[The] most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally be expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain improper [ascendancy] in our councils.
Tag: Alexander Hamilton
(1755–1804) The first United States Secretary of the Treasury, a Founding Father, economist, and political philosopher.
Government must pay its debts
Allow a government to decline paying its debts and you overthrow all public morality — you unhinge all the principles that preserve the limits of free constitutions. Nothing can more affect national prosperity than a constant and systematic attention to extinguish the present debt and to avoid as much as possibly the incurring of any new debt.
The Constitution is the law of the land
No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.
Exclude foreign influence
Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence.
The cure for bad government
The natural cure for an ill-administration … is a change of men.
At your feet or at your throat
Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.
Enthusiasm in liberty
There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.
Diversity of enterprise for the wealth of a nation
To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted.
Redressing federal government excess
If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.
Instruments of government
The instruments, by which [government] must act, are either the authority of the Laws or force. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; … and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government, there is an end to liberty.