Convention

“ Convention is a very real and wellnigh irresistible power. Not a few of our most cherished valuations—artistic, religious, political and social—are conventional fetishes which have been slowly evolved in the course of a great number of years as the result of determining factors, for the most part accidental and forgotten, and probably called into existence for totally different and unconnected reasons. ”

“ The convention not only is not a fact, but individuals have no authority without society, to meet in convention, and enter into the alleged compact, because they are not independent, sovereign individuals. ”

“ It is to induce our friends to act upon this important and universally acknowledged truth that we urge the adoption of the convention system. Reflection will prove that there is no other way of practically applying it. ”

“ This Convention, composed of men who possessed the confidence of the people, and many of whom had become highly distinguished by their patriotism, virtue, and wisdom, in times which tried the minds and hearts of men, undertook the arduous task. ”

“ Of the ability and intelligence of those who composed the Convention, the debates and proceedings may be a test; as the character of the work, which was the offspring of their deliberations, must be tested by the experience of the future, added to that of nearly half a century which has passed. ”

“ The Convention promulgated this great axiom: "The liberty of one citizen ends where the liberty of another citizen begins," which comprises in two lines the entire law of human society. ”

“ It seems to be generally admitted, that the system of government which has been proposed by the late convention, is well calculated to relieve us from many of the grievances under which we have been laboring. ”

“ Institutional principles, such as this item of civil rights, emerge from use and wont, resulting as a settled line of convention from usage and custom that grow out of the exigencies of life at the time. ”

“ Some States provide for a constitutional convention from time to time, where the people through their representatives selected for such a purpose assemble to consider the question of change or modification. ”

“ The free handling of a given material is characteristic for all forms in which a free social will shapes itself; but such a one is the will which must be reduced to the acts of the allied individuals themselves. We include here both the will which attains to expression in a normal legislation, and that which attains expression in a normal science. It is clear how legislation can proceed from convention. ”

“ And an apprehension of conventions in the United States is in like manner a testimonial, both of the eminent virtues they have so often displayed, and of the great abuses which have already eluded their authority. ”

“ Classical conventionalism shows us everywhere, behind passive society, a hidden power, under the names of Law, or Legislator (or, by a mode of expression which refers to some person or persons of undisputed weight and authority, but not named) , which moves, animates, enriches, and regenerates mankind. ”

“ Strong, Voted, That this Convention, sensible how important it is that the great subject submitted to their determination should be discussed and considered with moderation, candor, and deliberation, will enter into a free conversation on the several parts thereof, by paragraphs, until every member shall have had an opportunity to express his sentiments on the same ”

“ Y do, under the ægis of a convention, indulge their desire and embrace each other to their heart’s content with the full approval of civilized society; and it seems as though another convention might grow up, under the protection of which Mr. ”

“ Most men’s conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continual comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them. ”

“ These conventions, by this form of expression, meant merely to say, that the people of the United States had, by the blessing of Providence, enjoyed the opportunity of establishing a new Constitution, founded in the consent of the people. ”

“ SINCE no man has a natural authority over his fellow, and force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority among men. ”

“ i.e., that, instead of destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact substitutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have set up between men, an equality that is moral and legitimate, and that men, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become every one equal by convention and legal right.5
1. ”

“ Having thus satisfied ourselves, in those conventions, that we ourselves, the “people” of America, are mentioned in the Fifth Article as the sole makers of any future Article which exercises or grants power to interfere with our individual freedom, we turn with interest to the procedure which the Article establishes as the only constitutional mode of procedure in which that exclusive ability of our own may hereafter be evoked to exercise and be exercised. ”

“ "I make with you a convention wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; ”

“ One party says—We arrange our lives—even the best and boldest men and women that exist, just as much as the most limited—with reference to what society conventionally rules and makes right. ”

“ You well know, sir, that when the Constitution was submitted to the People of the respective States for their adoption or rejection, it awakened the warmest debates of the several State conventions. ”

“ Established customs; such as that where there are three brothers, the eldest brother shall be heir to the second, in exclusion of the youngest: and 2. Established rules and maxims; as, “that the king can do no wrong, that no man shall be bound to accuse himself,” and the like. But I take these to be one and the same thing. For the authority of these maxims rests entirely upon general reception and usage; and the only method of proving, that this or that maxim is a rule of the common law, is by shewing that it hath been always the custom to observe it. ”

“ That which regulates the nature and form of the body politic; which establishes the relation that each individual bears to it, and the rights and duties growing out of that relation, which determines the principles on which it exercises authority over him; and settles a system of jurisprudence by which it operates to protect and enforce right, and to redress and punish wrong.
2. That which determines the relations of individual members of society to each other; which defines the rights growing out of that relation ”

“ Legislation, the enactments of a legislature which, whether it take the form of an autocratic prince or of a parliamentary assembly, is the assumed organ of the entire society, is the last of the ameliorating instrumentalities. It differs from Legal Fictions just as Equity differs from them, and it is also distinguished from Equity, as deriving its authority from an external body or person. Its obligatory force is independent of its principles. ”

“ And this is what we mean by the original contract of society, which, though perhaps in no instance it has ever been formally expressed at the first institution of a state, yet, in nature, reason must always be understood and implied in the very act of associating together.... When society is once formed, government results, of course, as necessary to preserve and to keep that society in order ... ”

“ General laws are meant to regulate our conduct to each other, within certain rules; that the confidence necessary for the social union may be maintained. A principle laid down by the law, is promulgated as a general rule; and in the confidence that this rule will be respected by all; or that if violated, society will punish the violator, it is recognised as a general principle of action. ”

“ Ordinary law-givers offer us laws to regulate society--laws, subject to change like the minds of those who make them, and of the people who obey them: those talk only of general, immutable, and eternal laws, which, without exception, are obeyed with order, regularity, and absolute exactness in the immensity of space. ”

“ The answer to this question arises out of the above consideration of the means which law employs to obtain the fulfilment of obligations, combined with the view of law as relative to a moral end, i.e. the formation of a society of persons, acting from a certain disposition, from interest in the society as such. ”

“ In the formation of the law, regard should be often had to the convenience, to the faculties, to the interests, and to the habits of the citizens, sometimes even to their prejudices, but in the interpretation of it, nothing but justice should be regarded. ”

“ The demand, again, for a justification of what one is called on by authority to do presupposes some standard of right, recognised as equally valid for and by the person making the demand and others who form a society with him, and such a recognised standard in turn implies institutions for the regulation of men's dealings with each other, institutions of which the relation to the consciousness of right may be compared, as above, to that of language to thought. It cannot be said that the most elementary consciousness of right is prior to them, or they to it. ”

“ The authority of the laws which govern society is not found in the fact that the laws have been made by the will of the majority, or the will of the minority, or by the will of a king, or by the wills of any [236] or all of the people; but because they are founded in the constitution of human nature. ”

“ Speaking of the origin of civil power and the objects of law, he lays down these principles: "The law, strictly speaking, is directed primarily and principally to the common good; and to decree anything for the common benefit belongs either to the whole body of the people, or to some one acting in their place." ”

“ We may resort to the common law to aid us in interpreting such instruments, and their powers; for that law is the common rule, by which all our legislation is interpreted. It is known, and acted upon, and revered by the people. ”

“ The opinion, at that time, was almost universal, that society is founded on an agreement which is voluntary and conditional, and that the links which bind men to it are terminable, for sufficient reason, like those which subject them to authority. ”

“ Next to this I should place Government, understanding this word in its widest sense, as embracing the terms on which man agrees to live with his fellow man and with woman, family, therefore, as well as society ties. This includes the legal standards of duty, the rules of relationship and descent, the rights of property and the customs of commerce, the institutions of castes, classes and rulers, and those international relations on which depend war and peace. ”

“ Law is stable; the societies we are speaking of are progressive. The greater or less happiness of a people depends on the degree of promptitude with which the gulf is narrowed.
A general proposition of some value may be with respect to the agencies by which Law is brought into harmony with society. These instrumentalities seem to me to be three in number, Legal Fictions, Equity, and Legislation. ”

“ In primitive society legislation as a source of law had little or no place, custom and usage supplying whatever rules were found to be necessary for the regulation of the common affairs of the community. ”

“ The representative principle of a Government such as ours takes up, as if by a reverse process, those diverse hues of the denominational spectrum that vary the face of society, and compounds them in the Legislature into a blank. ”

“ The home, the school, the church, the club, business, profession, trade, and union, all insist on strict, correct conformity to standard; all demand authoritatively implicit obedience and submission to rule and regulation. ”

“ The rules of a society, in a majority of cases, may be conveniently divided into these four classes, though in some societies all the rules are found under one of these heads, being called either the constitution, or the by-laws, or the standing rules. ”

“ For the convenience of analysis, we may treat the obligations correlative to rights, obligations which it is the proper office of law to enforce, apart from moral duties and from the virtues which are tendencies to fulfil those duties. ”

“ The agents of legal change, Fictions, Equity, and Legislation, are brought in turn to bear on the primeval institutions, and at every point of the progress, a greater number of personal rights and a larger amount of property are removed from the domestic forum to the cognizance of the public tribunals. ”

“ If we intend to comprise in the idea of Order all that society requires from its government which is not included in the idea of Progress, we must define Order as the preservation of all kinds and amounts of good which already exist, and Progress as consisting in the increase of them. ”

“ If we apply this law to society, if we assume the existence of reasonable beings around us, then the demand that all the faculties of the individual should be uniformly cultivated includes also the demand that all reasonable beings should be cultivated uniformly with each other. ”

“ If a common standard were known among men, and if the understandings of men determined in the same manner as to the conformity, or otherwise, of an action to that standard; what renders it a matter of obligation that any one should perform it? The rule must be proved to be binding, or no ground of obligation is established.
An action is obligatory, say others, because it is agreeable to the moral sense. ”