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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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The principal purposes to be answered by union are these the common defense of the members the preservation of the public peace as well against internal convulsions as external attacks the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries.
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The laws of certain states . . . give an ownership in the service of Negroes as personal property . . . . But being men, by the laws of God and nature, they were capable of acquiring liberty - and when the captor in war . . . thought fit to give them liberty, the gift was not only valid, but irrevocable.
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An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.
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The idea of restraining the legislative authority, in the means of providing for the national defense, is one of those refinements which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.
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Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights and to maintain tranquillity you must be respectable even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.
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Would they not fear that citizens not less tenacious than conscious of their rights would flock from the remotest extremes of their respective states to the places of election, to overthrow their tyrants, and to substitute men who would be disposed to avenge the violated majesty of the people?
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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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I would die to preserve the law upon a solid foundation but take away liberty, and the foundation is destroyed.
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Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions.
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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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The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws.
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The instrument by which it [government] must act are either the AUTHORITY of the laws or FORCE. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is an end to liberty!
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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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There is a contagion in example which few men have sufficient force of mind to resist.
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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.
Alexander Hamilton
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Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct, that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?
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The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.
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That there may happen cases in which the national government may be necessitated to resort to force, cannot be denied.
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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 is a singular advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end purposed - that is, an extension of the revenue.
Alexander Hamilton