James Wilson, L.L.D., Assoc. Judge Supreme Court

"I consider the people who constitute a society or nation as the source of all authority in that nation; as free to transact their common concerns by any agents they think proper; to change these agents individually, or the organization of them in form or function whenever they please; that all the acts done by these agents under the authority of the nation are the acts of the nation, are obligatory on them and enure to their use, and can in no wise be annulled of affected by any change in the form of the government or of the persons administering it." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on French Treaties, 1793. ME 3:227

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That "all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people." [Xth amendment.] 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."

"We think experience has proved it safer for the mass of individuals
composing the society to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent and to delegate those to which they are not competent to deputies named and removable for unfaithful conduct by themselves immediately."

--Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816. ME 14:487

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0300.htm

Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind.

James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

From the Farmer Refuted, Feb 23, 1775 Alexander Hamilton

To usurp dominion over a People, in their own despite, or to grasp at a more extensive power than they (the People) are willing to entrust, is to violate that law of nature, which gives every man a right to his personal liberty; and can, therefore, confer no obligation to obedience.

http://www.founding.com/founders_library/pageID.2149/default.asp

This revolution principle - that, the sovereign power residing in the people, they may change their constitution and government whenever they please - is not a principle of discord, rancor, or war: it is a principle of melioration, contentment, and peace. It is a principle not recommended merely by a flattering theory: it is a principle recommended by happy experience. To the testimony of Pennsylvania - to the testimony of the United States I appeal for the truth of what I say.

James Wilson, Founding Father. Lectures on Law: Volume 1, page 21.

"Having not yet succeeded in hitting on an opportunity, I send you a part of it in a newspaper, which broaches a new Constitutional doctrine of vast consequence, and demanding the serious attention of the public. I consider it myself as subverting the fundamental and characteristic principle of the Government; as contrary to the true and fair, as well as the received construction, and as bidding defiance to the sense in which the Constitution is known to have been proposed, advocated, and adopted. If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions. It is to be remarked that the phrase out of which this doctrine is elaborated is copied from the old Articles of Confederation, where it was always understood as nothing more than a general caption to the specified powers, and it is a fact that it was preferred in the new instrument for that very reason, as less liable than any other to misconstruction.
Remaining always most affectionately yours"
January 21, 1792

Library of Congress: James Madison Documents

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House on August 1, 1776.

“Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking up Arms,” co-authored by Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson, and approved by the Continental Congress in 1775:

“We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful
as voluntary slavery. Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely
to surrender that freedom which we have received from our gallant
ancestors. . . . We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning
succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits
them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them. . . . [We are]
with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.”

Permit me to mention one great principle, the vital principle I may well call it, which diffuses animation and vigor through all the others. The principle I mean is this, that the supreme or sovereign power of the society resides in the citizens at large; and that, therefore, they always retain the right of abolishing, altering, or amending their constitution, at whatever time, and in whatever manner, they shall deem expedient. James Wilson, Founding Father, Lectures on Law: Volume 1 Chapter 1 page 17.

Learn More: The Honorable James Wilson

Lectures On Law: James Wilson - Founding Father of the Constitution

On the publik mind, one great truth can never be too deeply impressed - that the weight of the government of the United States, and of each State composing the union, rests on the shoulders of the people.

I express not this sentiment now, as I have never expressed it heretofore, with a view to flatter: I express it now, as I have always expressed it heretofore, with a far other and higher aim - with an aim to excite the people to acquire, by vigorous and manly exercise, a degree of strength sufficient to support the weighty burthen, which is laid upon them - with an aim to convince them, that their duties rise in strict proportion to their rights; and that few are able to trace or to estimate the great danger, in a free government, when the rights of the People are un-exercised, and the still greater danger, when the rights of the people are ill exercised.

At a general election, too few attend to the important consequence of voting or not voting; and to the consequences, still more important, of voting right or wrong. Founding Father, James Wilson

"The pyramid of government--and a republican government may well receive that beautiful and solid form--should be raised to a dignified altitude: but its foundations must, of consequence, be broad, and strong, and deep. The authority, the interests, and the affections of the people at large are the only foundation, on which a superstructure, proposed to be at once durable and magnificent, can be rationally erected."