Sovereignty of the people

“ To have a collective will, unity is necessary, and independence is requisite in order to assert it. Unity and nationality are still more essential to the notion of the sovereignty of the people than the cashiering of monarchs, or the revocation of laws. ”

“ If our constitutions admit the sovereignty of the people; if the federal government is erected on that foundation; and if no species of sovereignty can exist without freedom of will and of discussion; it follows, that laws for restraining or regulating discussion, are axes which cut up our policy at its root. ”

“ It is particularly remarkable therefore, under a system of government, acknowledging the sovereignty of the people, and reprobating privileges and exclusive interests, that laws may be retained against the will of this acknowledged sovereignty, after they have been found to operate to a revolutionary extent, in favour of the reprobated principles. ”

“ Thus for the sovereignty, in an impalpable and unnatural sense, of the general will, we get a sovereignty, in the natural and demonstrable sense, of the multitude. But as the multitude is not everywhere supreme, the assertion of its sovereignty has to be put in the form that it is sovereign 'de jure.' The truth which underlies this proposition is that an interest in common good is the ground of political society, in the sense that without it no body of people would recognise any authority as having a claim on their common obedience. ”

“ In America the principle of the sovereignty of the people is not either barren or concealed, as it is with some other nations; ”

“ 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. ”

“ The power which is committed to the hands of every citizen of this Commonwealth—the power of controlling public sentiment through his speech and of directing the public affairs through his vote—the power of national sovereignty in which he participates as one of the sovereign people—is a solemn trust. ”

“ Finally, the ultimate agency of popular sovereignty is the power of the people to amend their constitutions. So far as the state constitutions are concerned they accept or reject proposed changes by their own votes; in the case of the national constitution they act through their representatives in Congress and in the state legislatures. By these four methods of control we maintain what is known as the sovereignty of the people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have so long heard the principle admitted, and seen it acted on with advantage to the general weal, that the people are sovereign in their own affairs, that we must recover our presence of mind before we see the fallacy of the assumption, that the people, or a bare majority of them, in a single State, can exercise their right of sovereignty as against the will of the nation legitimately expressed. ”

“ Notwithstanding the limited sovereignty possessed by the people of the United Stages and the restricted grant of power to the Government which they have adopted, enough has been given to accomplish all the objects for which it was created. It has been found powerful in war, and hitherto justice has been administered, and intimate union effected, domestic tranquillity preserved, and personal liberty secured to the citizen. ”

“ The American revolution broke out, and the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, which had been nurtured in the townships and municipalities, took possession of the State: every class was enlisted in its cause; battles were fought, and victories obtained for it, until it became the law of laws. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And if it do not reside in the people of the several States, in their confederated character, where — so far as it relates to the constitution and government of the United States — can it be found? Not, certainly, in the government; for, according to our theory, sovereignty resides in the people, and not in the government. That it cannot be found in the people, taken in the aggregate, as forming one community or nation, is equally certain. ”

“ We revere that day because it marks the beginnings of independence, the beginnings of a constitution that was finally to give universal freedom and equality to all American citizens — the beginnings of a government that was to recognize beyond all others the power and worth and dignity of man. There began the first of governments to acknowledge that it was founded on the sovereignty of the people. There the world first beheld the revelation of modern democracy. ”

“ Even if there were no law in the case, we suppose the sovereignty of a nation, in other words, of the majority of the people, in a government constituted like ours, is competent to interpose their authority to prevent the damage of the Republic in an unforeseen exigency. ”

“ Then, my friends, be sure of it, whatever the allied monarchs of Europe may do, whatever the plots of the royalists and priests, the Republic, the Revolution, France, will be saved without the sovereignty of the people having been violated in the person of a single one of its Representatives in the Commune or the Convention, even of those most opposed to new ideas ”

“ But this does not mean what Judge Jameson reads into it, that sovereignty and the feeling of the community are one and the same thing; that the conditions of sovereignty and the exercise of sovereignty are identical. Sovereignty has at all times and under all systems of government been dependent upon the temper and disposition of the people. The will of the community, the inclinations and desires of the body politic as a whole, are always, in the last analysis, the foundation, as they are also in many instances the direct and immediate source, of law. ”

“ The principle of sovereignty rests in the people, as expressed through their representatives. The Law is the written expression of the people’s will. It is the guarantee of rights to 228all. All citizens need the law. ”

“ 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 State and Its Sovereignty.—The various economic and social functions that are exercised by the people as a nation can be performed in an orderly and effective way only when the people are organized politically, and the nation has full powers of sovereignty. When the nation functions politically it is a state. States may be large like Russia, or small like Montenegro; they may have full sovereignty like Great Britain, or limited sovereignty like New York; the fact that they exercise political authority makes them states. ”

“ The same principle has compelled the rulers of most of the European nations to divide the responsibility of government with their subjects, and to grant their people enlarged powers but little short of absolute sovereignty. ”

“ Our constitution places the sovereignty jointly in the king and people, in such a manner that the remedies necessary to be applied according to the ends of social life, for the security of persons and property, are in the power of the people. ”

“ THE PEOPLE AND THE NATION At the beginning of this discussion popular Sovereignty was declared to be the essential condition of democracy; and a general account of the nature of a constructive democratic ideal can best be brought to a close by a definition of the meaning of the phrase, popular Sovereignty, consistent with a nationalist interpretation of democracy. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Are not those States nominally republics? What is there that interferes with the free disposition which they might make of themselves? Do they not possess all the rights and forms of popular sovereignty? ”

“ Well, then, let all admit, what none deny, that the only source of political power in this country is the people. Let us admit that they are sovereign, for they are so; that is to say, the aggregate community, the collected will of the people, is sovereign. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We fought for the rights we held under the old constitution, made by a slave-holding aristocracy. But we collided with the resistless movement of humanity from the idea of local sovereignty toward nationalism, centralisation, solidarity. ”

“ In no such spirit has it developed its full and independent sovereignty. We adhere to the principle of equality among ourselves, and by no act of ours will we assign to ourselves a subordinate rank in the family of nations. ”

“ We can imagine how the lands of individuals, where they were contiguous and came to be united, became the public territory, and how the right of Sovereignty, extending from the subjects over the lands they held, became at once real and personal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Imagine the amazement of the world when it found that the resolutions were to the effect that the convention should draft and propose a constitution of government which would create an entirely new nation out of the human beings in all the assembled nations, and create a new national government for the new nation, and destroy forever the independence and sovereignty of each represented nation and its government and subordinate them to the new national and supreme government. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He did more than any other public man of the time to lessen the force of State attachments, to create a national feeling, and to lead the public mind to a comprehension of the necessity for an efficient national sovereignty. ”

“ At a time when the true danger is that sections or classes should arrogate to themselves authority which belongs to the State, it is an advantage to bring into prominence the sovereignty of the nation. ”

“ It has been shown that, in becoming parts of a nation, not members of a league, they surrendered many of their essential parts of sovereignty. The right to make treaties, declare war, levy taxes, exercise exclusive judicial and legislative powers, were all functions of sovereign power. ”

“ If the national government shows itself so regardless of the honor and interests of a State as has been evinced by the cold indifference with which negotiations for the last fifty years have been carried on, it becomes the solemn duty of the sovereignty thus trampled upon to rise and maintain its own rights. ”

“ These rights are indivisible. These are the rights, which make the essence of sovereignty; and which are the marks, whereby a man may discern in what man, or assembly of men, the sovereign power is placed, and resideth. ”

“ There nowhere appears the nucleus of statehood. The machinery for exercising the legitimate rights and powers of sovereignty, and responding to the obligations which de facto sovereignty entails in the face of equal rights of other states, is conspicuously lacking. ”

“ It is the power of guaranteeing rights, defined as above, which the old writers on sovereignty and civil government supposed to be established by covenant of all with all, translating the common interest which men have in the maintenance of such a power into an imaginary historical act by which they instituted it. ”