At the Virginia convention to ratify the US Constitution, Patrick Henry made this statement in rebuttal to Madison's support of ratification:
Some way or other we must be a great and mighty empire; we must have an army, and a navy, and a number of things. When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different. Liberty, Sir, was the primary object.... You make the citizens of this country agree to become the subjects of one great consolidated empire of America.... When I come to examine these features, Sir, they appear to me horribly frightful. Among other deformities it has an awful squinting; it squints toward monarchy.
