Law and academe share a fondness for citation. Nothing more interesting than a cliché may be quoted without attributing the quotation to its source. As the saying goes, "Be original - but find someone who said it first."1
The Hatfield courthouse in downtown Portland has an imposing quotation carved high on a wall on the ground floor: "THE FIRST DUTY OF SOCIETY IS JUSTICE", in majestic capitals, unsourced. Federal judges cite the saying to remind lawyers of their obligation of professionalism. But who first said it? The courthouse wall attributes the saying to "Jury Assembly Room," likely a pseudonym. I doubt that anyone in the courthouse knows who actually said it. If you were to ask the courthouse occupants for the name of the author, my guess is that half would confidently attribute the saying to Alexander Hamilton and the other half wouldn't know.
Alexander Hamilton said and wrote a lot of things, and he's occasionally credited with this fine saying. He isn't, however, the author -- people wrongly identified Hamilton as the author because the man who actually stated the phrase in a public speech followed it up with a mention of Hamilton. None of the online information I found that credits Hamilton as the author states where and when he said or wrote it.
The actual author was a prominent abolitionist, Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), who said it in a speech at the old Boston Music Hall on Winter Street on January 20, 1861. That speech and another that he gave the next month were published later that year. In that speech, talking of the impending Civil War, he said:
Mr. Seward says, "The first object of every human society is safety;" I think the first duty of society is JUSTICE. Alexander Hamilton said, "Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society." If any other basis of safety or gain were honest, it would be impossible.2
There is the original quotation, straight from Wendell Phillips in 1861. Unfortunately for the reputation of Mr. Phillips, his next two words were "Alexander Hamilton." HIs actual quotation of Hamilton's words: "Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society" is taken from Federalist Paper No. 51, and therein lies another irony in the history of this quotation: Hamilton wrote more than half of the Federalist papers, but he didn't write No. 51 -- James Madison wrote No. 51.
The irony? Today some mistakenly credit Hamilton for the words of Wendell Phillips because Phillips mistakenly credited Hamilton with the words of James Madison.
1 Isaac Laquedem, http://isaac.blogs.com/isaac_laquedem, retrieved March 23, 2018.
2 Wendell Phillips, Disunion: Two Discourses at Music Hall, on January 20th, and February 17th, 1861 (Boston: Robert F. Wallcut, 1861), page 6.