[Excerpts] Your American Yardstick, by Hamilton A. Long
Your American Yardstick, by Hamilton A. Long, 1963
Below you’ll find a collection of quotes, mostly from the Founders, compiled by Mr. Long, in addition to his own insights which I captured for entirely subjective reasons as I read. I’ve included some lengthy excerpts from a speech by then-Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt, (which the author places in the book’s appendix). The FDR speech is striking in its contrast with the way he conducted himself once in the White House. It’s a cautionary tale of the fallibility of man. I’m considering republishing this book. Please use the comment section below for your reflections on it.
Your American Yardstick:
Twelve Basic American Principles underlying the
traditional American philosophy of Man-over-Government
by Hamilton Abert Long, Your Heritage Books, Inc., Philadelphia, 1963
[Out of print as of April 2010]
“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.” — Thomas Jefferson, letter to Wm. C. Jarvis, 1820
“The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us.” — Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the state of Virginia, 1782
“The term Individual Liberty always connotes Liberty-Responsibility because Liberty cannot exist separate and apart from Responsibility, nor Right from Duty.” p. xxxi
“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? — Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1782 p. 22
“Rulers are the servants and agents of the people; the people are their masters.” — Patrick Henry, Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788 p. 32
“…the most modestly circumstanced individuals among the sovereign people rank higher than any public officials, even those serving in the highest ranking of public servants.” p. 37
“The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.” — James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, 1785 p. 40
“[Article 1 Section 8] excludes any power to tax and spend for all purposes which would not qualify as being for the ‘general welfare of the United States’ as a whole — for instance, it is excluded if for the benefit merely of a locality or some individuals in the United States.” p. 47
“Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath’d to us by the former, for the sake of the latter.” — Sam Adams, Essay in Boston Gazette 1771 p. 54
“Agriculture, manufactures, commerce and navigation, the four pillars of our prosprity, are the most thriving when left the most free to individual enterprise.” — President Thomas Jefferson, Annual Message to Congress 1801, p. 58
“As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.” — James Madison, The Federalist, no. 10 p. 64
“The American scene has traditionally been characterized by such a free, generously full, self-fulfilling and unceasing display of this practical idealism of voluntary cooperation for group and community welfare — on such a masive scale within, as well as among, communities generally on a country-wide basis — as to be a highly distinctive feature of American life which elevates its moral tone and, when understood, causes admiration throughout the civilized world.” p. 79
“…for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a Government of as much vigour as is consistent with the perfect security of Liberty is indispensable.” — President George Washington, Farewell Address p. 84
“…dependence upon government for economic support inescapably saps the independence of man’s spirit, robs him of the inspiration and inclination to be individually venturesome and self-reliant, and undermines his willingness and capacity to oppose developments of a Government-over-Man nature including violation by government of the unalienable rights of himself and others.” p. 89
“…the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” — President George Washington’s First Inaugural p. 91
“The American philosophy teaches that individual liberty is indivisible and for one and all, or for none, in the long run–that the American choice is: individual liberty in full, for one and all, always.” p. 91
“…the Utopian schemes of levelling, and a community of goods, are as visionary and impracticable, as those which vest all property in the Crown, are arbitrary, despotic, and in our government, unconstitutional.” — House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 1768, to agent in London for the colonies. ["Unconstitutional" pertains to British constitution.] p. 96
“…a power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.” — The Federalist, no. 79, Alexander Hamilton p. 98
“The public money of this country is the toil and labor of the people…reasonable frugality ought to be observed. And we would recommend particularly, the strictest care and utmost firmness to prevent all unconstitutional draughts upon the public treasury.” — instructions of town of Braintree, Mass., to their legislative representative, 1765 p. 104
“As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit…use it as sparingly as possible…; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt…in time of Peace…discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen which we ourselves ought to bear.” — President Geoge Washington, Farewell Address p. 106
“Those who framed and ratified the Constitution in 1787-1788 intended the Taxing Clause’s words: “general welfare of the United States” to serve as a limitation on the taxing power. These words were designed to restrict taxing and spending to constitutionally authorized objectives, meaning in part only those which would serve the welfare of the United States as a whole and not merely of a locality, not of individual citizens. Congress does not possess unlimited sovereign power to tax the people.” p. 109
“Just as surely as ‘great oaks from little acorns grow’
So do greatest tyrannies have smallest beginnings;
Yet the mind uninstructed by knowledge or reason,
Cannot sense either oak or tyranny in the seed.” p. 111
“It would be thought a hard government that should tax its People one tenth Part of their Time, to be employed in its Service.” — Benjamin Franklin, 1758 p. 113
“All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.” — President Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural p. 119
“No majority, however great — even all of the people but one individual — may properly infringe, or possess the power to infringe, the rights of any minority, however small — even a minority of a lone individual.” p. 119
“The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of 15 years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.” –John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1815 p. 130
“That the colonies may continue connected, as they have been, with Britain, is our second Wish: Our first is–THAT AMERICA MAY BE FREE.” — James Wilson, address to Continental Congress, Feb. 13, 1776 (emphasis his) p. 131
BOOK recommendation: A Vindication of the Government of New-England Churches, 1717, Ipswich, MA, Clergyman John Wise
“…public officals who act outside of their granted authority and violate its limits as prescribed by the people under the fundamental law are the traitors and rebels and not the people who resist their tyranny.” p. 140
BOOK recommendations:
– Essay Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government, John Locke, 1690
– Discourses Concerning Government, Algernon Sidney, 1698
“…these constitutional safeguards will always be necessary because they are designed to protect the people’s liberties against the never-changing weaknesses of human nature in government…This is all the more true because of the corresponding weaknesses of human nature among the electorate; these mutual and inter-related frailties of the people and of their public servants play upon and support each other to the ceaseless peril of Individual Liberty, as history proves.” p. 155
BOOK recommendation: A Treatise on Political Economy, Jean-Baptiste Say, 1803
“As there is a degree of depravity among mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government [that of a Republic] presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another. — James Madison, The Federalist no. 55 p. 163
“Any use of the term ‘sovereign,’ or ‘sovereignty,’ in seeking to define the limited, delegated, power of the central government is unsound.” p. 168
“The republican principle demands, that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests…They [the people] know from experience that they sometimes err, and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do; beset as they continually are by the wiles of parasites and sycophants by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate; by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it.”
– Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 71 p. 171
“[Alexander] Hamilton never contended for — indeed he evidently would have opposed strenuously — use of Federal power to tax and spend so as in effect to give the Federal government indirectly any control over anything, or anybody, which is not directly and openly authorized by the Constitution and its amendments through enumeration of the powers granted go it by the people.” p. 179
“…the power of Congress or in other words of the national legislature, shall extend to certain enumerated cases. The specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority; because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd as well as useless, if a general authority was intended.” — Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 83 p. 179
“The power to confer or withhold unlimited benefits is the power to coerce or destroy…” — United States v. Butler, Supreme Court, 1936 p. 179
“Wisely or unwisely people know that under the Eighteenth Amendment [alcohol prohibition, later repealed] Congress has been given the right to legislate on this particular subject, but this is not the case in the matter of a great number of other vital problems of government, such as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agricultural, of education, of social welfare and of a dozen other important features. In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere.” — Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, of New York, March 2, 1930 p. 249
“The proper relations between the government of the United States and the governments of the separate States thereof depend entirely, in their legal aspects, on what powers have been voluntarily ceded to the central government by the States themselves. What these powers of government are is contained in our Federal Constitution, either by direct language, by judicial interpretation thereof during many years, or by implication so plain as to have been recognized by the people generally.” — Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, of New York, March 2, 1930 p. 249
“Thus it was clear to the framers of our Constitution that the greatest possible liberty of self-government must be given to each State, and that any national administration attempting to make all laws for the whole Nation, such as was wholly practical in Great Britain, would inevitably result at some future time in the dissolution of the union itself. The preservation of this ‘Home Rule’ by the States is not a cry of jealous Commonwealths seeking their own aggrandizement at the expense of sister States. It is a fundamental necessity if we are to remain a truly united country.” — Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, of New York, March 2, 1930 p. 250
“The doctrine of regulation and legislation by ‘master minds’, in whose judgement and will all the people may gladly and quietly acquiesce, has been too glaringly apparent at Washington during these last ten years. Were it possible to find ‘master minds’ so unselfish, so willing to decide unhesitatingly against their own personal interests or private prejudices, men almost god-like in their ability to hold the scales of Justice with an even hand, such a government might be to the interest of the country, but there are none such on our political horizon, and we cannot expect a complete reversal of all the teachings of history.” — Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, of New York, March 2, 1930 p. 251
“Now to bring about government by oligarchy masquerading as democracy, it is fundamentally essential that practically all authority and control be centralized in our National Government. The individual sovereignty of our States must first be destroyed, except in mere minor matters of legislation. We are safe from the danger of any such departure from the principles on which this country was found just so long as the individual home rule of the States is scrupulously preserved and fought for whenever it seems in danger.” — Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, of New York, March 2, 1930 p. 251
“…any Act of Congress which violates the Constitution is automatically made null and void to start with — nullified by the Constitution itself — and therefore cannot be a part of the ‘supreme law of the land’ (Article VI, Section 2)” p. 183
“It is a violation of this fundamental law of the people for the Federal government to deprive the people of their property by taxation in order to donate to foreign governments, or peoples the funds thus obtained…except to the extent that this is authorized by the words ‘common Defence’ in the Constitution’s Taxing Clause…” p. 188
“A power to lay taxes for the common defence and general welfare of the United States is not in common sense a general power. It is limited to those objects. It cannot Constitutionally transcend them. If the defence proposed by a tax be not the common defence of the United States, if the welfare be not general, but special or local, as contradistinguished from national, it is not within the scope of the Constitution.” — Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833) by Justice Joseph Story (Supreme Court 1811-45) p. 191
“It merits emphasis that any violation of the Constitution so as to accomplish an unauthorized purpose…can never alter in the least the Constitutional situation with regard to the power granted to Congress. Such an act of usurpation, or even a great number of successive acts of usurpation, can never increase the power of Congress — can never change, or impair, or destroy, the limits on its power as described by the sovereign people in the Constitution. The power of Congress, as so limited, remains unchanged, unless and until increased by the people only by amendment to the Constitution. Any act of usurpation produces zero increase in power; and many acts of usurpation still produce zero increase. Many times zero equals zero.” p. 191
BOOK recommendation: The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. by Max Farrand, 4 volumes
“As men whose intentions require no concealment, generally employ the words which most directly and aptly express the ideas they intend to convey the enlightened patriots who framed our constitution and the peope who adopted it, must be understood to have employed words in their natural sense, and to have intended what they have said.” — Chief Justice John Marshall, 1824 Gibbons case p. 193
“It is important to keep in mind that it is only the Constitution itself which makes a conflicting law void, from the start, and not the decision of the Court — which has power merely to ascertain and declare this to be the fact; therefore the court has the power thus to clarify and explain the existing legal situation (under the Constitution), meaning the existing law, but not to create it–not make law in the constitutional field.” p. 196
“Among all the terrible instruments of arbitrary power, decisions of courts, whetted and guided and impelled by considerations of policy, cut with the keenest edge, and inflict the deepest and most deadly wounds.” — Justice James Wilson, Lectures 1790-91 p. 201
“Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.” Thomas Jefferson, First Annual Message to Congress, 1801 p. 209
[The author's brief summary of the workings of the free-enterprise system...]
“First, Individuals must deal with each other by free choice, by mutual and voluntary arrangement, so that the result can be mutual trade for mutual benefit in the light of rational self-interest, with due respect by each for the other’s equal rights.
“Second, the gain permitted by the private-profit feature of the Individual Enterprise system is The Individual’s reward for giving superior service, or superior benefits (of the product purchased), to those with whom he deals — offering them what they prefer to buy in the face of competition with all other offerings. The more the sales and resulting profit he makes, due to the greater value he offers, the more firmly his superior service becomes established through ‘repeat’ sales to well-satisfied customers, the greater the proof of the value of his services to them as well as to society, to the general welfare, in various ways. This special service, in some instances, takes the form of making various standard items offered more conveniently available to the customer, as in the case of the neighborhood drug store; the special convenience is the special service. The seller’s successful demonstration of sound practices and superior standards helps to influence others to emulate his example and thereby to raise the level of performance by other sellers. This gradually improves the material environment of the people, generally, directly and indirectly in a number of ways, while giving evidence of the soundness of the system and making its foundations more secure economically and in the minds of the people, which helps to form beneficent customs and traditions.
“Third, Man’s freedom in the economic realm — that is, freedom from Government-over-Man — including the freedom of the ‘free market’ economy operating on the basis of the private-profit motive, presupposes the existence of an ethical environment. Such an environment is created by the multiple, beneficent influences within any group, neighborhood, community and society stemming from all of the sound and constructive aspects of life. These influences include, for example, the religious, ethical, moral, social, educational, civic, fraternal, political, as well as the material. An additional and most compelling factor is self-interest based on the desire of The Individual to be known and accepted as an honorable, dependable and entirely worthy participant in the activities of the society — including mutual-trade transactions. In the background, always is fear of society’s potential disciplinary measure — fear by an offender of being driven out of business by group and community ostracism due to any dishonest or unfair treatment of others, including grossly avaricious conduct.” p. 210,211
“…it is to the last degree vicious and infamous to attempt to support a government, which manifestly tends to render the persons and property of the governed insecure. Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government founded on principles of reason and justice, but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.” — John Hancock, March 5, 1774, speech on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre p. 222
“…as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties or his possessions.”
– James Madison, Property, National Gazette, March 29,1792 p. 232
“Honour, justice and humanity call upon us to hold, and to transmit to our posterity, that liberty, which we received from our ancestors. It is not our duty to leave wealth to our children: but it is our duty to leave liberty to them. No infamy, iniquity, or cruelty, can exceed our own, if we, born and educated in a country of freedom, intitled to its blessings, and knowing their value, pusillanimously deserting the post assigned to us by Divine Providence, surrender succeeding generations to a condition of wretchedness, from which no human efforts, in all probability, will be sufficient to extricate them; the experience of all states mournfully demonstrating to us, that when arbitrary power had been established over them, even the wisest and bravest nations, that ever flourished, have, in a few years, degenerated into abject and wretched vassals.” — Resolutions of Committee for the Province of Pennsylvania, 1774, drafted by John Dickinson p. 240
“Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of…On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.” — Dr. Joseph Warren, President of the Massachusetts Congress, March 5, 1775 on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. Major General Warren was killed in action at Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775 p. 246
“The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted, it means now….those things which are within its grants of power, as those grants were understood when made, are still within them, and those things not within them still remain excluded.” — Supreme Court, South Carolina v. United States 199 U.S. 437 (1905), pages 448-449 p. 291
