The encouragement and protection of the good subjects of any state, and the suppression and punishment of bad ones, are the principal objects for which all authority is instituted, and the line in which it ought to operate.
From his series "The American Crisis," this passage defines the fundamental purpose and operation of governmental authority.
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In those which proceed from the former cause, the temper becomes incensed and soured; and the redress, obtained by danger, is too often sullied by revenge.
There ought, therefore, to be in every nation a method of occasionally ascertaining the state of public opinion with respect to government.
The poor, in all countries, are naturally both peaceable and grateful in all reforms in which their interest and happiness is included.
Reason and discussion, persuasion and conviction, become the weapons in the contest, and it is only when those are attempted to be suppressed that recourse is had to violence.