Quote

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.

Alexander Hamilton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alexander Hamilton
Persons
Mere
Regulation
Allurements
Ever
General
Description
Divest
Feel
Authority
Appears
Federalism
Feels
Loss
Temptation
Entrusted
Hold
Administration
Slender
State
Discover
Authorities
States
Police
Confess
Government
Ambition
Domestic

More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

Image
The true principle of government is this - make the system compleat in its structure give a perfect proportion and balance to its parts and the powers you give it will never affect your security.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The awful discretion, which a court of impeachments must necessarily have, to doom to honor or to infamy the most confidential and the most distinguished characters of the community, forbids the commitment of the trust to a small number of persons.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
If the exercise of power of internal taxation by the Union should be discovered on experiment to be really inconvenient, the federal government may then forbear the use of it . . .
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The passions of a revolution are apt to hurry even good men into excesses.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
It will be well to advert to the proportion between the objects that will require a federal provision in respect to revenue and those which will require a state provision. We shall discover that the former are altogether unlimited and that the latter are circumscribed within very moderate bounds.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
It is a singular capriciousness of the human mind, that after all the admonitions we have had from experience on this head, there should still be found men, who object to the new constitution for deviating from a principle which has been found the bane of the old.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Tyranny has perhaps oftener grown out of the assumptions of power, called for, on pressing exigencies, by a defective constitution, than out of the full exercise of the largest constitutional authorities.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
[W]e must extend the authority of the Union to the persons of the citizens - the only proper objects of government.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
This power ought to be coextensive with all the possible combinations of such circumstances and ought to be under the direction of the same councils which are appointed to preside over the common defense.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude, that the fiery and destructive passions of war, reign in the human breast, with much more powerful sway, than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
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.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Hard words are very rarely useful. Real firmness is good for every thing. Strut is good for nothing.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The variety of more minute interests, which will necessarily fall under the superintendence of the local administrations . . . cannot be particularized without involving a detail too tedious and uninteresting to compensate for the instruction it might afford.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
I expect we shall be told, that the Militia of the country is its natural bulwark, and would be at all times equal to the national defence...The facts, which from our own experience forbid a reliance of this kind, are too recent to permit us to be the dupes of such a suggestion.
Alexander Hamilton