Political rights

“ It is in the nature of liberties and rights, abstractly considered, to be insubordinate and to conflict both one with another and, perhaps, with the common weal. If the chief purpose of a democratic political system is merely the preservation of such rights, democracy becomes an invitation to local, factional, and individual ambitions and purposes. ”

“ WHO ARE CITIZENS? But who are citizens? Why, those who possess and enjoy, or who have the right to acquire and enjoy, an equality of political and civil privileges. Only certain classes of men possess these rights. These certain classes having possessed themselves of the machinery of the Government, tread upon the Constitution and spit upon the declarations of the Supreme Court. ”

“ National rights and opinions, held or moulded at the pleasure of governments, are the creatures of a species of political transubstantiation, which declares it to be heresy, not to believe, that the opinion and will of a government, is the opinion and will of a nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The bill of rights which it promulgates, is of rights that are older than human institutions, and spring from the eternal justice that is anterior to the state. Two political theories divided the world: one founded the commonwealth on the reason of state, the policy of expediency, the other on the immutable principles of morals; the new republic, as it took its place among the powers of the world, proclaimed its faith in the truth and reality and unchangeableness of freedom, virtue, and right. ”

“ In the exercise of these natural rights, it has been supposed, men with a view to their general interest established political society. From that establishment is derived both the system of rights and obligations maintained by law as between man and man, and the right of the state to the submission of its subjects. ”

“ But in truth it is only as members of a society, as recognising common interests and objects, that individuals come to have these attributes and rights; and the power, which in a political society they have to obey, is derived from the development and systematisation of those institutions for the regulation of a common life without which they would have no rights at all. ”

“ That the true mission of American democracy is to maintain the liberties of the people, the sovereignty of the states, and the perpetuity of the Union, by the impartial application to public affairs, without sectional discriminations, of the fundamental principles of human rights, strict justice, and an economical administration. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But an analogous mistake lurks in all static forms of democracy. The bestowal and the exercise of political and civil rights are merely a method of organization, which if used in proper subordination to the ultimate democratic purpose, may achieve in action something of the authority of a popular Sovereign will. ”

“ Payment of representatives. Abolition of all limitation of political rights, except in the case of disfranchisement.
‘2. Direct legislation through the people, by means of the right of proposal and rejection. Self-government of the people in Empire, State, Province, and Commune. Officials to be elected by the people; responsibility of officials. Yearly granting of taxes.
‘3. Training in universal military duty. A people’s army in place of the standing armies, decision on peace and war by the representatives of the people. Settlement of all international differences by arbitration. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ And the differences of political parties of the last fifty years have not been so much concerning the nature of human rights, as in regard to the institutions by which those rights can be best protected. ”

“ Prevail upon your friends never to threaten or trouble any class of voters in the free exercise of their rights, have those rights secured and protected by appropriate State legislation, and that State legislation respected by your friends, and such measures as this will never be practically applied. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The foundation of government is there laid, not in imaginary rights of men, (which at best is a confusion of judicial with civil principles,) but in political convenience, and in human nature,—either as that nature is universal, or as it is modified by local habits and social aptitudes. The foundation of government (those who have read that book will recollect) is laid in a provision for our wants and in a conformity to our duties: it is to purvey for the one, it is to enforce the other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A place where every interest and shade of opinion in the country can have its cause even passionately pleaded, in the face of the government and of all other interests and opinions, can compel them to listen, and either comply, or state clearly why they do not, is in itself, if it answered no other purpose, one of the most important political institutions that can exist any where, and one of the foremost benefits of free government. ”

“ Essentially, the problem facing that generation was how to organize political power so that it could be placed safely in the hands of men. Government had to be made strong enough to survive, yet it had to be kept properly tender about individual life, liberty, and property. As might be expected, the problem was seen in terms of rights against government rather than in terms of the citizen’s responsibility to government, but in the twentieth century’s era of absolutism it is useful to be reminded, in Mrs. ”

“ We offer it to you—a Union based upon universal liberty, impartial justice and equal rights, upon sacred pledges faithfully fulfilled, upon the faith of the Nation nobly vindicated; a Union without a slave and without a tyrant; a Union of truly democratic States; a Union capable of ripening to full maturity all that is great and hopeful in the mind and heart of the American people; a Union on every square foot of which free thought may shine out in free utterance; a Union between the most promising elements of progress, between the most loyal impulses in every section of this vast Republic ”

“ Your Representatives will appeal to the energy of the present and future generations to renew their claim both to National Independence, and the Rights of Civil and Religious Liberty. For these Rights they now appeal to the reason and the justice of all civilized Nations. ”

“ Such a form of government may prove to be the natural result and outcome of the ideas of liberty and popular rights, but it was then produced out of due time, and even if the life continued, the outer form decayed. ”

“ In other words, you, my Democratic friends, in the name of liberty asserted the right of one man, under State law, to deprive another man of his freedom; in the name of democracy you asserted the right of one class of people under State law to rule despotically over another class; in the name of self-government you asserted the right of the States to exclude a large portion, sometimes even amounting to a majority of their population, from all participation in self-government. ”

“ I hold, moreover, sir that inasmuch as every man is, by force of circumstances beyond his own control, a subject of government somewhere, he is, by the very constitution of human society, entitled to share equally in the conferring of political power on those who wield it, if he is not disqualified by crime; that in a despotic government he ought to be allowed arms, in a free government the ballot or the open vote, as a means of self-protection against unendurable oppression. ”

“ That all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people, and that government is instituted by them for their common interest, protection, and security.
That the enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are essential rights, which every government ought to respect and preserve. ”

“ Office-seekers are full of tricks and intrigues of every kind to get an office, and then the people may—and be damned.
The progress of revolution is quite considerable in every government of the world. But is the revolution for the constitutional rights of the people in progress? ”

“ Shall we not rather take the place to which we are entitled, as the leaders, rather than the followers, in the customs of society, turn back the tide of aristocratic inroads, and carry through the whole, not only of civil and political, but of social and domestic, life, the true principles of democratic freedom and equality? ”

“ The policy of the United States, exhibits its militia, its right of bearing arms, its rights retained, its right of instruction, and its inclusive right of abolishing the entire government.
Our policy, considering a nation as possessing rights it cannot alienate, secures its will and ability to protect them, by moral and physical means. It provides election, attempered by free discussion, as a moral mode of subjecting governments to the sovereignty of the nation, and not to subject the nation to a sovereignty of the government. ”

“ Again, questions may and often do arise between the government and the individual citizen that are not political questions, but are questions of private right, the right of the individual against the government. The disputants are the individual citizen or group of citizens on the one hand, and the government on the other whether that government be a monarchy, a republican or representative government, or a pure democracy. ”

“ Belonging to a disfranchised class, I have no political antecedents to recommend me to your support,—but my creed is free speech, free press, free men, and free trade,—the cardinal points of democracy. Viewing all questions from the stand-point of principle rather than expediency, there is a fixed uniform law, as yet unrecognized by either of the leading parties, governing alike the social and political life of men and nations. ”

“ Look over the history of the world, from the time when infant mankind felt in its heart the first throbbings of aspiring dignity, down to our days, when the rights of man have at last found a bold and powerful champion in a great and mighty Republic; where is the page that is not blotted with blood and tears shed in that all-absorbing struggle; where a chapter which does not tell a tale of jubilant triumph or heart-breaking distress, as the scales of freedom or slavery went up or down? ”

“ But though we may be proud of these conquests, we are compelled in the last analysis of our institutions, to return to a few fundamental notions of our government. We must continue the representative idea based upon the doctrine of the equality of rights and exercised by representative assemblies founded on popular elections; and after our most pleasing contemplation of the institutions of America, we must return to the people, the foundation of our government. Their wisdom and self-control, and these alone, will impart to our institutions that strength which insures their perpetuity. ”

“ Well, then, let all admit, what none deny, that the only source of political power in this country is the people. Let us admit that they are sovereign, for they are so; that is to say, the aggregate community, the collected will of the people, is sovereign. ”

“ To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that it is the great desideratum by which this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind. ”

“ The State, government with its functions and powers, is now the subject of vital interest to every thinking man. Political developments in all civilized countries have brought the questions home. Shall we have a strong government? Are democracy and parliamentary government to be preferred, or is Fascism of one kind or another, dictatorship - monarchical, bourgeois or proletarian - the solution of the ills and difficulties that beset society today? ”

“ The best energies of my life have been spent in endeavoring to establish and perpetuate the principles of free government, and I believe that the government, in passing through its present perils, will settle down upon principles consonant with popular rights, more permanent and enduring than heretofore. ”