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Constitutions should consist only of general provisions the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
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The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares.
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A promise must never be broken.
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Establish that a Government may decline a provision for its debts, though able to make it, and you overthrow all public morality, you unhinge all the principles that must preserve the limits of free constitutions.
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The system is the best that the present views and circumstances of the country will permit.
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It is just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good.
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To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection.
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But might not his [the president's] nomination be overruled? I grant it might, yet this could only be to make place for another nomination by himself. The person ultimately appointed must be object of his preference, though perhaps not in the first degree. It is also not very probable that his nomination would often be overruled.
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Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.
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[H]owever weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties.
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To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.
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When you assemble from your several counties in the Legislature, were every member to be guided only by the apparent interest of his county, government would be impracticable. There must be a perpetual accomodation and sacrifice of local advantage to general expediency.
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It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary and it is one among a multitude of proofs, how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and refinement is to lead men astray from the plainest paths of reason and conviction.
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It will be well to advert to the proportion between the objects that will require a federal provision in respect to revenue and those which will require a state provision. We shall discover that the former are altogether unlimited and that the latter are circumscribed within very moderate bounds.
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Common interest may always be reckoned upon as the surest bond of sympathy.
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As the duties of superintending the national defense and of securing the public peace against foreign or domestic violence involve a provision for casualties and dangers to which no possible limits can be assigned, the power of making that provision ought to know no other bounds than the exigencies of the nation and the resources of the community.
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Experience is the oracle of truth and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred.
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A government, the constitution of which renders it unfit to be trusted with all the powers which a free people ought to delegate to any government, would be an unsafe and improper depositary of the NATIONAL INTERESTS.
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There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of interested and factious men are often mistaken for patriotism.
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Give all the power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all the power to the few, they will oppress the many.
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Americans rouse - be unanimous, be virtuous, be firm, exert your courage, trust in Heaven, and nobly defy the enemies both of God and man!
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