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This policy of supplying by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, both private and public.

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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President Madison
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Conscience is the most sacred of all property.
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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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In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by Power. In America ... charters of power [are] granted by liberty.
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We are teaching the world the great truth that Governments do better without Kings & Nobles than with them.
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Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.
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In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.
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THE Constitution proposed by the convention may be considered under two general points of view. The FIRST relates to the sum or quantity of power which it vests in the government, including the restraints imposed on the States. The SECOND, to the particular structure of the government, and the distribution of this power among its branches.
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What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
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[The proposed establishment] will have a . . . tendency to banish our Citizens. . . . To superadd a fresh motive to emigration by revoking the liberty which they now enjoy, would be the same species of folly which has dishonoured and depopulated flourishing kingdoms.
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The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.
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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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Resolved, That the General Assembly of Virginia, doth unequivocally express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic, and that they will support the Government of the United States in all measures warranted by the former.
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I acknowledge, in the ordinary course of government, that the exposition of the laws and Constitution devolves upon the judicial. But I beg to know upon what principle it can be contended that any one department draws from the Constitution greater powers than another in marking out the limits of the powers of the several departments.
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The best service that can be rendered to a Country, next to that of giving it liberty, is in diffusing the mental improvement equally essential to the preservation, and the enjoyment of the blessing.
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Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.
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If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare... they may appoint teachers in every state... The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.
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Every answer he [President John Adams] gives to his addressers unmasks more and more his principles and views. His language to the young men at Philadelphia is the most abominable and degrading that could fall from the lips of the first magistrate of an independent people, and particularly from a Revolutionary patriot.
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A victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master.
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The invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents.
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It may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more constant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.
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