Political constitution

“ In accordance with the foregoing views, I remarked in my first message to your body, that "the durability and imperative authority of a state constitution, when the interests of the people require a state government, and a direct popular vote is necessary to give it sanction and effect, will be the proper occasion, once for all, to decide the grave political questions which underlie a well-regulated commonwealth." ”

“ A constitution that admits the people, by representation, to so considerable a share of power, must have many laws to determine the manner of elections, and the qualifications both of electors and elected. A constitution that makes the preservation of political freedom its great object, and that aims to defend the life, liberty, and property of the meanest individual, not only against others of their own rank, but even against the executive power of the society itself, must have many extraordinary fences, and barriers, to protect the weak from the mighty. ”

“ The Constitution was the expression not only of a political faith, but also of political fears. It was wrought both as the organ of the national interest and as the bulwark of certain individual and local rights. ”

“ The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitution of government; but the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government. ”

“ That the maintenance of the principle promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Constitution, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure those rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, is essential to the preservation of our republican institutions. ”

“ They have no written instrument, like ours, called constitution, adopted by the people. What is there called the constitution, is the aggregate or sum of laws, principles, and customs, which have been formed in the course of centuries. There is therefore no restraint upon the power of parliament; hence no law which may be enacted is contrary to the constitution; and the people have not the same security against the enactment of unjust laws as the people of the United States.
Chapter VI. Qualifications of Electors; or, by whom Political Power is exercised in the States of this Union. ”

“ But the moment it is admitted that the two Houses of Congress, the President and the executive and judicial officers acting under them,—by whatever name they may be called,—are a real Government:—that the instrument by which they hold their powers is a real Constitution, the case changes. By the Constitution of Government, is meant, in every community, the great social compact which binds together the individual members into one body politic or political society. ”

“ After the political powers of the State have been divided and have been delegated to particular officials and official colleges, and after political rights have been apportioned to the various classes of society, the next step consists in rendering the organization of the State secure by means of a Constitution regulating the entire political system. ”

“ And since they have the power of doing this, the theory of the Constitution ought to suppose that they will wish to do it, since the very principle of constitutional government requires it to be assumed that political power will be abused to promote the particular purposes of the holder; not because it always is so, but because such is the natural tendency of things, to guard against which is the especial use of free institutions. ”

“ Among the many practical and substantial triumphs of the principles achieved by the Republican party during the past twelve years, we may enumerate with pride and pleasure, the prohibiting of any State from abridging the privileges of any citizen of the Republic, the declaring the civil and political equality of every citizen, and the establishing of all these principles in the Federal Constitution by amendments thereto, as the permanent law. ”

“ If a number of political societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which the latter may enact, pursuant to the powers intrusted to it by its constitution, must necessarily be supreme over those societies, and the individuals of whom they are composed. ”

“ Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them. ”

“ They undertook to form a general government which should stand on a new basis—not a confederacy, not a league, not a compact between states, but a constitution; a popular government, founded in popular election, directly responsible to the people themselves, and divided into branches, with prescribed limits of power, and prescribed duties. ”

“ With a view, therefore, to preserve the rights and liberties of the people against unjust encroachments, and to secure the equal benefits of a free constitution, it is of vital importance to interpose some check against the undue exercise of the legislative power, which in every government is the predominating, and almost irresistible power. ”

“ As far as they are concerned, the State, as a party to the constitutional compact, has the right to decide, in the last resort — and, acting in the same character in which it ratified the constitution, to determine to what limits its powers extend, and how far they are bound to respect and obey it, and the acts made under its authority. ”

“ No candid man can dispute that I have given a correct description of the constitution-making power: that power which created and organized the Government, which delegated to it, as a common agent, certain powers, in trust for the common good of all the States, and which imposed strict limitations and checks against abuses and usurpations. ”

“ The clear-sighted provision in the national constitution, as in the constitutions of the different states, by which the frame of government can be moulded at will by the public voice, and so made to keep pace in progress with the public mind, is the master-stroke in constitutional law. ”

“ Whilst the Constitution for them was a means of regulating and restraining the national will, it was an instrument for accomplishing the popular will for their rivals rising to power on the crest of the wave. ”

“ But a constitution of government, founded by the people for themselves and their posterity, and for objects of the most momentous nature, for perpetual union, for the establishment of justice, for the general welfare, and for a perpetuation of the blessings of liberty, necessarily requires, that every interpretation of its powers should have a constant reference to these objects. No interpretation of the words, in which those powers are granted, can be a sound one, which narrows down their ordinary import, so as to defeat those objects. ”

“ To be sure, a democracy may impose rules of action upon itself—as the American democracy did in accepting the Federal Constitution. But in adopting the Federal Constitution the American people did not abandon either its responsibilities or rights as Sovereign. ”

“ If a majority are capable of preferring their own private interests, or that of their families, counties, and party, to that of the nation collectively, some provision must be made in the constitution in favour of justice, to compel all to respect the common right, the public good, the universal law in preference to all private and partial considerations. ”

“ As I have said before, 'Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind that brings new political administrations into temporary power.' Turner v. ”

“ That resolution declares that the powers granted by the proposed Constitution are the gift of the people, and may be resumed by them when perverted to their oppression, and every power not granted thereby remains with the people, and at their will. ”

“ Even in our mere general form of government, a combination of President, Congress, and the Supreme Court is out of the question. How, then, could the governments of all the states combine to suppress the whole people?—Translator's remark. ”

“ In imperfectly balanced governments, where some attempt is made to set constitutional limits to the impulses of the strongest power, but where that power is strong enough to overstep them with at least temporary impunity, it is only by doctrines of constitutional morality, recognized and sustained by opinion, that any regard at all is preserved for the checks and limitations of the constitution. ”

“ Shall any one hesitate then to prefer such a government to all others? A constitution in which the people reserve to themselves the absolute control of their purses, one essential branch of the legislature, and the inquest of grievances and state crimes, will always produce patriotism, bravery, simplicity and science; and that infinitely better for the order, security, and tranquillity they will enjoy, by putting the executive power in one hand, which it becomes their interest, as well as that of the nobles, to watch and control. ”

“ The first comports with, the last violates, the fundamental principles of good government; and, in fact, whatever may be the form of the constitution, the last unites all power in the same hands. The tendency of the legislative authority to absorb every other has been already insisted on at large in the preceding part of these Commentaries, and need not here be further illustrated. In governments purely republican it has been seen, that this tendency is almost irresistible. ”

“ Therefore it is that the question, in reference to any measure, Is it constitutional? far from exciting ridicule, as sometimes with superficial thinkers it has done, is to be recognized as proof of our magnificent control over the wayward factions of the hour, and of our abiding trust in the hardly less than inspired wisdom of our fathers, to which we thus make our ultimate appeal. For the Constitution is the organic law of the nation, and stands for the firm foundation of our national life. ”

“ It is not a democracy, wherein the people retain all their rights securely. Had these principles been adhered to, we should not have been brought to this alarming transition, from a confederacy to a consolidated government. ”

“ In the first place, the theory of States rights must be abandoned, and each State must become a member of the Union by organizing under a common form, to be prescribed by them all, or by the present required constitutional majority of them all, to make an amendment to the Constitution valid. ”

“ The important thing first to be learned is that in this democracy the government is in form a republic, because the laws are enacted and enforced, not by the direct vote of the people, but by the representatives elected by the people.
The power of the people always continues. A law may be passed by one legislature, or one session of Congress, and may be repealed the next. Any law upon the statute books may be changed from time to time, in response to the changing sentiment of the people. ”

“ The limited and well-defined powers under which we acted, and which could not, on any possible construction, embrace an idea of such magnitude as to assent to a general Constitution, in subversion of that, of the state. ”

“ Upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the dissolution of the ties of allegiance, the assumption of sovereign power, and the institution of civil government, are all acts of transcendent authority, which the people alone are competent to perform ”

“ The legislative power being that, which is predominant in all governments, ought to be, above all, of this character; because there can be no security for the general government, or the state governments, without an adequate representation, and an adequate check of each in the functions of legislation. ”

“ Independently of the legislative measures, which internal circumstances require, you will deem it useful perhaps, to occupy yourselves on regulating laws, calculated to render the constitution active. ”

“ What the grants of power meant when the constitution was adopted and ratified they mean still, and their meaning can never be changed except as described in the fifth article providing for amendments, as the constitution "is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men and under all circumstances." ”

“ Our Federal Government was set up as one of limited powers, but it was also given broad power to do all that was 'necessary and proper' to carry out its basic purpose of governing the Nation, so long as those powers were not exercised contrary to the limitations set forth in the Constitution. ”

“ It had been an opinion long established, that a republican form of government suited only the affairs of a small state; which opinion is founded in the consideration, that unless the people in every district of the empire be admitted to a share in the national representation, the government is not to them as a republic; that in a democratic constitution, the mechanism is too complicated, the motions too slow, for the operations of a great empire, whose defence and government require execution and dispatch in proportion to the magnitude, extent, and variety of its concerns. ”