Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 1: "A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."
Alexander Hamilton, Constitutional Convention, June 6, 1787: "An influential demagogue will give an impulse to the whole. Demagogues are not always inconsiderable persons. Patricians were frequently demagogues."
James Madison, Federalist 63: "As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn."
John Adams, Works: "There are as many and as dangerous aristocratical demagogues as there are democratical."
