Policy-making

“ No one entertains a higher opinion than myself, also, of that spirit of wise and liberal policy, which has actuated the government of your own great State in the accomplishment of high objects, important to the growth and prosperity both of the State and the city. But all these local advantages, and all this enlightened state policy, could never have made your city what it now is, without the aid and protection of a general government, extending over all the States, and establishing for all a common and uniform system of commercial regulation. ”

“ It is that policy which seeks to use the power of this great Republic for the advantage and benefit of private interests; it is that policy which takes money out of the pockets of the people to put it into the pockets of a favored few; it is that policy which, wherever it has prevailed, in every age and every country, has poisoned the very fountains of legislation. ”

“ But administration it is which organizes between the capacities of the people on the one hand, and the enlightened wishes of the government on the other—that intermediate nexus of social machinery without which both the amplest powers in a nation and the noblest policy in a government must equally and continually fall to the ground. ”

“ In contests of this nature, where a considerable body of people who have attempted to free themselves of the control of the superior government have reached such point in occupation of territory, in power, and in general organization as to constitute in fact a body politic; having a government in substance as well as in name; possessed of the elements of stability and equipped with the machinery for the administration of internal policy and the execution of its laws ”

“ The Aim of Regulation by the State.—An aim of a government, in all of its economic policy, is to insure the best use of the national resources, and this can often be done by keeping alive free competition. ”

“ In spite of the elaborate solar system of local, state, and national units of government that encircle our lives, most of us tend to regard ourselves as the objects of governmental policy and not the makers. ”

“ Some of you have achieved success in the mechanical arts, some in professional pursuits, and more of you come from that first great pursuit of man—the tilling of the soil—and you come to express the thought that you have common interests; that these diverse pursuits are bound together harmoniously in a common governmental policy and administration. Your interests have had a harmonious and an amazing growth under that protective system to which your representatives have referred, and you wisely demand a continuation of that policy for their further advancement and development. ”

“ For it must be substituted an economic policy which will secure to the nation, and the individual the opportunities and the benefits of the existing organization, while at the same time seeking the diffusion of those benefits over a larger social area. ”

“ One appeal which may be said to run through the whole of the speeches on the side of the Government is familiar to the readers and the audiences of all political debates, whore any manner of Reform is under discussion. "You are asked"—so runs the argument—"to adopt this sort of policy in order to satisfy the demands of a certain class of the population ”

“ No popular government ever determined the policy and administered the affairs of such large bodies of people successfully, ever transacted such a vast volume of business satisfactorily, ever promoted high and beneficent ends, ever afforded protection to the rights of each individual of the great multitude, unless in its plan of organization there was an organic separation of executive, legislative, and judicial functions and powers. ”

“ By what ordinances would public prosperity, and all the virtues which not merely adorn that prosperity, but produce it, be most powerfully excited and maintained? This political department of our science, which is in truth only a subdivision, though a very important one, of general practical ethics, comprehends, of course, the inquiries as to the relative advantages of different forms of government, and the expediency of the various contrivances which legislative wisdom may have established, or may be supposed to establish, for the happiness and defence of nations. ”

“ Seeing in the harmonious development of all branches of labor a source of progress and power, we must adopt a policy which draws to light the resources of the land, gives work to our workshops, and security to our commerce. ”

“ The subject presents itself to my mind in three different aspects: as a question of principle, a question of constitutional construction and a question of policy. I have often heard men sneer at general principles when applied to practical questions of policy. Our government, they say, has grown and developed itself out of facts, not out of abstractions; specious political theories are invented in order to give the results of history an artificial meaning and to befog the practical sense of the people. ”

“ The question, however, is not of great practical moment, and the matter may be likened to the general policy of the state when it contracts out for any of its work to be done. If economy and efficiency are secured, it is felt that there can be little ground for objection. ”

“ The policy of such a State means its collective will, the consciousness of its whole population of a purpose, mission, or duty which it must fulfil, with which it is identified, and which, therefore, it cannot abandon. ”

“ How the tempting resources of the country are to be exploited is another matter, to which I shall take the liberty of from time to time calling your attention, for it is a policy which must be worked out by well-considered stages, not upon theory, but upon lines of practical expediency. ”

“ We may answer again in general terms, that it is a government which well understands the public business, and, understanding it, transacts it within the limits of its constitutional power, intelligently, honestly and justly. The second question we have to answer to ourselves is, how far the government we have comes up to these requisites, how far the principles upon which it acts, the methods it employs, the aims it pursues and the degree of efficiency it develops, answer the public need, and how far in this respect we ought to preserve what we have or look for other things we have not. ”

“ And To Do That Adequately And Dependably, Government Must Possess The Capacity To Execute Good Policy And Deliver Basic Services Through Strong And Responsive Institutions Staffed By A Competent And Dedicated Bureaucracy. In Short, Government Must Be The Arm Of A Strong Republic. ”

“ The next man will give you some further information. 'The Government has a policy—a wise one—and sticks to it. This policy is—tranquillity: keep this hive of excitable nations as quiet as possible; encourage them to amuse themselves with things less inflammatory than politics. ”

“ Every four years we in this country profess to remand to the people the whole subject of government policy, which is to be reconsidered, revised, embodied in new platforms, and represented by newly chosen men for the future guidance of the nation. ”

“ Day by day we are looking more and more to government for leadership, for regulation, and for supervision in all our greater social and economic activities. In the field of social and economic effort, all roads lead through government—it is the clearing house of our greater problems. Whether the problem be one of banking, commerce, poor-relief, labor, or defence we must reckon with the hand of government as one of the strongest among constructive and harmonizing factors. Government is the focal point in all civic relations. ”

“ The chief business of government, from which, perforce, its essential nature must be derived, consists in the control and adjustment of conflicting economic interests. After enumerating the various forms of propertied interests which spring up inevitably in modern society, he adds: “The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the ordinary operations of the government.” ”

“ In internal policy: democratic administration, ditto education and army, economic reconstruction, rationing, public control of monopolies, especially mines and power, right of association and wage boards, public health, rights for civil servants, agricultural development and settlement preferably on reclaimed land, taxation of war profits, income-tax, death duties graduated but not confiscatory, freedom of conscience, freedom of the Press, freedom of meeting—all sorts of freedom. ”

“ The second rule of Policy—the master maxim of political wisdom—is, that no class of men must be expected to concur heartily, for extirpating the evils, from which its own revenues and importance are derived. ”

“ A policy which is so controlled by the spirit of the times, and is based upon a just appreciation of circumstances, may, perhaps, not be very brilliant, but it will be safe, and, above all, eminently democratic. ”

“ A policy well calculated to raise the importance, and increase the happiness of the individuals themselves, who were the objects of the change, to benefit those to whom these extensive but hitherto unproductive possessions belonged, and to promote the general prosperity of the nation. ”

“ The State originated from the natural desire which men experience to obtain certain goods, such as peace, security of life and property, of personal rights and privileges, etc., etc. These are goods which neither individuals, nor families, nor private corporations can procure for themselves satisfactorily. People therefore unite to establish a State, in order to attain, through the State, what they cannot do by their own private exertions. The State, then, is made by the people and for the people. In our form of government it is a mere corporate agency. ”

“ The consciousness of common interests grew rapidly among the people of different states and sections, and with it the feeling that the general government was the proper instrumentality by which those common interests should be served, and that it was its legitimate business to aid in making the different parts of this great common domain approachable and useful to the people. ”

“ Apparent concessions may be made by the favored interests and the advocates of the policy which benefits them, but the existing system is likely to be maintained for the present in its essential features, unless the people manifest their desire for a thorough reform of that system in so emphatic a manner as to make resistance impossible. And here again it is eminently desirable that those who think alike should make their influence felt by intelligent and energetic cooperation. ”

“ It is not enough, however, to determine the abstract principles upon which a policy may be founded—that which is just may not always be most expedient, and if both the one and the other, it may not be practicable. ”

“ He will therefore have every inducement to lend a helping hand in the introduction of a thorough and permanent reform of the civil service, which, proceeding upon the idea that established character, knowledge and capability ought to be the only test of fitness for office, will at last give the country an able, honest and economical administration of the public business. ”

“ Ask we too the ages what they have done to develope the true theory of political organisation, to improve the mechanism of the social system, to impart practical wisdom to its ministrations, in order that the State may discharge its high duty to the citizen, for whose sake it exists, and whose allegiance it claims. ”

“ Social plans of the socio-political communities shall lay down common development policy and guidelines and frameworks for adoption of measures of economic policy and of administrative and organizational measures which ensure conditions for the fulfillment of these plans. ”

“ In the preamble to the Constitution, they specified certain objects for which, in their esteem, this government should be formed—union, domestic tranquillity, justice, liberty, welfare. Any government constituted by a document like that has for the basis of its existence the facts of human nature, as really as the law of gravity has for the basis of its existence the facts of the stars. ”

“ Whatever the governing body decides to do can be done, is the postulate which lies hidden in the schemes of the most revolutionary reformers. Analyze the programmes of the Communalists, observe what is hoped for by the adherents of the Social and Democratic Republic, or study the ideas of legislative action which our own Trades-Unionists entertain, and you find the implied belief to be that a Government, organized after an approved pattern, will be able to remedy all the evils complained of, and to secure each proposed benefit. ”

“ The president-elect has already announced the policy of his government, which is to be an instrument of progress, its underlying impulses the maintenance of peace and the protection of the interests and rights of all citizens. Questions of sanitation, education, immigration, agriculture, and railroad construction are to receive attention, and everything that may 456contribute to the national well-being will have careful consideration. ”

“ To disseminate knowledge, then, universally, and to secure to labor and industry their just rewards, is the duty both of the general and the State governments, each in the exercise of its appropriate powers. ”

“ But politics, as a profession, as a separate and independent function of activity, has ceased to exist. The state or Government is run on the great universal principle of reciprocity which governs the entire community. It exists for the people, is administered by the people, and acts for the people. ”

“ The more you spread government as an organization of the people themselves, the more humane, upon that working basis, are likely to be its operations—on one condition: that such organisation of the people, whatever its numbers, submits to the operation of its own laws and shares equally in the conditions which it imposes—that, if it provides a qualification for citizenship, it provides also the means for all to qualify. ”