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Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions-a government of force, and a government of laws the first is the definition of despotism-the last, of liberty.

Alexander Hamilton

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There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the State governments . . . -I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice.
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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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[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes - rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments.
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The Liberty of the press consists in the right to publish with impunity truth with good motives for justifiable ends, though reflecting on government, magistracy, or individuals.
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[T]here is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution.
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What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws.
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This [a state militia system] appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.
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Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
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What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statutes the next.
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The origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a voluntary compact, between the rulers and the ruled and must be liable to such limitations, as are necessary for the security of the absolute rights of the latter for what original title can any man or set of men have, to govern others, except their own consent?
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To attempt to enumerate the complicated variety of mischiefs in the whole system of the social economy, which proceed from a neglect of the maxims that uphold public credit, and justify the solicitude manifested by the House on this point, would be an improper intrusion on their time and patience.
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Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.
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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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I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.
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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.
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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There are men who could neither be distressed nor won into a sacrifice of their duty but this stern virtue is the growth of few soils: And in the main it will be found, that a power over a man's support is a power over his will.
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To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted.
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In the usual progress of things, the necessities of a nation in every stage of its existence will be found at least equal to its resources.
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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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