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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.

Alexander Hamilton

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Self-preservation is the first principle of our nature.
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The institution of delegated power implies that there is a portion of virtue and honor among mankind which may be a reasonable foundation of confidence.
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States, like individuals, who observe their engagements, are respected and trusted: while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct.
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When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation.
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[I]n framing a Government for a nation we ought, in those provisions which are designed to be permanent, to calculate not on temporary, but on permanent causes of expence.
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A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people.
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It is presumable that no country will be able to borrow of foreigners upon better terms than the United States, because none can, perhaps, afford so good security.
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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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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.
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The people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.
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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.
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It is just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good.
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Remember civil and religious liberty always go together: if the foundation of the one be sapped, the other will fall of course.
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The increasing remoteness of consanguinity is everyday diminishing the force of the family compact between France and Spain. And politicians have ever with great reason considered the ties of blood as feeble and precarious links of political connection.
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Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.
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The attributes of sovereignty are now enjoyed by every state in the Union.
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How can you trust people who are poor and own no property? ... Inequality of property will exist as long as liberty exists.
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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.
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I never expect to see a perfect work from an imperfect man.
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The art of reading is to skip judiciously.
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