• “With my fervent prayers to the Almighty that He will be graciously pleased to continue to us that protection which He has already so conspicuously displayed.” ~James Monroe, 5^th President. Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817
  

• “It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.” ~James Monroe, March 4, 1817, Inaugural Address
  

• “Nothing is so contagious as opinion, especially on questions which, being susceptible of very different glosses, beget in the mind a distrust of itself.” ~James Madison (1790)
  

• “How difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.” ~James Monroe (1788)
  

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• It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty . . . Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found . . . The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin…” ~President James Monroe
  

• “It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt … that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin…” ~James Monroe (1817)
  

• “How prone all human institutions have been to decay.” ~James Monroe
  

• “How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.” ~James Monroe, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788
  

Re: Public Debt

• “I regret, as much as any member, the unavoidable weight and duration of the burdens to be imposed; having never been a proselyte to the doctrine, that public debts are public benefits. I consider them, on the contrary, as evils which ought to be removed as fast as honor and justice will permit.” —James Madison
  

Decay and Despotism

• “How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.” ~James Monroe, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788