Thomas Paine

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.