The hope of impunity is a strong incitement to sedition: the dread of punishment, a proportionably strong discouragement to it. - Alexander Hamilton

It is a maxim deeply ingrafted in that dark system, that no character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.

The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of
the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they
intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require
an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion
or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from
the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their
interests.

For it is a truth, which the experience of ages has attested, that the people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.