What we're experiencing currently with the majority of US governors passing edicts usurping the US Constitution's First Amendment freedoms of peaceful assembly, and religious acts of conviction, is not new. Below, in 1837, Daniel Webster spoke about how "good intentions" in the name of "public safety" had been, and would be, used to ignore the law of the united States, and that the Constitution was designed to block such tyrannical moves by those who govern.
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority; but they cannot justify it even if we were sure they existed. It is hardly too strong to say, that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intention, real or pretended. When bad intentions are boldly avowed the people will promptly take care of themselves. On the other hand, they will always be asked why they should resist or question that exercise of power which is so fair in its object, so plausible and patriotic in appearance, and which has the public good alone in view?
Human beings, we may be assured, will generally exercise power when they can get it; and they will exercise it most undoubtedly, in popular governments, under pretences of public safety or high public interest. . . . There are men, in all ages, who mean to exercise power usefully; but who mean to exercise it. They mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind masters, but they mean to be masters. They think there be little restraint upon themselves. Their notion of public interest is apt to be quite closely connected with their own exercise of authority. They may not, indeed, even understand their own motives. The love of power may sink too deeply in their own hearts even for their own scrutiny, and may pass with themselves for mere patriotism and benevolence."
A speech delivered at Niblo's Saloon in New York, March 15, 1837.
Found in The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster edited by E. Whipple
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