Historical voices

The defect was not in the principle, but in the distribution of power.

It has of itself no rights; they are altogether duties.

Government is not a trade which any man, or any body of men, has a right to set up and exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust, in right of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is always resumeable.

The only instance in which a compact can take place between the people and those who exercise the government, is, that the people shall pay them, while they choose to employ them.

To suppose that any government can be a party in a compact with the whole people, is to suppose it to have existence before it can have a right to exist.

The compact was that of the people with each other, to produce and constitute a government.

It was not the act of congress, because it is repugnant to the principles of representative government that a body should give power to itself.

When this is lost, government is but a child in power; and though, like the old government in France, it may harass individuals for a while, it but facilitates its own fall.

This instance, like that of the national assembly in France, sufficiently shows, that the strength of government does not consist in any thing itself, but in the attachment of a nation, and the interest which a people feel in supporting it.

Nothing on the part of congress was compulsive; yet, in this situation, it was more faithfully and affectionately obeyed than was any government in Europe.

Here we see a regular process--a government issuing out of a constitution, formed by the people in their original character; and that constitution serving, not only as an authority, but as a law of control to the government.

The real volume, not of history, but of facts, is directly before us, unmutilated by contrivance, or the errors of tradition.

All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation.

A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution, is power without a right.

The government of a free country, properly speaking, is not in the persons, but in the laws.

It is the popery of government; a thing kept up to amuse the ignorant, and quiet them into taxes.

It can only be by blinding the understanding of man, and making him believe that government is some wonderful mysterious thing, that excessive revenues are obtained.

He examines the cost, and compares it with the advantages; and above all, he does not adopt the slavish custom of following what in other governments are called Leaders.

Every man is a proprietor in government, and considers it a necessary part of his business to understand.

In the representative system, the reason for everything must publicly appear.

Nations can have no secrets; and the secrets of courts, like those of individuals, are always their defects.

There is no place for mystery; nowhere for it to begin.

But the case is, that the representative system diffuses such a body of knowledge throughout a nation, on the subject of government, as to explode ignorance and preclude imposition.

I presume that no man in his sober senses will compare the character of any of the kings of Europe with that of General Washington.