Circumvallation

“ In effect, Sir, every legal, regular authority, in matters of revenue, of political administration, of criminal law, of civil law, in many of the most essential parts of military discipline, is laid level with the ground; and an oppressive, irregular, capricious, unsteady, rapacious, and peculating despotism, with a direct disavowal of obedience to any authority at home, and without any fixed maxim, principle, or rule of proceeding to guide them in India, is at present the state of your charter-government over great kingdoms. ”

“ But if this habit of arbitrary violence begins to extend itself further, and perverts our authority, leading it from right to violence, so that those who had voluntarily obeyed us are only restrained by fear, then, although we, during our days, may escape the peril, yet am I solicitous respecting the safety of our posterity and the immortality of the Commonwealth itself, which, doubtless, might become perpetual and invincible if our people would maintain their ancient institutions and manners. ”

“ The foundation of civil authority is this natural right, which is not given, but left to the supreme magistrate upon men's entering into societies; and not only a foreign invader, but a domestic rebel, puts himself again into a state of nature to be proceeded against, not as a subject, but an enemy, and consequently acquires by his rebellion the same right over the life of his prince, as the prince for the most heinous crimes has over the life of his own subjects. ”

“ For, after all, what should be the test of the amount of coercion or control which law has a right to exert over individual liberty? Does it desire the moral death of the sinner, or that he be converted and live? Should the main purpose of punishment be retaliation against a criminal, or reformation? ”

“ The people, blinded by this seeming attention to their complaints, remained heedless of the violation of the ancient law of their republic, "that none of its citizens should ever be tried or punished out of the limits of its own territory." ”

“ Now in such unfortunate quarrels among the component parts of a great political union of communities, I can scarcely conceive anything more completely imprudent than for the head of the empire to insist, that if any privilege is pleaded against his will or his acts, that his whole authority is denied,—instantly to proclaim rebellion, to beat to arms, and to put the offending provinces under the ban. ”

“ The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves. ”

“ The violation, then, consists in using a power, granted for one object, to advance another, and that by a sacrifice of the original object. It is, in a word, a violation of perversion, the most dangerous of all, because the most insidious, and difficult to resist. ”

“ If princes, or ministers, or the corrupt sham-representatives of the people, order, command, or lay down any thing contrary to that which is ordered, commanded, or laid down by God, human nature, or the constitution of this government, I will still hold fast by the higher authorities. If the meaner authorities are offended, they can only destroy the body of the individual, but never can affect the right, or that which is ordered by their superiors. ”

“ But the people, as a whole, never can be a rebel; and the expression rebellion, applied to the people at large, is the greatest absurdity ever uttered. For the people are, in fact and in law, the highest power and the source of all power; responsible only to God. By the convening of the people, the government loses its power, both in fact and in law. ”

“ To attack the state immediately is to be guilty either of rebellion or high treason. Rebellion is to attempt to raise, or actually to raise, a power in hostility to the power of the state, and to resist therewith that power of the state. ”

“ Men who administer the laws may discriminate against us to an outrageous degree, but we have no power to remove or to punish them.
"Like lean, hungry dogs, we must crouch beneath our master's table and snap eagerly at the crumbs that fall. ”

“ If the sovereign tries to govern, and if the prince wants to make the laws, or if the subject refuses to obey them, disorder takes the place of order, and the state falls to pieces under despotism or anarchy. ”

“ It has a natural meaning in the mouths of those who, in resisting some coercive power that claims their obedience, can point to another determinate authority to which they not only consider obedience due, but to which such obedience in some considerable measure is actually rendered; a meaning which it has not when all that can be opposed to sovereign 'de facto' is either a 'general will,' or the mere name of a fallen dynasty exercising no control over men in their dealings with each other. ”

“ The first kind of alteration leads to the last. As violations of the rights of the governed are commonly not only specious, but small at the beginning, they spread over the multitude in such a manner as to touch individuals but slightly. ”

“ Others are arraigned for violating the laws, but we are to be condemned for putting them in execution, though our offices made it imperative upon us, and we were bound by the express commands of the sovereign, to whom the execution of the law is committed by the constitution. If we are to be sacrificed to the clamours of those whom our duty has obliged us to punish, I entreat that the cause of our suffering may be kept a profound secret ”

“ But among all the reproaches which the Whigs have flung upon their adversaries, there is none hath done them more service than that of passive obedience, as they represent it, with the consequences of non-resistance, arbitrary power, indefeasible right, tyranny, popery, and what not? There is no accusation which has passed with more plausibility than this, nor any that is supported with less justice. ”

“ And why should a man, who takes the advantage of his being king, or governor, to subvert the laws and liberties of his country, be considered in any other light than that of a foreign invader? Nay his crime is much more atrocious, as he was appointed the guardian of the laws and liberties, which he subverts, and which he was, therefore, under the strongest obligation to maintain. ”

“ In case that by any public disturbance a government contrary to the principles which it sanctions shall be established, as soon as the people recover their liberty its observance shall be reestablished, and in accordance with it and the laws which shall have been issued in virtue of it, shall be judged not only those who shall have figured in the government emanating from the rebellion, but also those who shall have cooperated with it. ”

“ Let us make oath upon the honour of our motherland that should any of us be seized by an unjust tribunal, intending against us one of those acts termed of political expediency—which are, in effect, but acts of despotism—let us swear, I say, to give a full expression to the strength that is in us and do that in self-defence which nature, courage, and despair dictate to us. ”

“ Now albeit Kings, who make the Laws, be (as King James teacheth us) above the Laws; yet will they Rule their Subjects by the Law; and a King, governing in a setled Kingdom, leaves to be a King, and degenerates into a Tyrant, so soon as he seems to Rule according to his Laws; yet where he sees the Laws Rigorous or Doubtful, he may mitigate and interpret. General Laws made in Parliament, may, upon known Respects to the King, by his Authority be Mitigated or Suspended, upon Causes only known to him. ”

“ Loud Complaints are made, of insufferable Grievances, and Encroachments upon our Liberties, under the benign Administration of our present gracious Sovereign; to redress which, is the pretended Design of this wicked Rebellion. But how is this heavy Charge made out? Do our Enemies pretend to produce any one Act of lawless Power, ever done, or so much as attempted by his present Majesty, or his Royal Father, through the whole Course of their Reigns? ”

“ The Will whose Province it is to obey and execute the Dictates of Reason, is continually rebelling against and usurping Authority over it; it not only stops us in the Pursuit of Truth, makes us wink hard and shut our Eyes against the Light, but even where it cannot thus hoodwink our Understanding, it frequently exerts its Tyranny the more, and makes us act in Contradiction to it. ”

“ But because a system is practicable in England, it does not follow that it is practicable here. That which is allowable for the ends of sustaining a monarchy or an aristocracy, may be tyrannical in a republic. ”

“ In short, crimes of every denomination, and acts of tyranny and injustice, of every kind, have multiplied, since the abolition of royalty, in a proportion which sets all the powers of calculation at defiance. ”

“ The suppression, for instance, of anarchy and resistance to law—the complete establishment of the authority of the central government, in a state of society like that of Europe in the Middle Ages—is one of the strongest interests of the people, and also of the rulers simply because they are the rulers ”

“ The laws are intended to give the official the opportunity to defend the interests of his real or ideal master the monarch or the State, against the people, which is credited with a perpetual tendency to rid itself of its task-master. ”

“ All cities and guilds, moreover, presuming to act counter to the foregoing, shall similarly be considered guilty of perjury, and likewise shall be altogether deprived of all their rights, liberties, privileges and favours obtained from the holy empire, and both in their persons and in all their possessions shall incur the imperial bann and proscription. And any man, on his own authority and without trial or the calling in of any magistrate, may henceforth with impunity attack those whom we, by the act itself, deprive, from now or from a past time on, of all their rights. ”

“ Indeed, the wretched state of society about the Middle Ages must have rendered travelling a service of danger, from the perpetual wars between each petty State, the burdensome jurisdiction of the barons, and the outrages committed by outlaws. ”

“ The favourite Subject of its Clamours will be the Misconduct of Those who govern. And in a Country where Liberty is justly ranked among the greatest national Blessings, the most plausible Pretence of Faction will be, "to load the executive Power with the Charge of Despotism." ”

“ Let every friend of man and of his country, then, guard against two similar reigns of horror, and defy, as we do, fines and imprisonment, in attempting, by every lawful and rational means, to push back the gigantic strides of tyranny, whether in a king or an overbearing ministry. ”

“ Would men indeed so completely divest themselves of their natural rights, as thenceforward to have no will or choice left save as he or they who held the supreme power commanded, then truly might governors rule tyrannically and cruelly with impunity. ”

“ The rising circumflex begins with the falling, and ends with the rising inflection; the falling circumflex begins with the rising, and ends with the falling inflection.
Positive assertions of irony, raillery, etc., have the falling circumflex, and all negative assertions of doubled meaning will have the rising. Doubt, pity, contrast, grief, supposition, comparison, irony, implication, sneering, raillery, scorn, reproach, and contempt, are all expressed by the use of the wave of the circumflex. ”

“ Next, as to cases of ordinary public oppression, where the vitals of the constitution are not attacked, the law hath also assigned a remedy. For, as a king cannot misuse his power, without the advice of evil counsellors, and the assistance of wicked ministers, these men may be examined and punished. ”

“ What one seizes to-day, another takes to-morrow, and our cupidity reacts upon ourselves. Let us establish judges, who shall arbitrate our rights, and settle our differences! When the strong shall rise against the weak, the judge shall restrain him, and dispose of our force to suppress violence ”

“ If we seek to give a charter to the state, that it may interfere, and to found interference on "principles" of morality and expediency, we find ourselves floundering in puerilities and pedantic generalizations. ”

“ To comply with the command seemed madness in men who were conscious that their proceedings had already amounted to high treason;—but to refuse obedience, and thus set at defiance a power to which they were as yet unprepared to oppose any effectual resistance, seemed equally desperate. ”

“ Laws, the will of a despot, who in the capital administers justice in person; in the provinces the kalifa or bashaw faithfully copies the despotism of his imperial master; yet judgment is generally correct, and always prompt; the ruling principle appears to be—keep the people poor, and they will not rebel. ”

“ Pretensions to power, destructive of the natural and inherent privileges of humanity, and inconsistent with every principle of common sense, were asserted from the pulpit, were claimed by the sovereign. ”

“ So completely does this charter cover the ground of probable abuses in both general and local government, when its provisions are interpreted as they would be understood by the men to whom it was addressed, that it is not strange if men thought that all evils of government were at an end. ”

“ As, for example, that if any man shall bring into England or into any of the dominions thereunto belonging, from the Pope of Rome or from any man that hath authority from him, any Bull, writing, instrument, or authority to absolve or reconcile any person, or to promise any such absolution or reconciliation by speech, preaching, teaching, writing, or any other open deed, that then all and every such act or acts, offence or offences, shall be deemed and adjudged by the authority of this Act to be high treason. ”