"Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience. If there be no penalty annexed to disobedience, the resolutions or commands which pretend to be laws will, in fact, amount to nothing more than advice or recommendations."

What Hamilton means by this quote is that calling yourself a nation with a government means being a group of citizens that come up with a list of rules to live by and enforcing those rules by acknowledging non compliance and then in turn giving incentive to comply by taking away rights from those who do not. In other words, law without law enforcement is just a suggestion and therefore ineffective as a means of protection of rights. If you tell me it is illegal to sell drugs but I sell drugs anyway with no consequences, then making something illegal is just saying "please don't do that."

I think this quote relates to the class because it addresses the most basic need for a government system. We talk about the process of forming a government and the different needs it should meet and the rolls it should play, but in my mind this quote addresses why we ever saw a need for government in the first place. I know that now, forming and enforcing laws is one of the governments many rolls, but to me it is the key roll. Other services provided by government are dictated by those laws and the only reason one could argue that we are different or separate from nature is because we have laws that we live by. Laws are put in place to keep our natural reactions to things in check. With out laws we are simply impulse driven, or least have no protection from those who are. And without enforcing those laws, they are not even really laws.