Political boundary

“ No part of this line can be made any more difficult to pass by writing it down on paper or parchment as a National boundary." In the President's view "a nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. ”

“ In this time of profound peace at home and abroad, the entire separation of the general government from the drink-traffic, and its prohibition in the District of Columbia, territories, and in all places and ways over which, under the constitution, Congress has control and power, is a political issue of the first importance to the peace and prosperity of the nation. ”

“ There should emanate from the regions of power something like an impulse of obedience to the law and observance of the institutions upon which the social and political well-being of the country rests. ”

“ Indeed, so incompatible are the two systems, that every new State which is organized within our ever-extending domain makes its first political act a choice of the one and the exclusion of the other, even at the cost of civil war, if necessary. ”

“ A century ago the very idea of a stable federation of forty powerful states, covering a territory nearly equal in area to the whole of Europe, carried on by a republican government elected by universal suffrage, and guaranteeing to every tiniest village its full meed of local independence,--the very idea of all this would have been scouted as a thoroughly impracticable Utopian dream. ”

“ In such cases the purely local desires of the inhabitants may have to give way before larger interests. But in general, at any rate as applied to civilized communities, the principle that the boundaries of nations ought to coincide with the boundaries of states has very few exceptions. ”

“ In proportion as territory is extended, its parts lose their relative importance to the whole. Its inhabitants cease to perceive their connection with the state, and are seldom united in the execution of any national, or even any factious designs. Distance from the seats of administration, and indifference to the persons who contend for preferment, teach the majority to consider themselves as the subjects of a sovereignty, not as the members of a political body. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In short, the real federal aspect of the nation, if we penetrate beneath constitutional forms to the deeper currents of social, economic and political life, will be found to lie in the relation of sections and nation, rather than in the relation of States and nation. ”

“ Such a system—in allowing each province to participate in political power and action, and in balancing industry, intelligence, and strength in all parts of the country—would equally secure, against enemies at home and enemies abroad, the liberty of the people and the stability of the government. ”

“ There are other questions, however, to be disposed of in determining upon the expediency of enlarging the territories of a nation which are not so clear. In a representative government, the laws embody the average political intelligence of the electors; that is, their average knowledge of the true functions and processes of government. ”

“ The division into demes or wards, whence comes the word democracy, was a real territorial division, not personal nor genealogical. And if the equality of all men was not recognized, all who were included in the political class stood on the same footing. ”

“ We do not want you, and have no designs upon you, but—purely for the sake of argument, and talking as enlightened persons—is it not rather fantastic? Is a boundary-line such an object in itself? May not a good deal that has stood for patriotism in the past be a mere provincial narrowness? ”

“ These were the ideas and principles of leading consolidationists and radicals in Congress who were politicians of ability, had studied the science of government, and were from conviction opponents of reserved rights and State sovereignty and of a mere confederation or Federal Union, based on the political equality and reserved sovereignty of the States, but insisted that the central Government should penetrate further and act directly on the people. ”

“ One of the most insuperable difficulties before the world at the present time is the lack of any central authority to which may be referred those matters of general and vital concern that affect the peoples of more than one nation. The peoples feel this lack. They are aware of the fact that industry, science, commerce, art, literature have all leaped the national boundary fence. ”

“ That the government, of a territory, organized by an act of Congress, is provisional and temporary; and, during its existence, all citizens of the United States have an equal right to settle, with their property, in the territory, without their rights, either of person or property, being destroyed or impaired by congressional or territorial legislation. ”

“ The state is for him the complex of those social relations out of which rights arise, so far as those rights have come to be regulated and harmonised according to a general law, which is recognised by a certain multitude of persons, and which there is sufficient power to secure against violation from without and from within. The other forms of community which precede and are independent of the formation of the state, do not continue to exist outside it, nor yet are they superseded by it. ”

“ The political system of this Republic rests upon the right of the people to control their local concerns in their several States by the operations of self-government, subject to certain restrictions imposed by the National Constitution, and in the right to coöperate with one another in the government of the whole. ”

“ Was all the territory of the States to become the property of Congress, and form a common stock? Every sentiment of justice revolts at the thought.
Had the war been unsuccessful, each State would have returned to its colonial condition without change of boundary. Had independence been achieved, and no union established, certainly each State would have retained its charter boundaries. ”

“ If we consistently follow out Green's dictum that will, not force, is the basis of the state, we shall be anxious that the political organization to which we render obedience shall follow the actual ramifications of common interests and of men's willingness to co-operate, and shall recognize that the national state with its territorial basis represents only one form of such ramification. ”

“ But what must be the mutual rights of the people and of the government in order that they might balance? We have just explained that. On the people's side there should be the four rights of election, recall, initiative, and referendum. On the government's side there must be five powers.... If the four governing powers of the people control the five administrative powers of the government, then we shall have a perfect political-democratic machine....277 ”

“ An obtuse angle is that in which the inclination is evidently to the Treasury.
An acute angle is that in which the inclination is apparently to the Opposition benches.
A boundary is the extremity or whipper-in of any party.
A party is that which is kept together by one or more whippers-in.
A circular member is a rum figure, produced by turning round; and is such that all lines of politics centre in himself, and are the same to him. ”

“ The Federal and state governments are parts of one system, alike necessary for the common prosperity, peace and security, and ought to be regarded alike with a cordial, habitual and immovable attachment. ”

“ It is in such states, perhaps, as in a fabric of a large dimension, that we can perceive most distinctly the several parts of which a political body consists; and observe that concurrence or opposition of interests, which serve to unite or to separate different orders of men, and lead them, by maintaining their several claims, to establish a variety of political forms. ”

“ It requires, it is believed, but time and perseverance in civil associations, to lead them to the same results arrived at by other barbarous nations, and to demonstrate to them the value and importance of a general political confederation, founded on the principles of equal rights and equal representation, supported by public virtue and intelligence. ”

“ Certain freedoms of opinion and utterance, of choice of occupation and of allegiance, of fair trial and equitable condemnation, have been blocked out as inviolable territories, lying quite beyond the jurisdiction of political sovereignty. ”

“ Foundation of the League of Nations for the sole purpose of re-establishing order among nations, and laying the basis of reciprocal guarantees of territorial integrity and political independence for all states, both great and small. ”

“ At the impending National election various questions of great importance will be submitted to our judgment. The settlements of the civil war as Constitutionally fixed must be conscientiously maintained, and at the same time the Government strengthened in general confidence by the strict observance of Constitutional principles, and the old brotherhood of the people revived by a policy of mutual justice and conciliation. ”

“ They will either have to become States of this Union, on an equal footing with the other States, or they will have to be governed as subject provinces. These are questions which concern not only our commercial interests, but which touch the working and perhaps even the very existence of our democratic institutions. ”

“ Why, because their chief aim is to erect a territorial and political system, and they wish to secure, by fair means or foul, a pretest or basis on which they may afterwards enforce that system by political and physical means. ”

“ The political and commercial combinations against the north are gaining in strength and confidence every day. Political, sectional, and local questions, that I had hoped were buried with the dead of the past four years, are revived. Independent sovereignty, State rights, and nullification, where the power to nullify is revoked, are openly discussed. ”

“ We can imagine how the lands of individuals, where they were contiguous and came to be united, became the public territory, and how the right of Sovereignty, extending from the subjects over the lands they held, became at once real and personal. ”

“ If we will not allow a man to gather his friends, arm them with bludgeons, and march out to settle a boundary dispute with a neighbouring village, we must settle the boundary ourselves, and we must settle it by distinct rules—that is, we must enforce laws. Peace and law go together, as violence and elastic custom go together. Now we must keep the peace, and, therefore, we must rule by law. ”

“ Will you not cease to regard each other as enemies, and look upon one another as the children of a common mother, and come and reason together?
"Let us banish all outside influences from our deliberations, and assemble around our council board with the constitution of our country and the organic law of this territory, as the great charts for our guidance and direction. The bona fide inhabitants of the territory alone are charged with the solemn duty of enacting her laws, upholding her government, maintaining peace, and laying the foundation for a future commonwealth. ”

“ On a larger scale the conditions are repeated now that less than a century ago prevented the ready formation of modern nations. The narrow-minded local interests of cities and other small political units resisted unification or federation on account of the supposed conflicts between their interests and ideals and those of other units of comparable size. ”

“ If such should become the fate of your Constitution, ask yourselves what must be the motive of your government? It is easier to govern a province by a faction than to govern a coordinate country by coordinate means. ”

“ The inestimable advantages of our complex political system in avoiding the necessary despotism of consolidated government, by establishing local legislation and administration in a number of partially independent States, were in some measure counterbalanced by a natural tendency to discord among the parts, and a capacity for independent action in support and perpetuation of dangerous divergencies of opinion and policy. ”

“ Independent states stretched over an immense territory, and known only by common difficulty, clinging to their Union as the rock of their safety, deciding by frank comparison of their relative condition, to rear on that rock, under the guidance of reason, a common government through whose commanding protection, liberty and order, with their long train of blessings, should be safe to themselves and the sure inheritance of their posterity. ”

“ The neutral authority should, of course, rest on a democratic basis, but should, if possible, represent a constituency wider than that of the groups concerned. In international affairs the only adequate authority would be one representing all civilized nations. ”

“ An attempt to fix the boundary between the region of ability and inability would much oftener give rise to personal, or party attachments and hostilities, than advance the interests of justice, or the public good. ”

“ Until the nineteenth century, however, the federal form of government had given no clear indication of its capacity for holding together great bodies of men, spread over vast territorial areas, in orderly and peaceful relations with one another. ”