The sovereignty trap: sacrificing prosperity for the empty dignity of dominion

“ The sons of rapacity have now drawn their swords upon each other, and referred their claims to the decision of war; let us look unconcerned upon the slaughter, and remember that the death of every European delivers the country from a tyrant and a robber; for what is the claim of either nation, but the claim of the vulture to the leveret, of the tiger to the fawn? Let them then continue to dispute their title to regions which they cannot people, to purchase by danger and blood the empty dignity of dominion over mountains which they will never climb, and rivers which they will never pass. ”

“ This consideration introduces the element of physical strength as a condition of national prosperity.
It profits a people but little to be affluent and free, if it is perpetually exposed to be pillaged or subjugated; the number of its manufactures and the extent of its commerce are of small advantage, if another nation has the empire of the seas and gives the law in all the markets of the globe. Small nations are often impoverished, not because they are small, but because they are weak; and great empires prosper less because they are great than because they are strong. ”

“ We have, indeed, the empty pleasure of seeing ourselves lords of the sea, and of shaking the coasts with volleys of our cannon; but we purchase the triumph at a very high price, and shall find ourselves in time weakened by a useless ostentation of superiority.
The only parts of the Spanish dominions in which they can receive any hurt from our forces, are those countries which they possess in America, and from which they receive the gold and silver which inflame their pride, and incite them to insult nations more powerful than themselves. ”

“ Is your poverty, due to sacrifice, so unbearable that you will barter your freedom in order that you may be made temporarily prosperous by the sale of a few pounds of tobacco?
“Is the need for money so pressing, is your impatience for its possession such, that you cannot allow the Federal Government time to organize, to put into operation a constitution just adopted and to make treaties which in decency and in order and without color of treason, will gain for you the perpetual free navigation of the river and commercial privileges, which will never be hampered by export duties? ”

“ The want of protection to general interests, the absence of the strong bond of experienced benefits; the oppressive nature of the conquering government; the sacrifice of the general interests to the selfish ambition or rapacious passions of a section of the community, whether civil or military, which had got possession of power. ”

“ The wealth and greatness proceeding from the conquest of the Americas were to be sacrificed in a fruitless attempt to gain a predominant place in Europe,—which, indeed, Spain might have had, much as England acquired it, if she had not pursued it so directly and insistently, but had been willing to devote her attention to her colonies. On the other hand, the Americas drained Spain of some of her best resources in manhood, while the Italian wars brought her into the current of the highest European civilization. ”

“ They grow out of conditions, circumstances, events, sympathies, prevailing interests. We all remember that the most powerful political interest in this country for a long period previous to the war was that of slavery. We remember also that the slave-power, finding itself at war with the conscience of mankind, condemned by the enlightened spirit of this age, menaced by adverse interests growing stronger and stronger every day, sought safety behind the bulwark of what they euphoniously called local self-government and intrenched itself in the doctrine of State sovereignty. ”

“ But in nearly all the convulsive throes of nations, kings have proved themselves the weakest, tamest, most cowardly and ineffectual of all the heads of the time—ready and willing enough to sacrifice the lives of thousands of brave and devoted men to their own cause, but never prepared to sacrifice themselves. Hence the cause of the triumph of Democracy over effete Autocracy. ”

“ The high-handed attempt of the latter to force the people to surrender the attributes of our Government, springing from tho Northern spirit of equality, to the Southern spirit of aristocratic dominion, was foiled, and the slave power, seeing that its arrogated privilege to rule the nation was denied, began to execute its threat to ruin it. It withdrew at once into its doctrine of Slave-States-rights, and, carrying it to the criminal extent of secession, struck its murderous blow at the life of the nation. ”

“ Non-slaveholders of the South! recollect that slavery is the only impediment to your progress and prosperity, that it stands diametrically opposed to all needful reforms, that it seeks to sacrifice you entirely for the benefit of others, and that it is the one great and only cause of dishonor to your country. ”

“ In vain you seek economy or purity in the National Government, in vain you seek improvement of rivers and harbors, in vain you seek homesteads on the public lands for actual settlers, in vain you seek reform in administration, in vain you seek dignity and peace in our foreign relations, with just sympathy for struggling Freedom everywhere, while [Pg 340] this selfish and corrupt power holds the National purse and the National sword. Prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and the door will be open to all generous principles. ”

“ The war fabric melted like a cloud; armies were disbanded, vessels were called home, credit rose, prices sprang upward, importations swelled, exportation began.
In truth, the time of antagonism was at an end, for, with the European peace of 1814, the immediate cause for irritation was removed, never to return. The whole structure of blockades, Orders in Council, seizures, and restrictions upon neutrals vanished; the necessity for British impressments ceased to exist; and, since France never again came into hostility with England, none of these grievances were revived. ”

“ The blood which has been shed will never come back; the wealth which has been wasted will come back but only slowly. In any case, it must become, for all living in it, a Europe of peaceful labour. The peace which shall end this war must be a lasting one and not containing the germ of a fresh war, but establishing a final and peaceful order of things in European affairs. ”

“ The West India market for fish, grain, and lumber, the British or European market for plantation products must be replaced on a profitable basis, and the United States must be prepared to purchase these privileges by whatever concessions lay in its power to grant. It rested chiefly with England to decide whether to permit the former colonies to resume their earlier commercial system or begin a new policy, for it was with Britain and the British colonies {150} that seven-eighths of American commerce naturally was carried on. ”

“ The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security. ”

“ To hinder, besides, the farmer from sending his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of public utility, to a sort of reasons of state; an act or legislative authority which ought to be exercised only, which can be pardoned only, in cases of the most urgent necessity. ”

“ I might next consider the Trade as it is destructive of the Welfare of human Society, and inconsistent with the Peace and Prosperity of a Country, as by it the number of natural Enemies must be encreased, and the Place of those taken up who would be its support and security: Or I might shew from innumerable Examples, how it introduces Idleness, discourages Marriage, corrupts the Youth and ruins and debauches Morals. ”

“ We, to the utmost of our power, weaken and dissolve the universal tie that binds and unites mankind. We practise what we should exclaim against as the utmost excess of cruelty and tyranny, if nations of the world, differing in colour and form of government from ourselves, were so possessed of empire as to be able to reduce us to a state of unmerited and brutish servitude. Of consequence, we sacrifice our reason, our humanity, our Christianity, to an unnatural sordid gain. We teach other nations to despise and trample under foot all the obligations of social virtue. ”

“ The great society of nations, instead of gaining anything by it, is only losing, as a whole, the total amount of the financial cost of the military operations, of the squandering of hard earned savings, of diminished labour and production, of the waste of productive capital, of the loss of so many long days which could have been so much better employed. But most deplorable is the loss entailed by the warring nations, and the universe at large, by the sacrifice of the younger generations, of early youth and of strongly developed manhood, for the success of tyrannical and criminal purposes. ”

“ Is it to be supposed for one single instant that the British people, so rightly proud of their political liberties, and of their representative government, which after centuries of efforts and [258] trials they have successfully brought to such perfection, basing its future permanency on the solid rock of ministerial responsibility, would consent to sacrifice them for the sake of a vain, a ridiculous, an odious and impracticable scheme to dominate the world by brute force? ”

“ Nevertheless, the general persuasion is, that, in a grand place, it is necessary to support the eclat of a public dignity: that the honour of the master requires that mean and sorry externals disgrace not the elevated post which he hath confided to us; that we are responsible to the sovereign, to the state, and to ourselves, before being so to individuals ”

“ But if it be in not acting so as to meet the gracious approbation of his sovereign that he becomes guilty,—the province and the people have yet their sacred sovereign to look to and rely upon for happiness, protection, justice, and peace. Whereas, if his guilt should lie in giving battle when unable to command a victory, then will the celestial dignity of the throne be sullied, the lives of the people sacrificed, and for further proceedings and arrangements it will be, in an increased degree, impossible to find resource. ”

“ You who have more than your share of the wealth of the world are rich at the cost of our suffering and our poverty. That troubles you not at all: you have sophistries and to spare to reassure you: the sacred rights of property, the fair struggle for life, the supreme interests of that Moloch, the State and Progress, that fabulous monster, that problematical Better to which men sacrifice the Good,—the Good of other men.—But for all that, the fact remains, and all your sophistries will never manage to deny it: "You have too much to live on. ”

“ Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope. ”

“ As an introduction to the question of extreme poverty, it is necessary to go back to the concept of human dignity. Discussion of the indivisibility of human rights involves consideration of the indivisibility of the individual and his dignity; recent discussions on human rights and the right to development have stressed the fact that the individual and his dignity must be at the centre of all development efforts. [1] ”

“ Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Article 24
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay. ”

“ In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition of liberty that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act, and the G.I. Bill of Rights. And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time. To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will bring the highest standards to our schools, and build an ownership society. ”

“ Poverty is a flagrant violation of human dignity and yet so difficult for legislation to cover. Learning from the poorest what these violations may entail in order constantly to improve on necessarily inadequate legislation - this is the object of becoming acquainted with extreme poverty in order to protect human rights. ”

“ It is the offspring of that false view of popular sovereignty which places it in the people personally or generically, irrespective of the domain, which makes sovereignty a purely personal right, not a right fixed to the soil, and is simply a return to the barbaric constitution of power. In all civilized nations, sovereignty is inseparable from the state, and the state is inseparable from the domain. The will of the people, unless they are a state, is no law, has no force, binds nobody, and justifies no act. ”

“ It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts,—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. ”

“ True liberty protects the labourer as well as his Lord; preserves the dignity of human nature, and seldom fails to render a province rich and populous; whereas, on the other hand, a toleration of slavery is the highest breach of social virtue, and not only tends to depopulation, but too often renders the minds of both masters and slaves utterly depraved and inhuman, by the hateful extremes of exaltation and depression. ”

“ Remember [he said on another occasion] , remember that the greatness of our country is not in the greatness of its (material) achievements, but in its promise—a promise that cannot be fulfilled without that sovereign moral sense, without a sensitive moral conscience. Commercial prosperity is only a curse if it be not subservient to moral and intellectual progress, and our prosperity will conquer us if we do not conquer our prosperity. Our commercial success tends to make us all cowards ”

“ Industry, navigation, commerce, have so much developed, they have formed so many ties by which every citizen is linked to his country's fate, that your own material interest is a security to your country's future.
In loving your own selves you love your country, and in loving your country you love your own selves. This community of public and private interest will make you avoid the stumbling-block over which others fell. Prosperity is, of course, a great benefit; it is one of the aims of human society; but when prosperity becomes too material, it does not always guarantee the future. ”

“ If you drift along in your torpor and your heedlessness, all the evils of slavery await you—deprivations, humiliations, the scorn and arrogance of the conqueror; you will be pushed about from pillar to post, because you have never found your proper niche, until, through the sacrifice of your nationality and of your language, you slip into some subordinate place where your nation shall sink its identity. ”