The Essence of Government

• “The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” –James Madison
  

A Popular Government

• “It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.” –Richard Henry Lee, letter to Colonel Martin Pickett, 1786
  

Regarding The People

• “I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.” –Thomas Jefferson
  

Regarding Power

• “The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” –James Madison
  

Chastising Our Prejudices

• “In observations on this subject, we hear the legislature mentioned as the people’s representatives. The distinction, intimated by concealed implication, through probably, not avowed upon reflection, is, that the executive and judicial powers are not connected with the people by a relation so strong or near or dear. But is high time that we should chastise our prejudices; and that we should look upon the different parts of government with a just and impartial eye.” –James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791
  

Tyrants

• “When people forget their God is when tyrants forge their chains” ~Patrick Henry
  

The Ruin of Liberty

• Disorders and miseries . . . gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual who turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty and thus to create whatever the form of Government, a real despotism ~George Washington
  

No King, No Tyrant, No Dictator . . .

• Thomas Jefferson believed . . . that no king, no Tyrant, no dictator can govern for them as well as they can govern for themselves ~Franklin Roosevelt
  

The Genius of Independence

• Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them . . . you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning Tyrant who rises among you ~Abraham Lincoln
  

Re: Tyrants

• Those who will not be governed by God will ruled by Tyrants ~William Penn