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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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A powerful, victorious ally is yet another name for master.
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A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.
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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 of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.
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Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.
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Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.
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Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
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The Courts must declare the sense of the law and if they should be disposed to exercise will instead of judgement the consequences would be the substitution of their pleasure for that of the legislative body.
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If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.
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I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons entrusted with the administration of the general government could ever feel to divest the States of the authorities of that description. The regulation of the mere domestic police of a State appears to me to hold out slender allurements to ambition.
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The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself and can never be erased.
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Its objects are CONTRACTS with foreign nations which have the force of law, but derive it from the obligations of good faith.
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War, like most other things, is a science to be acquired and perfected by diligence, by perserverance, by time, and by practice.
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But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States.
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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.
Alexander Hamilton
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When human laws contradict or discountenance the means, which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws, and so become null and void.
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If there are such things as political axioms, the propriety of the judicial power of a government being co-extensive with its legislative, may be ranked among the number.
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The militia is a voluntary force not associated or under the control of the States except when called out [ when called into actual service] a permanent or long standing force would be entirely different in make-up and call.
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The people are turbulent and changing they seldom judge right or make good decision.
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A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired.
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