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“ … A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right.
All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning.
It must either be delegated or assumed. There are no other sources.
All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation.
Time does not alter the nature and quality of either. …”
Thomas Paine
from The Rights of Man, Part the Second, published in 1791. | 
