Albert Beveridge

It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished....

There the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged....

It is but too true that we have a sect preaching up & pouting after an English constitution of king, lords, & commons, & whose heads are itching for crowns, coronets & mitres....

That which a whole nation chooses to do, it has a right to do" was one of them.

Even majorities have no right to do as they please; if so, what security has the individual citizen?

Under the unrestrained rule of the majority "the principles of liberty must still be the sport of arbitrary power, and the hideous form of despotism must lay aside the diadem and the scepter, only to assume the party-colored garments of…

The only genuine liberty consists in a mean equally distant from the despotism of an individual and of a million," asserted Publicola.

There seems to be something infectious in the example of a powerful and enlightened nation verging towards democracy, which imposes on the human mind, and leads human reason in fetters....

It wears the semblance of being the sense of mankind, breaking loose from the shackles which had been imposed by artifice, and asserting the freedom, and the dignity, of his nature.

My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated.

The successes of republicanism in France have given the coup de grace to their prospects, and I hope to their projects.

The American partisans of the French Revolution accused this man, who had fought for us in our War for Independence, of deserting the cause of liberty because he had striven to hold the Gallic uprising within orderly bounds.

This all-important subject had attracted the serious thought of the people more than had the form of government, foreign policy, or even taxes.

It has given me much pleasure to hear every part of your conduct spoken of with high approbation, and particularly your dispensing with ceremony, occasionally walking the streets; while Adams is never seen but in his carriage and six.

Will not this, or something like it, be the wretched fate of our country?...

Not more certain is it that the boldest streams must disappear, if the fountains which fed them be emptied, than was the dissolution of the democratic societies of America, when the Jacobin clubs were denounced by France.

Those whom Jefferson led profoundly believed that they were fighting for human rights; and in their view and as a practical matter at that particular time this sacred cause meant State Rights.

For everything which they felt to be oppressive, unjust, and antagonistic to liberty, came from the National Government.

Not a circumstance of the public lives of these two men and scarcely an incident of their private experience but was shaped and colored by this vast series of human events.

All the rights of humanity ... are daily violated with impunity ... universal anarchy prevails....

There is no succour ... against mobs & factions which have assumed despotic power.

We hear, incessantly, from the old foes of the Constitution 'this is unconstitutional and that is,' and, indeed, what is not?

Nobody could deny the existence of such powers--yet they were not granted by the language of the fundamental law.

But this was not the ordinary meaning of the word and it was by this usual and customary understanding of terms that the Constitution must be interpreted.

Our children see this and learn to imitate it....