Partition

“ Many different schemes of partition upon this principle may be found, each including forms subordinated one to the other, descending from the more comprehensive to the less comprehensive. It is only when you can find no more parts which are forms, that you must be content to divide into parts which are not forms. ”

“ Another method of partition will be found in the fields "checky" (or "chequy") and lozengy; but these divisions, as also the foregoing, will be treated more specifically under the different ordinaries. A field which is party need not necessarily have all its lines of partition the same. This peculiarity, however, seldom occurs except in the case of a field quarterly, the object in coats of this character being to prevent different quarters of one coat of arms being ranked as or taken to be quarterings representing different families. ”

“ According to this then, a partition, which under ordinary circumstances should facilitate the observance of laws, would prove a detriment; for were there no partition between the larger and smaller court and vines were planted anywhere within the two courts, a man would simply be obliged to measure off four ells whence the vines grew and could then plant whatever he chose. ”

“ And opposite the bench, the dock, divided by a partition, with the women to the left and the men to the right, as it is on the stairs or the block in polite society. ”

“ At first summoned to the national assembly for purposes partially like and partially unlike those of its other members, the elected members show a segregating tendency, which, where the industrial portion of the community continues to gain power, ends in the formation of a representative body distinct from the original consultative body. ”

“ It may be said of them truly that ‘thin partitions do their bounds divide.’ There cannot be a surer proof of a low origin or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel. ”

“ And there is the chosen head, commonly the man of greatest mark to be obtained, who exercises a recognized power over speakers and audience—the temporary king. Even an informally summoned assemblage soon resolves itself into these divisions more or less distinctly; and when the assemblage becomes a permanent body, as of the men composing a commercial company, or a philanthropic society, or a club, definiteness is quickly given to the three divisions—president or chairman, board or committee, proprietors or members. ”

“ What had become of the old radical division of parties,—the line between men who wished the national government to exercise inherent powers of sovereignty and those who held to a strict observance of powers expressly delegated by the people of the States? ”

“ Division teaches how to divide a number into two or more equal parts, as in the division of prize-money.
[39] Division is of great importance, whether political, ecclesiastical, commercial, civil, or social. Nothing is more likely to destroy your opponents than a split. Divide et impera is the true Machiavelian policy of all governments.
Numbers, that is the multitude, are to be divided, in a variety of ways,—by mob orators, or by mob-sneaks, or by parliamentary flounderers, or by mystifying pulpit demagogues. ”

“ Every divisor is a gift of God, and corresponds to the months of the year and to the revolution of the universe. All cities have a number, but none is more fortunate than our own, which can be divided by all numbers up to 12, with the exception of 11, and even by 11, if two families are deducted. And now let us divide the state, assigning to each division some God or demigod, who shall have altars raised to them, and sacrifices offered twice a month; and assemblies shall be held in their honour, twelve for the tribes, and twelve for the city, corresponding to their divisions. ”

“ The enlightened men who compose the majority of our Assembly render themselves powerless by their division on what is called the political question—that is to say, on the form of sovereignty. They may be assured that each political party, when it advances its principle, raises against it a majority formed by the coalition of rival parties. ”

“ The perpetual discord of factions, with several changes of late years in the very nature of our government, have controlled many maxims among us. The court and country party, which used to be the old division, seems now to be ceased, or suspended, for better times, and worse princes. ”

“ The spirit of faction owes its growth, in great part, to the gradual disappearance of the issues which originally divided the parties, or which subsequently sprung up and became important enough to keep the lines of division distinct. ”

“ Little as we may think of it, these assemblies, under whatever name they may be known—lyceums, societies, clubs, or “legislatures,”—are a power in the land; they do far more than most people think in forming the characters and fixing the opinions of the great multitude of boys and girls who participate in them. They are to-day more numerous than ever before, though they have been abroad in the land for more than half a century. ”

“ The presence of these groups, actuated by different interests, must make us consider an assembly as formed of superimposed and heterogeneous crowds, each obeying its particular leaders. The law of the mental unity of crowds is manifested only in each group, and it is only as a result of exceptional circumstances that the different groups act with a single intention.
Each group in an assembly represents a single being. The individuals contributing to the formation of this being are no longer themselves, and will unhesitatingly vote against their convictions and their wishes. ”

“ This was a useful simplification: on certain days only, from religious reasons, might the curies and centuries be convoked; the tribes on the contrary might assemble, and did assemble, every day, they were not restricted by the dies nefasti. People saw more and more that the form of general assemblies was a mere semblance, and too much depending on accident: it is but fancy to think of votes being the expression of personal will; impulse, the force of example, does every thing. ”

“ The assembly would receive thus at the time the same advantage that is given to it by the extension of the elections of its members to all parts of the territory which it represents. Now if one considers what experience has only too clearly taught, namely, that elections are always directed in the greatest degree by dominant opinions, one will feel how useful it is to temper these opinions, the ones by the others, by means of a partial renewal. ”

“ The discussions and resolutions of the assembly and the final type of organization which grew out of them can be understood only in the light thrown on them by a study of the composition of this revolutionary group of men. ”

“ If there could one single example be brought from the whole compass of history, of any one popular assembly, who, after beginning to contend for power, ever sat down quietly with a certain share; or if one instance could be produced of a popular assembly, that ever knew, or proposed, or declared what share of power was their due ”

“ Small assemblies of men possessing the same opinions, the same beliefs, and the same interests, which eliminate all dissentient voices, differ from the great assemblies by the unity of their sentiments and therefore their wills. Such were the communes, the religious congregations, the corporations, and the clubs during the Revolution, the secret societies during the first half of the nineteenth century, and the Freemasons and syndicalists of to-day. ”

“ The traditional division into two parties, which from one point of view seems so irrational, nevertheless exerts very important and valuable influences, of which the chief is that it prevents the assembly of legislators becoming a mere psychological crowd easily swayed to a decision by collective emotion and skilful suggestion ”

“ Each provincial kingdom and each tuath had assemblies of its own. Every flaith and flaith-fine was a member of a local assembly, the clan system conferring the qualification, and there being no other election. ”

“ By a faction, we are to understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united by some common impulse of passion, or interest, or party, adverse to the rights of the other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. ”

“ But when people are dispersed over a wide tract of country, the primary assembly inevitably shrinks up into an assembly of such persons as can best afford the time and trouble of attending it, or who have the strongest interest in going, or are most likely to be listened to after they get there. ”

“ The strength, permanence, and class-character of economic groups are made conspicuous by comparison with forms of grouping based on other principles. Political parties, groups of idealists, or communities professing a common creed, are associations which cannot but be weak and transient in view of their heterogeneous composition and of the accidental character of their bond of union. ”

“ The party divisions that have arisen from any cause whatsoever are preserved throughout the whole range of interests, and bring it to pass that, for example, political parties must occupy hostile camps, even about religious, aesthetic, personal, and culture questions of every sort, even in cases where the content of the new party programmes has no real connection with that which caused the original division. ”

“ No party, as I have often told you, and as I stated at the caucus at Marache’s, can last unless founded on pure principles; and the minute a party begins to intrigue within itself is the minute when the seed of division is sown and its purity begins to decline. ”

“ If after voting on any question by the Ayes and Noes, the chair is in doubt, or if before or after the decision by the chair, and before other business has been taken up by the assembly, any member calls for a division of the vote, a rising vote is taken. The chair will say, “As many as are in favor of —— will rise and remain standing until counted.” ”

“ There was the stone party, the brick party, and the concrete-wall party. Yet by patience, forbearing one with another and submitting one to another, the final result satisfied every one. Unity is the essential thing. ”

“ They serve to organize faction—to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community and according to the alternate triumphs of different parties to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests. ”

“ The subdivision of parties is generally the ruin of all, especially when it is introduced by cunning views, directly contrary to prudence; and this is what the Italians call, in comedy, a "plot within a plot," or a "wheel within a wheel." ”

“ I define a party vote arbitrarily as one where more than nine tenths of the members of the party in power, who take part in the division, vote together on one side, and nine tenths of the Opposition who take part vote together on the other side. ”

“ But if it be the duty of princes to restrain the factious, much more does it concern them to dissolve and dissipate the factions themselves. Now I call a faction, a multitude of subjects gathered together either by mutual contracts among themselves, or by the power of some one, without his or their authority who bear the supreme rule. 176A faction, therefore, is as it were a city in a city: for as by an union of men in the state of nature, a city receives its being, so by a new union of subjects there ariseth a faction. ”

“ An assembly of the provincial states or a parliament309 meeting to discuss a very important matter of business, presents nothing so grave and serious as156 a table crowded with gamblers who play very high; a melancholic severity is depicted on every countenance; implacable towards one another, and irreconcilable enemies as long as they are together, they neither regard relationship, connections, birth, or social distinctions. ”

“ But it will be said, a coalition of parties may indeed be allowed to be in many cases proper and wise; but a coalition between parties who have long treated each other with the extremest rancour, appears a species of conduct, abhorrent to the unadulterated judgment, and all the native prepossessions of mankind. ”

“ Every argument which can be urged against coalitions, as such, is also an argument against party connexions. Every argument by which party connexions can be defended, is a defence of coalitions. What coalitions are to parties, parties are to individuals. ”

“ I said before, and I trust I may say again, that this assembly was one in which any man might well be proud to sit—prouder I that I have not some of your traditions and am not of your families, but am of the people, the people that sent me here to speak for them. ”

“ The highest assembly of the commons we know of in this country is an assembly in which every measure, and every decision is subjected to free and impartial debate. In subordinate assemblies no man is precluded from delivering his sentiments with freedom upon every measure under their deliberation; and the man who speaks well, if he does not always meet with success, is sure never to miss of applause. ”

“ Their first weak invention is to attach to a new faction a contemptible or an opprobrious nickname. In the history of the revolutions of Europe, whenever a new party has at length established its independence, the original denomination which had been fixed on them, marked by the passions of the party which bestowed it, strangely contrasts with the state of the party finally established! ”