Legitimacy

“ These are some of the principles and ideas that exist in the world, among the various nations and institutions of men, which are framed according to illegitimate principles. A change of government changes not the condition of the people, for all are wrong, and acting without God. ”

“ It is that of the general will, which can neither be alienated nor represented. Is the prince above the law? The answer is, He is a member of the state, and cannot be so. Can the law be unjust? No one can be unjust to himself: therefore not the whole people to the whole people. How can we be free and yet subject to the laws? The laws are the register of our own will. (Ib.) Laws, in short, are properly those general 'conditions of civil association' which the associates impose on themselves. ”

“ What is government? The reverend gentleman who occupied this platform asserts that governments are divine, when all history teems with their sacrilegious proceedings. Or does he mean simply that this government is divine? If so, where is its sign-manual? The proper function of law as applied to society, is the protection of the rights of the individual. When it fails in this it is no longer binding on the conscience, according to the authority of one of the brightest lights in jurisprudence, whence this nation borrowed its common law. ”

“ No government without the consent of the governed, eh? When has our consent been asked, the consent of twenty-five million people? Are we sheep, that we have let a few thousands govern us for a thousand years, without our consent? ”

“ All laws, whether emanating from an absolute monarch or from the representatives of the majority of a state, are mere expressions of the will of the sovereign power, which may be exacted by force. The second use of the word LAW is a record of our experience—e.g., we see the tides ebb and flow, and conclude it is done in obedience to the will of a sovereign power ”

“ Then the power of each individual in the State to do his own work appears to compete with the other political virtues, wisdom, temperance, courage.
Yes, he said.
And the virtue which enters into this competition is justice?
Exactly.
Let us look at the question from another point of view: Are not the rulers in a State those to whom you would intrust the office of determining suits-at-law?
Certainly.
And are suits decided on any other ground but that a man may neither take what is another’s, nor be deprived of what is his own?
Yes; that is their principle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the nineteenth century, then, legal and political philosophers were agreed that the end of the legal order, the purpose of political organization and purpose of lawmaking, were to secure and maintain individual liberty. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Under the reign of a wise and virtuous ruler, the rights of person and property may be fully enjoyed, and the people may be in a good degree prosperous. But the requisite virtue and wisdom have seldom been found in any one man or a few men. And experience has proved that the objects of civil government may be best secured by a written constitution founded upon the will or consent of the people. ”

“ That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving all their just powers from the consent of the governed." Here is the great truth, the vital principle, upon which our Government is founded, and which demonstrates that the right of a voice in the conduct of the government, and the selection of the rulers, is a right and privilege of all citizens. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The permission by God of a mere human, unsanctioned enterprise, nay, of a mighty, general, protracted, and incurable division among mankind—a system of opposition with all its unhappy consequences, its moral impediments, and its political disasters; such a permission forms, as I have already observed, the great enigma of history—the wonderful secret of the divine decrees in the conduct of mankind, as well as in the conduct of individuals. ”

“ There it stands in the very front of our Great Charter, embodied in two simple, self-evident truths,—first, that all men are equal in rights, and, secondly, that all just government is founded only on the consent of the governed,—the two together making an axiomatic definition which proves itself. ”

“ Mark then, Judges and Lawgivers, and ye whose office it is to be our teachers, for I will now utter a doctrine, if ever any other, though neglected or not understood, yet of great and powerful importance to the governing of mankind. He who wisely would restrain the reasonable soul of man within due bounds must first himself know perfectly how far the territory and dominion extends of just and honest liberty. ”

“ All have recognized that a certain law which is distinct from the individual will encircles him,—a law which is called either reason, morality, or truth, and from which he cannot separate his conduct without making the exercise of his liberty either absurd or criminal. ”

“ The second is that the authority thus legitimately constituted should respect the legitimate liberties of those whom it is called to govern. A good system for the formation and organization of authority, a good system of securities for liberty, are the two conditions in which the goodness of government resides, whether civil or religious. ”

“ I. Our government is legitimate, and our society is founded on the one golden rule of right, consecrated by the universal consent of mankind, and by the practice of all ages, individuals, and nations: namely, To keep what we have, and to catch what we can. ”

“ 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 law of God has eminent domain everywhere, over the private passions of Oliver and Charles, the special interests of Carthage and of Rome, over all customs, all official business, all precedents, all human statutes, all treaties between Judas and Pilate, or England and France, over all the conventional affairs of one man or of mankind. My own conscience is to declare that law for me, yours for you, and is before all private passions, or public interests, the decision of majorities, and a world full of precedents. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now every society has the right of providing for what concerns the general interest, so that in permitting the parties to choose the judges of facts, the State reserves to itself the power to name the judges of right, who are the interpreters of the law. ”

“ This claim, wild as it may seem, this claim, which supposes dominion without authority, and subjects without subordination, has found among the libertines of policy many clamorous and hardy vindicators. The laws of Nature, the rights of humanity, the faith of charters, the danger of liberty, the encroachments of usurpation, have been thundered in our ears, sometimes by interested faction, and sometimes by honest stupidity. ”

“ The rights of the individual, the first thesis of the constitution, and the recognized source of all legitimate power, too often fade away during the supremacy of this second tendency, and sink to nothing before this despotic ideal. ”

“ Every institution, then, has its sovereignty, or authority, and its laws and rights. It is only a false abstraction which makes us conceive of sovereignty, or authority, and of law and of rights as inhering only in some supreme organization, as the national state. ”

“ The power that governs the course of human affairs has chosen his path. The decree that ascertained the condition of my life, admits of no recal. No doubt it squares with the maxims of eternal equity. ”

“ These rights are indivisible. These are the rights, which make the essence of sovereignty; and which are the marks, whereby a man may discern in what man, or assembly of men, the sovereign power is placed, and resideth. ”

“ Whatever form it takes,—monarchic, oligarchic, or democratic,—royalty, or the government of man by man, is illegitimate and absurd.
Man, in order to procure as speedily as possible the most thorough satisfaction of his wants, seeks RULE. In the beginning, this rule is to him living, visible, and tangible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the other hand, the constitutions of all civilized governments, whether written or unwritten, the principles of the civil as well as those of the common law, and the teachings of wise men of ancient and of modern times, recognize as a duty the protection of individual or selfish interests. They recognize as just and necessary the restraint and punishment of wrong-doers, and the protection of the rights and interests of the individual in person and property. ”

“ Custom is regarded as the expression of the national will and conscience, and as such it confers immediately the authority of law upon all principles approved by it. The will of the state is simply a special form of the popular will, and these are of equal authority. ”

“ It may be taken to imply that rights and obligations can exist in a 'state of nature'—a state in which every individual is free to do as he likes—; that legal rights and obligations derive their authority from a voluntary act by which individuals contracted themselves out of this state; and that the individual retains from the state of nature certain rights with which no legal obligations ought to conflict. ”

“ If we will further consider the nature of magistracy, it will appear what authority can conscientiously be owned, to wit, that which is power, not authorised power, not might or force; moral power, not merely natural. ”

“ Everybody answers, “No; the authority of man is only the authority of the law, which ought to be justice and truth.” The private will counts for nothing in government, which consists, first, in discovering truth and justice in order to make the law ”

“ Every authority that claimed man’s homage was weighed in the scales of the understanding, and, so weighed, every such authority was found wanting. The State had come to be regarded as only a collection of individuals who had agreed to live together under a ruler deriving all his claims from their consent, and invested with no divine right to their allegiance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the opposite class of moral beings, we have placed an equality of civil rights, freedom of religion, and of inquiry, division of power, national influence or sovereignty, knowledge, uncorrupted representation, and actual responsibility. This enumeration of a few individuals used to explain our reasoning, and not as including entire classes. ”

“ A full expose of the order, its origin and secrets, its designs and purposes, its operations and results, are related with an unswerving fidelity to the truth, and with all charity to the people with whom it had its rise, and among whom, by the grace of God, and under the firm but humane course pursued by the present administration in the enforcement of the law, and the establishment of the right, it must have its fall. ”

“ In political affairs, and all matters civil, the laws aim at securing the common good, and are not framed accord- ing to the delusive caprices and opinions of the mass of the people, but by truth and by justice; the ruling powers are invested with a sacredness more than human, and are withheld from deviating from the path of duty, and from overstepping the bounds of rightful authority ”

“ The idea underlying it is that the government, and every agent of the government, possesses a body of rights, privileges, and prerogatives which are sharply marked off from those of the private citizen, and that the nature and extent of these rights and privileges are to be determined on principles essentially distinct from those which govern in the fixing of the rights and privileges of citizens in relation one to another. ”

“ The immortal document which proclaimed the independence of the country declared as self-evident truths that the Creator had endowed all men "with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men." ”

“ But these arbitrary selections, as they appear at first sight, in reality, when we look more closely, are found to deliver the institution of primogeniture from arbitrariness; and they show to us that the Will which rules the world maintains its freedom under the guidance of its wisdom, and remits to no institution, however useful or honourable, the supreme power in the conduct of human affairs. ”