Words to live by.

As a Constitutionalist, I celebrate the occasion of the birthday anniversary of that "sacred document" we call the United States Constitution. So please allow me to leave you with these words to live by:


1) "[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes - rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments."

-- Alexander Hamilton (letter to James Bayard, April 1802)
Reference: Selected Writings and Speeches of Alexander Hamilton, Frisch, ed. (511)


2) "It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive
in it [the Constitution] a finger of that Almighty hand which
has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in
the critical stages of the revolution."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 37, 11 January 1788)


3) "The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals...[I]t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of."

-- Albert Gallatin (letter to Alexander Addison, 7 October 1789)
Reference: That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right, Halbrook; original MS. in N.Y. Hist. Soc.-A.G. Papers, 2