Seditious

“ That those who have the supreme power are subject to the civil laws is a seditious opinion. 5. That the supreme power may be divided is a seditious opinion. 6. That faith and sanctity are not acquired by study and reason, but always supernaturally infused and inspired, is a seditious opinion. 7. That each subject hath a propriety or absolute dominion of his own goods is a seditious opinion. 8. Not to understand the difference between the people and the multitude, prepares toward sedition. 9. Too great a tax of money, though never so just and necessary, prepares toward sedition. ”

“ The national guard, a force essentially revolutionary, because it participates, like the people, in the opinions, feelings, and passions, which, as a civic guard, it ought to repress, followed in every direction, from weakness or example, the fickle impressions of the mob. How could men, just leaving clubs, where they had been listening to, applauding, and frequently exciting sedition in patriotic discourses,—how could they, changing their feelings and part at the door of popular societies, take arms against the seditious? ”

“ The Government of this country, and those States which are parties concerned, cannot be too much alive to this fact. The public generally ought to understand it; and if the knowledge and conviction should generally obtain, that this Society is a seditious organization, and engaged in a work of sedition, which, by continuance, may grow into treason, it is believed, that no more acquisitions to its numbers and power could be made, and that it would gradually die away, and cease to agitate the public mind, without the intervention of the public authorities. ”

“ But when a Mob of Chairmen or Servants, or a Gang of Thieves and Sharpers, are almost too big for the Civil Authority to suppress, what must be the Case in a seditious Tumult, or general Riot of the People? ”

“ I have never been seditious, and am no disturber of the peace. The questions I discuss in my works are of an abstruse kind, and within the scope and ken of men of learning only. During all the time I passed in Germany, I never spoke on such subjects save with Œcolampadius, Bucer, and Capito; neither in France did I ever enter on them with anyone. I have always disavowed the opinions of the Anabaptists, seditious against the magistrate, and preaching community of goods. ”

“ The suggestion on which the authority over the press is founded, is, that seditious writings have a tendency to produce opposition to Government. What has a greater tendency to fit men for insurrection and resistance to Government, than dissolute, immoral habits, at once destroying love of order, and dissipating the fortune which gives an interest in society? ”

“ In one word, my dear general, we are all in dire apprehension that a beginning of anarchy with all its calamities is made, and we have no means to stop the dreadful work. Knowing your unbounded influence, and believing that your appearance among the seditious might bring them back to peace and reconciliation, individuals suggest the propriety of an invitation to you from congress to pay us a visit. ”

“ When men were hanged for petty theft, when they were whipped at the cart's tail for seditious language, when they were disembowelled for treasonable practices; theft, sedition, and treason flourished as they have never flourished since. ”

“ But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotions, and that is oppression. ”

“ To me, they have ever seemed more prone to vent their seditious discontent. But 'tis the nature of man to be niggardly of praise and lavish of censure. This decree of the tribunal must not be suffered to die, with the mere justice of the case. Our friends should dwell on it, openly, in the cafés, and at the Lido. They will have no cause to fear, should they give their tongues a little latitude. A just government hath no jealousy of comment."
"True, Signore." ”

“ If opposition to the National Government should arise from the disorderly conduct of refractory or seditious individuals, it could be overcome by the same means which are daily employed against the same evil, under the State Governments. ”

“ But this would be impracticable by any created being, if there could be no legal restraint of those scandalous misrepresentations of his measures and motives which directly tend to rob him of the public confidence; and equally impotent would be every other public officer, if thus left to the mercy of the seditious. ”

“ On the 12th of May a royal message was delivered, referring to the seditious practices of democratic societies, and intimating the necessity of taking measures for baffling their dangerous designs. The message stated that seditious practices had been carried on by societies in London in correspondence with other societies, for the purpose of assembling a convention to represent the people, in defiance of and in opposition to parliament, and on principles subversive of our constitution, and calculated to introduce anarchy similar to that in France ”

“ By often hearkening to the plausible discourses of seditious persons, utter'd with a seeming concern for the publick welfare, many come at length to approve of them, and highly to esteem those who make them, for their great understanding, and honesty, and disinterested zeal for the good of their country; and to believe that their governours are not so good as they ought to be, and that some changes for the better are both possible and needful. ”

“ First of all, that intruder upon the women's rites, who had shewn no more respect for the Bona Dea than for his three sisters, secured immunity by the votes of those men who, when a tribune wished by a legal action to exact penalties from a seditious citizen by the agency of the loyalists, deprived the Republic of what would have been hereafter a most splendid precedent for the punishment of sedition. ”

“ A seditious man is one who incites others to sedition, and since sedition denotes a kind of discord, it follows that a seditious man is one who creates discord, not of any kind, but between the parts of a multitude. ”

“ The private meetings that are in any wise deemed and denounced illegal, are such, and such only, as are seditious, and composed of seditious persons; who associate, indeed under a pretence of religion, but in reality to plot against the state. The sooner any that can be convicted of this, are made to forsake the assembling themselves together, the better ”

“ The mob, who at the same time appeared ready enough to murder some of the magistrates in the streets, had nothing in their mouths but the names and services of the Princes, who next day disowned their humble servants in the assemblies of the several courts. Though this conduct gave occasion to severe decrees, which the Parliament issued at every turn against the seditious, it did not hinder the same Parliament from believing that those who disowned the sedition were the authors of it, and consequently did not lessen the hatred which many private men conceived against them. ”

“ A number of fugitives, rendered frantic by oppression, had published a seditious declaration, renouncing allegiance to Charles Stuart, whom they called, as they, for their parts, had indeed some reason to esteem him, a tyrant. This incident afforded the privy council a pretence for an unusual kind of oppression. Soldiers were dispersed over the country, and power was given to all commission officers, even the lowest, to oblige every one they met with to abjure the declaration; and, upon refusal, instantly, without further questions, to shoot the delinquent. ”

“ Those who have failed to do so, and who, under the pretense of preaching or worshiping God, meet really 427for seditious purposes, and, in truth, to desecrate and violate the laws of God and their country, can not be allowed so to meet or carry on their seditious purposes, and will be held to a strict accountability. ”

“ Now, what they aim at may be either just or unjust; just, when those who are inferior are seditious, that they may be equal; unjust, when those who are equal are so, that they may be superior. These, then, are the situations in which men will be seditious: the causes for which they will be so are profit and honour ”

“ A sailor uttering seditious words is punishable at the discretion of a court-martial. In 1798 an act of Congress called the Sedition Act was passed, which expired by effluxion of time in 1801. Its constitutionality was violently assailed at the time and it “was beyond all question condemned by public sentiment” as “susceptible of being used for purposes of oppression and terrorism.” (See Story on the constitution of the United States, §§ 1293-1294.) ”

“ She was told that she had been talking sedition, and waxed indignant at the idea of anybody accusing her of sedition when she was a woman so far removed from ordinary planes, who could see into vast rounds of space. Her complacency was seriously jarred when informed that one of our operatives had crawled into her basement through the coal chute and listened to her seditious talk. Her inability to see into the basement caused her to have renewed faith in the long arm of Uncle Sam. ”

“ The case, then, gentlemen, is shortly and simply this: A man of the first family and fortune and character and property among you reads a proclamation stating the country to be in danger from abroad and at home, and thus alarmed—thus upon authority of the prosecutor alarmed—applies to that august body before whose awful presence sedition must vanish and insurrection disappear.
You must surrender, I hesitate not to say it, your oaths to unfounded assertion, if you can submit to say that such an act of such a man, so warranted, is a wicked and seditious libel. ”

“ Ours is a Government of forbearance, because it is the Government of the people. As we have reason to suppose, that the public generally have not even yet discovered the true position of the Anti-slavery Society, in relation to the Constitution, much less can we presume to say, that the members of that Society, as a body, have ever imagined, that they were involved in the responsibility of seditious action against the Government of their country. ”

“ As when a sedition arises in a kingdom or city, and one part rises against another part, so that evil-disposed men endeavour to seize upon the commonwealth, and spoil it, as Catiline with his fellow-conspirators did at Rome; then it is necessary for good citizens to defend the state, and he who does not, but desires to be neutral, is looked upon as an enemy and a companion of the seditious: because, under those circumstances, all citizens are bound to help the city or republic with all their might. ”

“ There is convincing evidence that the revolutionary party in Bengal depend largely upon seditious literature to recruit their ranks and several youths have confessed that they were drawn into the movement through reading leaflets issued by the revolutionists. Penalising the possession of seditious matter may not be a complete cure for the evil, but it will materially assist to check it. ”

“ The state court further gave its interpretation of the third clause of the statute, that is, in relation to the display of a flag or banner 'as an aid to propaganda that is of a seditious character.' Both opinions dealt with the meaning of this clause. Thus in one opinion it is said: 'Appellants' counsel concedes that sedition laws which 'interdict against the use of force or violence' are consistently upheld by the courts, and all of the authorities cited by him support that proposition. ”

“ It accordingly proscribed sedition against all government in the nation-national, state and local. Congress declared that these steps were taken 'to provide for the common defense, to preserve the sovereignty of the United States as an independent nation, and to guarantee to each State a republican form of government * * *.' [22] Congress having thus treated seditious conduct as a matter of vital national concern, it is in no sense a local enforcement problem. As was said in the court below:
'Sedition against the United States is not a local offense. It is a crime against the Nation. ”

“ Many, even of the richest burgesses, whose hatred for Protestants blinded them so far as not to see the dangers to which such associations expose public tranquillity in a well-regulated state, had the weakness to join the seditious. ”

“ Are there no seditious newspapers within your jurisdiction?” I am ignorant whether this report be or be not founded on fact. But if it be true, let me ask, shall we not pursue a similar course by adopting the present resolution? Shall we not authorize a committee to inquire, Is there no judicial guilt abroad in our land? Is there no latent inquiry in some unexplored corner of our country? A grand jury is sworn diligently to inquire, and true presentment make, of all such offences against the laws of the land, as shall come to their knowledge. Have we taken such an oath? ”

“ If legal ways are not found, illegal will be resorted to; and seditious clubs and confederacies, such as no man living holds in greater horror than I do, will grow and flourish, in spite, I am afraid, of anything which can be done to prevent the evil. ”

“ Who to all nations have sounded us abroad as seditious, who were never found plotters against ally, since we knew the life and power of Jesus Christ manifested in us, who hath redeemed us from the world, all works of darkness, and plotters therein, by which we know the election, before the world began. ”

“ In March 1663 he was again arrested, but released on signing an engagement to print nothing seditious and to inform against any one who did (ib. 1663–4, pp. 82, 86, cf. 1665–6, p. 409) . Nevertheless he was again in trouble in 1670 for writing a seditious libel called ‘The Character of a true and a false Shepherd’ (ib. 1670, p. 332) . ”