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Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society.

James Madison

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James Madison
Age: 85 †
Born: 1751
Born: March 16
Died: 1836
Died: June 28
4Th U.S. President
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Port Conway
Virginia
James Madison
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No free country has ever been without Parties, which are a natural offspring of freedom.
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It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.
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The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.
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[In a democracy] a common passion or interest will, in almost every case , be felt by a majority of the whole a communication and concert results from the form of government itself and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.
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[It] is indispensable that some provision should be made for defending the Community agst [against] the incapicity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate.
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Government is instituted to protect property of every sort as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own.
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Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.
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Who does not see that . . . the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?
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America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.
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Power is of an encroaching nature.
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The security intended to the general liberty consists in the frequent election and in the rotation of the members of Congress.
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In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the disease incident to republican government.
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Man is known to be a selfish, as well as a social being.
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In all the co-temporary discussions and comments, which the Constitution underwent, it was constantly justified and recommended on the ground, that the powers not given to the government, were withheld from it.
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Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
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We have seen that the tendency of republican governments is to an aggrandizement of the legislative at the expense of the other departments. The appeals to the people, therefore, would usually be made by the executive and judiciary departments.
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I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse and in a republican government more than in any other.
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The proposed Constitution is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal constitution but a composition of both.
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I am unable to conceive that the state legislatures which must feel so many motives to watch, and which possess so many means of counteracting the federal legislature, would fail either to detect or to defeat a conspiracy of the latter against the liberties of their common constituencies.
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War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.
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