Self-government

“ The people, not privileged orders, are to draw eminent qualities from eminent men. How? By election and responsibility, or by rejecting the government of authority, and exercising self government. A monarchy made out of Aristotle, as girls make a peacock by patching together shreds of silk, in the face of his unequivocal preference of a popular government for an agricultural people, would be a perfect emblem of authority. ”

“ It invented that remarkable phrase, “self-government”: which ingeniously preserves the fiction that someone has a right to govern other people, yet conciliates the modern spirit by intimating that the people really govern their governors. ”

“ Sir, whenever political life is regulated by constitutional forms, and by that infinite ramification of power, called self-government there can be no uniformity and regularity of movements, like that of a clock. ”

“ Self government, by responsible representation, is the essence of our policy; the sovereignty of orders in England, preserves its self government, by the responsibility of its judicial organ; our national sovereignty renounces self government by renouncing a similar responsibility. It renounces sovereignty itself, which cannot exist in association with a superior or an equal. Ancient hierarchy and aristocracy, never claimed the privilege of independence of the sovereignty, except under the sanction of a commerce with Heaven, and a descent from the Gods. ”

“ Liberty demands self-government, but not the right to interfere with others. ”

“ Destruction of self-government! What a prodigious discovery our Democratic associates have made! Sir, it is not because this bill lays its hands upon self-government to destroy it, but because by the fifteenth amendment, and the legislation made in pursuance thereof, the general sway of self-government is to be for the first time established all over this country, that I am in favor of the principles of this act. What is true self-government? ”

“ Democracy is direct self-government over all the people, for all the people, by all the people. ”

“ They imagined they could see the distant gleam of self-government. Others again, with a less imaginative nature, thought that even if self-government was still a far-off dream, they might yet see better days. ”

“ Those who talk so much about “fitting a people for self-government” often forget that no people were ever made “fit” for self-government by being kept in the leading-strings of a foreign Power. You learn to walk by doing your own crawling and stumbling. Self-government is learned only by exercising it upon one's own responsibility. ”

“ The ‘people’ who exercise the power are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the ‘self-government’ spoken of is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power. ”

“ I cannot forget that this Republic, which it has cost so much strife and so much blood to establish and to preserve, stands in the world to prove to struggling mankind that the self-government of the people under wise laws is able to evolve all necessary remedies for existing evils without violating popular liberty or constitutional rights. ”

“ Local self-government, which is the pride of our institutions, will be reconciled with the national supremacy in maintenance of human rights, and the two together will constitute the elemental principles of the Republic. ”

“ We must take the two factors of the working idea of self-government in their full antagonism, and exhibit, through and because of this, the fundamental unity at their root, and the necessity and conditions of their coherence. We must show, in short, how man, the actual man of flesh and blood, demands to be governed; and how a government, which puts real force upon him, is essential, as he is aware, to his becoming what he has it in him to be. ”

“ Can any such solid foundation for government be found in a self-governing community? In other words, can the people govern themselves for their own weal, and maintain institutions solely by the force of their own will, which shall accomplish the purposes of good government, and for ever secure the approval of all wise and virtuous citizens? If nay, then, royalty and aristocracy being repudiated, whither shall we fly for refuge and hope? ”

“ We have an Imperial Government that casts on ourselves the responsibilities as well as the privileges of self-government. We may govern ourselves as we please, we may misgovern ourselves as we please. ”

“ Is it nothing for the universal good of mankind to have carried into successful operation a system of self-government, uniting personal liberty, freedom of opinion, and equality of rights, with national power and dignity ”

“ For by this division of power the ruler rendered it impossible for himself to govern without help from others, and opened the way to a contract of compromise with the people. The influence of individuals upon the state spread, thus, to the people itself. Self-government, pure parliamentarism, is the ultimate end to be reached by the process.
We have seen that neither pleasure, nor utility, nor virtue, nor, finally, religion, can be regarded as the absolute means, but only as the relative means to the attainment of happiness. ”

“ In fact, sir, in my opinion, true local self-government is the great fountain from which the popular mind draws its healthiest and most invigorating inspirations. It is not only a machinery of political action, but it is one of the most efficient educational agencies of our social system. There is nothing better calculated to make a man understand and protect his interests, nothing more inspiring and instructive to the heart and mind of man than the independent management of his own affairs, upon his own responsibility ”

“ If the balance incline towards a more liberal form of government, towards democratic institutions, and therefore towards self-government, and the participation of the many rather than of the few in the affairs of the State, I am not to blame, nor is it my ordinance, but that of History and of Providence. ”

“ The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-government, and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution, which work with more energy than we believe, whilst we depend on artificial restraints. ”

“ We have just attained constitutions which give the people of this country sovereign power over their own soil, their own laws, and their own institutions. Let us grow accustomed to the practice of self-government, and demonstrate our fitness for it by wise laws, wisely administered, and by a scrupulous respect for the principles of justice and liberty. ”

“ It’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating, but necessary, work of self-government. ”

“ True self-government consists in a political organization of society which secures to the generality of its members, that is to say, to the whole people, and not to a part of them only, the right and the means to coöperate in the management of their common affairs, either directly, or, where direct action is impossible, by a voluntary delegation of power. ”

“ But if the history of the world and the observation of his own times have led a man to the opinion that, of divine right and human necessity, government of some sort there must be, in which power must be vested somewhere, and exercised somehow; that popular self-government is rather of the nature of a faculty than of a right ”

“ We find no fault with its institutions, neither do we particularly object to its form of government; but it is its administration, and the way its institutions and laws have been abused. The way it is now and has for years past been administered has founded the cause of complaint. It recognises the principle of self-government, that the people have the right to control. Of that principle we have long been apprised, but it has never been extended to us as a people. ”

“ I willingly acquiesce in the institutions of my country, perfect or imperfect; and think it a duty to leave their modifications to those who are to live under them, and are to participate of the good or evil they may produce. The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself. ”

“ It demanded, in the name of self-government, that if a State, by its assumed authority, made local self-government a sham and a mockery, no national authority should have a right to prevent or correct the mischief. ”

“ A nation cut up into orders or separate interests, cannot exert national self government, because the national self no more exists, than a polypus, after being cut into four or five pieces, which forage in different directions or upon each other. ”

“ All the truth in the opinion that knowledge is the best security for liberty," lies within its capacity to detect the fraud of authority, and to retain the contrary principle, self government. Our policy draws the liberty we enjoy from one principle; authority is the source of the present state of other countries. ”

“ That exception was taken away for the avowed and express purpose of making the rule of self-government general and universal, so that the people should form and regulate all their domestic institutions in their own way. ”

“ Hitherto the very prime principle of self-government, an intelligent cognizance of public affairs and a reflective insight into the fundamental principles of liberty, has been totally neglected in our land. ”

“ Free government is self-government—a government of the people by the people. The best government of this sort is that which the people think best. ”

“ Every State retained its self-government in domestic matters, as better qualified to direct them to the good and satisfaction of their citizens, than a general government so distant from its remoter citizens, and so little familiar with the local peculiarities of the different parts. ”

“ God has endowed man with inalienable Proper self-government rights, among which are self-government, reason, and conscience. Man is properly self-governed only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love. ”

“ Until dissolved, it is the master of the government, or the real political sovereignty; but the natural right of self government, is superior to any political sovereignty. The ancient notion of a social compact between nations and their governments or monarchs, alone sufficed to corrupt them. ”

“ A despotism, which may tame the savage, will, in so far as it is a despotism, only confirm the slaves in their incapacities. Yet a government under their own control would be entirely unmanageable by them. Their improvement can not come from themselves, but must be superinduced from without. The step which they have to take, and their only path to improvement, is to be raised from a government of will to one of law. They have to be taught self-government, and this, in its initial stage, means the capacity to act on general instructions. ”

“ And whatever the kind of self-government you succeed in obtaining—and I am sure we will obtain some substantial measure of self-government—be sure that our national work for the next 20 years to come will be in the field Of local self-government more than any other. ”

“ Just so far as a nation allows its institutions to be moulded by its weaknesses of character rather than by its strength it creates an influence to increase weakness at the expense of strength.
The habit of undue interference by government in private affairs breeds the habit of undue reliance upon government in private affairs at the expense of individual initiative, energy, enterprise, courage, independent manhood.
The strength of self-government and the motive power of progress must be found in the characters of the individual citizens who make up a nation. ”

“ We fought for self-government; and God hath pleased to give us one, better calculated perhaps to protect our rights, to foster our virtues, to call forth our energies, and to advance our condition nearer to perfection and happiness, than any government that was ever framed under the sun. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is true that the people who have made these rules may repeal them. As restraints upon the people themselves they are but self-denying ordinances which the people may revoke, but the supreme test of capacity for popular self-government is the possession of that power of self-restraint through which a people can subject its own conduct to the control of declared principles of action. ”

“ Preservation of our dual system of government, carefully restrained in each of its parts by the limitations of the constitution, has made possible our growth in local self-government and national power in the past, and, so far as we can see, it is essential to the continuance of that government in the future. ”

“ In discussing the merits of self-government we are apt to commit the error of claiming that self-government furnishes the best possible, that is the wisest and at the same time most economical kind of government, as to the practical administration of public affairs, for it does not. ”

“ And so the Declaration contemplates all forms of government which secure the fundamental rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Self-government, when that will best secure these ends, as in the case of people capable of self-government; other appropriate forms when people are not capable of self-government. ”