Free institutions

“ Your whole administration gives the highest assurance that you are moved, not so much from a desire to see all men everywhere made free, as from a higher desire to preserve free institutions for the benefit of men already free; not to make Slaves, Freemen, but to prevent Freemen from being made Slaves; not to destroy an Institution, which a portion of us only consider bad, but to save institutions which we all alike consider good. ”

“ Have you got it in yourselves to control yourselves? That is the prime question which comes up with regard to every one of you when you come to the University. Have you the sense and the resolution to regulate your own conduct?
It is pretty clear that in other spheres freedom is dangerous. How is it with free political institutions? Do they always yield the best government? Look at the American cities and compare them with the cities of Europe. Clearly, free institutions do not necessarily produce the best government. Are then free institutions wrong or inexpedient? What is freedom for? ”

“ The prosperity of the people, the perpetuity of our form of government, the rights of the states and the public can only be preserved by guarding against all encroachments made upon free institutions, whether they originate in congress or out of it—whether they are enunciated from the bench of the supreme court, or from the stump. ”

“ We are not indebted to manhood suffrage for our free institutions, nor for the valuable rights and guarantees secured by the Constitution, nor for the ideas and aspirations from which those institutions sprung. These rights and guarantees were secured, these free institutions were founded by practical and intelligent men of affairs; the propertied leaders of a propertied constituency, and by the use of practical methods, to whose success the populace only contributed their obedience to directions. ”

“ Free institutions can be maintained only by citizens, each of whom is instant to oppose every illegitimate act, every assumption of supremacy, every official excess of power, however trivial it may seem. ”

“ If the purpose of free institutions is good government where is the good government?—when may it be expected to begin?—how is it to come about? Systems of government have no sanctity; they are practical means to a simple end—the public welfare; worthy of no respect if they fail of its accomplishment. ”

“ Ruling classes can no more acquire a knowledge of the dangers they have to avoid, without free institutions, than their inferiors can discern the rights they ought to preserve in the same circumstances. ”

“ No one who claims to be a republican or lover of freedom at heart can dispute these positions. They are in substance the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence, and they form the common basis upon which our national and state governments rest. When they shall cease to be recognized and respected by the people and by our lawmakers, then free institutions will cease to exist. ”

“ We are placed under a most solemn obligation, to keep before them this motive to perseverance in their endeavors to place free institutions on a sure basis. Shall we leave those wide regions to despair and anarchy? ”

“ Those free institutions will be the product of education, legislation, Coöperation, Trades Unionism and Syndicalism, municipal and State ownership, and widely spread private ownership and enterprise. The organized State under democratic control will be the thing aimed at. But these free institutions must gradually extend over areas far wider than vocational training and economic well-being. They should seek to offer free expression to the fully-functioning mind in art, science, ethics and religion. ”

“ While the fundamental principles upon which the common property in game rest have undergone no change, the development of free institutions had led to the recognition of the fact that the power or control lodged in the state, resulting from this common ownership, is to be exercised, like all other powers of government, as a trust for the benefit of the people, and not as a prerogative for the advantage of the government as distinct from the people, or for the benefit of private individuals as distinguished from the public good. ”

“ I place myself and my administration at the service of all the people without distinction as to creed, class, or station, and pledge my whole effort to the production of their fundamental rights, the improvement of their livelihood, and the defense of their free institutions. ”

“ What is the nature of free institutions? Founded in [p. 390] man's free active nature, their tendency is to develope his powers and dignity. Their permanency, depending on the mental part of man, their chief aim and policy are his moral and intellectual elevation. ”

“ Free institutions appear to gain new life, and at the same time the monarchical system evidently prevails. We must closely study this singular coincidence, and endeavour thoroughly to understand its causes.
There are two ways in which we may understand a man's personal liberty; first, as the independence of the individual having no law but his own will; and secondly, as the enfranchisement of every individual from every other individual will, which is contrary to reason and justice. ”

“ Within the forms of your constitution there has grown up this organization of professional politicians, altogether uncontemplated at the outset, which has become in large measure the ruling power.
But will not education and the diffusion of political knowledge fit men for free institutions? ”

“ Of course in a land of free institutions, where such organization could be legally developed, and claim constitutional protection, until sufficiently matured to defend itself against the convulsions, the death struggles, the agonizing throes, which precede the dissolution of the long reign of mystic tyranny; and at a time when modern freedom had been consolidated, nationalized, and its standard recognized among the nations. ”

“ That such dissimilarity of interests may exist it is impossible to doubt. They are to be found in every community, in a greater or less degree, however small or homogeneous, and they constitute, everywhere, the great difficulty of forming and preserving free institutions. ”

“ Justice to the country and the dictates of sound policy, require that the legislature should confine itself to such subjects as will preserve the basis of entire equality; and when a sufficient population is here, and they choose to adopt a state government, that they shall be 'perfectly free,' without let or hindrance, to form all their domestic institutions in their own way, and to dictate that form of government, which, in their deliberate judgment, may be deemed proper. ”

“ Free institutions were to them mere abstract conceptions, about which the educated and the seriously thinking men indulged in politico-philosophical speculations, while to the uneducated and the superficial they only furnished political catchwords, in the use of which the general discontent with existing conditions found vent. ”

“ And since they have the power of doing this, the theory of the Constitution ought to suppose that they will wish to do it, since the very principle of constitutional government requires it to be assumed that political power will be abused to promote the particular purposes of the holder; not because it always is so, but because such is the natural tendency of things, to guard against which is the especial use of free institutions. ”

“ Free institutions, while they are essential to the prosperity and happiness of the people, always furnish the strongest inducements to peace and order. Crimes and offenses committed in the district must be referred to the consideration and judgment of the regular civil authorities, and these tribunals will be supported in their lawful jurisdiction. ”

“ Tendencies now in operation may a few generations hence land modern society in similar conclusions, unless other convictions revive meanwhile and get the mastery of them; of which possibility no more need be said than this, that unless there be such a revival in some shape or other, the forces, whatever they be, which control the forms in which human things adjust themselves, will make an end again, as they made an end before, of what are called free institutions. ”

“ Let it be immediately added, however, that this economic independence and prosperity has always been absolutely associated in the American mind with free political institutions. ”

“ We tax our ingenuity to draw nice distinctions. We are told of political liberty — of religious liberty — of moral liberty. Yet, after all, is there more than one liberty; and these divisions, are they not the more and the less of the same thing? The provision we have referred to in our political institutions, as framed in accordance with the principle inherent in ourselves, insures to us all of free action that statues can insure. ”

“ The life of the race becomes indeed more and more independent of the formal government. The council, in its opening phase, was heroic in spirit; a dragon-slaying body, it slashed out of existence a vast, knotted tangle of obsolete ideas and clumsy and jealous proprietorships; it secured by a noble system of institutional precautions, freedom of inquiry, freedom of criticism, free communications, a common basis of education and understanding, and freedom from economic oppression. ”

“ It is as essential to the successful working of this government that the great organisms of its executive and legislative branches should be the free choice of the people, as that the original form of it should be so. ”

“ The great elements of public liberty lie in the firm protection of private rights. The great end of political association, in a free government, is to obtain a firm, unwavering protection of our persons and honest earnings. ”

“ But when a man is said to obey an authority from interest in a common good, some other good is meant than that which consists in escaping the punishment which the authority would inflict on disobedience. Is then the conception of common good which is alleged a conception of it on the part of those who founded or who maintain the institutions in question? But is it not certain that private interests have been the main agents in establishing, and are still in maintaining, at any rate all the more artificial rights of property? ”

“ The state becomes a larger institution, by deepening its hold on a subordinate institution which had grown up as private property under the law of survival and centralization, until it reached the point where organization tended to suppress the free movement of the persuasive principle animating its members. ”

“ The institution represents might, and also, perhaps, right, but right organized, mature, perhaps gone to seed, never fresh and unrecognized. New right, or moral progress, always begins in a revolt against institutions. ”

“ We all know that civil institutions are established for the public benefit, and that when they cease to answer the ends of their existence they may be changed. But I do not understand the doctrine now contended for to be that, which, for the sake of distinction, we may call the right of revolution. ”

“ For, while not absolute, the enforced suffender of those rights must be justified by the existence and immediate impendency of dangers to the public interest which clearly and not dubiously outweigh those involved in the restrictions upon the very foundation of democratic institutions, grounded as those institutions are in the freedoms of religion, conscience, expression and assembly. ”

“ The nation, and the nation alone, can enfranchise all citizens. Only the nation can furnish the means of free development to all. Private associations, temporary and limited in character, can protect limited groups of individuals only for a time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are limitations on such power which grow out of the essential nature of all free governments. Implied reservations of individual rights, without which the social compact could not exist, and which are respected by all governments entitled to the name. ”

“ Institutions also must be produced which will hold the activities of society in channels of order, deliberation, peace, regulated antagonism of interests, and49 justice, according to the mores of the time. These institutions put an end to exploitation and bring interests into harmony under civil liberty. But where do the institutions come from? The masses have never made them. ”

“ Unlike the instances we have cited, the case before us is not concerned with an exertion of legislative power for the promotion of some specific need or interest of secular society-the protection of the family, the promotion of health, the common defense, the raising of public revenues to defray the cost of government. But all these specific activities of government presuppose the existence of an organized political society. The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment. ”

“ Here again, in this second charter of a private corporation for profit, is given unmistakable evidence that these early legislators believed in and adhered to that other fundamental principle proclaimed in the “declaration of rights”—that “all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their peace, safety and happiness; for the advancement of those ends, they have at all times an unalienable and indefeasible right to alter, reform [Pg 84] or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.” ”

“ With these views of the nature, character, and objects of the Government and the value of the Union, I shall steadily oppose the creation of those institutions and systems which in their nature tend to pervert it from its legitimate purposes and make it the instrument of sections, classes, and individuals. We need no national banks or other extraneous institutions planted around the Government to control or strengthen it in opposition to the will of its authors. ”