“governments are but trustees acting under derived authority and have no power to delegate what is not delegated to them. But the people, as the original fountain might take away what they have delegated and entrust to whom they please. .. The sovereignty in every state resides in the people of the state and they may alter and change their form of government at their own pleasure.” -Luther v. Borden, 48 US 1. 12 L.Ed. 581.
“Members of Congress are trustees of the people and of our Nation.”
Congressional Record Vol. 164, No. 24, SEC. 3, Page H913 (House – February 7, 2018)
“In 1881 his party turned to him as the logical candidate for mayor of Buffalo. Again the nomination was practically forced upon him, and in his letter of acceptance occurs the famous phrase, “public officials are the trustees of the people”, and from it was created the equally famous slogan of his later campaign for President, “public office is a public trust.”
Congressional Record p2519 (House – March 19, 1937)
“While Madison’s paramount purpose was to rescue the people from the perils of an existing condition bordering on anarchy, and to maintain justice between the States, he was also intent upon preserving the rights of the States. In his view, it was through the Unton that the States themselves were to be preserved. His conception was of the needs of a great people, and as he put it, “the Federal and State Governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes. Madison was seeking not to impair the necessary functions of State governments but by conserving the essential interests of national security and stability to make it possible for the people in their respective States to enjoy the advantages of the peaceful administration of their local affairs. Madison very clearly recognized the necessity of providing for invalidating State legislation which might be repugnant to the Constitution.”
Congressional Record p10475 (Senate – July 1, 1935)
“The fact that this country is large is no reason why we as trustees of the people should rush into all sorts of useless expenditure, and be satisfied with the statement that there is a surplus in the Treasury and the resources of the country are so great that it can stand any extravagance whatever.”
Congressional Record p2193 (Senate – February 22, 1889)
“The federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes. The adversaries of the Constitution seem to have lost sight of the people altogether in their reasonings on this subject; and to have viewed these different establishments, not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be reminded of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other.”
The Federalist Papers: Madison, No. 46, January 29, 1788
” “My idea of government,” says Lord Abingdon, “to speak as a lawyer would do, is, that the legislatures are the trustees of the people, the constitution the deed of gift, wherein they stood seized to uses only, and those uses being named, they cannot depart from them; but for their due performance are accountable to those by whose conveyance the trust was made. The right is therefore fiduciary, the power limited; or, as a mathematician would say, more in the road of demonstration; the constitution is a circle, the laws the radii of that circle, drawn on its surface with the pen of the legislature, and it is the known quality of a circle that its radii cannot exceed its circumference, whilst the people, like the compasses, are fixed in the center, and describe the circle.”
Luther Martin: A Citizen of the State of Maryland Remarks Relative to a Bill of Rights, 12 April 1788
“That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people, that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.”
Virginia Constitution Article I Section 2 – People the Source of Power