1.
We
are now fixing a national consolidation.
2.
The
absurdity must continually stare us in the face of confiding to a government
the direction of the most essential national interests, without
daring to trust to it
the authorities which are indispensable to their proper and efficient
management.
3.
States
are the characteristics and the soul of a confederation. If the
states be not
the agents of this compact, it must be one great consolidated
National Government of the
people of all the States.
4.
A
federal government …ought to be clothed with all the powers
requisite to
complete
execution of its trust.
5.
I
am against inserting a declaration of rights in the Constitution …if
such an
addition
is not dangerous, it is at least unnecessary.
6.
Energy
in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good
government.
7.
The
number of the representatives [called in for the Constitution of
1787]
appears
to be too few, either to communicate the requisite information of the
wants, local
circumstances,
and sentiments of so extensive an empire, or to prevent corruption
and
undue
influence in the exigencies of such great powers.
8.
This
country should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and
alien
sovereignties.
9.
The
vigor [strength] of government is essential to the security of
liberty
10.
If
a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority
will
be
insecure …in a society under the forms of which the stronger
faction can readily unite
and
oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a
state of nature
where
the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the
stronger.
11.
The
states should have laws, courts, force, and revenues of their own
sufficient
for their own security; they ought to be fit to keep house alone if
necessary; if
this
be not the case, or so far as it ceases to be so it is a departure
from a federal to a
consolidated
government.
12.
A
bill of rights …serves to secure the minority against the
usurpation and
tyranny
of the majority.
13.
In
our case, the concurrence of thirteen distinct sovereign wills is
requisite
under
the Confederation to the complete execution of every important
measure that
preceeds[sic]
from the Union. It has happened as was to have been foreseen. The
measures
of the Union have not been executed; and the delinquencies of the
States have
step
by step matured themselves to an extreme, which has, at length,
arrested all the
wheels
of the national government and brought them to an awful stand.
14.
The
…new form of government …declares a consolidation or union of all
the
thirteen parts, or states, into one great whole …it is an intuitive
truth that a
consolidated
republican form of government [will lead] …into a monarchy, either
limited
or
despotic.
15.
…one
government …never can extend equal benefits to all parts of the
United
States. Different laws, customs, and opinions exist in the different
states, which
by
a uniform system of laws would be unreasonably invaded.