Political equality

“ The fundamental principle of our political fabric, the political equality of all men, has afforded ample opportunity for designing persons to mislead the uninformed among the mass, and to make them believe that political equality means social, intellectual, and moral equality, that all are in fact equal in all respects in society, and that their rights are infringed by their exclusion from such recognition. ”

“ The question of human rights and the civil and political equality of all men shall be a first consideration with us, and we shall go to the aid of the class of men of like faith on these points, it matters not in what political party they may be found. ”

“ The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing — one person, one vote. ”

“ Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We, the Liberal Republicans of the United States, in national convention assembled at Cincinnati, proclaim the following principles as essential to just government:
1. We recognize the equality of all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of government, in its dealings with the people, to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political. ”

“ In this case, all the springs of the State are vigorous and simple and its rules clear and luminous; there are no embroilments or conflicts of interests; the common good is everywhere clearly apparent, and only good sense is needed to perceive it. Peace, unity and equality are the enemies of political subtleties. ”

“ What is the meaning of the doctrine that we all enjoy "equality of political rights"? Only this - that the state has no regard for my person, that to it I, like every other, am only a man, without having another significance that commands its deference. ”

“ This general identity of interests is the only thing that can guarantee the stability of democratic institutions. Equality of rights, embodied in general self-government, is the great moral element of true democracy; it is the only reliable safety-valve in the machinery of modern society. There is the solid foundation of our system of government; there is our mission; there is our greatness ”

“ The desirable democratic object, implied in the traditional democratic demand for equality, consists precisely in that of bestowing a share of the responsibility and the benefits, derived from political and economic association, upon the whole community. ”

“ Their complete development and reduction to practical operation constitute the progress which all liberal statesmen desire to promote, and the end of that progress will be complete political equality among ourselves, and the extension and perfection of institutions similar to our own throughout the world. ”

“ This principle contains the program of our political existence. It is the most progressive, for it takes even the lowliest members of the human family out of their degradation, and inspires them with the elevating consciousness of equal human dignity; the most conservative, for it makes a common cause of individual rights. From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbors' rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own. ”

“ Complete liberty and exact equality in the enjoyment of all civil, political, and public rights should be established and effectually maintained throughout the Union by efficient and appropriate state and federal legislation. Neither the law nor its administration should admit any discrimination in respect to citizens by reason of race, creed, color, or previous condition of servitude.
4. The national government should seek to maintain honorable peace with all nations, protecting its citizens everywhere, and sympathizing with all peoples who strive for greater liberty. ”

“ LIBERTY AND EQUALITY He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about either. ”

“ To bestow on communities some degree of political freedom, it is perhaps sufficient, that their members, either singly, or as they are involved with their several orders, should insist on their rights; that under republics, the citizen should either maintain his own equality with firmness, or restrain the ambition of his fellow citizen within moderate bounds; that under monarchy, men of every rank should maintain the honours of their private or their public stations ”

“ Acknowledge the right to control government, and you acknowledge the right to control life. So long as it lies in the power of one class to impose taxes, to regulate the hours of labour, to admit and to exclude from occupations, and generally to control the political organization of society, so long will its members be tempted to dispose of the members of the subject class in every part of life. When the equality of both classes in the State is admitted, the admission of their equal worth in all their private {28}relations inevitably follows. ”

“ That 'central idea' in our political public opinion at the beginning was, and until recently has continued to be, 'the equality of men.' And although it has always submitted patiently to whatever of inequality there seemed to be as matter of actual necessity, its constant working has been a steady progress towards the practical equality of all men. ”

“ Now I know of only two methods of establishing equality in the political world; every citizen must be put in possession of his rights, or rights must be granted to no one. ”

“ By the inequality of civil and political rights that exists in certain parts of the Union, and the great equality that exists in others, we see the necessity of referring the true character of the institutions to those of the states, without a just understanding of which, it is impossible to obtain any general and accurate ideas of the real polity of the country. ”

“ Among these requisites, unalterable by changing conditions of society, are individual liberty, freedom of labor, of human development, rights of conscience, equality of the States, distribution of political powers into independent executive, legislative and judicial departments, and a careful restriction of those powers to public uses only, the healthy action of concurrent majorities, a careful safe-guarding that the power which makes the laws and the power which applies them shall not be in the same hands, and local self-government. ”

“ The highest political watchword is not Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, nor yet Solidarity, but Service. ”

“ The American economic, political, and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality; and this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and to civilization. ”

“ In pursuing these necessary measures of relief, no injury is done to a minority, or to any individual, for the foundation on which our republic rests is equal and exact justice to all men, and the [Pg 252] equality of all men before the law. ”

“ The whole voting body are equals. Each, too, is free. No King, no Noble, is allowed to trench upon his freedom. So free is each that no will of the majority is binding upon him, except by his own consent. Here is equality indeed! Equality pushed so far that each man is not only the equal of every other—but of all others together;—the equal of the combined nation.
These men are brave, hardy, and, as you have seen, free, equal, and allowed more rights than the citizens of any republic before or since. ”

“ Now we pretend to say that our government was thus formed by the choicest wisdom and patriotism of the world, with the largest liberty in view, under the restraint of law, giving equitable privilege to all its citizens, and so balancing its different departments that they are mutually a defence. We pretend to claim for our government the loftiest purpose, the most comprehensive views, and the best practical results. We claim for it justice, equality, and power. It does not stand out--a thing distinct from the people and the states. ”

“ The question now is, have we the wisdom and conscience, from the present upheavings of our political system to reconstruct a government on the one enduring basis which never yet has been tried—Equal Rights to All? ”

“ These unfortunate people who are fighting here strive to create a republic where all men shall be equal! Said the sainted martyr Charles on the scaffold, ''T is no concern of the common people's how they are governed.' A common man equal to a Talbot! Fight, my son, if you must; but oh, fight for the king, even an usurper, before a republic, a mob in which so-called equality stands in very unstable equilibrium,—fight for the rightful ruler of the land, not against him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You want the rights and liberties of the citizen protected! Then let us have the Union and peace restored upon the basis of equal justice to all men; let us have a country purged of those abnormities which shun the light of free discussion; let the natural rights of man be held sacred; let us have a Republic firmly established upon complete harmony between our social institutions and the fundamental principles underlying our political system,—and the rights and liberties of the citizen will no longer be in danger! ”

“ Orderly government, individual liberty, equal rights before the people—upon these secure foundations the fabric of the national life was erected, and in these later days has come the not less noble ideal of a democracy founded upon equality of opportunity for all the people before the conditions of modern life. ”

“ How easy would it have been to lay broad and deep the foundations on which the political life of this Republic might have developed itself to the full realization of those sublime ideals of universal liberty, equal rights and impartial justice, which stand as the supreme guiding stars in the heart of every true friend of the human kind. ”

“ I need not enter further into the subject than to say, that we established a system of practically universal suffrage, of equality in representation, a just share in taxation for the support of the State, and equality in the benefits of public education, and in all those blessings which are derived from the freedom of a free people. ”

“ Without all doubt, it is the choice of the people that makes civil governors.—The people are the spring of all civil power, and they have a right to modify it as they please.
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Mankind being naturally equal according to the foregoing explanation, civil government, in its genuine intention, is an institution for maintaining that equality, by defending it against the encroachments of violence and tyranny. All the subordinations and distinctions in society previous to its establishment, it leaves as it found them, only confirming and protecting them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, after all, the essential thing is not the extension of the democratic republic, but the establishment of justice within that republic. Within the limits of equality of freedom and opportunity there is plenty of room for competi- tion, for inequality of rewards, for victories and defeats vic- tories without injury to the moral or physical nature of the victors, and defeats without absolute ruin to the vanquished. ”

“ Fifth, the struggle for the freedom of all men, without distinction of race and color; this Democratic struggle which confirms the masses in an equality with the few. We have taught a greater lesson than all of us think or understand. ”

“ A policy, intelligently informed by the desire to maintain a joint process of individual and social amelioration, should be able to keep a democracy sound and whole both in sentiment and in idea. Such a democracy would not be dedicated either to liberty or to equality in their abstract expressions, but to liberty and equality, in so far as they made for human brotherhood. ”

“ One sound democratic principle fully recognized and carried to its logical results in our government, declaring all citizens equal before the law, would soon chase away the metaphysical mists and fogs that cloud our political views in so many directions. ”

“ The French maybe as false as the Americans to their idea of liberty. At any rate, it is a good beginning. Let us rejoice at that.
Equality means that all are equal before the law; equal in rights, however unequal in mights. So all titles of nobility came at once to the ground. The royal family is like the family of our Presidents. The Chamber of Peers is abolished. Universal suffrage is decreed; all men over twenty-one are voters. ”