Political assembly

“ The traveller, entranced by the power and eloquence of these leaders, could scarcely have failed to feel that the House of Commons was the most glorious assembly on earth, the incarnation of the highest political wisdom, the theatre and school of the noblest energies, worthy to instruct and guide the English nation, or any other nation in the world. ”

“ An interesting political experiment has been made, in the constitution of a representative assembly, composed of 350 representatives of all classes of the community, who meet annually to hear an account of the state administration for the previous year. The assembly has no power to enact laws, to vote supplies, or to pass any resolution binding upon the executive. But it gives to the leading men of the districts a pleasant opportunity of visiting the capital, and to a limited extent brings the force of public opinion to bear upon the minister. ”

“ Common deliberation on common affairs is the principle, as well as the most simple form, of political liberty. This principle fully obtained at the infancy of modern nations. The national assembly was the great council in which public affairs of every kind were transacted. ”

“ The timorous scruples of the monarch, the subtle contrivances of his counsellors, the blind resistance of the privileged classes, no longer presided over the public affairs. A great assembly, the faithful interpreter of general intelligence and conscience, shook off the shackles of the past which had only sustained itself with artificial props, and enunciated principles that must resolve the most important problems of political and social order. ”

“ There are those who question why a Constituent Assembly is needed, if the Constitution can be amended by Congress. Those who make this objection should remember that the Executive Branch must concentrate on governing, and Congress on legislating and exercising political control over the government; tasks that must be referred to attend the urgent matters of each day. ”

“ The legislature to consist of one chamber; that chamber to consist of seven hundred and thirty members. The ministers to be appointed and dismissed at the pleasure of the president. A council of state to be appointed out of the assembly, forty in number, and chosen by the assembly itself; that body to draw up the projects of law which the government might think fit to bring in. The punishment of death for political offences was interdicted. Slavery to be abolished in all French colonies. The press to be free. All religions to be allowed, and their ministers to be paid by the state. ”

“ All electoral committees, all local organizations, the Councils of Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates and the soldiers' organizations at the front are to bend every effort toward safeguarding the freedom of the voters and fair play at the elections to the Constituent Assembly, which will be held on the appointed date. ”

“ An illegal assembly of men having taken possession of the hall of the house of representatives, and the police not being able to dislodge them, I respectfully request that you will immediately clear the hall and statehouse of all persons not returned as legal members of the house of representatives by the returning board of the State. ”

“ POLITICAL QUESTION IS NOT WITHIN JURISDICTION OF THE JUDICIARY. -- That the judiciary under the Constitution is wholly without jurisdiction to adjudicate a purely political question is not an open question. Also, it is the settled law of this state that actions of the General Assembly taken in virtue of a power conferred by the Constitution and in conforming with the provisions of the Constitution, are not subject to review by the courts. ”

“ Following a series of political reforms that have made it a true democracy, the Republic of China today embraces a political philosophy that is totally different from that which it espoused in the years immediately preceding and following its exclusion from the United Nations. It is determined to find a solution to the question of China's division by peaceful means. As to its return to the United Nations, the Government has made it clear that it no longer claims to represent all of China, but that it seeks representation only for its 21.8 million people. ”

“ Isn't it a crowd of the same enemies of the people? Isn't this 'Parliament' against our will? Shall we, proletarians, consider the question of a Constituent Assembly? Would it not be an act of counter-revolution? ”

“ A representation of the people in one assembly being obtained, a question arises, whether all the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, shall be left in this body? I think a people cannot be long free, nor ever happy, whose government is in one assembly. ”

“ We who remain free number a hundred and twenty Republican Representatives. Let us install ourselves in this hall. Let us install ourselves in the fulness and majesty of the Legislative Power. Henceforward we are the Assembly, the whole of the Assembly! Let us sit there, deliberate there, in our official sashes, in the midst of the People. Let us summon the Faubourg St. Antoine to its duty, let us shelter there the National Representation, let us shelter there the popular sovereignty. ”

“ To avoid these dangers, let a distinct assembly be constituted, as a mediator between the two extreme branches of the legislature, that which represents the people, and that which is vested with the executive power. ”

“ No State may use or encourage the use of economic political or any other type of measures to coerce another State in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights and to secure from it advantages of any kind. Also, no State shall organize, assist, foment, finance, incite or tolerate subversive, terrorist or armed activities directed towards the violent overthrow of the regime of another State, or interfere in civil strife in another State. ”

“ Nothing in the foregoing paragraphs shall be construed as authorizing or encouraging any action which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent States conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and selfdetermination of peoples as described above and thus possessed of a government representing the whole people belonging to the territory without distinction as to race, creed or colour. ”

“ The most natural substitute for an assembly of the whole, is a delegation of power, from the many, to a few of the most wise and virtuous. In the first place then establish rules for the choice of representatives: agree upon the number of persons who shall have the privilege of choosing one. As the representative assembly should be an exact portrait, in miniature, of the people at large, as it should think, feel, reason and act like them, great care should be taken in the formation of it, to prevent unfair, partial and corrupt elections. ”

“ The General Assembly requests the Economic and Social Council to survey the functions and activities of a non-political character which have hitherto been performed by the League of Nations in order to determine which of them should, with such modifications as are desirable, be assumed by organs of the United Nations or be entrusted to specialized agencies which have been brought into relationship with the United Nations. ”

“ Every State shall refrain from any action aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and territorial integrity of any other State or country.The principle of sovereign equality of States
All States enjoy sovereign equality. They have equal rights and duties and are equal members of the international community, notwithstanding differences of an economic, social, political or other nature. ”

“ And the main political fact of recent years has been the growing unimportance of representative assemblies, constructed on the old lines, and a tendency to delegate power to the executive, without requiring a constant oversight by an elected body. ”

“ On the one side, 750 representatives of the people, elected and qualified for re-election by universal suffrage, who constitute an uncontrollable, indissoluble, indivisible National Assembly, a National Assembly that enjoys legislative omnipotence, that decides in the last instance over war, peace and commercial treaties, that alone has the power to grant amnesties, and that, through its perpetuity, continually maintains the foreground on the stage ”

“ The Constitutional Court shall consist of eleven members who shall be elected by Parliament. Members of the Constitutional Court shall be nominated by the Nominating Committee comprised of members of the political parties represented in Parliament, taking also into consideration the percentage their faction represents among all Members of Parliament. A majority of two-thirds of the votes of the Members of Parliament shall be required to elect a member of the Constitutional Court. ”

“ Thinking that to bring together hundreds of members unaccustomed to parliamentary debate and its excitement, and to allow them a hand in the administration of affairs of the state, might be attended with serious dangers, as a preparation for the national assembly the government established first local assemblies. ”

“ What we find in the leagues is a sort of compromise between the principle of a primary assembly and the principle of a representative chamber. In both leagues the nominal sovereign was a primary assembly, in which every individual citizen had the right to vote. ”

“ The whole is applicable, we think, fully, even to “Congress” itself. Write “our General Legislature” in place of “Parliament,” “assembly” instead of “congress,” for “Bristol” read “Virginia,” and we see no difficulty whatever.
Our general legislature is not an assembly of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain as an agent, and advocate against the other agents and advocates; but our general legislature is a deliberative [Mr. B. has italicized deliberative] assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole. ”

“ If, therefore, the legislature assumes executive and judiciary powers, no opposition is likely to be made, nor, if made, can be effectual, because in that case they may put their proceedings into the form of an act of assembly, which will render them obligatory on the other branches. ”

“ To capture Parliament and turn it into a popular but constitutional assembly is, I must conclude, the aspiration of the genuine Democrats wherever they may be found; that is their idea of the first step of the Democratic policy. ”

“ I knew nothing about the situation of the national workshops, nor the politics of government, nor the intrigues that were intersecting the Assembly. One must have lived in this booth, called the National Assembly, to conceive how the men who are the most completely ignorant of the state of a country are almost always those who represent it. ”

“ To take immediate steps to restore all rights of the non-European population and remove all restraints and restrictions in law and in practice on the exercise of the freedom of political activity including all laws, ordinances and regulations which directly or indirectly sanction any policy or practice based on racial discrimination ”

“ Besides, a legislative assembly, which is sure to be separated again, and its members soon return to private life, will feel its own interests, as well as duties, bound up with those of the community at large. ”

“ But whenever different legislative assemblies exist, and popular control is once constitutionally acknowledged, it is in the nature of things that the more democratic assembly should absorb the main business of the more aristocratic. ”

“ Constitutionally, the Grand National Assembly, as the highest voice of the people, is asserted to be the supreme organ of state power, and all other government bodies are theoretically subordinate to it. ”

“ But shall the whole power of legislation rest in one assembly? Most of the foregoing reasons apply equally to prove that the legislative power ought to be more complex; to which we may add, that if the legislative power is wholly in one assembly, and the executive in another, or in a single person, these two powers will oppose and encroach upon each other, until the contest shall end in war, and the whole power, legislative and executive, be usurped by the strongest. ”

“ When the time for that government has arrived, sufficient power for all needful purposes is sure to reside in the sovereign assembly; and if enough of it is not intrusted to the executive, this can only arise from a jealous feeling on the part of the assembly toward the administration, never likely to exist but where the constitutional power of the assembly to turn them out of office has not yet sufficiently established itself. ”

“ Our Constitution, like every other constitution which puts the authority to make laws and the duty of controlling the public expenditure into the hands of a popular assembly, practically sets that assembly to rule the affairs of the nation as supreme overlord. ”

“ It is as essential that the general sense of the House should accord in the main with that of the nation as is that distinguished individuals should be able, without forfeiting their seats, to give free utterance to the most unpopular sentiments. There is another reason, of much weight, against the gradual and partial renewal of a representative assembly. It is useful that there should be a periodical general muster of opposing forces to gauge the state of the national mind, and ascertain, beyond dispute, the relative strength of different parties and opinions. ”

“ The Parliaments are so altered from their original Constitution, that between the Court and the Country, the House, instead of being united, is like Troops of a contrary Party facing one another, and watching their Advantage.
Even the well-meaning Men who have good Sense too, have their Difficulties in an Assembly; what they offer honestly for a good End, will be skilfully improved for an ill one. ”