Motion (politics)

“ These eternal principles happen now, in a peculiar degree, to be implicated in the shifting and uncertain current of politics; and political storms may seem for a time to overwhelm them. But the cloud which obscures the sun does not annihilate it ”

“ So a healthy and sound conservative equilibrium is not disturbed by outside forces, and the State will resume its former position of stability and rest when the opposing force is withdrawn. But an unhealthy and insecure conservatism is as easily disturbed as an egg balanced on its narrow end.
The kinetics of society, that is to say the Radical way of estimating force, is the party of motion, generally supposed to be the ‘party of progress.’ It has [98] therefore many attractions in the eyes of those who delight in motion, speed, and rushing about. ”

“ We mean to be perfectly understood on this point, and therefore openly disclaim all steel-traps,—all principle, as it is called,—all party,—all politics. Our only guide shall be good, sound, practical common-sense, applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in every-day life. ”

“ But by what power can this be accomplished? There is only one. Physical force will not do it. The system of our government has been compared to that of the heavenly bodies, which move on, orb within orb cycle within cycle, in apparent confusion, but in real, uninterrupted, unalterable harmony. And the harmony of our system can only be maintained by a power, which, like that regulating their movements, is unseen, unfelt, yet irresistible,—Public Opinion. ”

“ But this is a part of science which he is mainly familiar with. Here is a place, for instance, where the motion of particular forms is skilfully brought to the aid of that larger motion. Here we have an experiment in which these petty motives come in to aid the revolutionary movement in the minds of the leaders of it, and with their feather's weight turn the scale, when the abhorrence of change is too nicely balanced with its antagonistic force for a predominance of powers without it. ”

“ When I say that this question is of a most complex and perplexing nature, I only assert what is known of all men.
I would not forget that the arguments for and against independent action on our part are based upon two parties or sets of principles. Principles are inherent in government by the people, and parties are engines created by the people through which to voice the principles they espouse. ”

“ The spirit of analysis is scientific, but never political. In politics, whether dealing with rights or powers, the object is to create real vital forces, capable either of enforcing obedience or resisting oppression. ”

“ But not until recently have we been able to see the full effects of thus sending men to legislate for us at capitals distant the breadth of a continent. It makes the leaders of our politics, many of them, mere names to our consciousness instead of real persons whom we have seen and heard, and whom we know. ”

“ In the present period of transition the popular mind is unusually open to the discussion of those great problems of government which are upon us, and currents of thought and sentiment may thus be put in motion sufficiently strong to carry one or the other of the existing parties from point to point, thus accomplishing through that instrumentality results in detail, growing in importance as they accumulate. ”

“ The Government of the right-hand party restrained political life and action within a narrow circle, and rendered them more difficult; the generation which was then beginning to stir in the world, sought, not entirely independent of, but side by side with politics, the employment of its strength and the gratification of its desires: literature, [309] philosophy, history, policy, and criticism assumed a new and powerful flight. ”

“ There is something to be said, indeed, for the nature of the political machinery, for the whirling motion of the revolutionary wheel which has of late wrenched men’s understandings almost asunder, and ‘amazed the very faculties of eyes and ears’ ”

“ When I walk towards an object, it is necessary first that I should will to go there, and, in the second place, that my feet should carry me. If a paralytic wills to run and an active man wills not to, they will both stay where they are. The body politic has the same motive powers; here too force and will are distinguished, will under the name of legislative power and force under that of executive power. ”

“ Slowly but steadily, in the following years, a new vision began gradually to replace the dream of political power,—a powerful movement, the rise of another ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire by night after a clouded day. ”

“ Many are expecting a revolution by force of arms to establish the ideals of the leaders. More are opportunists, snatching every opportunity in legislation, in decision of courts, and in executive power, to apply their methods. ”

“ Whether the shaking power is a mechanical one, or is the force of organized law is all the same. Such approaches are without any obligations, are productions of the moment, born of the moment and swept away with the moment. ”

“ I wish it therefore to be considered as my humble opinion, that what, in political slang, is termed Radical Reform, is, in reality, proximate revolution:—Universal Suffrage, inextinguishable uproar:—and Annual Parliaments, periodical bloodshed. ”

“ Besides, every movement is a reaction, and generates counter-reactions. The pendulum swings backwards and forwards. Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival. ”

“ What has happened in the history of the world more than once happened again. Every step forward brought to the consciousness of the people the necessity of further steps forward. And now, when the king endeavored to stem the growing commotion, repelled the moderate demands made by the United Diet with sharp words, and dismissed that assembly “ungraciously,” then the public mind was, by the government itself, dragged into that channel of thought in which revolutionary sentiments grow. ”

“ In the eyes of reason, governments and parties are merely the mise en scène of the fundamental concepts of society, a realization of abstractions, a metaphysical pantomime, from which the direction is Liberty. ”

“ In what is termed politics, democratic social organization makes provision for this direct participation in control; in the economic region, control remains external and autocratic. Hence the split between inner mental action and outer physical action of which the traditional distinction between the liberal and the utilitarian is the reflex. ”

“ Now, all the schemes about voting, and districts, and annual Parliaments, and the rest, are engines, and the water or steam—the force that is to work them—must come out of human nature—out of men's passions, feelings, desires. ”

“ And what else can result from the policy of those among us, who, by all the measures in their power, are driving matters to extremity, if they cannot be counteracted effectually? The views of men can only be known, or guessed at, by their words or actions. Can those of the leaders of opposition be mistaken, then, if judged by this rule? ”

“ These stupendous changes are the results of human energy, and they reach, in their moral prestige, their progressive influence, through every vein and artery of governmental and social compacts, affecting political institutions, shaping national policy, and forcing, by their resistless demonstrations, change and mutations of opinions upon all men. ”

“ Sir, whenever political life is regulated by constitutional forms, and by that infinite ramification of power, called self-government there can be no uniformity and regularity of movements, like that of a clock. ”

“ All the world over, progressive political movements have had vicissitudes of fortune, stages of development, times of reactions, defeats and reverses. Governments always begin by ignoring such movements. ”

“ Here again we have a question of tactics, which will be decided by the very necessities of life and by the social and political evolution that will inevitably occur, a question hardly serious enough to call forth mutual recriminations and schisms in the party. ”

“ Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak. ”

“ That immense movement which has been communicated to every country and agitates all their deepest recesses; which is incessantly inciting every class and every individual to think, to desire, to claim, to act, to employ his activity in every direction,—this movement will not be stopped. It is a fact in which we must acquiesce, whether it pleases or displeases us, whether it awakens our fears or excites our hopes. ”

“ Every citizen knows that our government is a piece of mechanism, made up of wheels within wheels, and while these wheels are in one sense totally independent, and stand still or turn as they are moved or let alone, yet they may indirectly affect the whole. ”

“ We hear much of many wonders of combination and concentration of industrial power which railway and telegraph have wrought. But nothing is said about what seems to me the greatest wonder of them all—how these forces have resulted in the concentration of the political power of upwards of twelve millions of our fifteen million voters; how the few can impose their ideas and their will upon widening circles, out and out, until all are included. The people are scattered; the powers confer, man to man, day by day. ”

“ In politics, as in mechanics, the power which is to keep the engine going must be sought for outside the machinery; and if it is not forthcoming, or is insufficient to surmount the obstacles which may reasonably be expected, the contrivance will fail. ”

“ Philosophic theories, logical conclusions drawn from abstract reasoning, the speculations of the study, the argumentative rhetoric of the bar, were the equipment with which the prominent members of the Assembly started on their political career. Whereas the subtle involvement of social life is such, that the law of progress seems to be that for every two steps taken in advance there must be made a step backwards, these fanatics of freedom wished to push on at all hazards, even at that of annihilating all resisting human forces. ”

“ This malady of progress, civil war, we have met as we passed along, and it is one of the social phases, at once an act and an interlude of that drama whose pivot is a social condemnation, and whose veritable title is "Progress." ”

“ But there is need of political action to transform the machinery of the state, side by side with the transformation which we hope to see in economic institutions. In this country, neither transformation is likely to be brought about by a sudden revolution; we must expect each to come step by step, if at all, and I doubt if either could or should advance very far without the other. ”

“ Next, in politics, organise your strength, band together, and deliver the casting vote where you can, and, where you can t, compel as good terms as possible. You huddle to yourselves already in all countries, but you huddle to no sufficient purpose, politically speaking. ”

“ In seeking a political theory which is to be useful at any given moment, what is wanted is not the invention of a Utopia, but the discovery of the best direction of movement. The direction which is good at one time may be superficially very different from that which is good at another time. ”

“ The heterogeneous character of the Opposition with which the Government was confronted, the conflicting groups and interests into which it was split up, offered large scope for the intriguing, contriving genius of the man. ”

“ Underneath the corporeal and intermittent actions which civil power prescribes and regulates, they govern the imagination, the conscience and the affections, the whole inward being, that mute, persistent effort of which our visible acts are simply the incomplete expressions and rare outbursts. ”

“ It will influence and control the rise and fall of political parties, each doing the work all unconsciously of forces which it does not understand. It will lead in various ways, and through all oppositions and reactions, towards an organised society profoundly differing from our own. ”

“ These are the vital forces that work beneath the surface and dominate the external form. It is to changes in the economic and social life of a people that we must look for the forces, that ultimately create and modify organs of political action. ”

“ He who meets an Opponent half way, recedes from his own Principles, and embraces in part at least, those of his Antagonist. Now if your Principles were sound, and those of the old Standards unsound, as we must believe from your constant Opposition for the Time past; how can you depart from yours, without embracing unsound Principles? No, Sir, I protest against half-way Meetings between a Majority in Power, and a few, who, I’m afraid, grasp too eagerly at a Shred, or rather Shadow of that Power. ”

“ Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government, causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of some party which aims at becoming the government. ”

“ When the great quarrel between the North and the South was waxing hot and hotter, it was again direct action which preceded and precipitated political action. And I may remark here that political action is never taken, nor even contemplated, until slumbering minds have first been aroused by direct acts of protest against existing conditions. ”

“ Others, with greater boldness, will adventure sorties against the enemy, and thus provoke reply and discussion. To each will be assigned his suited task. A laboring for the one great object,—to maintain the national fever at a white heat, to suffer no interval of calm reflection to come, and to force upon the Parliament, by the pressure of outward opinion, some severe or at least some galling act of legislation. ”