I propose . . . . The conformity of the proposed Constitution to the true principles of republican government.

Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation.

The constitution of human nature" teaches us not to expect "that the persons, entrusted with the administration of the affairs of the particular members of a confederacy, will at all times be ready, with perfect good humor, and an unbiased regard to the public weal, to execute the resolutions of decrees of the general authority." "This tendency is not difficult to be accounted for," Publius argues, "It has its origin in the love of power.

[I]n framing a Government for a nation we ought, in those provisions which are designed to be permanent, to calculate not on temporary, but on permanent causes of expence.

People sometimes attribute my success to my genius; all the genius I know anything about is hard work.

Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself?

... for it is a truth, which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are commonly most in danger when the means of insuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.