Founder's Quotes - Madison on Virtue

The Patriot Post and other sources ^ | 11/30/2007 | James Madison

[Loud Mime]

Founder’s Quotes – Madison on Virtue in Politicians

The Patriot Post had this:

“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.”

Here’s the entire paragraph from the original speech:

“I have observed that gentlemen suppose that the general legislature will do every thing mischievous they possibly can, and that they will omit to do every thing good which they are authorized to do. If this were a reasonable supposition, their objections would be good. I consider it reasonable to conclude that they will as readily do their duty as deviate from it; nor do I go on the grounds mentioned by gentlemen on the other side — that we are to place unlimited confidence in them, and expect nothing but the most exalted integrity and sublime virtue. But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched {537} situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men; so that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.”
James Madison (speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 20 June 1788)

The text for the speech may be found HERE.

“My ardent desire is, and my aim has been...to comply strictly with all our engagements foreign and domestic; but to keep the U States free from political connections with every other Country. To see that they may be independent of all, and under the influence of none. In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home.”
George Washington (letter to Partick Henry, 9 October 1775)

States, like individuals, who observe their engagements, are respected and trusted...”
Alexander Hamilton

Others:

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.”
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
Aldous Huxley

“A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. And the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.”
Woodrow Wilson

“Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”
Alexis de Tocqueville

[Loud Mime]

PING

This is hundreds of years old, but spot-on!

“Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.” Alexis de Tocqueville

[Loud Mime]

Darn, I neglected to highlight this area of the featured quote:

"But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom."

Why would a people without virtue desire virtuous leaders?

[Bigun]

"We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

James Madison

[Greg F]

Madison is right when he points to virtue in the public as the base guarantor of virtue in governance and that the form of government does not create virtue in the people. That is why conservatives that attack the church are in error, even applying their own values, rather than Christian ones.

[Bigun]

"When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed upon your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, 'just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make the administer the laws."

Noah Webster, 1832

[Loud Mime]

Ping II

[Loud Mime]

Beautiful quote, just beautiful.

I was in a Starbucks discussion just last night where I made the point that if a person did not believe in God, they believed man was the ultimate authority. In a politician’s case he became a god on earth...or thought he was. As that politician believed he was the ultimate authority, nothing bound him to honesty.

Liberals may not like religion, but their dislike of it is the path toward tyranny.

[Oldexpat]

Unfortunately, none of this is taught in our schools today.
Soon, those of us old enough to have received a real Liberal education will be dead and with it the dream of America, unless we make changes today.

[Oldexpat]

Unfortunately, none of this is taught in our schools today.
Soon, those of us old enough to have received a real Liberal education will be dead and with it the dream of America, unless we make changes today.

[laotzu]

mark

[Greg F]

Why would a people without virtue desire virtuous leaders?

In many corrupt nations with elections the people don't even expect honesty. They willingly go and vote for someone they expect to be corrupt because they regard it as inevitable.

[atlaw]

What’s your source for this quote?

[Bigun]

http://www.lexrex.com/bios/nwebster.htm

[Vision]

“Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”

And the Democrat party can't wait to bring it to you.

[Greg F]

Snopes could not find the source for the quote so it is probably an internet creation.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/capital.asp

[Bigun]

The quote comes from Noah Websters History of the United States published in 1832.

[Greg F]

If that is the case you should correct snopes. Do you have a link showing that or the book itself? I mistrust internet quotes.

[atlaw]

I’m wondering about your source for the Madison quote, in post 4, the post I responded to. I can’t find your Madison quote anywhere on that Webster internet site you linked.

[Greg F]

You quoted a sentence from Chesterton — It is from one of my favorite passages in “Orthodoxy” . . . well worth reading in full:

“Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously. Let us follow for a moment the clue of the martyr and the suicide; and take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have no done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of life.”

[atlaw]

The Madison quote comes from Noah Webster’s “History of the United States” published in 1832?

[Matchett-PI]

bttt

[Bigun]

The Madison quote comes from Noah Webster’s “History of the United States” published in 1832?

No. Please forgive the fact that I assumed (here we go again) that you were referring to the Webster quote and did not look to see which post you had responded to.

Unfortunately, I have to leave right now but will attempt to locate the source of the Madison quote for you as soon as I can.

[Loud Mime]

It's in the congressional record HERE.

But I cannot find an original source.

[Loud Mime]

The increasing home school movement is going to help this nation....to what extent I do not know.

I once heard someone say that even though Clinton was a crook, "he was our crook. That's how far pragmatism has now infected our government.

[Loud Mime]

OK OK OK, more reading on my stack. ;)

Chesterton is clear and concise.....with virtue. I like him!

[Greg F]

I believe that “Orthodoxy” is one of the great works of the 20th Century. Which makes it one of the great works in history. Which makes it worth putting on your stack!

[Bigun]

I originally found the quote here and have queried the good professor as to it's origins.

[atlaw]

Thanks for your diligence. Let me know what you find out.

[Bigun]

The professor works at James Madison University and is using the quote so I sincerely hope he can provide a source.

[Loud Mime]

Let us know....we’re all curious about this.

[Bigun]

You can depend on it!

No one is more curious about it than I as it is literally all over the Internet.

[Loud Mime]

Did Chesterton have a quote about the folly of people believing that they are right, when they are incredibly wrong?

I’ve got this mental tickle from a long way back....I think it was Chesterton...

[Greg F]

He’s got a wonderful passage on how lunatics can be rational in Orthodoxy:

The madman’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ’s.

Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable MARK of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic’s theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way. I mean that if you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single argument. Suppose, for instance, it were the first case that I took as typical; suppose it were the case of a man who accused everybody of conspiring against him. If we could express our deepest feelings of protest and appeal against this obsession, I suppose we should say something like this: “Oh, I admit that you have your case and have it by heart, and that many things do fit into other things as you say. I admit that your explanation explains a great deal; but what a great deal it leaves out! Are there no other stories in the world except yours; and are all men busy with your business? Suppose we grant the details; perhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you it was only his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it was only because he knew it already. But how much happier you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you! How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.” Or suppose it were the second case of madness, that of a man who claims the crown, your impulse would be to answer, “All right! Perhaps you know that you are the King of England; but why do you care? Make one magnificent effort and you will be a human being and look down on all the kings of the earth.” Or it might be the third case, of the madman who called himself Christ. If we said what we felt, we should say, “So you are the Creator and Redeemer of the world: but what a small world it must be! What a little heaven you must inhabit, with angels no bigger than butterflies! How sad it must be to be God; and an inadequate God! Is there really no life fuller and no love more marvellous than yours; and is it really in your small and painful pity that all flesh must put its faith? How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles, and leave you in the open, free like other men to look up as well as down!”

Reminds me of some FReepers!

[Ken H]

The professor works at James Madison University and is using the quote so I sincerely hope he can provide a source.

What did the professor say? I did come across this:

Is it true that Madison said "Our future is staked on the 10 commandments?

The only problem with the above is, no such quote has ever been found among any of James Madison's writings. None of the biographers of Madison, past or present have ever run across such a quote, and most if not all would love to know where this false quote originated.

-snip-

Responding to the public hubbub, editors of The Papers of James Madison, John Stagg and David Mattern, referred all inquirers to a letter dated November 23, 1993, in which Mr. Mattern wrote concerning the alleged quotation:

"We did not find anything in our files remotely like the sentiment expressed in the extract you sent us. In addition, the idea is inconsistent with everything we know about Madison's views on religion and government, views which he expressed time and time again in public and in private."

More at:

http://candst.tripod.com/misq1.htm

[Loud Mime]

In reading Madison, he believed that our nation must follow aims higher than government law and power; that no man should judge himself, as governments frequently empower people to do.

I know this is combining religion with pragmatism. It’s good food for thought.

[atlaw]

Thanks. Good research.