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To presume a want of motives for such contests . . . would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
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These are not vague inferences . . . but they are solid conclusions drawn from the natural and necessary progress of human affairs.
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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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The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment on a uniformity of principles and habits on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.
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In the main it will be found that a power over a man's support [salary] is a power over his will.
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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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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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[V]igor of government is essential to the security of liberty.
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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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I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.
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The experience of past ages may inform us, that when the circumstances of a people render them distressed, their rulers generally recur to severe, cruel, and oppressive measures. Instead of endeavoring to establish their authority in the affection of their subjects, they think they have no security but in their fear.
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The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation.
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A promise must never be broken.
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Hence, in a state of nature, no man had any moral power to deprive another of his life, limbs, property, or liberty nor the least authority to command or exact obedience from him, except that which arose from the ties of consanguinity.
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Necessity, especially in politics, often occasions false hopes, false reasonings, and a system of measures, correspondingly erroneous.
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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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It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of violent love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is too apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten, that the vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty.
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The vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty. . . . a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.
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While the constitution continues to be read, and its principles known, the states, must, by every rational man, be considered as essential component parts of the union and therefore the idea of sacrificing the former to the latter is totally inadmissible.
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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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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.
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