Political division

“ It is the policy of England to consider the government as invested with all political powers hence the principle of division could reach no farther, than a distribution of power among the departments of government. It is our policy to consider the people as retaining a vast share of political power, and as only investing their government with so much as they deem necessary for their own benefit. ”

“ The one, emanating from the people, as forming a sovereign community, creates the government — the other, as a representative appointed to execute its powers, enacts laws to regulate and control the conduct of the people, regarded as individuals. This division between the two powers — thus necessarily incident to the separation from the parent country — constitutes an element in our political system as essential to its formation, as the great and primary territorial division of independent and sovereign States. ”

“ He takes no notice, however, of any forms of community more primitive than that of the state. The division into the 'status naturalis' and the 'status civilis' he seems to treat as exhaustive, and the 'status naturalis' he regards, after the manner of his time, as one of pure individualism, of simple detachment of man from man, or of detachment only modified by conflict. ”

“ We have not reached a political unity as to the basic elements of just and effective political method in the division of social control between the nation and the various states. The habit of rushing to the National Congress for Federal legislation with no plan or logical aim in relation to such division, is one that may well be curbed. ”

“ What justification have we, therefore, for saying dogmatically that a tendency to co-operation, which has swept before it profound ethnic differences, social and political divisions, which has been constant from the dawn of men's attempts to live and labor together, is to stop at the wall of modern State divisions, which represent none of the profound divisions of the human race, but mainly mere administrative convenience, and embody a conception which is being every day profoundly modified? ”

“ All that constitutes the proper organization of societies, whether you consider them as territory, commune, state, as country, every political, financial, social matter, depends on universal suffrage and obeys it; the smallest atom of the smallest moral question defies it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They go to the form and substance of government, not to its policy, as in America, where every party cry, radical or conservative, is attuned to the music of a republican federation, and which is the sine qua non to all political conclusions. How can a nation progress until its people have chosen, or are competent to choose, a stable form of government, and are satisfied with certain organic political principles? ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By such enlarged and liberal institutions, the Government of the United States will be endeared to the people.... Let us prevent the possibility of a division, by creating great national interests which shall bind us in an indissoluble chain. ”

“ The Empire has yielded to the Monarchy, the Monarchy to the Republic, the Republic to the Empire again, and that once more to the Republic, but the Code which embodies the principle of equality before the law has remained. Fundamentally the social equilibrium has been stable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These different orders of men are the elements of whose mixture the political body is generally formed; each draws to its side some part from the mass of the people. The people themselves are a party upon occasion; and numbers of men, however classed and distinguished, become, by their jarring pretensions and separate views, mutual interruptions and checks; and have, by bringing to the national councils the maxims and apprehensions of a particular order, and by guarding a particular interest, a share in adjusting or preserving the political form of the state. ”

“ The gentlemen condemn divisions of powers because the city's functions are of such a mixed nature and no strict line of separation can be drawn. Granted. We have emphasized repeatedly that we are not standing for division of powers ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But neither combination nor connection, in any moral and rational sense of the term, has anything to do with a system of government which perpetually sets up the great offices of state as the prizes of a contest between two organized factions, to one of which each citizen is bound to adhere, owing to his party an allegiance in fact higher than that which he owes to his political conscience or to the state. ”

“ He would naturally, therefore, divide the people, whose situation he had so observed, into two orders, viz. the rich and the poor. We shall make the same division; and, as the different conditions of the people are among the greatest effects of civilisation, shall inquire into the situation of each of these orders separately. ”

“ The points of similitude consist in the rivalship of power, applicable to both, and in the CONCENTRATION of large portions of the strength of the community into particular DEPOSITORIES, in one case at the disposal of individuals, in the other case at the disposal of political bodies. ”

“ I am not aware that history furnishes any example in which a number of these political atoms or corpuscles have coalesced into a body, and learned to feel themselves one people, except through previous subjection to a central authority common to all. [2] It is through the habit of deferring to that authority, entering into its plans and subserving its purposes, that a people such as we have supposed receive into their minds the conception of large interests common to a considerable geographical extent. ”

“ Were not this great country already divided into states, that division must be made, that each might do for itself what concerns itself directly, and what it can so much better do than a distant authority. ”

“ In normal times the occupations of legislatures and governments will be matters of current administration, not one of which is likely to form an issue of sufficient importance to swallow up all the rest and form a rational ground for the division of the nation into two organized parties struggling each to place its leaders in exclusive possession of the powers of the state. ”

“ An attachment to liberty, a devotion to the great cause of humanity, of freedom, of self-government, and of equal rights. If there is to be a division, as the gentleman says; if he is going to leave us, who are following the old track, he may, in his new connections, find a great variety of company, which, perhaps, may indemnify him for the loss of his old friends. What is the great principle that has distinguished parties in all ages, and under all governments—democrats and federalists, whigs and tories, plebeians and patricians? ”

“ One of the dangers of such division lies in the possibility that the general interests of the nation may be overlooked, at least temporarily, and sacrificed for the benefit of the particular interests represented in the group or bloc. ”

“ States based on an electoral system which is not controlled by organised parties or by other social forces calculated to ensure its working in conformity with precise and certain rules, are subject to eruptions of disorder, which end in establishing the personal power of that individual who succeeds in making the political and administrative machine work with comparative regularity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The result of a division of the executive power is either a more or less speedy establishment of the right of the strongest, or a continued state of war; that of a division of the legislative power is either truth, or general tranquillity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And these principles, therefore, become broader and more patriotic, because they must be broad enough to hold together the various factions and minor interests which must be combined to get a majority. ”

“ That the other political authorities in the given society are subordinate to the sovereign or supreme one; deriving their political powers from its express or tacit delegation, and holding those powers at its pleasure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I must premise that I shall call some of the groups political communities, meaning by a political community a number of persons living under one government and also having much else in common besides government: the rest I shall call political aggregates, meaning by a political aggregate a number of persons or bodies of persons living under one government and having nothing else or very little else in common. ”

“ The extension of political power has been accompanied by a subdivision of political functions, which has diminished the importance of the individual citizen, and turned him, as far as the routine of Government is concerned, into a sleeping partner, whose consent is necessary, but whose active co-operation is superfluous. ”

“ All they ask, desire and insist upon is to be recognized as political allies upon terms of equality and to have a voice in the councils of the party of their choice and in the creation and administration of the government under which they live, and by which they are taxed, and also a fair and reasonable recognition as a result of party success, based, all things else being equal, upon merit, fitness, ability and capacity. ”

“ Those impelling the government towards disunion are, also, very powerful. They consist chiefly of two; the one, arising from the great extent of the country — the other, from its division into separate States, having local institutions and interests. The former, under the operation of the numerical majority, has necessarily given to the two great parties, in their contest for the honors and emoluments of the government, a geographical character ”

“ To preserve our unexampled division of power between the nation and the government, a multitude of other divisions became necessary, and these were intended to be made, not for the purpose of a balance of power between departments, but by preventing such an accumulation as to awaken ambition^ to defend the sovereignty of the people against all, The insufficiency of election to prevent great power from awakening evil qualities, has induced the people in their state governments to superadd many auxiliaries drawn from the principle of division. ”