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In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not the executive department. ... The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man.

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
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James Madison
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Every new and successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance.
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War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement
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The real difference of interests, lay not between large and small, but between the Northern and Southern states. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed a line of discrimination.
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A public debt is a public curse.
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Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.
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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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On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve.
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The better proof of reverence for that holy name would be not to profane it by making it a topic of legislative discussion.
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To provide employment for the poor, and support for the indigent, is among the primary, and, at the same time, not least difficult cares of the public authority.
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The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it.
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We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.
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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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I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic.
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The magnitude of this evil among us is so deeply felt, and so universally acknowledged, that no merit could be greater than that of devising a satisfactory remedy for it.
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The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.
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As to the permanent interest of individuals in the aggregated interests of the community, and in the proverbial maxim, that honesty is the best policy, present temptation is often found to be an overmatch for those considerations.
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I love the summer.... the warm weather, hangin out with friends, and swimmin in the warm water..... but most importantly grabin a glove and a ball and playin some softball in the heat.
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Resistance to tyranny is service to God.
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The great desideratum in Government is, so to modify the sovereignty as that it may be sufficiently neutral between different parts of the Society to controul one part from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society.
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Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of a senate, is the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence first of a majority of the people, and then of a majority of the states.
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