What our founders said.

[2ndAmendment]

"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account." -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Monsieur A. Coray, 31 October 1823)

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[2ndAmendment]

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." -- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia, Query 19, 1781) Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America (290-1)

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[2ndAmendment]

"Nothing...is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Cartwright, 1824) Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Lipscomb and Bergh,
eds., 16:48.

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[2ndAmendment]

"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction." -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Wilson Nicholas, 1803) Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition), Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., 10:419.

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[2ndAmendment]

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." -- Thomas Jefferson (fair copy of the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, 1798)

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[2ndAmendment]

"It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." -- Thomas Jefferson (Opinion on a National Bank, 15 February 1791) Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America (418)

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[Patch]

2nd - I read some of your first posts in this thread. I like the burden you have on your heart. I hope you are doing more with that, then writing in this forum.

 

[2ndAmendment]

Shades of The Twilight Zone

I control the horizontal. I control the vertical.

 

[2ndAmendment]

The way it was supposed to work.

"This balance between the National and State governments ought to be dwelt on with peculiar attention, as it is of the utmost importance. It forms a double security to the people. If one encroaches on their rights they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from overpassing their constitutional limits by a certain rivalship, which will ever subsist between them." -- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 17 June 1788) Reference: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., vol. 2 (28)

 

[2ndAmendment]

"If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute." -- Thomas Paine (Rights of Man, 1791) Reference: Thomas Paine: Collected Writings , Foner ed., Library of America (549)

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[2ndAmendment]

"[A] rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive." -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Marquis de Lafayette, 4 November 1823) Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition, Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., vol. 15 (491)-

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[2ndAmendment]

"[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes - rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments." -- Alexander Hamilton (letter to James Bayard, April 1802) Reference: Selected Writings and Speeches of Alexander Hamilton,
Frisch, ed. (511)

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[2ndAmendment]

"If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation." -- Samuel Adams (letter to Elbridge Gerry, 27 November 1780) Reference: The Spirit of `Seventy-Six, Commager and Morris (109); original Life of Elbridge Gerry, Austin, (361-62)

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[2ndAmendment]

"The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people." -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Dickinson, 23 July 1801) Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Ford Edition, vol. 8 (76)

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[2ndAmendment]

Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superiour to all private passions.-- John Adams, 1776 - letter to Mercy Warren, Reference: The Spirit of `Seventy-Six, Commager and Morris (109); original Warren-Adams Letters, vol. 1 (221-222)

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[2ndAmendment]

"The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them." -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Judge Spencer Roane, 9 March 1821) Reference: respec. Quot

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[2ndAmendment]

"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves." -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Edward Carrington, 16 January 1787) Reference: The Learning of Liberty, Prangle, 111.

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[2ndAmendment]

"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves in all cases to which they think themselves competent, or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press." -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Cartwright, 1824) Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Lipscomb and Bergh,
eds., 16:45.

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[2ndAmendment]

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." -- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIX,,
1787)

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[2ndAmendment]

"All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?"" -- Benjamin Franklin (To Colleagues at the Constitutional Convention) Reference: Quoted by James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1987), pp. 209-

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