Quotes About Government

Washington as public sentiment began to lean toward railroad reform.

By now, monarchy and aristocracy were standard code words for Hamilton and the Federalists.

No governm[en]t could give us tranquillity and happiness at home, which did not possess sufficient stability and strength to make us respectable abroad.

Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty.

Clearly, the U.S. government condoned something that, in modern phraseology, could be termed industrial espionage. Building upon this precedent, Hamilton put the full authority of the Treasury behind the piracy of British trade secrets.

Hamilton said, "A nation without a national government is, in my view, an awful spectacle. The establishment of a constitution in [a] time of profound peace by the voluntary consent of a whole people is a prodigy, to the completion of which I look forward with trembling anxiety.

Jefferson recorded the story of Hamilton and Adams singing the praises of the British constitution; of Hamilton supposedly raising a toast to George III at a St. Andrew's Society dinner in New York; and of Hamilton declaring at a dinner party that "there was no stability, no security in any kind of government but a monarchy.

In the end, nobody would do more than Alexander Hamilton to infuse life into this parchment and make it the working mandate of the American government.

Washington contrived a statesmanlike compromise between Hamilton's truculence and Randolph's civility. He issued a proclamation telling the insurgents to desist by September 1, or the government would send in a militia. At the same time, he announced that a three-man commission would confer with citizens

There is no road to despotism more sure or more to be dreaded than that which begins at anarchy.

September 9, Washington had had enough. "If the laws are to be trampled upon with impunity," he said, "and a minority is to dictate to the majority, there is an end put at one stroke to republican government.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

A prominent antifederalist had already warned him that "rather than to adopt the Constitution, I would risk a government of Jew, Turk or infidel.

Endorsing still another form of government activism, Hamilton claimed that nothing had assisted Britain's industry more than its network of public roads and canals. He therefore touted internal improvements—what we would today call public infrastructure—to meld America's scattered regional markets into a single unified economy.

As always, Hamilton cited constitutional grounds for his program, invoking the clause that gave Congress authority to "provide for the common defence and general welfare."59 Owing in part to Hamilton's generous construction of this clause, it was to acquire enormous significance, allowing the government to enact programs to advance social welfare.

Hamilton's first act in Philadelphia paid homage to Franklin. The sage had opposed salaries for executive-branch officers, hoping such a measure would produce civic-minded leaders, not government officials feeding at the public trough. Others

To safeguard the public interest, the government would become a minority stockholder in the bank and able to vote for directors.

Madison wrote, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." The two shared a grim vision of the human condition, even if Hamilton's had the blacker tinge. They both wanted to erect barriers against irrational popular impulses and tyrannical minorities and majorities.

Hamilton lent his opinion the erudition of a treatise and the warmth of a manifesto. The essence of it was that government must possess the means to attain ends for which it was established or the bonds of society would dissolve. To liberate the government from a restrictive reading of the Constitution, Hamilton refined the doctrine of "implied powers"—that is, that the government had the right to employ all means necessary to carry out powers mentioned in the Constitution.

If education depended upon healthy tax rolls, then they would lift the entire tax base of the South.

Back at 23 Wall Street, Lamont received a wire from Jack Morgan expressing disgust with Mexico. Jack thought it a point of family honor to make sure Mexico repaid his father's 1899 loan: "I did not think any Government of modern times would so frankly proclaim its complete dishonesty or its abandonment of all decent finance or morals. Hope you did not have too trying a time, and congratulate you in getting out before they stole your pocketbook or watch.

A great business investment, religion. I'll take it over government bonds anytime.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect and defend" it.

All the romance of feeling that men in high places are above personal considerations and act only from motives of pure patriotism, and for the general good of the public has been destroyed. An inside view proves too truly very much the reverse. —ULYSSES S. GRANT to WILLIAM T. SHERMAN, September 18, 1867