Misgovernment

“ There they were, in the midst of sixty thousand picked men, trembling for the consequences of their own misgovernment; for they saw that the whole country was in the hands of the citizens, and that it would be impossible much longer to continue a resistance. ”

“ In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. ”

“ The seeds of discontent which they are assiduously sowing are likely to take root in the breasts of our own people, disgruntled as they are with the{17} past and present corruption of our politics and the inefficiency of our government. ”

“ Seeing this, the reformers naturally ask each other in wonder and disgust what is the matter with the people? What is the cause of their failure to rid themselves of these political gangs? What is the remedy and where is it to be found? ”

“ Countless political movements have been started and political campaigns fought in the effort to cure the delinquency, to cleanse the corruption of our local and general governments, with varying temporary success, but without permanent benefit. ”

“ In so doing it perverts the State from its proper functions. The State has no rightful authority over men’s lives except as the deputy of Society, and its every legitimate act should and must be for the promotion of beneficial social objects. ”

“ The fact that it persists and has so long persisted in operation affords evidence that it is not superficial but represents an organic defect in our governmental system. Many political students have puzzled over it, many have given the inquiry up as hopeless. ”

“ In every government on earth is some traces of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. ”

“ In all disputes between them (the governed) and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people. Experience may perhaps justify me in going further. When popular discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed that there has been something found amiss in the constitution or in the conduct of government. The people have no interest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error and not their crime. ”

“ State, or at least to do nothing for themselves without asking from the State not only leave to do it, but even how it is to be done, naturally hold the State responsible for all evil which befalls them, and when the evil exceeds their amount of patience, they rise against the government and make what is called a revolution; whereupon somebody else, with or without legitimate authority from the nation, vaults into the seat, issues his orders to the bureaucracy, and everything goes on much as it did before ”

“ A tide of oppression and misery, not arising from external or accidental causes, such as war, pestilence, or famine, nor even from any such alteration of the laws as might be supposed to impair this boasted perfection, but from a corrupt and wicked administration, which all the so much admired checks of the constitution were not able to prevent. How vain, then, how idle, how presumptuous is the opinion that laws can do everything! and how weak and pernicious the maxim founded upon it, that measures, not men, are to be attended to. ”

“ Where security of person and property are preserved by laws, which none but the whole can repeal, there the great ends of government are provided for, whether the administration be in the hands of one, or of many. Where any one person, or body of men, who do not represent the whole, seize into their hands the power in the last resort, there is properly no longer a government, but what Aristotle and his followers call the abuse and corruption of one. ”

“ I cannot be loyal to a system of meanness, terror, and corruption, although it usurp the title and assume the form of a 'government.' So long as such a 'government' presumes to injure and insult me, and those in whose prosperity I am involved, I must offer to it all the resistance in my power. ”

“ But I say such attacks are pregnant with mischief to government itself. Oppose ministers, you oppose government; disgrace ministers, you disgrace government; bring ministers into contempt, you bring government into contempt; and anarchy and civil war are the consequences. Besides, sir, the measure is unnecessary. Nobody complains of disorder in that shape in which it is the aim of your measure to propose a remedy to it. The business is one of the greatest importance; there is need of the greatest caution and circumspection. ”

“ In the system of special and class legislation causes of corruption and the downfall of governments may always be found; it is the bane of the nations, whence flows that subtle, entrancing poison that permeates all the arteries and veins of a country—so quietly and alluringly to the people, that, before its effects are suspected, the vital principle of the government is destroyed, and the lifeless form finally falls to rise no more forever ”

“ They would govern men against their will, but in that government they would be discharged from the exercise of vigilance, providence, and fortitude: and, therefore, that they may sleep on their watch, they consent to take some one division of the society into partnership of the tyranny over the rest. But let government, in what form it may be, comprehend the whole in its justice, and restrain the suspicious by its vigilance; let it keep watch and ward; let it discover by its sagacity, and punish by its firmness, all delinquency against its power, whenever delinquency exists in the overt acts ”

“ The favourite Subject of its Clamours will be the Misconduct of Those who govern. And in a Country where Liberty is justly ranked among the greatest national Blessings, the most plausible Pretence of Faction will be, "to load the executive Power with the Charge of Despotism." ”

“ The legislatures, the courts, the executive officers, all the sources of authority and springs of control, were defiled and impested until right and justice fled affrighted from the land, and the name of the country became a stench in the nostrils of the world. ”

“ True it is that the vices of the government are fatal to it, they cause its death, but they kill also the society in whose bosom they are developed. An immoral government presupposes a demoralized people, a conscienceless administration, greedy and servile citizens in the settled parts, outlaws and brigands in the mountains. ”

“ Our discussion and struggles about other great questions and principles will appear like a mockery and farce if we permit our public concerns to drift into that ruinous anarchy which corruption must necessarily bring in its train, because it destroys the confidence of the people in their self-government, the greatest evil that can befall a republic. ”

“ It denounces every institution established for human development as a fraud. It stigmatizes law as the machinery of injustice; it sneers at society as hollow-hearted corruption and insincerity; it brands politics as a reeking mass of rottenness, and scoffs at morality as the tinsel of sin. ”

“ The people, on the other hand, after bearing, with the most abject patience, the capricious cruelty of their tyrants, rising at once, and murdering them, or driving them, with ignominy, out of their dominions. Unable to bear either limited or absolute government, the impatient and capricious multitude wish for things which have always been found incompatible: the secrecy, promptitude, and efficacy, of a despotic government, with all the freedom and mildness of a legal and limited constitution. ”

“ We might add, as a further cause of their success, the [Pg 290] inattention of a large majority of the people to the political affairs of the country, and their willingness to follow a few political leaders, to whom they seem to have entrusted the entire control of the politics of the country. As a rule, we submit to wrongs in the administration of the affairs of states, as well as the national government, until we individually suffer from their mal-administration, then, what has been termed the "sober second thought of the people" manifests itself, and reforms are effected. ”

“ As soon as the State recognizes the right of existence of this dung-heap, by its toleration and organization, corruption hitherto hidden and ashamed raises its head and becomes more and more bold, even dragging public organs into its sink. ”

“ If we will arbitrarily suppose the contrary, we may deduce any inferences we please from the supposition; for it is certainly possible, by an injudicious exercise of the authorities of the best Government that ever was, or ever can be instituted, to provoke and precipitate the People into the wildest excesses. ”

“ It forced men to conclude that authority was odiously stupid and still more odiously ferocious, that existing governments were accursed, that the guardians and ministers of law, divine and human, were more guilty than their culprits. ”

“ Once started upon a system of law-making and executing not founded upon principles of justice and right, the course must be pursued and sustained by further enactments, either to cover the deformities of the previous proceeding or hide its purposes, and unless righteous judgment come to the rescue before the course has led to wide-spread and apparent corruption throughout all its channels of administration, it must eventually culminate in the downfall of the government, if not in the destruction of the nation.
Policy, not principle, is the ruling power behind all present legislation. ”

“ It is his Duty; both because Corruption can only flourish on the Ruins of Virtue and Religion, good Morals and Principles, without which public Liberty is essentially destroy'd; and because Corruption tends inevitably and invariably to weaken the public Administration of Government, by filling every high Department with the Venal, the Ignorant, the Selfish, the Dishonest. ”

“ Why is it that the very bases of society have been sapped, and the conditions of good government despised, or denounced under the name of despotism? Why is it that social and political life is poisoned in its source, and the blood of the nation corrupted? ”

“ Perhaps in all the wide world never again will be seen such malignant legislation, and maladministration of law, such trials 333 in the courts, speeches in legislative halls, preaching by illiterate negroes, mode of getting religion, idleness of the laborers, immorality taught by men from the slums of Northern cities, thirst for money, howling for office, insolence in office, with upheaval of society, creating constant anxiety of mind as to what a day might bring forth. ”

“ Demoralizing, first, because it made the conduct of the Government an example of gross public immorality, through the predominance of private over public interests in the State, and the abuse of the powers of legislation for the advantage of classes. Secondly, and in a still greater degree, because the respect of the multitude always attaching itself principally to that which, in the existing state of society, is the chief passport to power; and under English institutions, riches, hereditary or acquired, being the almost exclusive source of political importance ”

“ No thinking man denies that corruption and profligacy, the tendency to make the Government an agency for private support and the loose methods of doing the Government's business which minister to such evil practices are among the gravest dangers besetting democratic institutions. ”

“ It demanded, in the name of self-government, that if a State, by its assumed authority, made local self-government a sham and a mockery, no national authority should have a right to prevent or correct the mischief. ”

“ Nothing but the tyranny and corruption of the very governments that have reduced so large portions of the people to their present ignorance, servility, degradation, and corruption; an ignorance, servility, degradation, and corruption that are best illustrated in the simple fact that they do sustain the governments that have so oppressed, degraded, and corrupted them. ”

“ I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office, that the true way in which power should be gained in the Republic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service, and the true end for which it should be used when gained is the promotion of selfish ambition and the gratification of personal revenge. ”

“ These deplorable states of feeling, in any people who have emerged from savage life, are, no doubt, usually the consequence of previous bad government, which has taught them to regard the law as made for other ends than their good, and its administrators as worse enemies than those who openly violate it. ”

“ We saw the Government indulging in wanton disregard of the laws of the land, and resorting to daring assumptions of unconstitutional power, and we saw the people, apparently at least acquiescing with reckless levity in the transgressions, threatening the very life of our free institutions. ”

“ Now, however good the man may be, a system by which he breaks down our Constitutional Government and our legal Government, and makes our public officers mere puppets or men of straw, taking all dignity from their positions, because all responsibility and authority is gone, produces in the end in the public mind a contempt for government, and creates a condition where the temptation to wrong is irresistible. ”

“ It exposes us, by the scandalous spectacle of its periodical spoils carnivals, to the ridicule and contempt of civilized mankind, promoting among our own people the growth of serious doubts as to the practicability of democratic institutions on a great scale, and in an endless variety of ways it introduces into our political life more elements of demoralization, debasement and decadence than any other agency of evil I know of, aye, perhaps more than all other agencies of evil combined. ”

“ In the worst periods there was not a crime imaginable that could not be, and was not, committed openly and with impunity by anybody on the right side of the so-called "government"; and the "government" was nothing but an organised crime in itself. ”

“ The people are called together in tippling houses, their business neglected, their morals corrupted, themselves deluded; some promised offices for which they are unfit, and those who have disputes with their neighbours are assured of their causes167 whether they be right or wrong. Those with whom these arts will not prevail, are tempted with the wages of unrighteousness, and are offered a bribe to falsify their oath and betray their country. ”