Disestablishment

“ 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 habitual existence of chieftainship, and the establishment of chiefly authority by war; the rise everywhere of the medicine-man and priest; the presence of a cult having in all places the same fundamental traits; the traces of division of labor, early displayed, which gradually become more marked; and the various complications, political, ecclesastical, industrial, which arise as groups are compounded and recompounded by war—quickly prove to any who compares them that, apart from all their special differences, societies have general resemblances in their modes of origin and development. ”

“ It was foreseen, that if this was true, a revolution of some kind was near at hand, probably the deposing and death of the king, and that, in the interim, all subordination would cease in the town, and every man do what seemed good in his own eyes. ”

“ The Empire has yielded to the Monarchy, the Monarchy to the Republic, the Republic to the Empire again, and that once more to the Republic, but the Code which embodies the principle of equality before the law has remained. Fundamentally the social equilibrium has been stable. ”

“ Because, whilst it may be important for the regulation of outward, temporal affairs, to divide and arrange realms and peoples under certain princes and rulers, all this signifies but little or nothing to the inner development, to the well-being of the community. ”

“ Shall the decay of a mighty Empire be marked by such a House of Lords as may facilitate the plans of the demagogue, sinking the Sovereign to a Doge, and the Church to a State hireling, and giving to the Commons the unrestrained privilege of revolution and anarchy? ”

“ A state ruled in turn by a leper, a child, and an intriguing 194woman was in no fit state to carry on a perpetual struggle for existence, and the disorders of the royal house were only typical of the disorganisation of the realm. ”

“ We plead the question as the sincerest friends to the Establishment;—as wishing to it all the prosperity and duration its warmest advocates can desire,—but remembering always what these advocates seem to forget, that the Establishment cannot be threatened by any danger so great as the perdition of the kingdom in which it is established. ”

“ The actual overthrow of the hierarchy, the peerage, and the throne, with the desolations of civil war, and the disturbance of the whole country, could not but throw the minds of many into a maddening whirl, and dash them completely off their balance. ”

“ For the truth is, that there are many elements of dissolution in a state, as there are also in a ship, or in an animal; they all have their cords, and girders, and sinews―one nature diffused in many places, and called by many names; and the office of examiner is a most important element in the preservation and dissolution of states. ”

“ Threats of dissolution, if executed, become rebellion and treason. The machinery of this government is now moving onward in its majestic course. Custom-houses, post-offices, land-offices, army, navy, are fulfilling their prescribed circle of duties. ”

“ One unanimous voice, issuing from the plains of France and from her cities and her camps, demanded the preservation of all the principles of the Republic, or the establishment of an hereditary system of government, which would place the principles and interests of the Revolution beyond the reach of factions and the influence of foreigners. ”

“ Beginning with that singular and interesting order of the classical states of the ancient world, under which the individual was merged in the community and liberty became identical with a share in the exercise of the public power, we witness something like a gradual disintegration, a resolution of the State into its constituent elements, until at length those who govern and those who are governed are no longer one and the same, but stand face to face treating with one another, agreeing upon terms of command and obedience, as at Runnymede. ”

“ The great law of division became clear to him—the separation for a time of the universal agent into two parts, by the separation and reuniting of which comes light and heat and the hidden force of life, and the prime rules of attractive action; all things that are accounted material. ”

“ Arbitrary power, military and ecclesiastical, was stamped upon their education, upon their habits, and upon all their institutions. Civil dissension was infused into all their seminal principles. War and mutual destruction was in every member of their organization, moral, political, and physical. ”

“ The nucleus which lies at the heart of an empire or a civilization has a political life cycle that runs from the unstructured or little structured aggregation of confederation or self-determining local groups to a highly centralized political absolutism holding and exercising its authority by the use of the military. ”

“ The system of a triple division of specific powers, each one of which was vigorous in its own sphere while at the same time checked and balanced by the other branches of the government, has certain advantages and certain disadvantages. ”

“ We add also a rational decentralization that permits the direction and employment of the efforts of all even to the last man.
We animate with passion, a violent desire for independence, a religious fanaticism, national pride, a love of glory, a madness for possession. ”

“ When any dominant idea, principle, or social force of any kind, characteristic of any phase of civilization, declines, it does not perish, but becomes incorporated into the next higher phase of civilization as a subordinate force or principle. ”

“ Bound together not only by a common ruler, but by a highly organized and uniform though elastic system of administration, and as time went on by a common system of law and a common citizenship, it became the most powerful engine of assimilation that the world has ever seen. ”

“ The process of disintegration in the old Union may be expected to go on with almost absolute certainty if we pursue the right course. We are now the nucleus of a growing power which, if we are true to ourselves, our destiny, and high mission, will become the controlling power on this continent. ”

“ Expansion gives the ruling oligarchy of the expanding nation, empire or civilization command of the strategic vantage points from which the principle of exploitation can be made continuously operative. ”

“ Let the sixteenth be that which we term the royal or political motion, by which the predominant and governing parts of any body check, subdue, reduce, and regulate the others, and force them to unite, separate, stand still, move, or assume a certain position, not from any inclination of their own, but according to a certain order, and as best suits the convenience of the governing part, so that there is a sort of dominion and civil government exercised by the ruling part over its subjects. ”

“ The high hopes, indeed, which the men of our generation have formed may be frustrated. The work of reorganization necessary to fit the Empire for its lofty mission will tax statesmanship to the utmost—the statesmanship not only of leaders, but of peoples—and there is the possibility of failure. ”

“ In some countries this rift in the supreme power deepened into a total and permanent separation of the spiritual and temporal powers, the old royal house retaining their purely religious functions, while the civil government passed into the hands of a younger and more vigorous race. ”

“ Take in succession all the moral needs, all the legitimate interests of our society, arrange them in systematic order, and then traverse the history of our country;—you will find them constantly asserted and defended,—all epochs will afford you innumerable proofs of struggles endured, of victories won, of concessions obtained in this holy cause. ”

“ Thus a dynasty or a nation is consolidated and secured; whereas where there is no regular succession and inheritance of this kind, there is no safeguard of stability and tranquillity; or rather, there is every risk of revolution. ”

“ So long as expansion and exploitation are accepted and practiced as the basic principles of any community, so long independence and self-determination will be irrelevant and inimical to the dominant elements in the nation, empire or civilization under consideration. ”

“ There are two general courses by which government degenerates: i.e., when it undergoes contraction, or when the State is dissolved. Government undergoes contraction when it passes from the many to the few, that is, from democracy to aristocracy, and from aristocracy to royalty. ”

“ Such seems to have been the final outcome of the contest with nature, where permitted to develop in its natural and unobstructed way. A series of empires of a simple type of organization arose, their rulers uniting temporal and spiritual power, and becoming autocrats in a double sense, supreme lords of body and soul. ”

“ The whole world is in a ferment, which was begun by the terrific strife into which the course of events forced us, and from which we have just emerged through the reconstruction of an almost demolished Governmental structure. Not all of the legitimate results of that strife are even yet externally apparent, either in our own country or in the world at large. ”

“ For the time, adaptation of political structure may be incomplete or concealed. Old organs will be utilized to express new forces, and so gradual and subtle will be the change that it may hardly be recognized. ”

“ It is not, however, thought that the overthrow of the system of government, or of a dynasty, which has exterminated its rival, is held in serious contemplation, except by extremists, who may, however, get the upper hand. ”

“ But having said thus much against the lovers of novelty, I must observe, that I equally disapprove of another sect, who see ruin in every alteration. You are to understand that, for some time past, my kingdom has been divided by a great dispute concerning the efficacy of change. One side maintain that there can be no peace, commerce, or fertility, under a government which is the same for six months together, and they recommend change to the people as something that they can feed upon ”

“ If the tendency of affairs on the other side of our encircling sea was to pull down, to destroy, to modify, and to redistribute, the tendency at home was to build up and consolidate; so that in almost exact proportion to the wild experiments and frantic strugglings of other nations after something new—new principles of government, new theories of society—there arose in this country a dogged spirit of resistance to all alterations, and a persistence in old paths and old opinions. ”

“ The chaos of the administrative system caused difficulties no less great than those produced by opinions and creeds. Traditional rights, differences of language, provincial autonomy, ecclesiastical assemblies, parlements, governors, intendants—vestiges of the past, or promises for the future—all jostled against and thwarted each other. ”

“ For two hundred years there had been no great changes in political or legal methods and pretensions, the utmost change had been a certain shifting of boundaries and slight readjustment of procedure, while in nearly every other aspect of life there had been fundamental revolutions, gigantic releases, and an enormous enlargement of scope and outlook. ”

“ The monarchies that would probably have collapsed through internal forces and given place to modern democratic states were smashed from the outside, and a process of political reconstruction, that has probably missed out the complete formal democratic phase altogether—and that has been enormously complicated through religious, national, and dynastic traditions—set in. ”

“ A kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and the same holds good in all societies and corporations of men, from the constitution of the nation, down to every little parochial vestry. ”

“ We will behold in our mind's eye a succession of kingdoms, like the succession of seasons, a rise and fall of dynasties, like the sowing and reaping of grain. We will count the number of patricians who live in idleness and luxury, and shudder at the multitude of plebeians who die in agony and want. ”

“ Human theories and systems have flitted across my path like birds of night, but they have vanished; numberless sects have, like so many waves, dashed themselves to froth against me, this rock, or, recoiling, have been lost in the vast ocean of forgetfulness. Kingdoms and empires that once existed in inimitable worldly grandeur are no [Pg 268] more; dynasties have died out, and have been replaced by others. ”

“ On an immensely larger scale and in ways variously modified, here by the slow collapse of an old régime and there by combination for war, the rise of the first French Republic and that of the American Republic have similarly shown us this tendency toward resumption of the primitive form of political organization, when a decayed or otherwise incapable government is broken up. ”

“ Physically, our Empire is incurably scattered, various, and divided, and it is to quite other links and forces, it seems to me, than fiscal or military unification that we who desire its continuance must look to hold it together. ”

“ Not once, but again and again, we have laid our whole thought and purpose before the world, not in general terms only, but each time with sufficient definition to make it clear what sort of definitive terms of settlement must necessarily spring out of them. ”