Sovereign

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Despised in his youth by the proud and restless barons of his duchy, he compelled their obedience and respect, became stronger than his neighbours, extended his dominions by policy and war, conquered a kingdom far richer and larger than his duchy, forced its people to live quietly and orderly under his rule, and, dying a powerful sovereign, left his dominions in peace to his sons. ”

“ If the power of an emperor, or of a king, be limited by law, the government is called a limited monarchy; if there be no legal restraint to the will of the sovereign, it is called an absolute monarchy. ”

“ The theory that the sovereign, representing the majesty of the nation, was the owner of all the lands of the kingdom, and that directly or indirectly all the occupiers of the soil were his tenants, holding by right of fealty and service, gave to the people what they so long wanted, a centre of unity and a common authority to which they could look for redress and protection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All laws, whether emanating from an absolute monarch or from the representatives of the majority of a state, are mere expressions of the will of the sovereign power, which may be exacted by force. The second use of the word LAW is a record of our experience—e.g., we see the tides ebb and flow, and conclude it is done in obedience to the will of a sovereign power ”

“ The sovereign is necessarily judge of all proper means of defence, of what doctrines shall be taught, of all disputes and complaints, of rewards and punishments, of war and peace with neighbouring commonwealths, and even of what shall be held by each subject in property. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The definition of sovereignty was derived from the definition of the law. The law, they said, is THE EXPRESSION OF THE WILL OF THE SOVEREIGN: then, under a monarchy, the law is the expression of the will of the king; in a republic, the law is the expression of the will of the people. ”

“ When the American nation, a sovereign, created a government of delegated powers, under the Constitution, it delegated to that government powers adequate to its purposes as a nation.28 The essential purpose of sovereignty is to continue sovereign. ”

“ For when the men that be in that office please, they are called an aristocracy, or otherwise an oligarchy, wherein those, the major part of which declare the wills of the whole multitude being assembled, are the sovereign, and every man severally a subject. Lastly, if their consent be such, that the will of one man, whom they name, shall stand for the wills of them all, then is their government or union called a monarchy, and that one man a sovereign, and every of the rest a subject. ”

“ To have holden their lands allodially, or for every man to have been the sovereign lord and proprietor of the ground he occupied, would have constituted a government too nearly like a commonwealth. They were contented, therefore, to hold their lands of their king, as their sovereign lord ”

“ In all States, the sovereign is the authority which is in possession of the three preceding powers and delegates them. In an absolute monarchy, the sovereign is the monarch, who of himself exercises the legislative and executive power, sometimes even the judicial power. In a democracy, the sovereign is the universality of the citizens, or the people, which delegates the three powers, and even in some cases exercises them.
As to the basis of sovereignty, two systems face each other: the divine right and the sovereignty of the people. ”

“ As the good sovereign on the throne, apparently isolated and seemingly detached and unconcerned, is yet the source, the fountain-head, the central sanctum of authority and the sole stay and the supreme strength of the realm, even so the supreme Lord is seated in the inner core of all created beings ”

“ The king said, 'Ah! ye hereditary rulers of my friendly states, and all ye my officers, managers of my affairs, hearken clearly to my declaration.
'Heaven and earth is the parent of all creatures; and of all creatures man is the most highly endowed.* The sincerely intelligent (among men) becomes the great sovereign; and the great sovereign is the parent of the people. ”

“ To state the matter shortly, the sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. ”

“ It is true, that a sovereign monarch, or the greater part of a sovereign assembly, may ordain the doing of many things in pursuit of their passions, contrary to their own consciences, which is a breach of trust, and of the law of nature ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For elective kings, are not sovereigns, but ministers of the sovereign; nor limited kings, sovereigns, but ministers of them that have the sovereign power: nor are those provinces which are in subjection to a democracy, or aristocracyaristocracy of another commonwealth, democratically or aristocratically governed, but monarchically. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sovereign power ought in all commonwealths to be absolute. So that it appeareth plainly, to my understanding, both from reason, and Scripture, that the sovereign power, whether placed in one man, as in monarchy, or in one assembly of men, as in popular, 195and aristocratical commonwealths, is as great, as possibly men can be imagined to make it. ”

“ The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ Every schoolboy, whose studies have gone so far as the Abridgments of Goldsmith, can mention instances in which sovereigns have allied themselves with the people against the aristocracy, and in which the nobles have allied themselves with the people against the sovereign. ”

“ Thus the acts of the sovereign are done in his name by his magistrates or other officers, among whom ambassadors are reckoned. And in the exercise of all those rights sovereign power consists.
VII. That power is called sovereign, whose actions are not subject to the controul of any other power, so as to be annulled at the pleasure of any other human will. The term ANY OTHER HUMAN WILL exempts the sovereign himself from this restriction, who may annul his own acts, as may also his successor, who enjoys the same right, having the same power and no other. ”

“ From God alone was the sovereign power of the princes of the earth derived, and it was the task of the Holy Alliance to compel the peoples to submit to this divinely-appointed and righteous despotism. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the sovereign of a constitutional country, content to abide within the strict limits imposed by his coronation oath, his reign has been prosperous and happy. In his private capacity he is kind and attentive to all around him, as well as a close observer of passing events. ”

“ The theory of the English constitution, according to many high authorities, was that three independent powers, the sovereign, the nobility, and the commons, ought constantly to act as checks on each other. ”

“ We have this day restored the Sovereign, to whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in Heaven, and with a propitious eye beholds his subjects assuming that freedom of thought, and dignity of self-direction which He bestowed on them. From the rising to the setting sun, may His kingdom come. ”

“ A prince, the moment he is crown'd, Inherits every virtue round, As emblems of the sovereign power, Like other baubles in the Tower; Is generous, valiant, just, and wise, And so continues till he dies: His humble senate this professes, In all their speeches, votes, addresses. ”

“ Do you acknowledge the sovereignty of the nation, represented by its deputies in this general and extraordinary Cortes? Do you swear to obey its decrees, and the constitution which it may establish, according to the holy object for which they have assembled; to order that they shall be observed, and to see87 that they be executed? To preserve the independence, liberty, and integrity of the nation? the Catholic Apostolic Roman religion? the monarchial government of the kingdom? To re-establish upon the throne our beloved king D. Ferdinand VIIth, of Bourbon? ”

“ But as to our country and our race, as long as the well-compacted structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion—as long as the British monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the state, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land—so long the mounds and dykes of the low, fat Bedford level will have nothing to fear from the pickaxes of all the levellers of France. As long as our sovereign lord the king, and his faithful subjects, the Lords and Commons of this realm,—the triple cord, which no man can break; ”

“ An intermediate body set up between the subjects and the Sovereign, to secure their mutual correspondence, charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of liberty, both civil and political. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”