The true principle of a republic is that the people should choose whom they please to govern them. Representation is imperfect, in proportion as the current of popular favor is checked. The great source of free government, popular election, should be perfectly pure, and the most unbounded liberty allowed.
Interpretation
A republic thrives when citizens freely elect their leaders, ensuring true representation.
Alexander Hamilton emphasizes the fundamental principle of a republic, which is that citizens have the right to choose their leaders without external influences. He argues that true representation occurs when elections are free from manipulation and that the purity of the electoral process is vital for the integrity of a government that is accountable to its people.
In practice
During a civic education class discussing the importance of fair elections.
When men, engaged in unjustifiable pursuits, are aware that obstructions may come from a quarter which bare apprehension of opposition from doing what they would with eagerness rush into if no such external impediments were to be feared.
The tendency of a national bank is to increase public and private credit. The former gives power to the state, for the protection of its rights and interests: and the latter facilitates and extends the operations of commerce among individuals. Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state.
It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government.
The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master.
The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge right or make good decision.
Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature....Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind.
The role of Ronald Reagan had been deliberately diminished; the role of the Europeans, who, with the exception of Helmet Kohl, were often keen to undermine America when it mattered, had been sanitized; and the role of Mr. Gorbachev, who had failed spectacularly in his declared objective of saving communism and the Soviet Union, had been absurdly misunderstood.
We can have democracy and a prosperous, just, and sustainable human future. Or we can have corporate rule. We cannot have both.
There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.
If ever there were a place where people not only tend not to face economic facts, but it's almost their purpose not to face economic facts, it's Washington.
While democracy must have its organization and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.
In the final analysis it doesn't really matter what the political system is...We don't need perfect political systems; we need perfect participation.
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