Quote of the day—John Sharp Williams

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government.

Senator John Sharp Williams
From Respectfully quoted: a dictionary of quotations found in Williams works, Thomas Jefferson: His Permanent Influence on American Institutions, p. 49 (1913). Lecture delivered at Columbia University, New York City, 1912.
Although this is often attributed to Jefferson himself this is probably false with Williams deserving most of the credit.
[This certainly applies to many many instances of bad government. I suspect it is a direct effect of power corrupting. The more power a government has the more it becomes corrupted. The only real solution, realized at the time our country was founded, was to enumerate and limit the power of government. Now that those enumerations and limitations are ignored we again have corrupted and bad government.—Joe]

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