- “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” –Thomas Jefferson, letter to E. Carrington, 1788
The natural progress of things . . .
Summation of Constitution Interpretation
- Let me explain the division among conservative legal thinkers. Some conservative legal thinkers like justice Scalia and Justice Thomas think that the Constitution means what it originally meant –Cass Sunstein
The instrument by which government must act . . .
- “The instrument 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! “–Alexander Hamilton, Tully, No. 3, 1794
Good and wise men . . .
- “To grant that there is a supreme intelligence who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable. Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature….Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind.” –Alexander Hamilton
The Belief in God . . .
- “The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities impressed with it.” –James Madison, letter to Frederick Beasley, 1825
