Political stability

“ Have we, however, as yet produced political methods under democratic-republican government which afford us any guarantees that fit persons alone will obtain power? It is very certain that we have not done this. We do not fear for the stability of the civil organization. ”

“ We have redressed the most urgent popular grievances. We have established a pattern of social, political, and economic stability. From this new level of stability, we must now launch our nation towards a new height of development. ”

“ No other method has yet been discovered by which effectively to express political opinion, to secure stability in governmental administration and policies, and to effectuate the real and permanent judgment of the people and promote their best interests. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The third essential condition of stability in political society, is a strong and active principle of cohesion among the members of the same community or state. We need scarcely say that we do not mean nationality, in the vulgar sense of the term ”

“ Political quietude and order pervade her widespread dominions, and a striking proof is presented by the stability of her government and her consequent prosperity, of the advantage she possesses in a well-balanced constitutional monarchy. ”

“ We are proceeding towards political stability and economic prosperity and taking fundamental steps towards restoring security and stability. Yet Iraq is still confronted by forces of terrorism that incorporate foreign elements which carry out horrific attacks and terrorist acts in an attempt to thwart political and economic development in Iraq. ”

“ 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? ”

“ If he could be brought to comprehend that when the constitution says the president must serve four years that means four years, and not merely until some one is strong enough to overthrow him, it might make him more careful as to whom he elected to office in the first place. But the value of stability in government is something they cannot be made to understand. It is not in their power to see it, and the desire for change and revolution is born in the blood. ”

“ And like the good sons of a Republic, after we have saved our nation, after we have done all to keep it secure and stable, then there will be time enough for us to quarrel and match political strengths in accordance with our political processes. ”

“ It would be a healing, a reconciling measure; softening all political transitions; securing that every opinion, instead of conquering or being conquered by starts and shocks, and passing suddenly from having no power at all in Parliament to having too much, or the contrary, should wax or wane in political power in exact proportion to its growth or decline in the general mind of the country. ”

“ The stability of every state rests ultimately on the wealth and character of its citizens, and any government which exhausts the one and degrades the other in an effort to maintain its own unlimited power has its days numbered. ”

“ What States would not adventure upon as policy, he espoused as policy and humanity both. Addressing himself from the first to the great middle class, whose principles are less corrupted by party politics, in whom the free destiny of peoples is lodged, he is gathering the elements of power and authority which, becoming formidable in ability if not in numbers, must secure the country's confidence, and in due time have political dictation and rule. ”

“ I declare that the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the states, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend. ”

“ If we want good government, is it not time that we should take our share in the struggle to secure it?” And hence that fresh political activity, that freedom of criticism, that breaking of party lines, that movement of independence all over the field, which makes political ringmasters tremble and patriotic citizens rejoice in new hope. ”

“ Perhaps the happiest fate which can befall the country is that it should make that gradual progress in political freedom, which is alone lasting, under the guidance of the power which has already given it prosperity, the ascendancy of an impartial law, freedom from arbitrary authority, freedom of speech and thought, and emancipation from the thraldom of foreign financial interests ”

“ We will protect the Republic with our sinews and blood of brass and iron, we will take the lead of the province, and be their backbone, [94] and we will not allow the revival of the monarchy and the suppression of the powers of the people. Let Heaven and earth be witness to our words. You gentlemen are pillars of the political parties, or the representatives of the people, and you should unite together and not become inconsistent. ”

“ But the fidelity in engagements and the stability, so necessary to the success of such institutions, can be guaranteed only by a government in which the legislative power is divided among several independent powers. The confidence which the necessary coöperation of these powers inspires, doubles the strength of the State, and the sovereign himself gains then in legal power more than he loses in arbitrary power. ”

“ The working out of this great result has led to certain habits in the assumption and exercise of political power which have to some extent disturbed those balances in which self-government finds its security. ”

“ I will only say that every government, to be good, should comprise within itself the principles of its stability: for otherwise, instead of prosperity there would be before us only the perspective of a series of changes. ”

“ The people will, if the Democratic leaders do not, appreciate the greatness and beneficence of the idea upon which the new order of things, the settlement we propose, rests—true and general self-government exercised in and through the States ”

“ To a philosophical observer of the Republic, at the end of the hundred years, I should say that the important facts are not its industrial energy, its wealth, or its population, but the stability of the federal power, and the integrity of the individual States. ”

“ If the integrity of any state can only be maintained at the cost of war, and if that state is more than what many so-called states have been,—more than an aggregation of individuals or communities under one ruling power,—if it so far fulfils the idea of a state, that its maintenance is necessary to the free development of the people belonging to it ”

“ The greater part of our foreign admirers find our success to consist in the achievement of stable safeguards against hasty or retrogressive action; we are asked to believe that we have succeeded because we have taken Sir Archibald Alison’s advice, and have resisted the infection of revolution by staying quite still.
But, after all, progress is motion, government is action. The waters of democracy are useless in their reservoirs unless they may be used to drive the wheels of policy and administration. ”

“ Moreover, the policy with which an administration charged with the duty of maintaining itself and preserving the Union shall conduct a civil war, must be confined always to the existing condition of political forces, and to the public sentiment of the whole country. ”

“ With both people there is a feeling of profound security in regard to their liberties, a deep conviction that they have gained a decisive victory, and that they have nothing to fear from the encroachments of the civil power or of a religious corporation; the same wish to see political reforms gives rise to substantial and palpable improvement in the condition of the people, and the same disposition on the part of the government to enlighten and realize the popular will. ”

“ It has built such temporary governments as it has had opportunity to erect on the old foundations and out of the discredited materials of centralized rule, elevating the people’s representatives for a season to the throne, but securing almost as little as ever of that every-day local self-government which lies so near to the heart of liberty. ”

“ All in all the Revolution did nothing else, and it is time that this should stop. Safety and security for consciences, property, and persons is the loud and unanimous outcry vibrating in all hears.3103—To calm things down, many novelties are required: To start with, the political and administrative concentration just described, a centralization of all powers in one hand, local powers conferred by the central power, and, to exercise this supreme power a resolute chief, equal in intelligence to his high position. ”

“ We may look for similar eccentric behaviour on the part of a community, nation, or state, whose centre is at infinity, whose constitution has been violently disturbed, and whose monarchy is situated in the far-off regions of unlimited space. The erratic course of Republican rule is proverbial. There is no stability, no regularity. ”

“ This is a vote of confidence in democracy as an effective means of governing-a practical problem-solving mechanism-not just an abstract political ideal. The trend reinforces the bonds which unite us and strengthens our capacity for cooperation. ”

“ In contests of this nature, where a considerable body of people who have attempted to free themselves of the control of the superior government have reached such point in occupation of territory, in power, and in general organization as to constitute in fact a body politic; having a government in substance as well as in name; possessed of the elements of stability and equipped with the machinery for the administration of internal policy and the execution of its laws ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When our political system was being debauched by the spoils of office, he gave his time and his great ability to the cause of civil service reform. And now that the lust of power and conquest has for a time blinded the eyes of many to the dangers of expansion, and the changes that must occur in our political ideals, if this policy is adopted, no voice has been raised more strenuously in calling the attention of our people to those ideals which have heretofore prevailed, that ours is a nation founded upon the consent of the governed, upon justice and liberty, upon peace and prosperity. ”

“ Our party interests have everything to lose by a peaceable settlement of this trouble, and everything to gain by collision. For a generation we have been 'the outs;' now at last we are 'the ins.' While in opposition, it was very well to prate of Constitution, and of rights; but now we are the government, and mean to continue so; and our interest is to have a strong and centralized government. ”

“ It was plain, therefore, that from this moment the growth of these powers would throw their fellow kingdoms into the background, and that with an ever-growing inequality of strength must come a new arrangement of political forces. ”

“ You then who regard your own safety and the public happiness, who wish to preserve the constitution and uphold the throne of your sovereign, are you not called upon by all these motives to come forward now, at this moment of doubtful fate, and exert yourselves to procure that timely and tranquil reform, which would be to your country the blessed harbinger of peace and concord?—Meet then speedily, if yet it be in your power to meet, and consider well the importance of your resolves. ”

“ The orderly unfolding of their national lives calls for a series of compromises which carry the fundamental democratic implication of the national principle as far as it can under the circumstances be safely carried; and in no other way does a people exhibit its political common sense so clearly as in its ability to be contemporary and progressive without breaking away from its historical anchorage. ”

“ Meanwhile, it may be laid down as a political truth, that by irresponsible monarchy rather than by representative government can a multitude of insignificant political units be welded into a people, with common feelings of cohesion, power enough to protect itself against conquest or foreign aggression, and affairs sufficiently various and considerable of its own to occupy worthily and expand to fit proportions the social and political intelligence of the population. ”