“Patronage is the sword and cannon by which war may be made on the liberty of the human race.”
Speech in Congress (24 February 1834) against the policies of Andrew Jackson.
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John Tyler 8
American politician, 10th President of the United States (i… 1790–1862Related quotes

Chapter: Helvidius Number IV http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1910&chapter=112553&layout=html&Itemid=27 in: The Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793-1794: Toward the Completion of the American Founding, edited with and Introduction by Morton J. Frisch (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007)
Context: In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture of heterogeneous powers: the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man: not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war a physical force is to be created, and it is the executive will which is to direct it. In war the public treasures are to be unlocked, and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions, and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.

Popular Government: Its Essence, Its Permanence and Its Perils, chapter 4, p.90 (1913).

Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV (1861), p. 322 https://archive.org/stream/lifemahomet00muirgoog/lifemahomet00muirgoog#page/n342/mode/1up

“God will see to it that war always recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race.”
Politics, Volume I, p. 76.

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The Great Dictator (1940)