"... we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...we will have no time to think, no means of calling our mismanagers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers...  And this is the tendency of all human government. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent. ... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery. .. And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression. 

What more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? .... a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them  otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned..... I deem the essential principles of our government [to be]....., peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies ... economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burdened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith ; .... these principles .... should be our creed and our political faith ....and should we wander from them in moments of error ... let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

In questions of power, then , let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."   Thomas Jefferson