"Nothing could be more preposterous or absurd..."

“Constant apprehension of war has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim, to excite a war whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved, the people.”
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- James Madison, [The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Friday, June 29. [Elliot's Debates, Volume 5].
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“But as states are a collection of individual men, which ought we to respect most, the rights of the people composing them, or of the artificial beings resulting from the composition? Nothing could be more preposterous or absurd than to sacrifice the former to the latter.”
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- Alexander Hamilton, [The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Friday, June 29. [Elliot's Debates, Volume 5]