Sovereign people

“ Sovereignty, under God, inheres in the organic people, or the people as the republic; and every organic people fixed to the soil, and politically independent of every other people, is a sovereign people, and, in the modern sense, an independent sovereign nation. ”

“ Standing on this well established doctrine of the equality of the States, do—"we the People," the only legitimate Sovereign in this land, erect our head, high as the proudest he who sits upon a throne, because we too are sovereign, and like him may rightfully do within our own dominions, all that mortals may. ”

“ Hence, while the sovereignty resides inherently and inalienably in the people, it is a perversion of language to denominate the State, as a body politic or government, sovereign and independent.—Ibid., p. ”

“ When the people were admittedly sovereign, it followed, in the view of the enthusiast, that any proportion of the people could be sovereigns too, and, provided that he were a patriot, every man might be a law unto himself. ”

“ One cardinal evil could be attacked and at least minimised: the absurd pretence that anything with the legal status of a sovereign State is a nation, a people, a thing with a distinctive soul and an individuality, entitled to full and equal consideration in the counsels of mankind. ”

“ Even if it were shown that a proud, haughty, and powerful nation like England, had made war upon other provinces, on the ground of a mere recognition, the single example could not alter the public law, or shake the strength of a clear principle.
But what has been our uniform practice? We have constantly proceeded on the principle, that the government de facto is that we can alone notice. Whatever form of government any society of people adopts, whoever they acknowledge as their sovereign, we consider that government or that sovereign as the one to be acknowledged by us. ”

“ But from this grant I infer, as before hath been touched, that the sovereign, original, and foundation of civil power, lies in the people—whom they must needs mean by the civil power distinct from the government set up: and if so, that a people may erect and establish what form of government seems to them most meet for their civil condition. ”

“ We knew, that, when the people truly realized their sovereignty, they would claim not only the utilitarian, but the artistic and munificent attributes of their throne,—and that all the splendors and decorations, all the provisions for leisure, taste, and recreation, which kings and courts have made, would be found to be mere preludes and rehearsals to the grander arrangements and achievements of the vastly richer and more legitimate sovereign, the People, when he understood his own right and duty. ”

“ Upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the dissolution of the ties of allegiance, the assumption of sovereign power, and the institution of civil government, are all acts of transcendent authority, which the people alone are competent to perform ”

“ While announcing to the nations of the world the new position which the people of this Republic have felt themselves called upon to assume, courtesy to their opinions seems to demand a brief accompanying statement of the causes which induced them, first to expatriate themselves from the land of their nativity, and to form settlements on this barbarous coast, and now to organize their government by the assumption of a sovereign and independent character. ”

“ These heroes established the first republic, and demonstrated that a government in which the legally expressed will of the people is sovereign and supreme is the safest, strongest, securest, noblest and the best. ”

“ In which of these senses is the word to be taken when it is said, "The people are sovereign?" The people are the population or inhabitants of one and the same country. That is something. But who or what determines the country? Is the country the whole territory of the globe? That will not be said, especially since the dispersion of mankind and their division into separate nations. ”

“ We promptly take in that, if ever we are to commune in a concentrated way with the sovereign people, and see 361their exercised power raise a side-wind of irony for forms and arrangements other than theirs, the occasion here will amply serve. ”

“ Hail to the Crown by Freedom shaped—to gird
An English Sovereign's brow! and to the Throne
Whereon he sits! Whose deep foundations lie
In veneration and the People's love,
Whose steps are equity, whose seat is law. ”

“ They are the covenants of a community. Time out of mind communities have made covenants with their sovereigns. When despotism in France was ‘tempered by epigram,’ the sharp tongues of the wits spoke, after a sort, the constitution of the country,—a positive law whose sanction89 was ridicule. But the wits were not sovereign; the salons did not conduct government. Our written constitutions are only very formal statements of the standards to which the people, upon whom government depends for support, will hold those who exercise the sovereign power. ”

“ But the forms of government which have most prevailed, are designated by the terms, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, or republic. These words severally indicate by what persons, and in what manner, the governing power of a state is exercised. This power is usually called the sovereign, or supreme power. Where kings rule, they are called sovereign; and where the power is in the hands of the people, the people are sovereign. ”

“ Under the benignant providence of Almighty God the representatives of the States and of the people are again brought together to deliberate for the public good. The gratitude of the nation to the Sovereign Arbiter of All Human Events should be commensurate with the boundless blessings which we enjoy.
Peace, plenty, and contentment reign throughout our borders, and our beloved country presents a sublime moral spectacle to the world. ”

“ For if sovereign authority is derived formally from the consent of the people and not from God, who is the supreme and Eternal Principle of all power, it loses in the eyes of the governed its most august characteristic and degenerates into an artificial sovereignty which rests on unstable and shifting bases, namely, the will of those from whom it is said to be de- rived. ”

“ A sovereign consults his people on the means of assuring their felicity, and assembles around him all those gifted with political knowledge, to strengthen, or rather, to relay the bases of general prosperity.
‘Already, from one end of France to the other, those social ideas which establish the rights of man and citizenship on true and solid foundations have been disseminated. Government, far from attempting to hinder the spread of these ideas, has allowed them a liberty in accordance with its own generous purposes. ”

“ Behold a republic, in which civil and religious liberty stimulate all to earnest endeavour and in which the law restrains every hand uplifted for a neighbour's injury—a republic in which every citizen is a sovereign, but in which no one cares to wear a crown. ”

“ But with these broad admissions, if we would compare the sovereignty acknowledged to exist in the mass of our people with the power claimed by other sovereignties, even by those which have been considered most purely democratic, we shall find a most essential difference. ”

“ When the sovereignty of the people shall have been acknowledged; when the inalienable rights of man, without distinction of religious or political opinions, shall have been solemnly declared; we may expect that peace, liberty, and security, which have so long been banished from our land, will again take up their abode with us, and form the source of our common felicity. ”

“ When we listen so frequently to such abstract terms as “the majesty of the people,” “the sovereignty of the people,” whence the inference that “all power is derived from the people,” we can form no definite notions: it is “a confusion of words,” contradicting all the political experience which our studies or our observations furnish; for sovereignty is established to rule, to conduct, and to settle the vacillations and quick passions of the multitude. ”

“ Again, in monarchical countries, in order that allegiance to the sovereign may be consistent with natural ethics, he must be regarded as the servant and symbol of the national unity, capable of rebellion and punishable for it. ”

“ This sovereign, this person or combination of persons, universally occurring in all independent political communities, has in all such communities one characteristic, common to all the shapes sovereignty may take, the possession of irresistible force, not necessarily exerted, but capable of being exerted. ”

“ The office of the sovereign, as an institution of such a society, is to protect those rights from invasion, either from without, from foreign nations, or from within, from members of the society who cease to behave as such. ”

“ Now government is no other than the soul of a nation or city: wherefore that which was reason in the debate of a commonwealth being brought forth by the result, must be virtue; and forasmuch as the soul of a city or nation is the sovereign power, her virtue must be law. But the government whose law is virtue, and whose virtue is law, is the same whose empire is authority, and whose authority is empire. ”

“ But how would they be answered if the representative and constituent bodies were both thoroughly instructed in the sacred character and paramount authority and importance of the duties which belong to the high function of sovereignty? We justly deny and deride the divine right of kings; and we assert and maintain the divine right of the people to self government. ”

“ No nation ever was, or can be truly great, powerful, and happy by pursuing oppressive and persecuting measures. And a sovereign, who has a true sense of his present and future glory, must see it can only arise from his being the head of a great, powerful, and happy nation, made, or continued so, by himself. ”

“ Every thing that tends to insulate the individual,—to surround him with barriers of natural respect, so that each man shall feel the world is his, and man shall treat with man as a sovereign state with a sovereign state;—tends to true union as well as greatness. ”

“ But, gentlemen, pursue this view of the subject. The longer the reign, the influence of that sovereign must proportionately increase. All the illustrious statesmen who served his youth disappear. A new generation of public servants rises up, there is a critical conjunction in affairs—a moment of perplexity and peril. Then it is that the sovereign can appeal to a similar state of affairs that occurred perhaps thirty years before. ”

“ The traditional reason for obedience to the State is personal loyalty to the sovereign. European States grew up under the feudal system, and were originally the several territories owned by feudal chiefs. ”

“ With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice, that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, to one united people; a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general Liberty and Independence. ”

“ The members of a republic, above all other men, should be candid and dispassionate. They are, individually, portions of the sovereign mind and sovereign will, and should be enabled to come to all questions of national concern with calm and unbiassed judgments. ”

“ Again, in section 18th of the same chapter,
nations composed of men, and considered as so many free persons living together in a state of nature, are naturally equal, and inherit from nature the same obligations and rights. Power or weakness does not produce any difference. A small republic is no less a sovereign state than the most powerful kingdom. ”

“ Virtually he argues that states have been formed as the only alternative to the state of nature, or, on his showing, to anarchy and barbarism. The supremacy and unity of the sovereign power is therefore an expression of the essential condition of civilised life. ”

“ Let them discuss it among themselves and decide it for themselves. I am positive that, in the name of sovereign nationhood, my choice is the only one open to them. Indeed, there never was, and never will be, any other choice. For history shows that, throughout the ages, in similar crises all proud nations have ever made this very choice and fought to the last man to maintain their sovereign nationhoods. ”

“ They had experienced so much evil from the sovereignty of kings that they might be excused for lending a ready ear to those who preached, in an exaggerated form, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people. ”

“ The sovereign authority is then established only for the common good of all the citizens. The sovereign thus clothed with the public authority, with everything that constitutes the moral personality of the nation, of course becomes bound by the moral obligations of that nation and invested with its rights. ”

“ The English, the Italians, the Germans, are now too enlightened to allow themselves to be crammed with old ideas, with antiquated notions. In the eyes of nations, the Sovereign who is chosen by the entirety of the nation, will always be the legitimate Sovereign.... ”

“ Popular sovereignty, in the true sense of the term, means the sovereignty of all individuals, so organized to give a common expression to the collective will, limited only by the natural rights of individual man. ”

“ Exalt the citizen. As the State is the unit of government, he is the unit of the State. Teach him that his home is his castle, and his sovereignty rests beneath his hat. Make him self-respecting, self-reliant and responsible. ”

“ But the original idea of sovereignty was grand and wise;—the strongest man and bravest, raised aloft on shields and bucklers with warrior cries of approval from the people who voluntarily chose him as their leader in battle,—their utmost Head of affairs. ”