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[A] mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands.

James Madison

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James Madison
Age: 85 †
Born: 1751
Born: March 16
Died: 1836
Died: June 28
4Th U.S. President
Diplomat
Lawyer
Philosopher
Politician
Slaveholder
Statesperson
Writer
Port Conway
Virginia
James Madison
Jr.
President Madison
J. Madison
Madison
Limits
Constitutional
Lead
Guard
Political
Concentration
Demarcation
Hands
Department
Encroachments
Government
Several
Parchment
Sufficient
Encroachment
Powers
Tyrannical
Mere
Departments

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That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.
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The essence of Government is power and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
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No free country has ever been without Parties, which are a natural offspring of freedom.
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The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself.
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Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
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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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No power over the freedom of religion [is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution.
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As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.
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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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But the mere circumstance of complexion cannot deprive them of the character of men.
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Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.
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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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Experience has instructed us that no skill in the science of government has yet been able to discriminate and define, with sufficient certainty, its three great provinces the legislative, executive, and judiciary or even the privileges and powers of the different legislative branches.
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[Christianity] existed and flourishes, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them.
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There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation, than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises.
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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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But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.
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[In government] the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other-that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.
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A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States.
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If this spirit shall ever be so far debased, as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty.
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