The Notes Read Free

Pres. is our moral teacher & our leader he should be freed from the shackles of ill informed pub. opinion. He is hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by a Const. system designed for an 18th century agrarian society.
    Henry Steele Commager, 1953

    O nly the Pres. because he is the chief exec. is in a position to know all the facts. Only the Pres. and his advisors are in a position to weigh all the facts. Therefore the Pres. alone can lead the country.
    Alex Hamilton on Impeachment

    T he greatest danger is that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties than by a real demonstration of innocence or guilt.
    Thomas Jefferson

    T he germ of dissolution of our Fed. govt. is in the Fed. Judiciary, an irresponsible body working like gravity, gaining a little today & a little tomorrow, & advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction until all shall be usurped from the states & the govt. of all be consolidated into one.

    1813: The same pol. parties that agitate the U.S. have existed through all time. Whether the power of the people or of the elite should prevail were questions which kept the states of Greece & Rome in eternal convulsions.

    T he policy of the Am. govt. is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.

    A character of good faith is of as much value to a nation as to an individual. The moral obligations constitute the law of nations as well as individuals.

    I place ec. among the 1st & most important virtues and pub. debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. We must make our election between ec. & liberty or profusion & servitude.

    I f we let Wash. tell us when to sow & when to reap the Nation shall soon want for bread.

    A rebuke to Cong. “How could 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.”

    T he basis of our govt. being the opinion of the people, the very 1st object should be to keep that right; & were it left to me to decide whether we should have govt. without newspapers or newspapers without govt., I should unhesitatingly prefer the latter.

    W ise & frugal govt. which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry & improvement & shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
    Abe Lincoln

    1864 —By general law life & limb must be protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life, but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures otherwise unconst. might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong I assumed that ground & now avow it.
    Montesquieu, 1748—Forms of Govt.

    E ach has a special relationship to its people. When that relationship is changed that form of govt. is doomed. 1—Dictatorship—Fear (can’t survive if people no longer fear the dictator). 2—Monarchy—respect & affection for the Crown. 3—Rep. Govt.—There must be virtue among the people.
    Winston Churchill

    S ome people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse pulling a sturdy wagon.
    Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1935

    T he Fed. govt. must & shall quit this business of relief. Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual & moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to Nat. fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.
    F.D.R., Pittsburgh, Oct. 19, 1932

    M ost of this new govt. created credit has been taken to finance the govt.’s continuing deficits. The truth is that the burden is absorbing their resources. All this is highly undesirable & wholly unnecessary. It arises from one cause only and that is the unbalanced bud. and the continued failure of this