Mixed government

“ And talking about the difficulty of sorting out mixed populations, or of dealing with small colonies of one race embedded in the midst of another race, it is evident that once you get rid of autocratic or military or class-government of any kind, and return to democratic forms, this difficulty will be much reduced or disappear. Small democratic communes are perfectly simple to form in groups of any magnitude or minuteness which may be desirable ”

“ The localities may be allowed to mismanage their own interests, but not to prejudice those of others, nor violate those principles of justice between one person and another of which it is the duty of the state to maintain the rigid observance. If the local majority attempts to oppress the minority, or one class another, the state is bound to interpose. ”

“ It must however be admitted, that in our constitutions and political disquisitions, a struggle between the light of our revolution, and the clouds of previous habits, is also discernible. The numerical analysis, a balance of orders or of powers, and a social compact between nations and their governments, often bewilder us, so as to exhibit reason and prejudice, striving for a reconciliation. Our policy, says one, abhors and rejects orders of men; but, replies the other, it loves and creates orders of power; as if power could exist abstractedly of men. ”

“ But the politicians addressed themselves to these prejudices, often with unworthy motives. Local prejudices, self-interest, fears, in some cases from an anticipated loss of consequence, in the event of a transfer of sovereignty from the individual States to the general government, all combined to make many violent in their expressions of opposition to the plan. Apprehensions of violence and disorder, and fears from individual popularity in a circumscribed sphere, led others to desire consolidation. ”

“ On the other hand, the minority, insisting on a rigid construction of their powers, and planting themselves upon the nature of the compact already formed between the States, contended that these separate and sovereign communities had distinct governments already vested with the whole political power of their respective populations, and therefore that they could not, consistently with the truth of their situation, act as if the whole or any considerable part of that power could be transferred by the people themselves to another government. ”

“ Our state governments, in which few such guarantees have been successfully evolved, have again and again oppressed the minority; but, with hardly an exception, the national government has been true to its purposes. ”

“ There can be no truer principle than this—that every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of government. If, therefore, three states contain a majority of the inhabitants of America, ought they to be governed by a minority? ”

“ Those who are most ardent in their devotion to this branch of the government, knowing the feelings produced by these decisions in those states affected by them,—sensible that those feelings are rather smothered, than abandoned upon conviction of their injustice,—fear that, by adding another and another state to the ranks of those who think they have reason to complain, an accumulation of prejudice may be produced that will threaten, if not endanger, the safety of the institution. ”

“ The resources of the one and the aspirations of the other are derived from some external source, and the consequence is that the country becomes the instrument and the scene of contests in which it is not interested. These States, like the minuter communities of the Middle Ages, serve a purpose, by constituting partitions and securities of self-government in the larger States; but they are impediments to the progress of society, which depends on the mixture of races under the same governments. ”

“ Should they accomplish their object, they then will have succeeded in forever establishing a barrier of impassable separation, by the creation of a political distinction between those peoples, of superiority and inferiority of origin or national existence. Here, then, is another stratagem of this most determined and untiring enemy of our race—the government of the United States. ”

“ In a population strictly homogeneous in interests, character and pursuits, there is no danger in this principle. We adopt it in all our State governments, and in them it is the true principle; because the majority can pass no law which will not affect themselves, in mode and degree, precisely as it affects others. But in a country so extensive as the United States, with great differences of character, interests and pursuits, and with these differences, too, marked by geographical lines, a fair opportunity is afforded for the exercise of an oppressive tyranny, by the majority over the minority. ”

“ Looking at democracy in the way in which it is commonly conceived, as the rule of the numerical majority, it is surely possible that the ruling power may be under the dominion of sectional or class interests, pointing to conduct different from that which would be dictated by impartial regard for the interest of all. Suppose the majority to be whites, the minority negroes, or vice versâ: is it likely that the majority would allow equal justice to the minority? ”

“ The people respectively composing them, instead of constituting political communities, having appropriate organs to will and to act — which is indispensable to the existence of a State — would, in such case, be divested of all such organs; and, by consequence, reduced into an unorganized mass of individuals — as far as related to the respective States — and merged into one community or nation, having but one constitution and government as the organ, through which to will and to act. ”

“ Whatever be the theory of our Constitution, its practice, of late years, has made it a consolidated government; the government of an irresponsible majority. If that majority can find, either in the pursuits of their own peculiar industry, or in the offices and emoluments which flow from the patronage of the government, an interest distinct from that of the minority, they will pursue that interest, and nothing will be left to the minority but the poor privilege of complaining. ”

“ It has been shown, under the second head of our inquiries, that all provisions which require more than the majority of any body to its resolutions, have a direct tendency to embarrass the operations of the government, and an indirect one to subject the sense of the majority to that of the minority. ”

“ A power which had been relatively dwindling and diminishing from the beginning—which, in the very nature of things, could not maintain its equality in numbers and in constitutional weight—this minority demanded the control of the Government, in its growth, and in all its policy, and, in the event of refusal, threatened to rend and destroy it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Popular government, in this instance, meant, not compromise between conflicting views, but the complete triumph of one party and the complete humiliation of the other. Nearly half the nation was powerless to resist or modify a measure they regarded with dismay. Majority rule, pushed ruthlessly to its logical issue, leaves minorities, however numerous and influential, at the mercy of a sovereign power against whose decisions there is no appeal, and to whom the possibility of compromise is increasingly difficult. ”

“ Absolutely the only hope of radical reform lies in a straight-out, aggressive and fearless fight upon both the old parties, which in turn have had control of the Government, and which have played into each other’s hands in forging the chains of class legislation which now bind and burden the Common People. ”

“ As men died and their sons succeeded them prejudices gradually yielded and sentiment changed. Moreover, various other forces—immigration, free trade among the states, the growth of railways and other nationwide industries, foreign wars—have been at work to obliterate state lines.
Advocates of the old order see in the change a breaking down of the principle of local self-government. To their minds the danger of majority tyranny, made possible by a centralization of power in a republic of such vast extent and varied interests, outweighs all the advantages of national uniformity and efficiency. ”

“ Instead of balancing power, we divide it and make it responsible, to prevent the evils of its accumulation in the hands of one interest. And such is the force of this principle of dividing power, to excite the good, and suppress the evil qualities of man, that among several hundred state governours who have already existed, not one instance has appeared of kingly qualities, of usurpation, or of war between neighbouring states. ”

“ In fact, the distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race. They interfere with the municipal legislation of the States, with the relations existing exclusively between a State and its citizens, or between inhabitants of the same State—an absorption and assumption of power by the General Government which, if acquiesced in, must sap and destroy our federative system of limited powers and break down the barriers which preserve the rights of the States. ”

“ Therefore the powers of the States being bestowed or reserved by a majority of the States or of the people, no matter which; any State would disobey the majority, and thus betray the national right of self-government in the federal form, by suffering itself to be deprived of these powers. A division and a consolidation; checks and no checks; cannot exist together. ”

“ Supposing it does, it will be easy for the masses to keep the minority in check. They can revolt and rebel, but under your Government the bureaucracy is all powerful. The truth is, sir, that the condition of these very millions, in whose interests, you say, you are reluctant to give power to the [pg 45] educated and the wealthy few, is a standing condemnation of your government there. The educated minority and the wealthy few are fairly well off under your regime. It is the ignorant ryot and the millions of workingmen and women who suffer. ”

“ The dissimilarity in the ingredients which will compose the national government, and still more in the manner in which they will be brought into action in its various branches, must form a powerful obstacle to a concert of views in any partial scheme of elections. There is sufficient diversity in the state of property, in the genius, manners, and habits of the people of the different parts of the Union, to occasion a material diversity of disposition in their representatives towards the different ranks and conditions in society. ”

“ The first step, it seems to me, towards governmental reform, is decentralization, with a return to the States, the civic communities and the individual citizens of nine-tenths of the powers and the prerogatives that have been taken from them in defiance of abstract justice, of the principles of free government and of the theory of the workable unit of human scale. In a word we must abandon imperialism and all its works and go back to the Federal Republic. ”

“ It supposes the interest of the people, under the general and State governments, to be in hostility with each other, instead of considering the two governments as parts only of the same system, and forming but one government for the same people, having for its object the same common interest and welfare of all. ”

“ The sympathies available for the purpose are those of race, language, religion, and, above all, of political institutions, as conducing most to a feeling of identity of political interest. When a few free states, separately insufficient for their own defense, are hemmed in on all sides by military or feudal monarchs, who hate and despise freedom even in a neighbor, those states have no chance for preserving liberty and its blessings but by a federal union. ”

“ The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the proposed constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted and recognized as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and cannot, unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a government by States to something like a despotic central government, with power to control even the municipal regulations of States, and to make them conform to its own despotic will. ”

“ 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 maybe deemed proper. ”

“ It is a falsehood, that the policy of enriching a minority at the publick expense, is ever resorted to, for the purpose of protecting property; or that it is capable of any such effect. The idea of hiring a minority in civil government, to protect the property of a majority, is visibly absurd. ”

“ Large masses of mankind are not apt to be swayed, except by interest alone; and wherever that interest is distinct and clear, it presents a motive of action too strong to be controlled. Let it be supposed that a certain number of States, containing a majority of the people of all the States, should find it to their interest to pass laws oppressive to the minority, and violating their rights as secured by the Constitution. What redress is there, upon the principles of our author? Is it to be found in the federal tribunals? ”