A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.

Benjamin Disraeli (Earl Beaconsfield) (1805-1881): Speech, March 17, 1845.

  All government,—indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act,—is founded on compromise and barter.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797): Speech on the Conciliation of America. Vol. ii. p. 169.

  I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865): Speech, June 16, 1858.

  Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.

Henry Clay (1777-1852): Speech at Ashland, Ky., March, 1829.

  The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.

Daniel Webster (1782-1852): Second Speech on Foot's Resolution, Jan. 26, 1830. P. 321.

  That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865): Speech at Gettysburg, Nov. 19, 1863.

  There is what I call the American idea. . . . This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy,—that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God. For shortness' sake I will call it the idea of Freedom.

Theodore Parker (1810-1860): Speech at the N. E. Antislavery Convention, Boston, May 29, 1850.

  That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865): Speech at Gettysburg, Nov. 19, 1863.

  Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations,—entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigour, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; . . . . freedom of religion; freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected,—these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826): First Inaugural Address. March 4, 1801.

  That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.

Thomas B Macaulay (1800-1859): On Mitford's History of Greece. 1824.

  There was a state without king or nobles; there was a church without a bishop; there was a people governed by grave magistrates which it had selected, and by equal laws which it had framed.

Rufus Choate (1799-1859): Speech before the New England Society, Dec. 22, 1843.