General rule

“ Let the weak and defenseless talk their fill of right, of justice, of equity; let these invoke reason, logic, common sense and fair play; but the world's rulers, the dominant class, know only one law, recognize but one rule—might. ”

“ This power is the law; it is, or ought to be, the collection of the will of society, reunited to fix the conduct of its members, to direct their action in such a mode, that it may concur to the great end of his association—the general good. ”

“ In vain do we seek freedom under the power of the laws. The laws! Where is there any law? Where is there any respect for law? Under the name of law you have everywhere seen the rule of self-interest and human passion. But the eternal laws of nature and of order exist. ”

“ From these distinctions, applied to each political society and its members, are derived the most certain and universal rules, by which we can judge whether a government is good or bad, and in general of the morality of all human actions. ”

“ Men, in society, have found it essential, for mutual benefit, that the powers of Individuals, over the general causes of good, should be fixed by certain rules; that is, Laws. Acts done in conformity with those rules are called Just Acts ”

“ In saying this, I mean only to designate the general spirit of human law. Every principle, on its application to practice, must be limited and modified by circumstances; our reason by our common sense. ”

“ Rule stands by rule, usage beside usage,—a mere aggregate or multitude of petty tyrants, reduced to no unity or system, and each pressing with all the weight of an absolute mandate. The pettiest bit of ceremonial law is here of equal dignity with the most far-reaching principle of political obligation. ”

“ The FORCE of the people, or the popular will, in action and exerted, symbolized by the GAVEL, regulated and guided by and acting within the limits of LAW and ORDER, symbolized by the TWENTY-FOUR-INCH RULE, has for its fruit LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and FRATERNITY,—liberty regulated by law ”

“ In view of these things, may we fairly raise the question as to whether there are exceptions to so universal a rule? Were we to set up a different right, would it not be the right of the weak? Would it not be to make the sick and the infirm masters over the well and the strong? ”

“ Even from so brief an outline, it must be evident that this system does no violence to any of the general laws by which human action, even in the present imperfect state of moral and intellectual cultivation, is influenced ”

“ Such a power directed with wisdom and moderation, seems necessary for the general good of that great body politick of which we are a part, although in some degree repugnant to the principles of the Constitution. ”

“ I speak after the manner of men, and according to their phraseology with regard to temporal things. We talk of establishing a government, a kingdom, a rule and law, that will be according to the principle of justice, equity and righteousness and then we calculate in some sort of having a government that shall be self-sustaining, that shall move pleasantly and harmoniously along, like the stars that move in the firmament without clashing or conflict, confusion or disorder. ”

“ Thus the general doctrine, that all kinds of government exercised over men were at first one government—that the political, the religious, and the ceremonial forms of control are divergent branches of a general and once indivisible control—begins to look tenable. ”

“ They are immutable and irrefragible, and the best possible laws: therefore necessarily the basis of the most perfect government, and the fundamental rule of all positive laws, which are only for the purpose of upholding natural order, evidently the most advantageous for the human race. ”

“ The really living totality,—that which preserves, in other words continually produces the state in general and its constitution, is the government. The organisation which natural necessity gives is seen in the rise of the family and of the 'estates' of civil society. ”

“ The degree to which the individual judges for himself of the relation between the common good and the laws which cross the path of his ordinary life, is the measure of his intelligent, as distinguished from a merely instinctive, recognition of rights in others and in the state ”

“ This alone is inferable, when viewed with the conclusions previously arrived at, that things of which we can be conscious are unitary in origin and in ultimate effect. Supreme rule is removed beyond the pale of vicissitudes of time and circumstance. ”

“ But laws, in their more confined sense, and in which it is our present business to consider them, denote the rules, not of action in general, but of human action or conduct: that is, the precepts by which man, the noblest of all sublunary beings, a creature endowed with both reason and freewill, is commanded to make use of those faculties in the general regulation of his behaviour. ”

“ There are in the world, in fact, two different laws of conduct each valid on its own plane, the rale principally dependent on external status and the rule independent of status and entirely dependent on the thought and conscience. ”

“ The nearest thing to an authoritative and universal rule which we get in the "Data of Ethics" is the assertion that "the life of the social organism must, as a rule, rank above the lives of its units." ”

“ The capacity, then, on the part of the individual of conceiving a good as the same for himself and others, and of being determined to action by that conception, is the foundation of rights; and rights are the condition of that capacity being realised. ”

“ How striking and instructive to observe the abstract rules of justice brought to bear, with equal readiness and precision, upon ordinary and extraordinary combinations of circumstances!—to witness the dead letter of the law become animated with potent vitality for the regulation of human affairs! ”

“ People who undertake the task of governing others, as I do, be their rule a kingdom or a hamlet, must adopt a principle of government and adhere to it. The principle that suits best with the Hill is Respect for the Proprieties. ”

“ By this error, the moral efforts of mankind, towards political improvement, have been restrained and disappointed. Under every modification of circumstances, these three general principles of government, or a mixture of them, have been universally allowed to comprise the whole extent of political volition; and whilst the liberty enjoyed by the other sciences, has produced a series of wonderful discoveries ”

“ In the sacred fact of obligation you touch the immutable, and lay hold, as it were, on the eternities. At the very centre of your being, there is a fixed element, and that of a kind or degree essentially sovereign. A standard is set up in your very thought, by which a great part of your questions are determined, and about which your otherwise random thoughts may settle into order and law. ”

“ Reasonable men, therefore, will look upon the general plan of our constitution, transmitted down to us by our ancestors, as sacred, and content themselves with calmly doing what their station requires towards rectifying the particular things which they think amiss, and supplying the particular things which they think deficient in it, so far as is practicable, without endangering the whole. ”

“ That the Principle implied in this second Interpretation hath passed into a general Maxim in this Kingdom, among those who pique themselves on unlimited Freedom of Thought. These Men have long and openly derided every Regulation of Opinion and Principle ”

“ All the doctrines which ascribe absolute goodness to particular forms of government, particular social arrangements, and even to particular modes of education, without reference to the state of civilization and the various distinguishing characters of the society for which they are intended, are open to the same objection—that of assuming one class of influencing circumstances to be the paramount rulers of phenomena which depend in an equal or greater degree on many others. ”

“ We are ready to acknowledge that extraordinary virtue, talents and wealth united, will govern, and ought to govern, and yet it is denied that this confession is reconcileable with the system of king, lords and commons. If a body of men, which possesses the virtue, talents and wealth of a nation, ought to govern; it follows, that a body of men, which does not possess these attributes, ought not to govern. ”

“ He is to learn the natural rule of conduct by studying the constitution of matter, the constitution of man, and then apply this law of God to human life. He can show what use man should make of his mastery over the material world, the function of property, the product of industry, in the development of the individual and the race, and explain the services which vassal matter may render to imperial man. ”

“ I think, therefore, that I have established the truth of the proposition, that men who aspire to exercise a directing and controlling influence in any pursuit or business, should be distinguished by a knowledge of principles and general laws. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What confuses our view is the fact that these formal documentary statements of the kinds and degrees of obedience to which the people assent, the methods of power to which they submit, the sort of responsibility upon which they insist, have become, from the very necessity of their nature, a distinct and superior sort of precise and positive law. ”

“ "For why?—because the good old Rule
"Sufficeth them, the simple Plan,
"That they should take who have the power,
⁠"And they should keep who can. ”

“ Theoretical power is consultative; it directs education, and supplies general principles. Practical power directs action by special and imperative rules. All the elements of society that are excluded from political government become guarantees for the preservation of this arrangement. ”

“ Those who know something of the general laws of life, and who perceive that these general laws of life underlie all social phenomena, will see that this dual change in the character of advanced governments, involves an answer to the first of all political questions. ”

“ And it will be long before social discipline has so far modified human character that reverence for law, as rooted in the moral order of things, will serve in place of reverence for the power which enforces law. ”

“ Who does not see that there is no empire, kingdom, dukedom, republic, state, or household, that is not established by laws, which constitute the order and so the form of its. government? In each of them the laws of justice are in the highest place, political laws in the second, and economical laws in the third. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every government which acts in a certain manner, desires the good of its subjects; the supposed government acts in that particular manner, therefore it desires the good of its subjects. But is it true that the government acts in the manner supposed? ”

“ But for others, leaders of opinion or potentates, and in general those to whose actions position or genius gives a far-reaching import, and to the rest of us, each in his measure,—whenever we espouse a cause we contribute to the determination of the evolutionary standard of right. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But for their sakes who have a little been staggered at the principles themselves, to wit, the nature of men, the authority or right of nature, the nature of compacts and contracts, and the original of civil government ”

“ The first point to agree upon in this enterprise is that as a rule men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they actually possess and which they might use under appropriate conditions. ”

“ Among the universal propositions which are not derived from Induction, but which serve as ἀρχαὶ for Deduction and Demonstration, we may reckon the religious, ethical, æsthetical, social, political, &c., beliefs received in each different community, and impressed upon all newcomers born into it by the force of precept, example, authority. Here the major premiss is felt by each individual as carrying an authority of its own, stamped and enforced by the sanction of society, and by the disgrace or other penalties in store for those who disobey it. ”