...concrete aims than if a hotly contested amendment campaign were waged and won. According to Jefferson, "(s]ome men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched."81 Madison was not one of these men. He did not wish...

...interest and passion' of popular majorities and provide a rallying point against a usurping government. -k Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious...did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; 1 belonged to it, and labored with it — But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand...

...ed. 1905) ("Some men look at constitutions with a sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe...amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it... .It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience...

...this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows...with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom...

...occasional, and sometimes violent, antagonism against the Constitution and particularly against those who "look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence...the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched," was motivated by a feeling of outrage about the injustice that only his generation should have it in...

...similar point in an 1816 letter, "Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence. . . . They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human. ... I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It...

...which have recently been recalled both by the present Prime Minister and the present governor-general. Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious...and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. . . Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. . . We might as...

...was not one of them- "look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe...and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment." Nineteen years, he pointed out once again- how easily Jefferson must have composed these letters- was...

...anti-Federalist sentiment. Jefferson had written a letter to Samuel Kercheval in 1816, commenting, "Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched." Although "not an advocate for frequent and untried...

...Arendt's On Revolution (1963) cites to similar effect Jefferson's intense opposition to "those who 'look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence,...them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.1" Endorsing Jefferson's rejection of "the injustice that only [the framers'] generation should...