Republication

“ A republic, where the people at large, either collectively or by representation, form the legislature.
The separate advantages of monarchy are unity of council, decision, secrecy, and dispatch; the military strength and energy resulting from these qualities of government; the exclusion of popular and aristocratical contentions; the preventing, by a known rule of succession, all competition for the supreme power, thereby repressing the dangerous hopes and intrigues of aspiring citizens. ”

“ A republican government presupposes, and requires the existence of these qualities in a higher degree, than any other form; and wholly to destroy our reliance on them is to sap all the foundation, on which our liberties must rest. ”

“ What reality there is in our glorious system of constitutional government, with its King, Lords and Commons, whose duties and rights are so accurately defined that none can trench on those of the rest! ”

“ 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? ”

“ The Constitution devolves this solemn duty upon the people’s representatives, the Congress, because the linchpin of representative democracy is public confidence in the political system, regime, and community. ”

“ Other shades of republicanism may be found in other forms of government, where the executive, judiciary and legislative functions, and the different branches of the latter, are chosen by the people more or less directly, for longer terms of years, or for life, or made hereditary ”

“ They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. ”

“ I therefore give the name 'Republic' to every State that is governed by laws, no matter what the form of its administration may be: for only in such a case does the public interest govern, and the res publica rank as a reality. Every legitimate government is republican; [1] what government is I will explain later on.
Laws are, properly speaking, only the conditions of civil association. The people, being subject to the laws, ought to be their author: the conditions of the society ought to be regulated solely by those who come together to form it. ”

“ May the hands of the executive of their own choice, be strengthened more by the unanimity and affection of the people, than by the dread of penal infliction, or any restraints that might repress free inquiry, relative to the principles of their own government, and the conduct of its administrators! The world is now viewing America, as experimenting a new system of government, a FEDERAL REPUBLIC, including a territory to which the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland bear little proportion. ”

“ Having constituted the government, and declared its powers, the people have further said, that, since somebody must decide on the extent of these powers, the government shall itself decide; subject, always, like other popular governments, to its responsibility to the people. And now, Sir, I repeat, how is it that a State legislature acquires any power to interfere? ”

“ And they may make a part in a constitution of government more lasting than any of those in which the people, possessing or pretending to the entire legislature, are, when assembled, the tyrants, and, when dispersed, the slaves of a distempered state. In governments properly mixed, the popular interest, finding a counterpoise in that of the prince or of the nobles, a balance is actually established between them, in which the public freedom and the public order are made to consist. ”

“ There are three simple species of government—monarchy, where the supreme power is in a single person; aristocracy, where the supreme power is in a select assembly, the members of which either fill up, by election, the vacancies in their own body, or succeed to their places in it by inheritance, property, or in respect of some personal right or qualification; a republic or democracy, where the people at large retain the supreme power, and act either collectively or by representation. ”

“ The mischiefs of an aristocracy are dissensions in the ruling orders of the state; an oppression of the lower orders by the privilege of the higher, and by laws partial to the separate interests of the law-makers.
The advantages of a republic are liberty, exemption from needless restrictions, equal laws, public spirit, averseness to war, frugality,—above all, the opportunities afforded, to men of every description, of producing their abilities and counsels to public observation, and the exciting to the service of the commonwealth the faculties of its best citizens. ”

“ As there is no possibility of establishing the monarchy, as no candidate acceptable to all can be found, it is necessary, it is indispensable to get rid of the suspense, and I say that we should establish a republic. Have you not said that the forms of government are accidental? Gentlemen, you know the republic I want. It is a federal republic. I shall aways defend the federal republic. I am a federal, but, deputies, understand one thing: the republic is a form of government which admits many conditions, and which has many grades. ”

“ As all partial application of Republican principles must ever breed a complicated legislation as well as a discontented people, we would pray your Honorable Body, in order to simplify the machinery of government and ensure domestic tranquillity, that you legislate hereafter for persons, citizens, tax-payers, and not for class or caste. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The dominant majority, for the time, would, in reality, through the right of suffrage, be the rulers — the controlling, governing, and irresponsible power; and those who make and execute the laws would, for the time, be, in reality, but their representatives and agents. ”

“ You, Sir Robert, are amongst those who have taught us that a man, in office and out of office, forms two distinct beings, opposite both in nature and in principle; and I should not be surprised if, in the course of the revolutions of all that is natural, this country should adopt a representative system of government, or, in other words, a republican form, to find you filling some office to which your abilities shall be commensurate on the ground of your former boasted principles. ”

“ It is our business to lay down certain principles and propositions of policy, and we have to present to the suffrage of the people, men for the highest offices of the Republic, who, if elected, are to carry those principles and propositions into a living reality. ”

“ A Republic is where taxation and representation go hand in hand, where all are equal in rights, and no man is excluded from participation in the government. Such is the definition of a republican government, which it is the duty of Congress to maintain. Here is a bountiful source of power, which cannot be called in question. In the execution of the guaranty Congress may—nay, must—require that there shall be no Inequality, Caste, or Oligarchy of the Skin.
I know well the arguments of the champions. ”

“ On this view of the import of the term republic, instead of saying, as has been said, "that it may mean anything or nothing," we may say with truth and meaning, that governments are more or less republican, as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition ”

“ The powers of our republican form of government originated with the governed. It is the theory of our fundamental law that the people choose their representatives, yet no fact is so true as that this object is deliberately thwarted of accomplishment. ”

“ Where the whole machinery of government is capable of being changed or modified by the will of the people while the written constitution remains, and where hereditary and territorial differences of opinion exist on very important subjects, is not surprising that party spirit should run very high. ”

“ Resolved, That the American democracy place their trust in the intelligence, the patriotism, and the discriminating justice of the American people.
2. Resolved, That we regard this as a distinctive feature of our political creed, which we are proud to maintain before the world, as the great moral element in a form of government springing from and upheld by the popular will; and contrast it with the creed and practice of federalism, under whatever name or form, which seeks to palsy the will of the constituent, and which conceives no imposture too monstrous for the popular credulity. ”

“ By some few individuals, the practicability of governing by a system formed on the republican model, an immense, populous, and military nation, whose institutions, habits, and morals, were adapted to monarchy, and which was surrounded by armed neighbours, was deemed a problem which time alone could solve. ”

“ I know what is said by the several admirers of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, which are the rule of one, a few, and many, and are the three common ideas of government, when men discourse on the subject. But I chuse to solve the controversy with this small distinction, and it belongs to all three: Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) where the laws rule, and the people are a party to those laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion. ”

“ Why, the present government there is more republican than that proposed. The government now in existence is republican in form at least, and the officers are elected by the majority of the people and represent them truly. ”

“ The second, in pursuing the true and common interest of the nation they govern, without espousing those of any party or faction; or if these are so formed in a state, that they must incline to one or other, then to chuse and favour that which is most popular, or wherein the greatest or strongest part of the people appear to be engaged. ”

“ Government within the State has widened down from autocratic authority to authority broad-based upon a people's will. The expansion of the principle of representation is responsible for that development. ”

“ Here, then, is a form of government to all whose offices many thousands of men are eligible, and to whose elective franchise nearly every man of full age is entitled. It is a democratic republic. And from its inception in 1776 to the present day it has been steadily growing more democratic and more republican. ”

“ It is indispensable to a republican form of government, that the public, the mass of the people, if not the entire people, participate in the grant of powers to the government, and in the protection afforded by the government. ”

“ It being most unreasonable that we should either be kept from new, frequent and successive Representatives, or that the supreme Authority should fall into the hands of such as have manifested disaffection to our common Freedom, and endeavoured the bondage of the Nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ New and divisive questions which lead only to faction are propounded so that the voters are confused. The great principle of Representative Government, on which the Republic was founded, is being attacked. ”

“ But, thank God, we have no such disputes; we have no monarchs to contend with, or demand admissions from. The proposed government is to be the government of the people: all its officers are to be their officers, and to exercise no rights but such as the people commit to them. ”

“ If we bear in mind that the election of rulers is a function of government, and not of Sovereignty, we shall see why the lot is the method more natural to democracy, in which the administration is better in proportion as the number of its acts is small. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From these hints, if pursued further, might be demonstrated the expediency of the whole people 'intruding themselves' on the office of legislation, and the wisdom of putting into force what they may claim as a right. But government is divided into two parts—the legislative and executive. The executive power you would lodge in the hands of an individual. Before we inquire into the propriety of this measure, it will be necessary to state the proper objects of the executive power in governments where the principle of universal representation is admitted. ”

“ The body politic has the same motive powers; here too force and will are distinguished, will under the name of legislative power and force under that of executive power. Without their concurrence, nothing is, or should be, done.
We have seen that the legislative power belongs to the people, and can belong to it alone. ”

“ They know also, that this State government of theirs, with all its ramifications—whether as to its Executive, its Legislative, its Judicial, and other officials, either elective or appointed—is a Republican form of government, in the American sense—in the sense contemplated by the Fathers, when they incorporated into the revered Constitution of our Country the vital words: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of government." ”