Commonalty

“ To the wise men who were entrusted with the formation of that union and common government, it was obvious enough that each separate society should be entrusted with the management of its own peculiar interests, and that the united government should take charge only of those interests which were common and general. ”

“ Every people, therefore, which consists of such an association of the entire multitude as I have described, every city which consists of an assemblage of the people, and every commonwealth which embraces every member of these associations, must be regulated by a certain authority, in order to be permanent. ”

“ If we merely suppose an agreement, unanimous, of course, in those who concur in it, to be governed by one man, or by one council promising that they shall wield the force of the whole against anyone who shall contravene their commands issued for the public good, the foundation is as well laid, and the commonwealth as firmly established, as by the double process of a mutual covenant to constitute a people, and a popular determination to constitute a government. ”

“ You may take a big jump through history, from primitive to feudal, from feudal to modern times; and you will still find the same interests strong in every state, using their inherited control of wealth, of organisation, and of law, to extract advantage to themselves from the weaker, and the less educated members of the community; and always doing it in the name of the commonwealth—the strength and stability of the State. ”

“ The second important principle or characteristic to be borne in mind when interpreting our Constitution is a corollary of the reality of co-existence of the individual and society, and also the reality of co-existence of rights and duties of the individual on the one hand, and the collective of communitarian rights and duties of society on the other. ”

“ By commonwealth, I must be understood all along to mean, not a democracy, or any form of government, but any independent community, which the Latines signified by the word civitas, to which the word which best answers in our language, is commonwealth, and most properly expresses such a society of men, which community or city in English does not; for there may be subordinate communities in a government ”

“ In his public capacity he is one of the sovereign people who appoint the government. That is to say, in his private capacity he is one of those to whom rights are given; and in his public capacity he is one of those who, through their agency, give the rights. Turn this abstract statement into a concrete statement, and see what it means. Let the community consist of a million men, who, by the hypothesis, are not only joint possessors of the inhabited region, but joint possessors of all liberties of action and appropriation: the only right recognized being that of the aggregate to everything. ”

“ As to the share of power, authority, direction, which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society."—Ibid. ”

“ The more you spread government as an organization of the people themselves, the more humane, upon that working basis, are likely to be its operations—on one condition: that such organisation of the people, whatever its numbers, submits to the operation of its own laws and shares equally in the conditions which it imposes—that, if it provides a qualification for citizenship, it provides also the means for all to qualify. ”

“ But if all associations aim at some good, the state, or political association, which is the highest of all and which embraces all the rest, aims, and in a greater degree than any other, at the highest good.’ In other words, in cases of conflict of allegiance between the state or political association and some other form of grouping, whether Church or Trade Union or professional or humanitarian organization, the claim of the state must take precedence. ”

“ This communal organization of society continued for thousands of years and its vestiges still exist amid the highest enlightenment, as the foundation for business corporations, partnerships, and, indeed, all commercial and other coöperation,—communism—the greatest good to the greatest number, being the basis of all civilized laws. ”

“ Moreover, in a commonwealth perfectly organized, where the happiness of the whole becomes that of each part, whatever tends to the highest general good tends to the best interest of each individual member. ”

“ Having given a general idea of the lords, and their share of the legislature, it will now be proper to descend, and see the several classes of the lower rank, called Commons, and to examine what share or influence they had formerly, or now enjoy, in the government. The commoners may, in general, then, be divided into the lesser nobility, or gentry, and the others, whom, for distinction sake, I shall call the lower commons. ”

“ The foremost duty, therefore, of the rulers of the State should be to make sure that the laws and institutions, the general character and administration of the commonwealth, shall be such as of themselves to realize public well-being and private prosperity. ”

“ Now what constitutes the commonweal, or common notion of what is for the common good, will and always must be expressed in the form of laws of some kind—either political laws, instituted by the citizens in public assembly, as of old by folk-moot, or if you will by real councils or parliaments of the people, or by social customs growing up from the experience of Society. The fact that at present many or the majority of laws and customs are bad, does not mean that we can do without good laws or good customs. ”

“ I purpose, in the few minutes allotted to me, to discover, if possible, the true sphere of the state in reference to the education of the young. I shall use the word state in its broadest sense—a community of persons living within a limited territory and bound together by political ties. If such a community has a right to exist, then it has a right to do anything that is necessary to maintain that existence—to appropriate private property and even to take life itself. ”

“ This person (including of course an assembly as well as individual) is the sovereign, and possesses sovereign power. And such power may spring from agreement or from force. A commonwealth by agreement or institution is when a multitude do agree and covenant one with another that whatever the major part shall agree to represent them, shall be the representative of them all. ”

“ Among the distinctions which elevate man above brutes, there is one which we have not mentioned, but which is really one of the most eminent. We mean, his faculty and habit of forming himself into Societies, united by laws and language for some common object, the furtherance of which requires such union. The most general and primary kind of such societies, is that Civil Society which is bound together by Law and Government, and which secures to men the Rights of property, person, family, external peace, and the like. ”

“ Effective association began to demand, that is, a new adjustment among the individual and class interests, traditions, and convictions which constituted the substance of any particular state; and such an adjustment could be secured only by an adequate machinery of consultation and discussion. Cohesion could no longer be imposed upon a people, because they no longer had any sufficient reason to submit to the discipline of such an imposition. ”

“ The oldest “institution” in this view was the individual, and the primordial society the natural grouping of human beings under the influence of family affection, and for the sake of mutual aid. Political society was a more artificial arrangement, a convention arrived at for the specific purpose of securing a better order and maintaining the common safety. ”

“ In starting this little Co-operative Commonwealth, I am reminded by those who are always at a man's elbow to fill him with forebodings of ill, to look at the failures, which I have just referred to, which make up the history of the attempt to realise ideal commonwealths in this practical workaday world. ”

“ The representatives of the nation are incessantly employed on a social compact, of which the component powers, separated, but not divided, all contribute, by their reciprocal action, to harmony and unity. ”

“ In this strange and splendid degree it cannot be expected, perhaps, to pervade a whole commonwealth or a whole civilization; but one commonwealth may have it much more than another commonwealth, one civilization much more than another civilization. ”

“ All this labor is done for the commonwealth—no citizen of which is capable even of thinking about "property," except as a res publica;—and the sole object of the commonwealth is the nurture and training of its young,—nearly all of whom are girls. ”

“ In this respect, I cannot compare the soul more properly to any thing than to a republic or commonwealth, in which the several members are united by the reciprocal ties of government and subordination, and give rise to other persons, who propagate the same republic in the incessant changes of its parts. ”

“ Combinations of classes in society, united by the bond of a corporate spirit, for the accumulation of power, influence, or wealth, by the control of intercourse or trade, or the spiritual or moral concerns of society, unquestionably desire limitations upon the sovereignty of the people, and the existence of an authority upon which they can repose in security and confidence. ”

“ We may see the need of government in societies by what is visible in families, those lesser societies of which all public societies are constituted. How miserable would these little societies be, if all were left to themselves, without any authority or superiority in one above another or any head of union and influence among them? ”

“ Can any one doubt that such a state of society in which the greatest knowledge of its interests was thus combined with the greatest sympathy with its wants, would realize the idea of a perfect Commonwealth? ”

“ And as in order to lay down good rules for well governing the commonwealth, you must first know the commonwealth; so in order to persuade and govern men, you must know what will please or frighten them. The good that they do to one another, they do not because it is just or commanded ”

“ This is more than consent or concord,—it is a real unity of them all in one and the same person, made by covenant of every man with every man, in such manner as if every man should say to every man: I authorise, and give up my right of governing myself to this man or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner. This done, the multitude so united in one person is called a commonwealth, in Latin civitas. ”

“ There were the workshops in which the political creed of England was fashioned, where the notion of a free commonwealth with the three estates of king, lords, and commons holding by common consent their several authority, was proved and tested till it became the mere commonplace, the vulgar property of every Englishman. ”

“ The political system of this Republic rests upon the right of the people to control their local concerns in their several States by the operations of self-government, subject to certain restrictions imposed by the National Constitution, and in the right to coöperate with one another in the government of the whole. ”

“ It is better that the commonwealth be fashioned to the setting forth of God's house, which is his church: than to accomodate the church frame to the civill state. Democracy, I do not conceyve that ever God did ordeyne as a fit government eyther for church or commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed? ”

“ He notices how important such just definitions are in all debates whatever, and draws this conclusion from the preceding arguments—that the Commonwealth is the common welfare whenever it is swayed with justice and wisdom, whether it be subordinated to a king, an aristocracy, or a democracy. ”

“ When, therefore, the instructed in general can be brought to recognize one social arrangement, or political or other institution, as good, and another as bad—one as desirable, another as condemnable, very much has been done towards giving to the one, or withdrawing from the other, that preponderance of social force which enables it to subsist. ”

“ From the first our commonwealth conspicuously stood for something greater than any party, something that antedates all our parties, that spirit of independence in political judgment and action which brought the old thirteen states into being and made the Republic possible. ”

“ And as this union into a city or body politic, is instituted with common power over all the particular persons, or members thereof, to the common good of them all; so also may there be amongst a multitude of those members, instituted a subordinate union of certain men, for certain common actions to be done by those men for some common benefit of theirs, or of the whole city ”

“ Consequently, in this constitution, the individuality of each absolutely disappears in the community of all; and each one receives back his contribution to the common power, strengthened by the united powers of all the rest. ”

“ Present tendency is in the direction of safeguarding the interests of all by a fully representative government, in which the individual efficiency of prince or commoner alike shall have due weight, but no one sovereign or class shall rule the people as a whole. ”

“ From the family certain powers are delegated to the next higher social unit, the village or communal group, which in its turn concedes certain of its inherent rights to the organic group of communities, or states, and finally the states commit to the last and general authority, the national government, some of the elements of authority that have been delegated to them. ”