Liberty Quotes

"If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?" -- William Drayton (1776-1846) US Congressman for South Carolina (1825-1833), banker, and author 1828
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/William.Drayton.Quote.228B

"I have said I do not dread industrial corporations as instruments of power to destroy this country, because there are a thousand agencies which can regulate, restrain and control them; but there is a corporation we may all dread. That corporation is the federal government. From the aggressions of this corporation, there can be no safety, if it is allowed to go beyond the well defined limits of it's powers. I dread nothing so much as the exercise of ungranted and doubtful powers by the government. It is, in my opinion, the danger of dangers to the future of this country. Let us be sure to keep it always within it's limits. If this great, ambitious, ever growing corporation becomes oppressive, who shall check it? If it becomes too wayward who shall control it? If it becomes unjust, who shall trust it? As sentinels of the country's watchtower, Senators, I beseech you to watch and guard with sleepless dread, that corporation which can make all property and rights, all states and people, all liberty and hope it's plaything in an hour, and it's victims forever." -- Benjamin H. Hill (1823-1882) U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator and a Confederate senator from the state of Georgia Source: before the U.S. Senate, March 27, 1878.
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Benjamin.Hill.Quote.68F6

"Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, of course, lays out the delegated, enumerated, and therefore limited powers of Congress. Only through a deliberate misreading of the general welfare and commerce clauses of the Constitution has the federal government been allowed to overreach its authority and extend its tendrils into every corner of civil society." -- Edward H. Crane Founder and president of the Cato Institute Source: A Constitution of Liberty, Cato Institute 1995 Annual Report
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Edward.Crane.Quote.21DA