Thrown Under The Power Of Congress

RICHARD HENRY LEE The first maxim of a man who loves liberty, should be never to grant to rulers an atom of power that is not most clearly and indispensably necessary for the safety and wellbeing of society. JAMES MADISON If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads; in short, everything, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress! JOHN ADAMS And when the people give way, these deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them fast, the encroachment upon the American Constitution grows every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, less spirited, less virtuous, the power seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increasing the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery[i], selfishness, meanness, and downright corruption swallow up the whole society! THOMAS JEFFERSON For when all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the monarchy from which we separated! JAMES MADISON Citizens! Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America. JOHN LOCKE For I have no reason to believe that he, who would take away my liberty, would not when he had me in his power, take away everything else! JOHN ADAMS And yet, human nature itself, from indolence, modesty, humanity, or fear, has always too much reluctance to a manly assertion of its rights. JOHN ADAMS The most sensible and jealous people are so little attentive to government that there are no instances of resistance until repeated, multiplied oppressions have placed it beyond a doubt that their rulers have formed settled plans to deprive them of their liberties; not to oppress an individual or a few, but to break down the fences of a free Constitution, and deprive the people at large of all share in the government, and all the checks by which it is limited.

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