A single step beyond the limits of the constitution – is a step too far.
Thomas Jefferson – in his 1791 opinion on the constitutionality of the national bank – put it like this:
“To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”
Jefferson understood the danger of precedent. Once you allow government any reason to go beyond its limits – it will keep doing the same again and again.
And again.
Yes, and again.
It’ll never stop.
This was a widely understood principle for the founders and old revolutionaries, read more below.
John Dickinson, the “Penman of the American Revolution,” put it this way in his broadside urging noncompliance with the Stamp Act of 1765
“IF you comply with the Act by using Stamped Papers, you fix, you rivet perpetual Chains upon your unhappy Country. You unnecessarily, voluntarily establish the detestable Precedent, which those who have forged your Fetters ardently wish for, to varnish the future Exercise of this new claimed Authority”
Dickinson repeated this warning about precedent in his 1767 Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania – the most widely-read documents on American liberty up until publication of Thomas Paine’s common sense in 1776.
Quoting Dickinson, Samuel Adams emphasized this view:
“When an act injurious to freedom has been once done, and the people bear it, the repetition of it is most likely to meet with submission.”
Unfortunately today, a lot of people seem to be ok with usurpations of power – steps beyond the limits of the Constitution – as long as it’s done by their team or if they like the policy.
But this short-term thinking is like disarming yourself and then handing a loaded weapon to your opposition.
George Washington understood this well, and warned against it in his farewell address.
“let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.”
James Otis Jr may have summed it up best:
“It is of the utmost consequence that we boldly oppose the least infraction of our charter and rights.”
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