Congress

CONGRESS:

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected. Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821.
Such will be the relation between the House of Representatives and their constituents. Duty gratitude, interest, ambition itself, are the cords by which they will be bound to fidelity and sympathy with the great mass of the people. James Madison, Federalist No. 57, February 19, 1788
The house of representatives...can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny. James Madison, Federalist No. 57, February 19, 1788.
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. James Madison, Federalist No. 45, January 26, 1788.

It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn. George Washington, letter to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, September 5, 1789.

They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. Benjamin Franklin (attributed), at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already? Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 12, 1782.

No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. James Madison, Federalist No. 48, February 1, 1788.

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. James Madison, letter to Thomas Jefferson, October 17, 1788.

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams, Address to the Military, October 11, 1798.