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The passions of a revolution are apt to hurry even good men into excesses.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
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There is a contagion in example which few men have sufficient force of mind to resist.
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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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I trust that the proposed Constitution afford a genuine specimen of representative government and republican government and that it will answer, in an eminent degree, all the beneficial purposes of society.
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It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend they always reason right about the means of promoting it.
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Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community require time to mature them for execution.
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To presume a want of motives for such contests . . . would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.
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[T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution.
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The Christian Constitutional Society, its object is first: The support of the Christian religion. Second: The support of the United States.
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Every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes by force of the term a right to employ all the means requisite . . . to the attainment of the ends of such power.
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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.
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Man is either governed by his own laws - freedom - or the laws of another - slavery. Are you willing to become slaves? Will you give up your freedom, your life and your property without a single struggle? No man has a right to rule over his fellow creatures.
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The idea of governing at all times by the simple force of law (which we have been told is the only admissible principle of republican government) has no place but in the reveries of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental instruction.
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[If you understood the natural rights of mankind,] [y]ou would be convinced that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that, and cannot be wrested from any people without the most manifest violation of justice.
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[A] power equal to every possible contingency must exist somewhere in the government . . .
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The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right.
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The laws of Congress are restricted to a certain sphere, and when they depart from this sphere, they are no longer supreme or binding.
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[W]ar is a question, under our constitution, not of Executive, but of Legislative cognizance. It belongs to Congress to say whether the Nation shall of choice dismiss the olive branch and unfurl the banners of War.
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The civil jury is a valuable safeguard to liberty.
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If it be said that the legislative body are themselves the constitutional judges of their own powers, and that the construction they put upon them is conclusive upon the other departments, it may be answered, that this cannot be the natural presumption, where it is not be collected from any particular provisions in the Constitution.
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A LAW, by the very meaning of the term, includes supremacy. It is a rule which those to whom it is prescribed are bound to observe. This results from every political association.
Alexander Hamilton