Alexander Hamilton Quotes

The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution.

If the Bill of Rights was intended to place strict limits on federal power and protect individual and locality from the national government the 14th Amendment effectively defeated that purpose by placing the power to enforce the Bill of Rights in federal hands, where it was never intended to be.

The fate of this government depends absolutely upon raising it above the state governments.

Government is no sooner created than it becomes too strong for society, and shapes and moulds, as well as controls it.

I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons entrusted with the administration of the general government could ever feel to divest the States of the authorities of that description. The regulation of the mere domestic police of a State appears to me to hold out slender allurements to ambition.

It is by far the safer course to lay [considerations of the future] altogether aside; and to confine our attention wholly to the nature and extent of the powers as they are delineated in the constitution. Everything beyond this, must be left to the prudence and firmness of the people; who, as they will hold the scales in their own hands, it is to be hoped, will always take care to preserve the constitutional equilibrium between the General and State governments.

One of the basic philosophical tenets of conservatism - which says that the more power devolves from the federal government to the states, the greater individual freedom grows - is just flatly contradicted by crucial junctures in the country's life, most conspicuously in the 1860s and 1960s, when it's been the federal government that's interceded against the states to secure individual freedom.

If we are in earnest about giving the Union energy and duration we must abandon the vain project of legislating upon the States in their collective capacities.

I see,... and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power... It is but too evident that the three ruling branches of [the Federal government] are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic.

It is important to strengthen the State governments; and as this cannot be done by any change in the Federal Constitution (for the preservation of that is all we need contend for), it must be done by the States themselves, erecting such barriers at the constitutional line as cannot be surmounted either by themselves or by the General Government. The only barrier in their power is a wise government. A weak one will lose ground in every contest.

The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government

For states' rights advocates, the Constitution is like a contract that is openly violated by one party with impunity. On paper, the states remain sovereign powers, while in reality the federal government appears able to dictate everything from the ingredients of school lunches to speed limits. Congress now routinely collects taxes in order to return the money to the states with conditions on their conforming to federal demands.

If the federal government has the exclusive right to judge the extent of its own powers, warned the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions' authors (James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, respectively), it will continue to grow - regardless of elections, the separation of powers, and other much-touted limits on government power.

We have seen an outrageous increase in the size, scope, and intrusiveness of the federal government.

I think the federal government should be doing only what the Constitution says it should be. We don't have authority under the federal Constitution to have a big federal criminal justice system.

The danger in our system is that the general government, which represents the interests of the whole, may encroach on the states, which represent the peculiar and local interests, or that the latter may encroach on the former.

The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government had the power to issue commands to the several sovereign states, but it had no authority to govern individuals directly.

Nothing can be clearer than that what the Constitution intended to guard against was the exercise by the general government of the power of directly taxing persons and property within any State through a majority made up from the other States.

The great object of my fear is the Federal Judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and alarming advance..., is engulfing insidiously the special governments [the States] into the jaws of that which feeds them.

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. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce;... the powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and prosperities of the people.

No State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union;

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. –

Conservatives deserve a consistent and thoughtful vision for the role of federal government in relationship to states.

I start with a concern about the growth of federal government. I start with a perspective concerned about the growth of that power, and containing it within the bounds of the Constitution.