The Founders' Constitution
Volume 3, Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3, Document 5
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_9_3s5.html
The University of Chicago Press
Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3
Document 5
Alexander Hamilton, Letter from Phocion
1--27 Jan. 1784
Papers 3:485--86
Nothing is more common than for a free people, in times of heat and violence, to gratify momentary passions, by letting into the government, principles and precedents which afterwards prove fatal to themselves. Of this kind is the doctrine of disqualification, disfranchisement and banishment by acts of legislature. The dangerous consequences of this power are manifest. If the legislature can disfranchise any number of citizens at pleasure by general descriptions, it may soon confine all the votes to a small number of partizans, and establish an aristocracy or an oligarchy; if it may banish at discretion all those whom particular circumstances render obnoxious, without hearing or trial, no man can be safe, nor know when he may be the innocent victim of a prevailing faction. The name of liberty applied to such a government would be a mockery of common sense.
The Founders' Constitution
Volume 3, Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3, Document 5
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_9_3s5.html
The University of Chicago Press
The Papers of Alexander Hamilton. Edited by Harold C. Syrett et al. 26 vols. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1961--79. See also: Federalist
