Civil and political rights

“ They agree in part to be governed by others, in order that in part they may govern others. The rights of participation in the government, such as voting and holding office, are called political rights, because they affect the public policy of society. ”

“ The question of human rights and the civil and political equality of all men shall be a first consideration with us, and we shall go to the aid of the class of men of like faith on these points, it matters not in what political party they may be found. ”

“ To bestow on communities some degree of political freedom, it is perhaps sufficient, that their members, either singly, or as they are involved with their several orders, should insist on their rights; that under republics, the citizen should either maintain his own equality with firmness, or restrain the ambition of his fellow citizen within moderate bounds; that under monarchy, men of every rank should maintain the honours of their private or their public stations ”

“ The end of all union of men in society being maintenance of their natural rights, civil and political, these rights should be the basis of the social pact: their recognition and their declaration ought to precede the Constitution which secures and guarantees them. 1. The natural rights, civil and political, of men are liberty, equality, security, property, social protection, and resistance to oppression. 2. Liberty consists in the power to do whatever is not contrary to the rights of others ”

“ His civil-rights bill he pressed with unflagging perseverance, against an opposition which stood upon the ground that the objects his measure contemplated, belonged, under the Constitution, to the jurisdiction of the States; that the colored people, armed with the ballot, possessed the necessary means to provide for their own security, and that the progressive development of public sentiment would afford to them greater protection than could be given by National legislation of questionable constitutionality. ”

“ But an analogous mistake lurks in all static forms of democracy. The bestowal and the exercise of political and civil rights are merely a method of organization, which if used in proper subordination to the ultimate democratic purpose, may achieve in action something of the authority of a popular Sovereign will. ”

“ It requires, it is believed, but time and perseverance in civil associations, to lead them to the same results arrived at by other barbarous nations, and to demonstrate to them the value and importance of a general political confederation, founded on the principles of equal rights and equal representation, supported by public virtue and intelligence. ”

“ Local self-government, with impartial suffrage, will guard the rights of all citizens more securely than any centralized power. The public welfare requires the supremacy of the civil over the military authority, and the freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus. We demand for the individual the largest liberty consistent with public order, for the state self-government, and for the nation a return to the methods of peace and the constitutional limitations of power. ”

“ The foundation of government is there laid, not in imaginary rights of men, (which at best is a confusion of judicial with civil principles,) but in political convenience, and in human nature,—either as that nature is universal, or as it is modified by local habits and social aptitudes. The foundation of government (those who have read that book will recollect) is laid in a provision for our wants and in a conformity to our duties: it is to purvey for the one, it is to enforce the other. ”

“ Legal rights must be granted, and since the law is the child of the fundamental principles of human justice, legal equality should follow. Social and political rights also must be given; but why social and political equality? ”

“ Men never fail to dwell on maternity as a disqualification for the possession of many civil and political rights. Suggest the idea of women having a voice in making laws and administering the Government in the halls of legislation, in Congress, or the British Parliament, and men will declaim at once on the disabilities of maternity in a sneering contemptuous way, as if the office of motherhood was undignified and did not comport with the highest public offices in church and state. ”

“ Among these requisites, unalterable by changing conditions of society, are individual liberty, freedom of labor, of human development, rights of conscience, equality of the States, distribution of political powers into independent executive, legislative and judicial departments, and a careful restriction of those powers to public uses only, the healthy action of concurrent majorities, a careful safe-guarding that the power which makes the laws and the power which applies them shall not be in the same hands, and local self-government. ”

“ You want the rights and liberties of the citizen protected! Then let us have the Union and peace restored upon the basis of equal justice to all men; let us have a country purged of those abnormities which shun the light of free discussion; let the natural rights of man be held sacred; let us have a Republic firmly established upon complete harmony between our social institutions and the fundamental principles underlying our political system,—and the rights and liberties of the citizen will no longer be in danger! ”

“ The question now is, have we the wisdom and conscience, from the present upheavings of our political system to reconstruct a government on the one enduring basis which never yet has been tried—Equal Rights to All? ”

“ In this style, argue tyrants of every denomination from the weak king to the weak father of a family; they are all eager to crush reason; yet always assert that they usurp its throne only to be useful. Do you not act a similar part, when you FORCE all women, by denying them civil and political rights, to remain immured in their families groping in the dark? ”

“ The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State. ”

“ But in truth it is only as members of a society, as recognising common interests and objects, that individuals come to have these attributes and rights; and the power, which in a political society they have to obey, is derived from the development and systematisation of those institutions for the regulation of a common life without which they would have no rights at all. ”

“ Shall we not rather take the place to which we are entitled, as the leaders, rather than the followers, in the customs of society, turn back the tide of aristocratic inroads, and carry through the whole, not only of civil and political but of social and domestic life, the true principles of democratic freedom and equality? ”

“ This being the case, the institution of civil society is for the purpose of making an equalization of powers that shall be parallel to, and a guarantee of the equality of rights. The laws of a country when properly constructed apply to this purpose. ”

“ How easy would it have been to lay broad and deep the foundations on which the political life of this Republic might have developed itself to the full realization of those sublime ideals of universal liberty, equal rights and impartial justice, which stand as the supreme guiding stars in the heart of every true friend of the human kind. ”

“ A national government, which did not possess this power of legislation, would be little worthy of the exalted functions of guarding the happiness, and supporting the rights of a free people. It might guard against political oppressions, only to render private oppressions more intolerable, and more glaring. ”

“ I am very sensible, that civil government, as it actually exists in the world, by no means answers to the account I have given of it.—Instead of being an institution for guarding the weak against the strong, we find it an institution which makes the strong yet stronger, and gives them a systematical power of oppressing. Instead of promoting virtue and restraining vice, encouraging free enquiry, establishing Liberty, and protecting alike all peaceable persons in the enjoyment of their civil and religious rights ”

“ President, to bury the black man and the woman in the citizen, and our two organizations in the broader work of reconstruction? They who have been trained in the school of anti-slavery; they who, for the last thirty years, have discussed the whole question of human rights, which involves every other question of trade, commerce, finance, political economy, jurisprudence, morals and religion, are the true statesmen for the new republic—the best enunciators of our future policy of justice and equality. ”

“ The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from, and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same, as that for religious rights. ”

“ At the impending National election various questions of great importance will be submitted to our judgment. The settlements of the civil war as Constitutionally fixed must be conscientiously maintained, and at the same time the Government strengthened in general confidence by the strict observance of Constitutional principles, and the old brotherhood of the people revived by a policy of mutual justice and conciliation. ”

“ In the exercise of these natural rights, it has been supposed, men with a view to their general interest established political society. From that establishment is derived both the system of rights and obligations maintained by law as between man and man, and the right of the state to the submission of its subjects. ”

“ The state is for him the complex of those social relations out of which rights arise, so far as those rights have come to be regulated and harmonised according to a general law, which is recognised by a certain multitude of persons, and which there is sufficient power to secure against violation from without and from within. The other forms of community which precede and are independent of the formation of the state, do not continue to exist outside it, nor yet are they superseded by it. ”

“ In the Absolute form of the State, where all the powers of all men are called into activity for the necessary purpose of the whole community, each Individual binds all others just in so far as he is bound by them: all have equal Civil Rights or Civil Freedom; and each Individual is thus at once a complete Citizen and a complete Subject;—and, for the same reason, all are Citizens and Subjects in like manner. ”

“ Under the pressure of all the excited feeling growing out of the war, our statemen have still believed that the existence of the State with powers for domestic and local government, including the regulation of civil rights—the rights of person and of property—was essential to the perfect working of our complex form of government, though they have thought proper to impose additional limitations on the States, and to confer additional power on that of the Nation. ”

“ It is in the nature of liberties and rights, abstractly considered, to be insubordinate and to conflict both one with another and, perhaps, with the common weal. If the chief purpose of a democratic political system is merely the preservation of such rights, democracy becomes an invitation to local, factional, and individual ambitions and purposes. ”

“ We hold that all political power is inherent in the people, and free government founded on their authority and established for their benefit; that all citizens are equal in political rights, entitled to the largest religious and political liberty compatible with the good order of society, as also the use and enjoyment of the fruits of their labor and talents; and no man or set of men is entitled to exclusive separable endowments and privileges or immunities from the government, but in consideration of public services ”

“ Among the many practical and substantial triumphs of the principles achieved by the Republican party during the past twelve years, we may enumerate with pride and pleasure, the prohibiting of any State from abridging the privileges of any citizen of the Republic, the declaring the civil and political equality of every citizen, and the establishing of all these principles in the Federal Constitution by amendments thereto, as the permanent law. ”

“ The rights of an individual with regard to matters which primarily concern the State are public or political rights, or, in other words, duties or functions to be exercised by the possessor not in accordance with his own wish or interest, but primarily at least with a view to the interest of the State, and therefore may be limited or extended in any way which conduces to the welfare of the community. ”

“ But the form of our government is such, that every measure that bears upon the public [112] or private interest of every citizen, is decided by public sentiment. All laws and regulations in civil, or religious, or social concerns, are decided by the majority of votes. And the present is a time when every doctrine, every principle, and every practice which influences the happiness of man, either in this, or in a future life, is under discussion. ”

“ In the opposite class of moral beings, we have placed an equality of civil rights, freedom of religion, and of inquiry, division of power, national influence or sovereignty, knowledge, uncorrupted representation, and actual responsibility. This enumeration of a few individuals used to explain our reasoning, and not as including entire classes. ”