by governmental authority see this as leading only to chaos. But a government of the people requires difference of opinion in order to discover truth and to take advantage of the opportunity that only understanding brings.
"Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth; and that, I am sure, is the ultimate and sincere object of us both. We both value too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our Constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition to ourselves."
"Nothing but good can result from an exchange of information and opinions between those whose circumstances and morals admit no doubt of the integrity of their views."
"Truth between candid minds can never do harm."
"To those whose views are single and direct, it is a great comfort to have to do business with frank and honorable minds."
"Men, according to their constitutions and the circumstances in which they are placed, differ honestly in opinion. Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, etc."
"In every country where man is free to think and to speak, differences of opinion will arise from difference of perception, and the imperfection of reason; but these differences when permitted, as in this happy country, to purify themselves by free discussion, are but as passing clouds overspreading our land transiently and leaving our horizon more bright and serene."
"I am myself an empiric in natural philosophy, suffering my faith to go no further than my facts. I am pleased, however, to see the efforts of hypothetical speculation, because by the collisions of different hypotheses, truth may be elicited and science advanced in the end."
"We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."
"Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
"Error is the stuff of which the web of life is woven, and he who lives longest and wisest is only able to weave out the more of it."
"There is more honor and magnanimity in correcting, than persevering in an error."
"We are wiser than we were, by having an error the less in our catalogue."
"The best indication of error which my experience has tested is the approbation of [those favoring a consolidated government]. Their conclusions necessarily follow the false bias of their principles."
"The vote of your opponents is the most honorable mark by which the soundness of your conduct could be stamped. I claim the same honorable testimonial. There was but a single act of my whole administration of which [the opposing] party approved... And when I found they approved of it, I confess I began strongly to apprehend I had done wrong, and to exclaim with the Psalmist, ’Lord, what have I done that the wicked should praise me?’"
"Error is to be pitied and pardoned: it is the weakness of human nature. But vice is a foul blemish, not pardonable in any character."
"Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error... They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only... If [free enquiry] be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged."
"Every man has a commission to admonish, exhort, convince another of error."
"Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?"
"Error indeed has often prevailed by the assistance of power or force. Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error."
"If [a] book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But for God’s sake, let us freely hear both sides if we choose."
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
"It is always better to have no ideas, than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong. In my mind, theories are more easily demolished than rebuilt."
"One... had rather have no opinion than a false one."
"One sentence of [M. de Buffon’s] book must do him immortal honor: ’I love a man who frees me from an error as much as one who apprehends me of a truth, for in effect an error corrected is a truth.’"
"By oft repeating an untruth, men come to believe it themselves."
"It is of great importance to set a resolution not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truth3 without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions."
"If we suffer ourselves to be frightened from our post by mere lying, surely the enemy will use that weapon; for what one so cheap to those of whose system of politics morality makes no part?"
"The uniform tenor of a man’s life furnishes better evidence of what he has said or done on any particular occasion than the word of an enemy, and of an enemy too who shows that he prefers the use of falsehoods which suit him to truth3 which do not."
"It is a proof of sincerity, which I value above all things; as, between those who practise it, falsehood and malice work their efforts in vain."
"Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them."
"Time and truth will at length correct error."
"Truth advances and error recedes step by step only; and to do our fellow-men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step."
"I have learned to be less confident in the conclusions of human reason, and give more credit to the honesty of contrary opinions."
"I know too well the weakness and uncertainty of human reason to wonder at its different results."
"The known bias of the human mind from motives of interest should lessen the confidence of each party in the justice of their reasoning."
"All know the influence of interest on the mind of man, and how unconsciously his judgment is warped by that influence."
"The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees, in every object, only the traits which favor that theory."
"Experience and frequent disappointment have taught me not to be over-confident in theories or calculations, until actual trial of the whole combination has stamped it with approbation."
"All theory must yield to experience."
"The union of a fruitful imagination with a limited talent... is always incompatible with those faculties of the mind which qualify their possessor to penetrate, to combine, and to comprehend all the relations of objects."
"Little is to be believed which interests the prevailing passions, and happens beyond the limits of our own senses."
"Reasonings... not built on the basis of experiment... cannot be decided ultimately... More facts must be collected, and more time flow off, before the world will be ripe for decision. In the meantime, doubt is wisdom."
"When I meet with a proposition beyond finite comprehension, I abandon it as I do a weight which human strength cannot lift, and I think ignorance, in these cases, is truly the softest pillow on which I can lay my head."
"[We] know too well the texture of the human mind, and the slipperiness of human reason, to consider differences of opinion otherwise than differences of form or feature. Integrity of views more than their soundness, is the basis of esteem."
"I see too many proofs of the imperfection of human reason to entertain wonder or intolerance at any difference of opinion on any subject, and acquiesce in that difference as easily as on a difference of feature or form, experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can when we cannot do all we would wish."
"Differing on a particular question from those whom I knew to be of the same political principles with myself, and with whom I generally thought and acted, a consciousness of the fallibility of the human mind and of my own in particular, with a respect for the accumulated judgment of my friends, has induced me to suspect erroneous impressions in myself, to suppose my own opinion wrong, and to act with them on theirs. The want of this spirit of compromise, or of self-distrust, proudly but falsely called independence, is what gives [some opponents] victories which they could never obtain if these brethren could learn to respect the opinions of their friends more than of their enemies, and prevents many able and honest men from doing all the good they otherwise might do. These considerations... have often quieted my own conscience in voting and acting on the judgment of others against my own... All honest and prudent men [should] sacrifice a little of self-confidence, and... go with their friends, although they may sometimes think they are going wrong."
"Is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature."
"Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children since the introduction of Christianity have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity."
"It is a singular anxiety which some people have that we should all think alike. Would the world be more beautiful were all our faces alike? were our tempers, our talents, our tastes, our forms, our wishes, aversions and pursuits cast exactly in the same mould? If no varieties existed in the animal, vegetable or mineral creation, but all moved strictly uniform, catholic and orthodox, what a world of physical and moral monotony would it be!"
"Suppose the State should take into head that there should be an uniformity of countenance. Men would be obliged to put an artificial bump or swelling here, a patch there, etc. But this would be merely hypocritical, or if the alternative was given of wearing a mask, ninety-nine one-hundredth3 must immediately mask. Would this add to the beauty of nature? Why otherwise in opinions?"
"The varieties in the structure and action of the human mind, as in those of the body, are the work of our Creator against which it cannot be a religious duty to erect the standard of uniformity."
"As the Creator has made no two faces alike, so no two minds, and probably no two creeds."
"Nature has, in truth, produced units only through all her works. Classes, orders, genera, species, are not of her work. Her creation is of individuals."
"I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality."
"That there should be a contrariety of opinions respecting the public agents and their measures,... is ever to be expected among free men."
"Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle."
"Others... may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts."
"When a man whose life has been marked by its candor, has given a latter opinion contrary to a former one, it is probably the result of further inquiry, reflection and conviction."
"With the same honest views, the most honest men often form different conclusions."
"There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive."
"If no action is to be deemed virtuous for which malice can imagine a sinister motive, then there never was a virtuous action."
"Malice will always find bad motives for good actions. Shall we therefore never do good?"
"Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission."
"An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes."
"There is nothing against which human ingenuity will not be able to find something to say."
"Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us."
"In the heat of debate, men are generally disposed to contradict every authority urged by their opponents."
"What is it men cannot be made to believe!"
"The bulk of mankind are schoolboys through life."
"The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction."
"Almighty God has created the mind free and manifested His supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint... All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion who, being Lord of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in His Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone."
"A government held together by the bands of reason only, requires much compromise of opinion."
"On no question can a perfect unanimity be hoped."
"Things even salutary should not be crammed down the throats of dissenting brethren, especially when they may be put into a form to be willingly swallowed."
"I respect the right of free opinion too much to urge an uneasy pressure of [my own] opinion on [others]. Time and advancing science will ripen us all in its course and reconcile all to wholesome and necessary changes."
"I see the necessity of sacrificing our opinions sometimes to the opinions of others for the sake of harmony."
"It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possible in matters which they must of necessity transact together."
"A great deal of indulgence is necessary to strengthen habits of harmony and fraternity."
"I will sacrifice everything but principle to procure [harmony]."
"Every man cannot have his way in all things. If his opinion prevails at some times, he should acquiesce on seeing that of others preponderate at other times. Without this mutual disposition we are disjointed individuals, but not a society."
"In general, I think it necessary to give as well as take in a government like ours."
"He alone who walks strict and upright, and who, in matters of opinion, will be contented that others should be as free as himself and acquiesce when his opinion is freely overruled, will attain his object in the end."
"[A] reasonable disposition,... sensible that advantages are not all to be on one side, yielding what is just and liberal, is the more certain of obtaining liberality and justice."
"I have found prejudices [are] frequently produced against propositions handed to the world without explanation or support."
"A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others."
"I have most carefully avoided every public act or manifestation on that subject [i.e., the opposition to slavery]. Should an occasion ever occur in which I can interpose with decisive effect, I shall certainly know and do my duty with promptitude and zeal. But in the meantime it would only be disarming myself of influence to be taking small means."
"An indifferent measure carried through with perseverance is better than a good one taken up only at intervals."
"Preserving the ends, I should be flexible and conciliatory as to the means."
"We ought not to schismatize on either men or measures. Principles alone can justify that."
"If the game runs sometimes against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost. For this is a game where principles are the stake."
"Postpone to the great object of Liberty every smaller motive and passion."
"[Without] union of action and effort in all its parts... no nation can be happy or safe."
"Union of opinion... gives to a nation the blessing of harmony and the benefit of all its strength."
"To the principles of union I sacrifice all minor differences of opinion. These, like differences of face, are a law of our nature and should be viewed with the same tolerance."
"If to rid ourselves of the present rule of Massachusetts and Connecticut, we break the Union, will the evil stop there? Suppose the New England States alone cut off, will our natures be changed? Are we not men still to the south of that, and with all the passions of men. Immediately we shall see a Pennsylvania and a Virginia party arise in the residuary confederacy, and the public mind will be distracted with the same party spirit. What a game, too, will the one party have in their hands by eternally threatening the other that unless they do so and so, they will join their Northern neighbors. If we reduce our Union to Virginia and North Carolina, immediately the conflict will be established between the representatives of these two States, and they will end by breaking into their simple units. Seeing, therefore, that an association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry, seeing that we must have somebody to quarrel with, I had rather keep our New England associates for that purpose than to see our bickerings transferred to others... A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolved, and the people recovering their true sight, restoring their government to its true principles."
"It might have been made the interest of the western States to remain united with us, by managing their interests honestly and for their own good. But the moment we sacrifice their interests to our own, they will see it better to govern themselves."
"That differences of opinion should arise among men on politics, on religion and on every other topic of human inquiry, and that these should be freely expressed in a country where all our faculties are free, is to be expected. But these valuable privileges are much perverted when permitted to disturb the harmony of social intercourse, and to lessen the tolerance of opinion."
"The history of Poland... gives a lesson which all our countrymen should study: the example of a country erased from the map of the world by the dissensions of its own citizens."
"It is... a matter of principle with me to avoid disturbing the tranquillity of others by the expression of any opinion on the innocent questions on which we schismatize."
"[We] have formerly seen warm debates and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other, and separate the business of the Senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives, cross the streets to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch their hats. This may do for young men with whom passion is enjoyment. But it is afflicting to peaceable minds. Tranquility is the old man’s milk."
"Public assemblies, where every one is free to speak and to act, are the most powerful looseners of the bands of private friendship."
"I have never thought that a difference in political, any more than in religious opinions, should disturb the friendly intercourse of society. There are so many other topics on which friends may converse and be happy, that it is wonderful they would select, of preference, the only one on which they cannot agree."
"Political conversations I really dislike, and therefore avoid where I can without affectation. But when urged by others, I have never conceived that having been in public life requires me to belie my sentiments, or even to conceal them. When I am led by conversation to express them, I do it with the same independence here which I have practiced everywhere, and which is inseparable from my nature."
"As far as my good will may go (for I can no longer act), I shall adhere to my government, Executive and Legislative, and as long as they are republican, I shall go with their measures whether I think them right or wrong; because I know they are honest and are wiser and better informed than I am."
"So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done."
"Never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many on their getting warm, becoming rude and shooting one another. Conviction is the effect of our own dispassionate reasoning, either in solitude or weighing within ourselves dispassionately what we hear from others, standing uncommitted in argument ourselves... In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set... fiery zealots to rights either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal."
"Nothing gives one person so great advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."
"I fear [political difference] is inseparable from the different constitutions of the human mind and that degree of freedom which permits unrestrained expression. Political dissention is doubtless a less evil than the lethargy of despotism, but still it is a great evil, and it would be as worthy the efforts of the patriot as of the philosopher, to exclude its influence, if possible, from social life. The good are rare enough at best. There is no reason to subdivide them by artificial lines. But whether we shall ever be able so far to perfect the principles of society, as that political opinions shall, in its intercourse, be as inoffensive as those of philosophy, mechanics, or any other, may be well doubted."
"Avoid the subject of politics in society, and generally indeed... shun disputation on every subject, which never did convince an antagonist, and too often alienates a friend, besides being always an uneasy thing to a good-humored society."
"I have never suffered political opinion to enter into the estimate of my private friendships; nor did I ever abdicate the society of a friend on that account till he had first withdrawn from mine. Many have left me on that account, but with many I still preserve affectionate intercourse, only avoiding to speak on politics, as with a Quaker or Catholic I would avoid speaking on religion."
"I wish to avoid all collisions of opinion with all mankind."
"With a man possessing so many other estimable qualities, why should we be dissocialized by mere difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, or anything else?"
"I have received many letters stating to me in the spirit of prophecy, caricatures which the writers, it seems, know are to be the principles of my administration. To these no answer has been given, because the prejudiced spirit in which they have been written proved the writers not in a state of mind to yield to truth or reason."
"Remember that we often repent of what we have said, but never, never of that which we have not."
In a free society, differences of political sentiment result in different political parties. These sentiments resolve themselves naturally into two basic parties: the authoritarian (or monarchist, tory, etc.) that favors government that controls the people, and the democratic (or republican, liberal, etc.) that favors government controlled by the people. The body of the nation chooses a path that is mapped by one or the other of these parties.
"In every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time."
"In an absolute government there can be no... equiponderant parties. The despot is the government. His power suppressing all opposition, maintains his ministers firm in their places. What he has contracted, therefore, through them, he has the power to observe with good faith; and he identifies his own honor and faith with that of his nation."
"Warring against [the principles] of the people,... there is no length to which [the delusion of the people] may not be pushed by a party in possession of the revenues and the legal authorities of the United States, for a short time indeed, but yet long enough to admit much particular mischief. There is no event, therefore, however atrocious which may not be expected."
"It is the steady abuse of power in other governments which renders that of opposition always the popular party."
"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last one of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all."
"Both of our political parties, at least the honest portion of them, agree conscientiously in the same object: the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers, the other by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove. We think that one side of this experiment has been long enough tried and proved not to promote the good of the many, and that the other has not been fairly and sufficiently tried. Our opponents think the reverse. With whichever opinion the body of the nation concurs, that must prevail."
"Men have differed in opinion and been divided into parties by these opinions from the first origin of societies, and in all governments where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak. The same political parties which now agitate the U.S. have existed through all time. Whether the power of the people or that of the [aristocracy] should prevail were questions which kept the states of Greece and Rome in eternal convulsions, as they now schismatize every people whose minds and mouth3 are not shut up by the gag of a despot. And in fact the terms of Whig and Tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and constitution of mind of different individuals."
"The division into Whig and Tory is founded in the nature of man; the weakly and nerveless, the rich and the corrupt, seeing more safety and accessibility in a strong executive; the healthy, firm, and virtuous, feeling confidence in their physical and moral resources, and willing to part with only so much power as is necessary for their good government; and, therefore, to retain the rest in the hands of the many, the division will substantially be into Whig and Tory."
"The parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by these names or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats, Cote Droite and Cote Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles and Liberals. The sickly, weakly, timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold cherishes them, and is formed a Whig by nature."
"Nature has made some men monarchists and tories by their constitution, and some, of course, there always will be."
"The common division of Whig and Tory... is the most salutary of all divisions and ought, therefore, to be fostered instead of being amalgamated; for take away this, and some more dangerous principle of division will take its place."
"I consider the party division of Whig and Tory the most wholesome which can exist in any government, and well worthy of being nourished, to keep out those of a more dangerous character."
"To me... it appears that there have been differences of opinion and party differences, from the first establishment of government to the present day, and on the same question which now divides our own country; that these will continue through all future time; that every one takes his side in favor of the many, or of the few, according to his constitution, and the circumstances in which he is placed... that as we judge between the Claudii and the Gracchi, the Wentworth3 and the Hampdens of past ages, so of those among us whose names may happen to be remembered for awhile, the next generations will judge favorably or unfavorably according to the complexion of individual minds and the side they shall themselves have taken; that nothing new can be added to what has been said by others and will be said in every age in support of the conflicting opinions on government; and that wisdom and duty dictate an humble resignation to the verdict of our future peers."
"Wherever there are men, there will be parties; and wherever there are free men they will make themselves heard. Those of firm health and spirits are unwilling to cede more of their liberty than is necessary to preserve order; those of feeble constitutions will wish to see one strong arm able to protect them from the many. These are the Whigs and Tories of nature. These mutual jealousies produce mutual security; and while the laws shall be obeyed, all will be safe. He alone is your enemy who disobeys them."
"The Tories are for strengthening the Executive and General Government; the Whigs cherish the representative branch and the rights reserved by the States as the bulwark against consolidation, which must immediately generate monarchy."
"I had always expected that when the republicans should have put down all things under their feet, they would schismatize among themselves. I always expected, too, that whatever names the parties might bear, the real division would be into moderate and ardent republicanism. In this division there is no great evil -- not even if the minority obtain the ascendency by the accession of federal votes to their candidate; because this gives us one shade only, instead of another, of republicanism. It is to be considered as apostasy only when they purchase the votes of federalists, with a participation in honor and power."
"The duty of an upright administration is to pursue its course steadily, to know nothing of these family dissensions, and to cherish the good principles of both parties."
"I am no believer in the amalgamation of parties, nor do I consider it as either desirable or useful for the public; but only that, like religious differences, a difference in politics should never be permitted to enter into social intercourse or to disturb its friendships, its charities or justice. In that form, they are censors of the conduct of each other and useful watchmen for the public."
"It would not be for the public good to have [a majority in Congress of one party] greater [than] two to one."
"A respectable minority [in Congress] is useful as censors."
"[Those] States in which local discontents might engender a commencement of fermentation would be paralyzed and self-checked by that very division into parties into which we have fallen, into which all States must fall wherein men are at liberty to think, speak and act freely according to the diversities of their individual conformations, and which are, perhaps, essential to preserve the purity of the government by the censorship which these parties habitually exercise over each other."
"Perhaps this party division is necessary to induce each to watch and delate to the people the proceedings of the other. But if on a temporary superiority of the one party the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, no federal government can ever exist."
"I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than the breaking of the Union into two or more parts."
"If we keep together we shall be safe, and when error is so apparent as to become visible to the majority, they will correct it."
"Who can say what would be the evils of a scission, and when and where they would end? Better keep together as we are, haul off from Europe as soon as we can and from all attachments to any portions of it; and if they show their power just sufficiently to hoop us together, it will be the happiest situation in which we can exist."
"The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people."
"Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions."
"To restore... harmony,... to render us again one people acting as one nation should be the object of every man really a patriot."
"It will be a great blessing to our country if we can once more restore harmony and social love among its citizens. I confess, as to myself, it is almost the first object of my heart, and one to which I would sacrifice everything but principle."
"If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check."
"If we schismatize on either men or measures, if we do not act in phalanx, as when we rescued [our country] from the satellites of monarchism, I will not say our party, the term is false and degrading, but our nation will be undone. For the republicans are the nation."
"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."
"Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,...to take a part with either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man."
"Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided."
"That each party endeavors to get into the administration of the government and exclude the other from power is true, and may be stated as a motive of action: but this is only secondary; the primary motive being a real and radical difference of political principle. I sincerely wish our differences were but personally who should govern, and that the principles of our Constitution were those of both parties. Unfortunately, it is otherwise; and the question of preference between monarchy and republicanism, which has so long divided mankind elsewhere, threatens a permanent division here."
"The denunciation of the democratic societies, [whose avowed object is the nourishment of the republican principles of our Constitution,] is one of the extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many from the faction of monocrats,... [and is] an attack on the freedom of discussion, the freedom of writing, printing and publishing."
"I should suspect error where the [monocrats] found no fault. The buzzard feeds on carrion only."
"The consolidation of our fellow-citizens in general is the great object we ought to keep in view, and that being once obtained, while we associate with us in affairs, to a certain degree, the federal sect of republicans, we must strip of all the means of influence the... monocrats in every part of the Union."
"[Those] quondam leaders [who cover] under [a] mask... hearts devoted to monarchy... have a right to tolerance, but neither to confidence nor power."
"Amiable monarchists are not safe subjects of republican confidence."
"In appointments to office the government refuses to know any difference between descriptions of republicans [as to their politics], all of whom are in principle, and co-operate, with the government."
"I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles."
"Men of energy of character must have enemies; because there are two sides to every question, and taking one with decision, and acting on it with effect, those who take the other will of course be hostile in proportion as they feel that effect."
"Dr. Franklin had many political enemies, as every character must, which, with decision enough to have opinions, has energy and talent to give them effect on the feelings of the adversary opinion."
"It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions."
"An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes."
"With those who wish to think amiss of me, I have learned to be perfectly indifferent; but where I know a mind to be ingenuous, and to need only truth to set it to rights, I cannot be as passive."
A written constitution was an essential feature of the government created by the Founding Fathers. The term "constitution" refers to the nature or manner in which a society is organized and the principles by which governmental powers are distributed. It is the fundamental law of a nation, and may be a single document, as in the United States, or the totality of basic legislation, as in England. The Founders preferred a written constitution, founded in the authority of the people, in order more surely to limit the power of the governors and protect the rights of the governed.
"Aware of the tendency of power to degenerate into abuse, the worthies of our country have secured its independence by the establishment of a Constitution and form of government for our nation, calculated to prevent as well as to correct abuse."
"It is true, we are as yet secured against [tyrannical laws] by the spirit of the times... But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? Is it government? Is this the kind of protection we receive in return for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless."
"[To establish republican government, it is necessary to] effect a constitution in which the will of the nation shall have an organized control over the actions of its government, and its citizens a regular protection against its oppressions."
"[The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights."
"No interests are dearer to men than those which ought to be secured to them by their form of government, and none deserve better of them than those who contribute to the amelioration of that form."
"A permanent constitution must be the work of quiet, leisure, much inquiry, and great deliberation."
"Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people. They fix, too, for the people the principles of their political creed."
"I am persuaded no Constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government."
"[Ours is] a constitution of government destined to be the primitive and precious model of what is to change the condition of man over the globe."
"The authority of [the] people [is] a necessary foundation for a constitution."
"Every... constitution [should] lay its foundation in the authority of the nation... [If] no special authority [is] delegated [to the legislative body] by the people to form a permanent constitution over which their successors in legislation should have no powers of alteration,... although... they [give] to this act the title of a constitution, yet it could be no more than an act of legislation subject, as their other acts [are], to alteration by their successors."
"I question if any Congress (much less all successively) can have self-denial enough to go through with this distribution [of executive business, so that Congress itself should meddle only with what should be legislative.] The distribution, then, should be imposed on them."
"All of the States [except] Virginia... had... delineated [the] unceded portions of right and [the] fences against wrong which they meant to exempt from the powers of their governors, in instruments called declarations of rights and constitutions. And as they did this by conventions which they appointed for the express purpose of reserving these rights and of delegating others to their ordinary legislative, executive, and judiciary bodies, none of the reserved rights can be touched without resorting to the people to appoint another convention for the express purpose of permitting it. Where the constitutions then have been so formed by conventions named for this express purpose, they are fixed and unalterable but by a convention or other body to be specially authorized."
"The foundation on which all [our State constitutions] are built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth."
"The basis of our constitution is in opposition to the principle of equal political rights [if it refuses] to all but freeholders any participation in the natural right of self-government... And even among our citizens who participate in the representative privilege, the equality of political rights is entirely prostrated by our constitution... [if it gives] to every citizen of [one county] as much weight in the government as to twenty-two equal citizens in [another]... If these fundamental principles are of no importance in actual government, then no principles are important, and it is as well to rely on the dispositions of an administration, good or evil, as on the provisions of a constitution."
"The true principles of our Constitution... are wisely opposed to all perpetuations of power, and to every practice which may lead to hereditary establishments."
"I consider the foundation of the [Federal] Constitution as laid on this ground: That "all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people." [10th Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
"I was in Europe when the Constitution was planned, and never saw it till after it was established. On receiving it, I wrote strongly to Mr. Madison, urging the want of provision for... an express reservation to the States of all rights not specifically granted to the Union."
"Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force."
"[An] act of the Congress of the United States... which assumes powers... not delegated by the Constitution, is not law, but is altogether void and of no force."
"To keep in all things within the pale of our constitutional powers... [is one of] the landmarks by which we are to guide ourselves in all our proceedings."
"[We considered the Alien and Sedition] acts as so palpably against the Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration that that compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the General Government, but that it will proceed in the exercise over these States of all powers whatsoever... [We] view this as seizing the rights of the States and consolidating them in the hands of the General Government, with a power assumed to bind the States, not merely as [to] cases made federal (casus foederis), but in all cases whatsoever, by laws made, not with their consent, but by others against their consent... This would be to surrender the form of government we have chosen and live under one deriving its powers from its own will and not from our authority."
"It [is] inconsistent with the principles of civil liberty, and contrary to the natural rights of the other members of the society, that any body of men therein should have authority to enlarge their own powers, prerogatives or emoluments without restraint."
"The Legislature... can neither pass a law that my head shall be stricken from my body without trial, nor my freehold taken from me without indemnification, and when not necessary for a public use."
"Laws provide against injury from others, but not from ourselves."
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others."
"No man on earth has more implicit confidence than myself in the integrity and discretion of [the confidential officers of the government, who are the choice of the people themselves]... But is confidence or discretion, or is strict limit, the principle of our Constitution?"
"Had [the election of 1800] terminated in the elevation of Mr. Burr, every republican would, I am sure, have acquiesced in a moment; because, however it might have been variant from the intentions of the voters, yet it would have been agreeable to the Constitution... But in the event of an usurpation, I was decidedly with those who were determined not to permit it. Because that precedent once set, would be artificially reproduced, and end soon in a dictator."
"The Tory principle of passive obedience [seeks to] become entirely triumphant under the new-fangled names of confidence and responsibility."
"It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights... Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power... Our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go... In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
"Let the honest advocate of confidence read the Alien and Sedition Acts and say if the Constitution has not been wise in fixing limits to the government it created, and whether we should be wise in destroying those limits."
"Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people."
"Unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and their families selected for the trust. Whether our Constitution has hit on the exact degree of control necessary, is yet under experiment."
"I sincerely wish... we could see our government so secured as to depend less on the character of the person in whose hands it is trusted. Bad men will sometimes get in and with such an immense patronage may make great progress in corrupting the public mind and principles. This is a subject with which wisdom and patriotism should be occupied."
"Smaller objections [I have to the new Constitution] are [the omission of] the appeals on matters of fact as well as law, and the binding of all persons, Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary, by oath to maintain that constitution."
"I apprehend... that the total abandonment of the principle of rotation in the offices of President and Senator will end in abuse."
When our Constitution was first established, it was assumed that the description of specific powers granted to the government would leave no doubt as to what the government could and could not do, and that the absence of powers over the rights of the people would leave those rights protected. But Jefferson and others were wary of leaving such important matters up to inference. They insisted on a Bill of Rights that would state in unmistakable terms those rights of the people that must be left inviolate.
"I disapproved from the first moment... the want of a bill of rights [in the new Constitution] to guard liberty against the legislative as well as the executive branches of the government."
"I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land and not by the law of nations."
"A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences."
"The general voice from north to south... calls for a bill of rights. It seems pretty generally understood that this should go to juries, habeas corpus, standing armies, printing, religion and monopolies. I conceive there may be difficulty in finding general modifications of these suited to the habits of all the States. But if such cannot be found, then it is better to establish trials by jury, the right of habeas corpus, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion, in all cases, and to abolish standing armies in time of peace, and monopolies in all cases, than not to do it in any. The few cases wherein these things may do evil cannot be weighed against the multitude wherein the want of them will do evil."
"It astonishes me to find... [that so many] of our countrymen... should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty... which I [would not have expected for at least] four centuries."
"I consider all the ill as established which may be established. I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away."
"I hope, therefore, a bill of rights will be formed to guard the people against the federal government as they are already guarded against their State governments, in most instances."
"It had become an universal and almost uncontroverted position in the several States, that the purposes of society do not require a surrender of all our rights to our ordinary governors; that there are certain portions of right not necessary to enable them to carry on an effective government, and which experience has nevertheless proved they will be constantly encroaching on, if submitted to them; that there are also certain fences which experience has proved peculiarly efficacious against wrong, and rarely obstructive of right, which yet the governing powers have ever shown a disposition to weaken and remove. Of the first kind, for instance, is freedom of religion; of the second, trial by jury, habeas corpus laws, free presses."
"A constitutive act may, certainly, be so formed as to need no declaration of rights. The act itself has the force of a declaration as far as it goes; and if it goes to all material points, nothing more is wanting... But in a constitutive act which leaves some precious articles unnoticed and raises implications against others, a declaration of rights becomes necessary by way of supplement. This is the case of our new Federal Constitution. This instrument forms us into one State as to certain objects and gives us a legislative and executive body for these objects. It should therefore guard against their abuses of power within the field submitted to them."
"The jealousy of the subordinate governments is a precious reliance. But observe that those governments are only agents. They must have principles furnished them whereon to found their opposition. The declaration of rights will be the text whereby they will try all the acts of the federal government. In this view, it is necessary to the federal government also; as by the same text, they may try the opposition of the subordinate governments."
"In the arguments in favor of a declaration of rights... one which has great weight with me [is] the legal check which it puts into the hands of the judiciary."
"[The objection has been raised that] experience proves the inefficacy of a bill of rights. [This is] true. But though it is not absolutely efficacious under all circumstances, it is of great potency always, and rarely inefficacious. A brace the more will often keep up the building which would have fallen with that brace the less. There is a remarkable difference between the characters of the inconveniences which attend a Declaration of Rights, and those which attend the want of it. The inconveniences of the Declaration are that it may cramp government in its useful exertions. But the evil of this is short-lived, trivial and reparable. The inconveniences of the want of a Declaration are permanent, afflicting and irreparable. They are in constant progression from bad to worse."
"The declaration of rights is, like all other human blessings, alloyed with some inconveniences and not accomplishing fully its object. But the good in this instance vastly outweigh3 the evil."
"My idea then is, that though proper exceptions to these general rules are desirable and probably practicable, yet if the exceptions cannot be agreed on, the establishment of the rules in all cases will do ill in very few."
"By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline."
"The Constitutions of our several States vary more or less in some particulars. But there are certain principles in which all agree, and which all cherish as vitally essential to the protection of the life, liberty, property, and safety of the citizen: 1. Freedom of religion, restricted only from acts of trespass on that of others; 2. Freedom of person, securing every one from imprisonment or other bodily restraint but by the laws of the land. This is effected by the well-know law of habeas corpus; 3. Trial by jury, the best of all safeguards for the person, the property, and the fame of every individual; 4. The exclusive right of legislation and taxation in the representatives of the people; 5. Freedom of the press, subject only to liability for personal injuries."
"I like [the declaration of rights] as far as it goes, but I should have been for going further. For instance, the following alterations and additions would have pleased me:
Article 4. The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right otherwise to publish anything but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty, property or reputation of others, or affecting the peace of the confederacy with foreign nations.
Article 7. All facts put in issue before any judicature shall be tried by jury except, 1, in cases of admiralty jurisdiction, wherein a foreigner shall be interested; 2, in cases cognizable before a court martial concerning only the regular officers and soldiers of the United States, or members of the militia in actual service in time of war or insurrection; and 3, in impeachments allowed by the Constitution.
Article 8. No person shall be held in confinement more than -- days after he shall have demanded and been refused a writ of habeas corpus by the judge appointed by law, nor more than -- days after such a writ shall have been served on the person holding him in confinement, and no order given on due examination for his remandment or discharge, nor more than -- hours in any place at a greater distance than -- miles from the usual residence of some judge authorized to issue the writ of habeas corpus; nor shall that writ be suspended for any term exceeding one year, nor in any place more than -- miles distant from the State or encampment of enemies or of insurgents.
Article 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding -- years, but for no longer term, and no other purpose.
Article 10. All troops of the United States shall stand
ipso facto disbanded at the expiration of the term for which their pay and subsistence shall have been last voted by Congress, and all officers and soldiers not natives of the United States shall be incapable of serving in their armies by land, except during a foreign war.These restrictions, I think, are so guarded as to hinder evil only. However, if we do not have them now, I have so much confidence in my countrymen as to be satisfied that we shall have them as soon as the degeneracy of our government shall render them necessary."
No work of man is perfect. It is inevitable that, in the course of time, the imperfections of a written Constitution will become apparent. Moreover, the passage of time will bring changes in society which a Constitution must accommodate if it is to remain suitable for the nation. It was imperative, therefore, that a practicable means of amending the Constitution be provided.
"Whatever be the Constitution, great care must be taken to provide a mode of amendment when experience or change of circumstances shall have manifested that any part of it is unadapted to the good of the nation. In some of our States it requires a new authority from the whole people, acting by their representatives, chosen for this express purpose, and assembled in convention. This is found too difficult for remedying the imperfections which experience develops from time to time in an organization of the first impression. A greater facility of ammendment is certainly requisite to maintain it in a course of action accommodated to the times and changes through which we are ever passing."
"Time and changes in the condition and constitution of society may require occasional and corresponding modifications."
"Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wanting."
"Though we may say with confidence, that the worst of the American constitutions is better than the best which ever existed before in any other country, and that they are wonderfully perfect for a first essay, yet every human essay must have defects. It will remain, therefore, to those now coming on the stage of public affairs, to perfect what has been so well begun by those going off it."
"We must be contented to travel on towards perfection, step by step. We must be contented with the ground which [the new] Constitution will gain for us, and hope that a favorable moment will come for correcting what is amiss in it."
"To secure the ground we gain, and gain what more we can, is, I think, the wisest course."
"Our government wanted bracing. Still, we must take care not to run from one extreme to another; not to brace too high."
"This peaceable and legitimate resource [i.e., amendment], to which we are in the habit of implicit obedience, superseding all appeal to force and being always within our reach, shows a precious principle of self-preservation in our composition, till a change of circumstances shall take place, which is not within prospect at any definite period."
"We have always a right to correct ancient errors and to establish what is more conformable to reason and convenience."
"We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
"[The European] monarch3 instead of wisely yielding to the gradual change of circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself and of ordering its own affairs. Let us... avail ourselves of our reason and experience to correct the crude essays of our first and unexperienced although wise, virtuous, and well-meaning councils."
"[Algernon Sidney wrote in Discourses Concerning Government, Sect. II, Par 13,] ’All human constitutions are subject to corruption and must perish unless they are timely renewed and reduced to their first principles.’"
"I have found here [in America] a philosophic revolution, philosophically effected."
"Happy for us that when we find our constitutions defective and insufficient to secure the happiness of our people, we can assemble with all the coolness of philosophers and set it to rights, while every other nation on earth must have recourse to arms to amend or to restore their constitutions."
"The European governments have resisted reformation until the people, seeing no other resource, undertake it themselves by force, their only weapon, and work it out through blood, desolation and long-continued anarchy. Here it will be by large fragments breaking off, and refusing re-union but on condition of amendment, or perhaps permanently."
"A schism in our Union... would be an incurable evil, because near friends falling out, never re-unite cordially; whereas, all of us going together, we shall be sure to cure the evils of our new Constitution, before they do great harm."
"Happy for us that abuses have not yet become patrimonies, and that every description of interest is in favor of rational and moderate government. That we are yet able to send our wise and good men together to talk over our form of government, discuss its weaknesses and establish its remedies with the samesang-froid as they would a subject of agriculture."
"The example of changing a constitution by assembling the wise men of the State instead of assembling armies will be worth as much to the world as the former examples we had given them."
"I willingly acquiesce in the institutions of my country, perfect or imperfect, and think it a duty to leave their modifications to those who are to live under them and are to participate of the good or evil they may produce. The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself."
"My wish is to offend nobody; to leave to those who are to live under it, the settlement of their own constitution."
"We have not yet so far perfected our constitutions as to venture to make them unchangeable. But still, in their present state, we consider them not otherwise changeable than by the authority of the people on a special election of representatives for that purpose expressly. They are until then thelex legum. "
"Our children will be as wise as we are and will establish in the fulness of time those things not yet ripe for establishment."
"The generation which is going off the stage has deserved well of mankind for the struggles it has made and for having arrested that course of despotism which had overwhelmed the world for thousands and thousands of years. If there seems to be danger that the ground they have gained will be lost again, that danger comes from the [upcoming] generation. But that the enthusiasm which characterizes youth should lift its parricide hands against freedom and science would be such a monstrous phenomenon as I cannot place among possible things in this age and this country."
"The precept... is wise which directs us to try all things and hold fast that which is good."
"I am a friend to the reformation generally of whatever can be made better."
"Let us go on perfecting the Constitution by adding, by way of amendment, those forms which time and trial show are still wanting."
"It is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it."
"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves were they to rise from the dead."
"Those who [advocate] reformation of institutions pari passu with the progress of science [maintain] that no definite limits [can] be assigned to that progress. The enemies of reform, on the other hand, [deny] improvement and [advocate] steady adherence to the principles, practices and institutions of our fathers, which they [represent] as the consummation of wisdom and acme of excellence, beyond which the human mind could never advance."
"I am not afraid of new inventions or improvements, nor bigoted to the practices of our forefathers. It is that bigotry which keeps the Indians in a state of barbarism in the midst of the arts [and] would have kept us in the same state even now."
"Nature and reason, as well as all our constitutions, condemn retrospective conditions as mere acts of power against right."
"The real friends of the Constitution in its federal form, if they wish it to be immortal, should be attentive, by amendments, to make it keep pace with the advance of the age in science and experience. Instead of this, the European governments have resisted reformation until the people, seeing no other resource, undertake it themselves by force, their only weapon, and work it out through blood, desolation and long-continued anarchy."
"I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accomodate ourselves to them and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truth3 disclosed and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also and keep pace with the times."
"It will be said it is easier to find faults than to amend them. I do not think their amendment so difficult as is pretended. Only lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly."
"I am sorry [the federal convention] began their deliberations by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the tongues of their members. Nothing can justify this example but the innocence of their intentions, and ignorance of the value of public discussions."
"There is a snail-paced gait for the advance of new ideas on the general mind under which we must acquiesce. A forty years’ experience of popular assemblies has taught me that you must give them time for every step you take. If too hard pushed, they balk, and the machine retrogrades."
"Governments... are always in their stock of information a century or two behind the intelligent part of mankind, and... have interests against touching ancient institutions."
"The functionaries of public power rarely strengthen in their dispositions to abridge it, and an unorganized call for timely amendment is not likely to prevail against an organized opposition to it."
"The idea that institutions established for the use of the nation cannot be touched nor modified even to make them answer their end because of rights gratuitously supposed in those employed to manage them in trust for the public, may perhaps be a salutary provision against the abuses of a monarch but is most absurd against the nation itself. Yet our lawyers and priests generally inculcate this doctrine and suppose that preceding generations held the earth more freely than we do, had a right to impose laws on us unalterable by ourselves, and that we in like manner can make laws and impose burdens on future generations which they will have no right to alter; in fine, that the earth belongs to the dead and not the living."
"I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self-evident: ’That the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;’ that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it... We seem not to have perceived that by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation to another."
"Can one generation bind another and all others in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter unendowed with will."
"The generations of men may be considered as bodies or corporations. Each generation has the usufruct of the earth during the period of its continuance. When it ceases to exist, the usufruct passes on to the succeeding generation free and unencumbered and so on successively from one generation to another forever. We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country."
"These are axioms so self-evident that no explanation can make them plainer; for he is not to be reasoned with who says that non-existence can control existence, or that nothing can move something. They are axioms also pregnant with salutary consequences."
"Forty years [after a] Constitution... was formed,... two-thirds of the adults then living are... dead. Have, then, the remaining third, even if they had the wish, the right to hold in obedience to their will and to laws heretofore made by them, the other two-thirds who with themselves compose the present mass of adults? If they have not, who has? The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are nothing, and nothing can not own something. Where there is no substance, there can be no accident [i.e., attribute]."
"A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man."
"The laws of civil society indeed for the encouragement of industry, give the property of the parent to his family on his death, and in most civilized countries permit him even to give it, by testament, to whom he pleases. And it is also found more convenient to suffer the laws of our predecessors to stand on our implied assent, as if positively re-enacted, until the existing majority positively repeals them. But this does not lessen the right of that majority to repeal whenever a change of circumstances or of will calls for it. Habit alone confounds what is civil practice with natural right."
"Let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated periods. What these periods should be nature herself indicates. By the European tables of mortality, of the adults living at any one moment of time, a majority will be dead in about nineteen years. At the end of that period, then, a new majority is come into place; or, in other words, a new generation. Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently, to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself that received from its predecessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years should be provided by the constitution, so that it may be handed on with periodical repairs from generation to generation to the end of time, if anything human can so long endure."
"Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of nineteen years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. It may be said, that the succeeding generation exercising, in fact, the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to nineteen years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be, indeed, if every form of government were so perfectly contrived, that the will of the majority could always be obtained, fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils, bribery corrupts them, personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents; and other impediments arise, so as to prove to every practical man, that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal."
"This principle, that the earth belongs to the living and not to the dead,... will exclude... the ruinous and contagious errors... which have armed despots with means which nature does not sanction, for binding in chains their fellow-men."
The purpose of a written constitution is entirely defeated if, in interpreting it as a legal document, its provisions are manipulated and worked around so that the document means whatever the manipulators wish. Jefferson recognized this danger and spoke out constantly for careful adherence to the Constitution as written, with changes to be made by amendment, not by tortured and twisted interpretations of the text.
"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction."
"Where a constitution, like ours, wears a mixed aspect of monarchy and republicanism, its citizens will naturally divide into two classes of sentiment, according as their tone of body or mind, their habits, connections and callings, induce them to wish to strengthen either the monarchical or the republican features of the constitution. Some will consider it as an elective monarchy, which had better be made hereditary, and therefore endeavor to lead towards that all the forms and principles of its administration. Others will view it as an energetic republic, turning in all its points on the pivot of free and frequent elections."
"The Constitution to which we are all attached was meant to be republican, and we believe to be republican according to every candid interpretation. Yet we have seen it so interpreted and administered, as to be truly what the French have called, a monarchie masque."
"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure."
"Common sense [is] the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction."
"The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me [as President] according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States at the time of its adoption--a meaning to be found in the explanations of those who advocated, not those who opposed it, and who opposed it merely lest the construction should be applied which they denounced as possible."
"I do then, with sincere zeal, wish an inviolable preservation of our present federal Constitution, according to the true sense in which it was adopted by the States, that in which it was advocated by its friends, and not that which its enemies apprehended, who therefore became its enemies."
"It is a rule, where expressions are susceptible of two meanings, to recur to other explanations. Good faith is in favor of this recurrence."
"Whenever the words of a law will bear two meanings, one of which will give effect to the law, and the other will defeat it, the former must be supposed to have been intended by the Legislature, because they could not intend that meaning, which would defeat their intention, in passing that law; and in a statute, as in a will, the intention of the party is to be sought after."
"It was understood to be a rule of law that where the words of a statute admit of two constructions, the one just and the other unjust, the former is to be given them."
"When an instrument admits two constructions, the one safe, the other dangerous, the one precise, the other indefinite, I prefer that which is safe and precise. I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless."
"Where a phrase is susceptible of two meanings, we ought certainly to adopt that which will bring upon us the fewest inconveniences."
"The general rule [is] that an instrument is to be so construed as to reconcile and give meaning and effect to all its parts."
"In every event, I would rather construe so narrowly as to oblige the nation to amend, and thus declare what powers they would agree to yield, than too broadly, and indeed, so broadly as to enable the executive and the Senate to do things which the Constitution forbids."
"The government will certainly decide for itself on whose counsel they will settle the construction of the laws they are to execute. We are to look at the intention of the Legislature, and to carry it into execution while the lawyers are nibbling at the words of the law."
"The [legislature’s] laws have always some rational object in view; and are so to be construed as to produce order and justice."
"In the construction of a law, even in judiciary cases ofmeum et tuum , where the opposite parties have a right and counterright in the very words of the law, the Judge considers the intention of the lawgiver as his true guide, and gives to all the parts and expressions of the law, that meaning which will effect, instead of defeating, its intention. But in laws merely executive, where no private right stands in the way, and the public object is the interest of all, a much freer scope of construction, in favor of the intention of the law, ought to be taken, and ingenuity ever should be exercised in devising constructions which may save to the public the benefit of the law. Its intention is the important thing: the means of attaining it quite subordinate."
"The true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law."
"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."
"Strained constructions... loosen all the bands of the Constitution."
"One single object... [will merit] the endless gratitude of society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation."
"It often happens that, the Legislature prescribing details of execution [of a law], some circumstance arises, unforeseen or unattended to by them, which would totally frustrate their intention, were their details scrupulously adhered to and deemed exclusive of all others. But constructions must not be favored which go to defeat instead of furthering the principal object of their law, and to sacrifice the end to the means. It being as evidently their intention that the end shall be attained as that it should be effected by any given means, if both cannot be observed, we are equally free to deviate from the one as the other, and more rational in postponing the means to the end."
"It is not honorable to take a mere legal advantage, when it happens to be contrary to justice."
"[There are] cases which, though within the words of the law, [are] notoriously not within its intention, and are therefore relievable by an equitable exercise of discretionary power."
"It is a maxim of our municipal law, and, I believe, of universal law, that he who permits the end, permits of course the means, without which the end cannot be effected."
"The capital and leading object of the Constitution was to leave with the States all authorities which respected their own citizens only and to transfer to the United States those which respected citizens of foreign or other States; to make us several as to ourselves, but one as to all others. In the latter case, then, constructions should lean to the general jurisdiction if the words will bear it, and in favor of the States in the former if possible to be so construed."
"Among the purposes to which the Constitution permits [Congress] to apply money, the granting premiums or bounties is not enumerated, and there has never been a single instance of their doing it, although there has been a multiplicity of applications. The Constitution has left these encouragements to the separate States."
"[The Constitution] specifies and delineates the operations permitted to the federal government and gives all the powers necessary to carry these into execution. Whatever of these enumerated objects is proper for a law, Congress may make the law; whatever is proper to be executed by way of a treaty, the President and Senate may enter into the treaty; whatever is to be done by a judicial sentence, the judges may pass the sentence."
"In giving to the President and Senate a power to make treaties, the Constitution meant only to authorize them to carry into effect, by way of treaty, any powers they might constitutionally exercise."
"Surely the President and Senate cannot do by treaty what the whole government is interdicted from doing in any way."
"We conceive the constitutional doctrine to be, that though the President and Senate have the general power of making treaties, yet wherever they include in a treaty matters confided by the Constitution to the three branches of Legislature, an act of legislation will be requisite to confirm these articles, and that the House of Representatives, as one branch of the Legislature, are perfectly free to pass the act or to refuse it, governing themselves by their own judgment whether it is for the good of their constituents to let the treaty go into effect or not."
"I was glad... to hear it admitted on all hands, that laws of the United States, subsequent to a treaty, control its operation, and that the Legislature is the only power which can control a treaty. Both points are sound beyond doubt."
"According to the rule established by usage and common sense, of construing one part of the instrument by another, the objects on which the President and Senate may exclusively act by treaty are much reduced, but the field on which they may act with the sanction of the Legislature is large enough; and I see no harm in rendering their sanction necessary, and not much harm in annihilating the whole treaty-making power, except as to making peace."
"I say... to the opinion of those who consider the grant of the treaty-making power as boundless: If it is, then we have no Constitution. If it has bounds, they can be no others than the definitions of the powers which that instrument gives."
"The construction applied... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States," and "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof," goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to [the General Government’s] power by the Constitution... Words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument."
"To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, "to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare."
"Aided by a little sophistry on the words "general welfare," [the federal branch claim] a right to do not only the acts to effect that which are specifically enumerated and permitted, but whatsoever they shall think or pretend will be for the general welfare."
"They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please... Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect."
"It is an established rule of construction where a phrase will bear either of two meanings, to give it that which will allow some meaning to the other parts of the instrument, and not that which would render all the others useless."
"The general rule, in the construction of instruments, [is] to leave no words merely useless, for which any rational meaning can be found."
"For authority to apply the surplus [of taxes] to objects of improvement, an amendment of the Constitution would have been necessary."
"[If] it [were] assumed that the general government has a right to exercise all powers which may be for the ’general welfare,’ that [would include] all the legitimate powers of government, since no government has a legitimate right to do what is not for the welfare of the governed."
"Our tenet ever was... that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money."
"Congress are authorized to defend the nation. Ships are necessary for defence; copper is necessary for ships; mines necessary for copper; a company necessary to work mines; and who can doubt this reasoning who has ever played at ’This is the House that Jack built?’ Under such a process of filiation of necessities the sweeping clause makes clean work."
"If, wherever the Constitution assumes a single power out of many which belong to the same subject, we should consider it as assuming the whole, it would vest the General Government with a mass of powers never contemplated. On the contrary, the assumption of particular powers seems an exclusion of all not assumed."
"I hope our courts will never countenance the sweeping pretensions which have been set up under the words ’general defence and public welfare.’ These words only express the motives which induced the Convention to give to the ordinary legislature certain specified powers which they enumerate, and which they thought might be trusted to the ordinary legislature, and not to give them the unspecified also; or why any specification? They could not be so awkward in language as to mean, as we say, ’all and some.’ And should this construction prevail, all limits to the federal government are done away."
"This phrase,... by a mere grammatical quibble, has countenanced the General Government in a claim of universal power. For in the phrase, ’to lay taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare,’ it is a mere question of syntax, whether the two last infinitives are governed by the first or are distinct and coordinate powers; a question unequivocally decided by the exact definition of powers immediately following."
"Although the power to regulate commerce does not give a power to build piers, wharves, open ports, clear the beds of rivers, dig canals, build warehouses, build manufacturing machines, set up manufactories, cultivate the earth, to all of which the power would go if it went to the first, yet a power to provide and maintain a navy is a power to provide receptacles for it, and places to cover and preserve it."
"While we pursue, then, the construction of the Legislature, that the repairing and erecting lighthouses, beacons, buoys, and piers, is authorized as belonging to the regulation of commerce, we must take care not to go ahead of them and strain the meaning of the terms still further to the clearing out the channels of all the rivers, etc., of the United States. The removing a sunken vessel is not the repairing of a pier."
"I suppose an amendment to the Constitution, by consent of the States, necessary [for certain objects of public improvement], because the objects now recommended are not among those enumerated in the Constitution, and to which it permits the public moneys to be applied."
"The interests of commerce place the principal object [i.e., a western exploring expedition] within the constitutional powers and care of Congress, and that it should incidentally advance the geographical knowledge of our own continent, can not but be an additional gratification."
"Where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy."
"[The States] alone being parties to the [Federal] compact... [are] solely authorized to judge in the last resort of the powers exercised under it, Congress being not a party but merely the creation of the compact and subject as to its assumptions of power to the final judgment of those by whom and for whose use itself and its powers were all created and modified."
"The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion and not the Constitution the measure of its powers; but... as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress."
"I think it important... to set an example against broad construction by appealing for new power to the people. If, however, our friends shall think differently, certainly I shall acquiesce with satisfaction, [confident] that the good sense of our country will correct the evil of construction whenever it shall produce ill effects."
"It is a happy circumstance in human affairs that evils which are not cured in one way will cure themselves in some other."
"As to [the giving to Congress the power of internal improvement on condition that each State’s federal proportion of the moneys so expended shall be employed within the State], there is probably not a State in the Union which would not grant the power on the condition proposed, or which would grant it without that."
"An express grant of the power [for internal improvements]... would render its exercise smooth and acceptable to all and insure to it all the facilities which the States could contribute to prevent that kind of abuse which all will fear, because all know it is so much practiced in public bodies: I mean the bartering of votes. It would reconcile everyone, if limited by the proviso that the federal proportion of each State should be expended within the State. With this single security against partiality and corrupt bargaining, I suppose there is not a State, perhaps not a man in the Union, who would not consent to add this to the powers of the General Government."
"One precedent in favor of power is stronger than an hundred against it."
"The utility of the thing [shall sanction] the infraction [of the Constitution]. But if on that infraction we build a second, and on that second a third, etc., any one of the powers in the Constitution may be made to comprehend every power of government."
"On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?"
"The Constitution of the United States is a compact of independent nations subject to the rules acknowledged in similar cases, as well that of amendment provided within itself, as, in case of abuse, the justly dreaded but unavoidableultimo ratio gentium [the final argument of nations, i.e., war]."
"[The Louisiana Purchase was] laid before both Houses [of Congress], because both [had] important functions to exercise respecting it. They... [saw] their duty to their country in ratifying and paying for it so as to secure a good which would otherwise probably be never again in their power. The Constitution has made no provision for our holding foreign territory, still less for incorporating foreign nations into our Union. The Executive, in seizing the fugitive occurrence which so much advances the good of their country, have done an act beyond the Constitution. The Legislature in casting behind them metaphysical subtleties and risking themselves like faithful servants, must ratify and pay for it and throw themselves on their country for doing for them unauthorized what we know they would have done for themselves had they been in a situation to do it. It is the case of a guardian investing the money of his ward in purchasing an important adjacent territory and saying to him when of age, I did this for your good; I pretend to no right to bind you. You may disavow me, and I must get out of the scrape as I can. I thought it my duty to risk myself for you. But we [were] not disavowed by the nation, and their act of indemnity [confirmed] and [did] not weaken the Constitution by more strongly marking out its lines."
Who should make the final decision on interpreting the Constitution? The Supreme Court in the case of Marbury v. Madison, which was decided during the first term of President Thomas Jefferson, determined that IT should make the final decision for all branches of government, and that opinion has remained in force ever since. Jefferson, however, strongly opposed Judicial Review because he thought it violated the principle of separation of powers. He proposed that each branch of government decide constitutional questions for itself, only being responsible for their decisions to the voters.
"The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches."
"But the Chief Justice says, ’There must be an ultimate arbiter somewhere.’ True, there must; but does that prove it is either party? The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States. Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two of their organs. And it has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of our Constitution, to have provided this peaceable appeal, where that of other nations is at once to force."
"But, you may ask, if the two departments [i.e., federal and state] should claim each the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best."
"The Constitution... meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."
"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."
"In denying the right [the Supreme Court usurps] of exclusively explaining the Constitution, I go further than [others] do, if I understand rightly [this] quotation from the Federalist of an opinion that ’the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under which the judiciary is derived.’ If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se [act of suicide]. For intending to establish three departments, coordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not even a scare-crow... The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."
"This member of the Government was at first considered as the most harmless and helpless of all its organs. But it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is,ad libitum, by sapping and mining slyly and without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt."
"My construction of the Constitution is... that each department is truly independent of the others and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the Constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially where it is to act ultimately and without appeal."
"That branch which is to act ultimately and without appeal on any law, is the rightful expositor of the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the opinions of the other co-ordinate authorities."
"Nothing in the Constitution has given [the judges] a right to decide for the Executive, more than to the Executive to decide for them. Both magistrates are equally independent in the sphere of action assigned to them."
"The federal judges... cannot issue a mandamus to the President or legislature, or to any of their officers, the Constitution controlling the common law in this particular."
"Each of the three departments has equally the right to decide for itself what is its duty under the Constitution without regard to what the others may have decided for themselves under a similar question."
"The judges certainly have more frequent occasion to act on constitutional questions, because the laws ofmeum andtuum and of criminal action, forming the great mass of the system of law, constitute their particular department. When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough... The people themselves,... [with] their discretion [informed] by education, [are] the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
"It may be said that contradictory decisions may arise in such case and produce inconvenience. This is possible and is a necessary failing in all human proceedings. Yet the prudence of the public functionaries and authority of public opinion will generally produce accommodation. Such an instance of difference occurred between the judges of England (in the time of Lord Holt) and the House of Commons, but the prudence of those bodies prevented inconvenience from it. So in the cases of Duane and of William Smith of South Carolina, whose characters of citizenship stood precisely on the same ground: the judges in a question of meum and tuum which came before them decided that Duane was not a citizen; and in a question of membership, the House of Representatives under the same words of the same provision adjudged William Smith to be a citizen. Yet no inconvenience has ensued from these contradictory decisions. This is what I believe myself to be sound."
"The... proposed [Constitution of Spain]... has one feature which I like much: that which provides that when the three coordinate branches differ in their construction of the Constitution, the opinion of two branches shall overrule the third. Our Constitution has not sufficiently solved this difficulty."
"There is another opinion entertained by some men of such judgment and information as to lessen my confidence in my own. That is, that the Legislature alone is the exclusive expounder of the sense of the Constitution in every part of it whatever. And they allege in its support that this branch has authority to impeach and punish a member of either of the others acting contrary to its declaration of the sense of the Constitution. It may, indeed, be answered that an act may still be valid although the party is punished for it, right or wrong. However, this opinion which ascribes exclusive exposition to the Legislature merits respect for its safety, there being in the body of the nation a control over them which, if expressed by rejection on the subsequent exercise of their elective franchise, enlists public opinion against their exposition and encourages a judge or executive on a future occasion to adhere to their former opinion. Between these two doctrines, every one has a right to choose, and I know of no third meriting any respect."
"[How] to check these unconstitutional invasions of... rights by the Federal judiciary? Not by impeachment in the first instance, but by a strong protestation of both houses of Congress that such and such doctrines advanced by the Supreme Court are contrary to the Constitution; and if afterwards they relapse into the same heresies, impeach and set the whole adrift. For what was the government divided into three branches, but that each should watch over the others and oppose their usurpations?"
The Federative Principle was the mechanism introduced by the Founders that made possible a republic spread over a vast continent. In addition, by dividing governmental power into co-equal, independent responsibilities, each branch of government might serve as a check on the other and thus prevent either one from undermining the safety of the public liberty.
"Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste."
"While smaller governments are better adapted to the ordinary objects of society, larger confederations more effectually secure independence and the preservation of republican government."
"The extent of our country was so great, and its former division into distinct States so established, that we thought it better to confederate as to foreign affairs only. Every State retained its self-government in domestic matters, as better qualified to direct them to the good and satisfaction of their citizens, than a general government so distant from its remoter citizens and so little familiar with the local peculiarities of the different parts."
"I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones."
"My general plan would be, to make the States one as to everything connected with foreign nations, and several as to everything purely domestic."
"Distinct States, amalgamated into one as to their foreign concerns, but single and independent as to their internal administration, regularly organized with a legislature and governor resting on the choice of the people and enlightened by a free press, can never be so fascinated by the arts of one man as to submit voluntarily to his usurpation. Nor can they be constrained to it by any force he can possess. While that may paralyze the single State in which it happens to be encamped, [the] others, spread over a country of two thousand miles diameter, rise up on every side, ready organized for deliberation by a constitutional legislature and for action by their governor, constitutionally the commander of the militia of the State, that is to say, of every man in it able to bear arms."
"It is hoped that by a due poise and partition of powers between the General and particular governments, we have found the secret of extending the benign blessings of republicanism over still greater tracts of country than we possess, and that a subdivision may be avoided for ages, if not forever."
"Our citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation as to others and several States as among themselves. To the united nation belong our external and mutual relations; to each State, severally, the care of our persons, our property, our reputation and religious freedom."
"The States in North America which confederated to establish their independence of the government of Great Britain, of which Virginia was one, became on that acquisition, free and independent States, and as such, authorized to constitute governments, each for itself, in such form as it thought best. They entered into a compact (which is called the Constitution of the United States of America), by which they agreed to unite in a single government as to their relations with each other and with foreign nations, and as to certain other articles particularly specified. They retained at the same time each to itself, the other rights of independent government, comprehending mainly their domestic interests."
"The radical idea of the character of the constitution of our government, which I have adopted as a key in cases of doubtful construction, is, that the whole field of government is divided into two departments, domestic and foreign (the States in their mutual relations being of the latter); that the former department is reserved exclusively to the respective States within their own limits, and the latter assigned to a separate set of functionaries, constituting what may be called the foreign branch, which, instead of a federal basis, is established as a distinct governmentquoad hoc [to this extent], acting as the domestic branch does on the citizens directly and coercively; that these departments have distinct directories, co-ordinate, and equally independent and supreme, each within its own sphere of action."
"Nor is it admitted... that the people of these States, by not investing their federal branch with all the means of bettering their condition, have denied to themselves any which may effect that purpose; since, in the distribution of these means, they have given to that branch those which belong to its department, and to the States have reserved separately the residue which belong to them separately. And thus by the organization of the two branches taken together, have completely secured the first object of human association, the full improvement of their condition, and reserved to themselves all the faculties of multiplying their own blessings."
"To the State governments are reserved all legislation and administration in affairs which concern their own citizens only, and to the federal government is given whatever concerns foreigners or the citizens of other States; these functions alone being made federal. The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government; neither having control over the other, but within its own department. There are one or two exceptions only to this partition of power."
"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That "all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people."[X Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
"The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers."
"The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the States are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign nations."
"The best general key for the solution of questions of power between our governments is the fact that ’every foreign and federal power is given to the Federal Government, and to the States every power purely domestic.’ I recollect but one instance of control vested in the Federal over the State authorities in a matter purely domestic, which is that of metallic tenders. The Federal is, in truth, our foreign government, which department alone is taken from the sovereignty of the separate States."
"To draw around the whole nation the strength of the General Government as a barrier against foreign foes; to watch the border of every State that no external hand may intrude or disturb the exercise of self-government reserved to itself; to equalize and moderate the public contributions that while the requisite services are invited by due remuneration, nothing beyond this may exist to attract the attention of our citizens from the pursuits of useful industry, nor unjustly to burden those who continue in those pursuits--these are the functions of the General Government on which you have a right to call."
"The preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration."
"It has been so often said, as to be generally believed, that Congress have no power by the [Articles of] Confederation to enforce anything; for example, contributions of money. It was not necessary to give them that power expressly; they have it by the law of nature. When two parties make a compact, there results to each a power of compelling the other to execute it."
"I like much the general idea of framing a government which should go on of itself, peaceably, without needing continual recurrence to the State legislatures."
"The States should be left to do whatever acts they can do as well as the General Government."
"It is of immense consequence that the States retain as complete authority as possible over their own citizens. The withdrawing themselves under the shelter of a foreign jurisdiction is so subversive of order and so pregnant of abuse, that it may not be amiss to consider how far a law of praemunire [a punishable offense against government] should be revised and modified, against all citizens who attempt to carry their causes before any other than the State courts, in cases where those other courts have no right to their cognizance."
"[Regulating] the condition of the descriptions of men composing a State... certainly is the exclusive right of every State, which nothing in the Constitution has taken from them and given to the General Government. Could Congress, for example, say that the non-freemen of Connecticut shall be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other State?"
"With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole."
"The several States composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but... by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes,-- delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government."
"It is a fatal heresy to suppose that either our State governments are superior to the Federal or the Federal to the States. The people, to whom all authority belongs, have divided the powers of government into two distinct departments, the leading characters of which are foreign and domestic; and they have appointed for each a distinct set of functionaries. These they have made coordinate, checking and balancing each other like the three cardinal departments in the individual States; each equally supreme as to the powers delegated to itself, and neither authorized ultimately to decide what belongs to itself or to its coparcener in government. As independent, in fact, as different nations."
"Comparing the two governments together, it is observable that in all those cases where the independent or reserved rights of the States are in question, the two executives, if they are to act together, must be exactly co-ordinate; they are, in these cases, each the supreme head of an independent government. In other cases, to wit, those transferred by the Constitution to the General Government, the general executive is certainly preordinate; e. g. in a question respecting the militia, and others easily to be recollected."
"I do not think it for the interest of the General Government itself, and still less of the Union at large, that the State governments should be so little respected as they have been. However, I dare say that in time all these as well as their central government, like the planets revolving round their common sun, acting and acted upon according to their respective weights and distances, will produce that beautiful equilibrium on which our Constitution is founded, and which I believe it will exhibit to the world in a degree of perfection, unexampled but in the planetary system itself. The enlightened statesman, therefore, will endeavor to preserve the weight and influence of every part, as too much given any member of it would destroy the general equilibrium."
"The true barriers of our liberty in this country are our State governments; and the wisest conservative power ever contrived by man is that of which our Revolution and present government found us possessed."
"To preserve the republican forms and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that has established... are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering."
"The spirit of concord [amongst] sister States... alone carried us successfully through the revolutionary war, and finally placed us under that national government, which constitutes the safety of every part, by uniting for its protection the powers of the whole."
"It is a singular phenomenon that while our State governments are the very best in the world, without exception or comparison, our General Government has, in the rapid course of nine or ten years, become more arbitrary and has swallowed more of the public liberty than even that of England."
"I have always thought that where the line of demarcation between the powers of the General and the State governments was doubtfully or indistinctly drawn it would be prudent and praiseworthy in both parties never to approach it but under the most urgent necessity."
"In one sentiment of [Edward Livingston’s] speech I particularly concur. ’If we have a doubt relative to any power, we ought not to exercise it.’ When we consider the extensive and deep-seated opposition to [a certain] assumption, the conviction entertained by so many, that this deduction of powers by elaborate construction prostrates the rights reserved to the States, the difficulties with which it will rub along in the course of its exercise; that changes of majorities will be changing the system backwards and forwards, so that no undertaking under it will be safe; that there is not a State in the Union which would not give the power willingly by way of amendment with some little guard, perhaps, against abuse; I cannot but think it would be the wisest course to ask an express grant of the power."
"A spirit of forbearance and compromise, therefore, and not of encroachment and usurpation, is the healing balm of such a Constitution [as ours]; and each party should prudently shrink from all approach to the line of demarcation, instead of rashly overleaping it, or throwing grapples ahead to haul to hereafter."
"The interests of the States... ought to be made joint in every possible instance in order to cultivate the idea of our being one nation, and to multiply the instances in which the people shall look up to Congress as their head."
"By [the] operations [of public improvement] new channels of communication will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties."
"Many are the exercises of power reserved to the States wherein a uniformity of proceeding would be advantageous to all. Such are quarantines, health laws, regulations of the press, banking institutions, training militia, etc., etc."
"The system of the General Government is to seize all doubtful ground. We must join in the scramble, or get nothing. Where first occupancy is to give right, he who lies still loses all."
"Were it observed that either party [i.e., State or General government] set up unjustifiable pretensions, perhaps the other might be right in opposing them by a tenaciousness of his own rigorous rights."
"If the two departments [Federal and State] should claim each the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but if it can neither be avoided not compromised, a convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best."
"Congress... has always shown that it would wait, as it ought to do, to the last extremities, before it would execute any of its powers which are disagreeable."
"The peculiar happiness of our blessed system is that in differences of opinion between these different sets of servants, the appeal is to neither, but to their employers peaceably assembled by their representatives in convention. This is more rational than thejus fortioris, or the canon’s mouth, theultima et sola ratio regum."
"The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the function he is competent to. Let the National Government be entrusted with the defence of the nation and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man’s farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best."
"It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected. Were not this great country already divided into States, that division must be made that each might do for itself what concerns itself directly and what it can so much better do than a distant authority. Every state again is divided into counties, each to take care of what lies within its local bounds; each county again into townships or wards, to manage minuter details; and every ward into farms, to be governed each by its individual proprietor... It is by this partition of cares descending in gradation from general to particular that the mass of human affairs may be best managed for the good and prosperity of all."
"We should thus marshal our government into, 1. the general federal republic, for all concerns foreign and federal; 2. that of the State, for what relates to our own citizens exclusively; 3. the county republics, for the duties and concerns of the county; and 4. the ward republics, for the small and yet numerous and interesting concerns of the neighborhood; and in government, as well as in every other business of life, it is by division and subdivision of duties alone, that all matters, great and small, can be managed to perfection. And the whole is cemented by giving to every citizen, personally, a part in the administration of the public affairs."
"But how collect [the people’s] voice? This is the real difficulty. If invited by private authority, [to] county or district meetings, these divisions are so large that few will attend; and their voice will be imperfectly, or falsely, pronounced. Here, then, would be one of the advantages of the ward divisions I have proposed. The mayor of every ward, on a question like the present, would call his ward together, take the simple yea or nay of its members, convey these to the country court, who would hand on those of all its wards to the proper general authority; and the voice of the whole people would be thus fairly, fully, and peaceably expressed, discussed, and decided by the common reason of the society."
"These wards once established, will be found convenient and salutary aids in the administration of government, of which they will constitute the organic elements, and the first integral members in the composition of the military."
"These wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government and for its preservation."
"The elementary republics of the wards, the county republics, the State republics, and the Republic of the Union, would form a gradation of authorities, standing each on the basis of law, holding every one its delegated share of powers and constituting truly a system of fundamental balances and checks for the government. Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic, or of some of the higher ones, and feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day; when there shall not be a man in the State who will not be a member of some one of its councils, great or small, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte."
"My proposition [to divide every county into wards and to establish in each a free school] had for a further object, to impart to these wards those portions of self-government for which they are best qualified, by confiding to them the care of their poor, their roads, police, elections, the nomination of jurors, administration of justice in small cases, elementary exercises of militia; in short, to have made them little republics, with a warden at the head of each, for all those concerns which, being under their eye, they would better manage than the larger republics of the county or State. A general call of ward meetings by their wardens on the same day through the State, would at any time produce the genuine sense of the people on any required point, and would enable the State to act in mass."
"The article... nearest my heart is the division of counties into wards. These will be pure and elementary republics, the sum of which taken together composes the State, and will make of the whole a true democracy as to the business of the wards, which is that of nearest and daily concern. The affairs of the larger sections, of counties, of States, and of the Union, not admitting personal transactions by the people, will be delegated to agents elected by themselves; and representation will thus be substituted where personal action becomes impracticable. Yet even over these representative organs, should they become corrupt and perverted, the division into wards constituting the people, in their wards, a regularly organized power, enables them by that organization to crush, regularly and peaceably, the usurpations of their unfaithful agents, and rescues them from the dreadful necessity of doing it insurrectionally. In this way we shall be as republican as a large society can be, and secure the continuance of purity in our government by the salutary, peaceable, and regular control of the people."
"Divide the counties into wards of such size as that every citizen can attend, when called on, and act in person. Ascribe to them the government of their wards in all things relating to themselves exclusively. A justice chosen by themselves, in each a constable, a military company, a patrol, a school, the care of their own poor, their own portion of the public roads, the choice of one or more jurors to serve in some court, and the delivery within their own wards of their own votes for all elective officers of higher sphere, will relieve the county administration of nearly all its business, will have it better done, and by making every citizen an acting member of the government, and in the offices nearest and most interesting to him, will attach him by his strongest feelings to the independence of his country and its republican Constitution."
"Each ward would thus be a small republic within itself, and every man in the State would thus become an acting member of the common government, transacting in person a great portion of its rights and duties, subordinate indeed, yet important, and entirely within his competence. The wit of man cannot devise a more solid basis for a free, durable and well-administered republic."
"These little republics would be the main strength of the great one. We owe to them the vigor given to our revolution in its commencement in the Eastern States."
"If it is believed that... elementary schools will be better managed by the governor and council, the commissioners of the literary fund or any other general authority of the government than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience. Try the principle one step further, and... commit to the governor and council the management of all our farms, our mills and merchants’ stores. No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to."
"I have long contemplated a division of [our own state of Virginia] into hundreds or wards, as the most fundamental measure securing good government, and for instilling the principles and exercise of self-government into every fibre of every member of our commonwealth."
"There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks."
"As Cato, then concluded every speech with the words, ’Cathago delenda est ,’ so do I every opinion with the injunction, ’divide the counties into wards.’"
The separation of powers was essential to prevent the consolidation of government and the formation of centralized, authoritarian tyranny to which all governments are prone. Jefferson has often been referred to as a proponent of "States Rights," but his main interest was not so much in the rights of States in and of themselves, but rather in a division of powers in order to prevent the destruction of liberty that would inevitably result from a national government that gathered all powers unto itself.
"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others."
"I wish to preserve the line drawn by the Federal Constitution between the general and particular governments as it stands at present, and to take every prudent means of preventing either from stepping over it."
"I am for preserving to the States the powers not yielded by them to the Union, and to the legislature of the Union its constitutional share in the division of powers; and I am not for transferring all the powers of the States to the General Government, and all those of that government to the executive branch."
"[We have seen] the importance of preserving to the State authorities all that vigor which the Constitution foresaw would be necessary, not only for their own safety, but for that of the whole."
"What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian Senate. And I do believe that if the Almighty has not decreed that man shall never be free (and it is blasphemy to believe it), that the secret will be found to be in the making himself the depository of the powers respecting himself, so far as he is competent to them, and delegating only what is beyond his competence by a synthetical process, to higher and higher orders of functionaries, so as to trust fewer and fewer powers in proportion as the trustees become more and more oligarchical."
"When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."
"The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers."
"[We are] determined... to submit to undelegated, and consequently unlimited powers in no man or body of men on earth."
"We are willing to sacrifice to [union with our sister States, and to the instrument and principles by which we are united] everything but the rights of self-government in those important points which we have never yielded, and in which alone we see liberty, safety, and happiness."
"The truth is that finding that monarchy is a desperate wish in this country, [the enemies of republicanism] rally to the point which they think next best: a consolidated government. Their aim is now therefore to break down the rights reserved by the Constitution to the States as a bulwark against that consolidation, the fear of which produced the whole of the opposition to the Constitution at its birth... But I trust they will fail... and that the friends of the real Constitution and Union will prevail against consolidation as they have done against monarchism. I scarcely know myself which is most to be deprecated, a consolidation or dissolution of the States. The horrors of both are beyond the reach of human foresight."
"In the convention which formed our government, [the monarchists] endeavored to draw the cords of power as tight as they could obtain them, to lessen the dependence of the general functionaries on their constituents, to subject to them those of the States, and to weaken their means of maintaining the steady equilibrium which the majority of the convention had deemed salutary for both branches, general and local."
"Consolidation is the present principle of distinction between republicans and the pseudo-republicans."
"The support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our Government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration."
"I wish... to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers established by the Constitution for the limitation of both [the State and General governments], and never to see all offices transferred to Washington where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold as at market."
"What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building and office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the State powers into the hands of the General Government!"
"Our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction; to wit: by consolidation first and then corruption, its necessary consequence. The engine of consolidation will be the Federal judiciary; the two other branches the corrupting and corrupted instruments."
"Monarchy, to be sure, is now defeated,... yet the spirit is not done away. The same party takes now what they deem the next best ground, the consolidation of the government; the giving to the federal member of the government, by unlimited constructions of the Constitution, a control over all the functions of the States, and the concentration of all power ultimately at Washington."
"I see,... and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power... It is but too evident that the three ruling branches of [the Federal government] are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic."
"[We] disavow and declare to be most false and unfounded, the doctrine that the compact, in authorizing its federal branch to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States, has given them thereby a power to do whatever they may think or pretend would promote the general welfare, which construction would make that, of itself, a complete government, without limitation of powers; but that the plain sense and obvious meaning were, that they might levy the taxes necessary to provide for the general welfare by the various acts of power therein specified and delegated to them, and by no others."
"Though the experiment has not yet had a long enough course to show us from which quarter encroachments are most to be feared, yet it is easy to foresee, from the nature of things, that the encroachments of the State governments will tend to an excess of liberty which will correct itself,... while those of the General Government will tend to monarchy, which will fortify itself from day to day instead of working its own cure, as all experience shows."
"I am firmly persuaded that it is by giving due tone to the particular governments that the general one will be preserved in vigor also, the Constitution having foreseen its incompetency to all the objects of government and therefore confined it to those specially described."
"Can it be believed that under the jealousies prevailing against the General Government at the adoption of the Constitution, the States meant to surrender the authority of preserving order or enforcing moral duties and restraining vice within their own territory?... Can any good be effected by taking from the States the moral rule of their citizens and subordinating it to the general authority?"
"[Since] no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press [was] delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain and were reserved to the States or the people... Thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be destroyed."
"Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the States, as far as it can be in any human authority."
"[We] believe that to take from the States all the powers of self-government and transfer them to a general and consolidated government without regard to the special delegations and reservations solemnly agreed to in [the Federal] compact, is not for the peace, happiness or prosperity of these States."
"The [federal] judiciary branch is the instrument which, working like gravity, without intermission, is to press us at last into one consolidated mass."
"There is no danger I apprehend so much as the consolidation of our government by the noiseless and therefore unalarming instrumentality of the Supreme Court."
"We already see the [judiciary] power, installed for life, responsible to no authority (for impeachment is not even a scare-crow), advancing with a noiseless and steady pace to the great object of consolidation. The foundations are already deeply laid by their decisions for the annihilation of constitutional State rights and the removal of every check, every counterpoise to the engulfing power of which themselves are to make a sovereign part."
"After twenty years’ confirmation of the federated system by the voice of the nation, declared through the medium of elections, we find the judiciary on every occasion, still driving us into consolidation."
"The judges... are practicing on the Constitution by inferences, analogies, and sophisms, as they would on an ordinary law. They do not seem aware that it is not even a Constitution, formed by a single authority and subject to a single superintendence and control, but that it is a compact of many independent powers, every single one of which claims an equal right to understand it and to require its observance. However strong the cord of compact may be, there is a point of tension at which it will break. A few such doctrinal decisions... happening to bear immediately on two or three of the large States may induce them to join in arresting the march of government, and in arousing the co-States to pay some attention to what is passing, to bring back the compact to its original principles or to modify it legitimately by the express consent of the parties themselves, and not by the usurpation of their created agents. They imagine they can lead us into a consolidated government, while their road leads directly to its dissolution."
"Of all the doctrines which have ever been broached by the federal government, the novel one of the common law being in force and cognizable as an existing law in their courts, is to me the most formidable. All their other assumptions of un-given powers have been in the detail... -- solitary, inconsequential, timid things, in comparison with the audacious, barefaced and sweeping pretension to a system of law for the United States, without the adoption of their Legislature, and so infinitely beyond their power to adopt. If this assumption be yielded to, the State courts may be shut up, as there will then be nothing to hinder citizens of the same State suing each other in the federal courts in every case, as on a bond for instance, because the common law obliges payment of it, and the common law they say is their law."
"I do verily believe that if the principle were to prevail of a common law being in force in the United States (which principle possesses the general government at once of all the powers of the state governments, and reduces us to a single consolidated government), it would become the most corrupt government on the earth."
"I have been blamed for saying that a prevalence of the doctrines of consolidation would one day call for reformation or revolution. I answer by asking if a single State of the union would have agreed to the Constitution had it given all powers to the General Government? If the whole opposition to it did not proceed from the jealousy and fear of every State of being subjected to the other States in matters merely its own? And if there is any reason to believe the States more disposed now than then to acquiesce in this general surrender of all their rights and powers to a consolidated government, one and undivided?"
"Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis ) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them."
"If Congress fails to shield the States from dangers so palpable and so imminent, the States must shield themselves and meet the invader foot to foot."
"This branch of government [i.e., the State Judiciary] will have the weight of the conflict [between the general and the particular governments] on their hands, because they will be the last appeal of reason."
"It is important to strengthen the State governments; and as this cannot be done by any change in the Federal Constitution (for the preservation of that is all we need contend for), it must be done by the States themselves, erecting such barriers at the constitutional line as cannot be surmounted either by themselves of by the General Government. The only barrier in their power is a wise government. A weak one will lose ground in every contest."
"If every infraction of a compact of so many parties is to be resisted at once as a dissolution, none can ever be formed which would last one year. We must have patience and longer endurance then with our brethren while under delusion; give them time for reflection and experience of consequences; keep ourselves in a situation to profit by the chapter of accidents; and separate from our companions only when the sole alternatives left are the dissolution of our Union with them or submission to a government without limitation of powers. Between these two evils, when we must make a choice, there can be no hesitation. But in the meanwhile, the States should be watchful to note every material usurpation on their rights; to denounce them as they occur in the most peremptory terms; to protest against them as wrongs to which our present submission shall be considered, not as acknowledgments or precedents of right, but as a temporary yielding to the lesser evil, until their accumulation shall overweigh that of separation."
"We should never think of separation but for repeated and enormous violations."
"We will breast... every misfortune save that only of living under a government of unlimited powers. We owe every other sacrifice to ourselves, to our federal brethren, and to the world at large to pursue with temper and perseverance the great experiment which shall prove that man is capable of living in society, governing itself by laws self-imposed, and securing to its members the enjoyment of life, liberty, property and peace; and further to show that even when the government of its choice shall manifest a tendency to degeneracy, we are not at once to despair, but that the will and the watchfulness of its sounder parts will reform its aberrations, recall it to original and legitimate principles, and restrain it within the rightful limits of self-government."
"A single government... of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface... will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reformation and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable. Before the canker is become inveterate, before its venom has reached so much of the body politic as to get beyond control, remedy should be applied."
"The only greater [evil] than separation... [is] living under a government of discretion."
"If the States look with apathy on this silent descent of their government into the gulf [of consolidation] which is to swallow all, we have only to weep over the human character formed uncontrollable but by a rod of iron, and the blasphemers of man as incapable of self-government become his true historians."
The principle of separation of powers applies not only to the Federal and State governments, but also to the three branches within each government. When this separation is properly respected, no single branch can gather sufficient power to itself that will allow it to exercise despotic control over the whole nation.
"To make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and keep us distinct in domestic ones, gives the outline of the proper division of powers between the general and particular governments. But, to enable the federal head to exercise the powers given it to best advantage, it should be organized as the particular ones are, into legislative, executive, and judiciary."
"The first principle of a good government is certainly a distribution of its powers into executive, judiciary, and legislative, and a subdivision of the latter into two or three branches."
"The constitution has divided the powers of government into three branches, Legislative, Executive and Judiciary, lodging each with a distinct magistracy. The Legislative it has given completely to the Senate and House of Representatives. It has declared that the Executive powers shall be vested in the President, submitting special articles of it to a negative by the Senate, and it has vested the Judiciary power in the courts of justice, with certain exceptions also in favor of the Senate."
"My idea is that... the Federal government should be organized into Legislative, Executive and Judiciary, as are the State governments, and some peaceable means of enforcement devised for the Federal head over the States."
"The leading principle of our Constitution is the independence of the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary of each other."
"There are many [in Congress] who think that not to support the Executive is to abandon Government."
"[The] principle [of the Constitution] is that of a separation of Legislative, Executive and Judiciary functions except in cases specified. If this principle be not expressed in direct terms, it is clearly the spirit of the Constitution, and it ought to be so commented and acted on by every friend of free government."
"Our Constitution has wisely distributed the administration of the government into three distinct and independent departments. To each of these it belongs to administer law within its separate jurisdiction. The Judiciary in cases ofmeum andtuum , and of public crimes; the Executive, as to laws executive in their nature; the Legislature in various cases which belong to itself, and in the important function of amending and adding to the system."
"The three great departments having distinct functions to perform, must have distinct rules adapted to them. Each must act under its own rules, those of no one having any obligation on either of the others."
"The Constitution intended that the three great branches of the government should be co-ordinate and independent of each other. As to acts, therefore, which are to be done by either, it has given no control to another branch... Where different branches have to act in their respective lines, finally and without appeal, under any law, they may give to it different and opposite constructions... From these different constructions of the same act by different branches, less mischief arises than from giving to any one of them a control over the others."
"If the Legislature fails to pass laws for a census, for paying the Judges and other officers of government, for establishing a militia, for naturalization as prescribed by the Constitution, or if they fail to meet in Congress, the Judges cannot issue their mandamus to them; if the President fails to supply the place of a judge, to appoint other civil or military officers, to issue requisite commissions, the Judges cannot force him. They can issue their mandamus or distringas [i.e., property seizures] to no executive or legislative officer to enforce the fulfilment of their official duties any more that the President or Legislature may issue orders to the Judges or their officers. Betrayed by the English example, and unaware, as it should seem, of the control of our Constitution in this particular, they have at times overstepped their limit by undertaking to command executive officers in the discharge of their executive duties; but the Constitution, in keeping the three departments distinct and independent, restrains the authority of the Judges to judiciary organs as it does the Executive and Legislative to executive and legislative organs."
"It may be objected that the Senate may by continual negatives on the person, do what amounts to a negative on the grade [of an appointee], and so, indirectly, defeat [the] right of the President [to determine the grade]. But this would be a breach of trust; an abuse of power confided to the Senate, of which that body cannot be supposed capable. So the President has a power to convoke the Legislature, and the Senate might defeat that power by refusing to come. This equally amounts to a negative on the power of convoking. Yet nobody will say they possess such a negative, or would be capable of usurping it by such oblique means. If the Constitution had meant to give the Senate a negative on the grade or destination, as well as the person, it would have said so in direct terms, and not left it to be effected by a sidewind. It could never mean to give them the use of one power through the abuse of another."
"Legislative, Executive and Judiciary offices shall be kept forever separate, and no person exercising the one shall be capable of appointment to the others, or to either of them."
"Citizens, whether individually or in bodies corporate or associated, have a right to apply directly to any department of their government, whether Legislative, Executive or Judiciary, the exercise of whose powers they have a right to claim, and neither of these can regularly offer its intervention in a case belonging to the other."
"Where... petitioners have a right to petition their immediate representatives in Congress directly, I have deemed it neither necessary nor proper for them to pass their petition through the intermediate channel of the Executive. But as the petitioners may be ignorant of this, and, confiding in it, may omit the proper measure, I have usually put such petitions into the hands of the Representatives of the State, informally to be used or not as they see best, and considering me as entirely disclaiming any agency in the case."
"It seems proper that every person should address himself directly to the department to which the Constitution has allotted his case; and that the proper answer to such from any other department is, ’that it is not to us that the Constitution has assigned the transaction of this business.’"
"The courts of justice exercise the sovereignty of this country in judiciary matters, are supreme in these, and liable neither to control nor opposition from any other branch of the government."
"The interference of the Executive can rarely be proper where that of the Judiciary is so."
"For the Judiciary to interpose in the Legislative department between the constituent and his representative, to control them in the exercise of their functions or duties towards each other, to overawe the free correspondence which exists and ought to exist between them, to dictate what may pass between them and to punish all others, to put the representative into jeopardy of criminal prosecution, of vexation, expense and punishment before the Judiciary if his communications, public or private, do not exactly square with their ideas of fact or right or with their designs of wrong, is to put the Legislative department under the feet of the Judiciary, is to leave us, indeed, the shadow but to take away the substance of representation, which requires essentially that the representative be as free as his constituents would be, that the same interchange of sentiment be lawful between him and them as would be lawful among themselves were they in the personal transaction of their own business; is to do away the influence of the people over the proceedings of their representatives by excluding from their knowledge by the terror of punishment, all but such information or misinformation as may suit their own views."
"If the three powers maintain their mutual independence on each other our Government may last long, but not so if either can assume the authorities of the other."
"[A very capital defect in a constitution is when] all the powers of government, legislative, executive and judiciary result to the legislative body. The concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one."
"[Where] there [is] no barrier between the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments, the legislature may seize the whole... Having seized it and possessing a right to fix their own quorum, they may reduce that quorum to one, whom they may call a chairman, speaker, dictator, or by any other name they please."
"I said to [President Washington] that if the equilibrium of the three great bodies, Legislative, Executive and Judiciary, could be preserved, if the Legislature could be kept independent, I should never fear the result of such a government; but that I could not but be uneasy when I saw that the Executive had swallowed up the Legislative branch."
"Nor should [a legislative body] be deluded by the integrity of their own purposes and conclude that... unlimited powers will never be abused because themselves are not disposed to abuse them. They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government and be spread by them through the body of the people, when they will purchase the voices of the people and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes."
"Mankind soon learn to make interested uses of every right and power which they possess or may assume. The public money and public liberty, intended to have been deposited with three branches of magistracy but found inadvertently to be in the hands of one only, will soon be discovered to be sources of wealth and dominion to those who hold them; distinguished, too, by this tempting circumstance: that they are the instrument as well as the object of acquisition. With money we will get men, said Caesar, and with men we will get money."
"It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order; and those who have once got an ascendency and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantages."
Through their right of suffrage, the people exercise their sovereign power over government. If things are not going right, they can throw one set of interests out and elect another that promises a revision of the course that government has taken. Thus, elective government is an essential part of the process of control by the people.
"Elective government [is] calculated to promote [my fellow citizens’] happiness, peculiarly adapted to their genius, habits, and situation, and the best permanent corrective of the errors or abuses of those entrusted with power."
"Election [is] a fundamental member in the structure of government."
"The Legislative and Executive branches may sometimes err, but elections and dependence will bring them to rights."
"[It is] by their votes the people exercise their sovereignty."
"There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents... There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And, indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these naturalaristoi into the offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency."
"I hold it to be one of the distinguishing excellences of elective over hereditary successions, that the talents which nature has provided in sufficient proportion, should be selected by the society for the government of their affairs, rather than that this should be transmitted through the loins of knaves and fools, passing from the debauches of the table to those of the bed."
"Yet by such worthless beings is a great nation to be governed."
"Our executive and legislative authorities are the choice of the nation, and possess the nation’s confidence. They are chosen because they possess it."
"Men of high learning and abilities are few in every country; and by taking in those who are not so, the able part of the body have their hands tied by the unable."
"With us, the people (by which is meant the mass of individuals composing the society)... being unqualified for the management of affairs requiring intelligence above the common level yet competent judges of human character, they choose for their management representatives, some by themselves immediately, others by electors chosen by themselves."
"I have ever observed that a choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished for its wisdom. This first secretion from them is usually crude and heterogeneous. But give to those so chosen by the people a second choice themselves and they generally will choose wise men."
"The frequent recurrence of this chastening operation [of elections] can alone restrain the propensity of governments to enlarge expense beyond income."
"Our President is chosen by ourselves, directly in practice, for we vote for A as elector only on the condition he will vote for B, our representatives by ourselves immediately, our Senate [now elected directly --ed.] and judges of law through electors chosen by ourselves. And we believe that this proximate choice and power of removal is the best security which experience has sanctioned for ensuring an honest conduct in the functionaries of society."
"When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the Judges from that is quite dangerous enough."
"I love to see honest and honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses nor pursue measures by which they may profit and then profit by their measures."
"Men possessing minds of the first order and who have had opportunities of being known and of acquiring the general confidence do not abound in any country beyond the wants of the country."
"I think... that it is for the public interest to encourage sacrifices and services by rewarding them, and that they should weigh to a certain point in the decision between candidates."
"An unprincipled man, let his other fitnesses be what they will, ought never to be employed."
"It is from the supporters of regular government only that the pledge of life, fortune and honor is worthy of confidence."
"Our public economy is such as to offer drudgery and subsistence only to those entrusted with its administration--a wise and necessary precaution against the degeneracy of the public servants."
"That love of order and obedience to the laws, which so remarkably characterize the citizens of the United States, are sure pledges of internal tranquility; and the elective franchise, if guarded as the ark of our safety, will peaceably dissipate all combinations to subvert a Constitution, dictated by the wisdom, and resting on the will of the people."
"A worthy portion of our fellow-citizens... consider themselves as in duty bound to support the constituted authorities of every branch, and to reserve their opposition to the period of election."
"We believe that... proximate choice and power of removal [are] the best security which experience has sanctioned for ensuring an honest conduct in the functionaries of society."
"Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights."
"All can be done peaceably, by the people confining their choice of Representatives and Senators to persons attached to republican government and the principles of 1776, not office-hunters, but farmers, whose interests are entirely agricultural. Such men are the true representatives of the great American interest, and are alone to be relied on for expressing the proper American sentiments."
"A jealous care of the right of election by the people--a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided--I deem [one of] the essential principles of our Government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration."
"The right of representation in the legislature [is] a right inestimable to [the people], and formidable to tyrants only."
"I [am] for extending the right of suffrage (or in other words the rights of a citizen) to all who [have] a permanent intention of living in the country. Take what circumstances you please as evidence of this: either the having resided a certain time, or having a family, or having property--any or all of them. Whoever intends to live in a country must wish that country well, and has a natural right of assisting in the preservation of it."
"The basis of our [state] Constitution is in opposition to the principle of equal political rights [if it refuses] to all but freeholders any participation in the natural right of self-government... However nature may by mental or physical disqualifications have marked infants and the weaker sex for the protection rather than the direction of government, yet among the men who either pay or fight for their country, no line of right can be drawn. The exclusion of a majority of our freemen from the right of representation is merely arbitrary, and an usurpation of the minority over the majority."
"One-half of our brethren who fight and pay taxes are excluded, like Helots, from the rights of representation, as if society were instituted for the soil, and not for the men inhabiting it."
"Experience and reflection have but more and more confirmed me in the particular importance of... equal representation."
"Every male citizen of the commonwealth liable to taxes or to militia duty in any county, shall have a right to vote for representatives for that county to the legislature."
"Were our State a pure democracy, in which all its inhabitants should meet together to transact all their business, there would yet be excluded from their deliberations, 1. Infants, until arrived at years of discretion. 2. Women, who, to prevent depravation of morals and ambiguity of issue, could not mix promiscuously in the public meetings of men. 3. Slaves, from whom the unfortunate state of things with us takes away the rights of will and of property. Those then who have no will could be permitted to exercise none in the popular assembly; and of course, could delegate none to an agent in a representative assembly. The business, in the first case, would be done by qualified citizens only."
"The fool has as great a right to express his opinion by vote as the wise, because he is equally free, and equally master of himself."
"Society has certainly a right to disavow him whom they offer, and are permitted to qualify for the duties of a citizen."
"My opinion has always been in favor of [a general suffrage]. Still, I find some very honest men who, thinking the possession of some property necessary to give due independence of mind, are for restraining the elective franchise to property."
"It has been thought that corruption is restrained by confining the right of suffrage to a few of the wealthier of the people; but it would be more effectually restrained by an extension of that right to such numbers as would bid defiance to the means of corruption."
"I believe we may lessen the danger of buying and selling votes by making the number of voters too great for any means of purchase."
"[In 1800,] the nation declared its will by dismissing functionaries of one principle and electing those of another in the two branches, executive and legislative, submitted to their election. Over the judiciary department, the Constitution had deprived them of their control."
"I think the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our constitutions: to leave to the citizens the free election and separation of thearistoi from the pseudo-aristoi , of the wheat from the chaff. In general they will elect the real good and wise. In some instances wealth may corrupt and birth blind them, but not in sufficient degree to endanger the society."
"It will be forever seen that of bodies of men even elected by the people, there will always be a greater proportion aristocratic than among their constituents."
"In a government like ours, the standing of a man well with this portion of the public [i.e., in Washington] must weigh against a considerable difference of other qualifications."
"If our fellow citizens, now solidly republican, will sacrifice favoritism towards men for the preservation of principle, we may hope that no divisions will again endanger a degeneracy in our government."
"I think it is a duty in those entrusted with the administration of their affairs to conform themselves to the decided choice of their constituents."
"Perfection in wisdom as well as in integrity is neither required nor expected in [the] agents [of government]. It belongs not to man... Were every man engaged in rendering service to the public, bound in his body and goods to indemnification for all his errors, we must commit our public affairs to the paupers of the nation, to the sweepings of hospitals and poor-houses, who, having nothing to lose, would have nothing to risk. The wise know their weakness too well to assume infallibility; and he who knows most, knows best how little he knows... The spirit of our law... expects not impossibilities. It has consecrated the principle that its servants are not answerable for honest error of judgment... He who has done his duty honestly, and according to his best skill and judgment, stands acquitted before God and man."
"The newspapers [of England say] that Mr. Madison and myself are personally her enemies. Such an idea is unworthy a man of sense; as we should have been unworthy our trusts could we have felt such a motive of public action."
"I,... having no motive to public service but the public satisfaction, would certainly retire the moment that satisfaction should appear to languish."
"Nothing is more incumbent on the old than to know when they should get out of the way and relinquish to younger successors the honors they can no longer earn, and the duties they can no longer perform."
"I am for responsibilities at short periods, seeing neither reason nor safety in making public functionaries independent of the nation for life, or even for long terms of years."