"A government must be fitted to a nation as much as a coat to the individual"

Founding Quote of the Week

"I hold with Montesquieu that a government must be fitted to a nation as much as a coat to the individual, and consequently that what may be good at Philadelphia may be bad at Paris and ridiculous at Petersburg." - Alexander Hamilton

Professor Thomas G. West of Hillsdale College discusses the theory of the American founding in terms of form and matter. Rights and natural law are the form - the mind - of the founding, while the American people were the matter.