Sovereignty

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Sovereignty as supreme authority, which is independent of any other earthly authority, may be said to have different aspects. As excluding dependence from any other authority, and in especial from the authority of another State, sovereignty is independence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In fact, since sovereignty can no more be conceived of outside of the people than outside of reason, it remains to be ascertained who, among the people, shall exercise the sovereignty; and, among so many minds, which shall be the sovereigns. ”

“ 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 sovereignty of a nation or state, considered with reference to its association, as a body politic, may be absolute and uncontrollable in all respects, except the limitations which it chooses to impose upon itself. But the sovereignty of the government, organized within the state, may be of a very limited nature. ”

“ The words ‘state sovereignty’ acquired an odious significance in the days of our civil struggle, but the idea for which they stand is nevertheless a precious one and represents what is probably America’s most valuable contribution to the science of government. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I think a definition of genuine popular sovereignty in the abstract would be about this: that each man shall do precisely as he pleases with himself, and with all those things which exclusively concern him. Applied to governments, this principle would be, that a general government shall do all those things which pertain to it ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is never easy to point out in our complex modern governments the exact organs in which sovereignty is lodged. On the whole, however, it is always safe to ascribe sovereignty to the highest91 originative or law-making body of the state,—the body by whose determinations both the tasks to be carried out by the Administration and the rules to be applied by the courts are fixed and warranted. ”

“ For by art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth, or State, in Latin Civitas, which is but an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the xmagistrates, and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment, by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty every joint and member is moved to perform his duty, are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; ”

“ 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. ”

“ The claim to absolute sovereignty is, in effect, a claim that all external affairs are to be regulated purely by force, and that when two nations or groups of nations are interested in a question, the decision shall depend solely upon which of them is, or is believed to be, the stronger. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If a monarch, an aristocracy, or a parliament, possess the sovereignty of a country, a doctrine that these sovereignties should not think, speak or discuss, except according to such rules as should be prescribed to them by the people, would be equivalent to the doctrine, that a nation possessing the soveveignty, should not think, speak or discuss, except according to such rules as should be prescribed to them by a monarchy an aristocracy or a parliament. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Popular sovereignty, in the true sense of the term, means the sovereignty of all individuals, so regulated by law as to protect the rights and liberties of any one against the encroachments of any other, and so organized by political institutions as to give a common expression to the collective will. ”

“ By far the greater part of the inhabitants recognize American sovereignty, and welcome it as n guarantee of order and security for life, property, liberty, freedom of conscience and the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Under our confederate system, sovereignty is that highest political power which, at its pleasure, creates governments and delegates authority to them. Sovereignty grants powers, but not sovereign powers ”

“ All governments, properly speaking, in which the sovereignty is held to rest in the people or political community, and the king or emperor holds from the community and represents the the majority of the state, are Republican, as was Imperial Rome or is Imperial France; all governments, on the other in which the sovereignty vests not in the political community, but in the individual and is held as a personal right, or as a private estate, are in principal monarchical. ”

“ I’ the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
145 And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too, but innocent and pure;
II. 1. 150 No sovereignty;—
Seb.
Yet he would be king on’t.
Ant. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But no ordinary citizen of the United States probably ever thought of sovereignty except as residing either in the government of his state or in the federal government consisting of congress and president, or sometimes in one way, sometimes in the other. ”

“ But though the sovereignty be not mixed, but be always either simple democracy, or simple aristocracy, or pure monarchy, nevertheless in the administration thereof, all those sorts of government may have place subordinate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is one application of the doctrine of illimitable sovereignty which is of sufficient importance and interest to deserve special notice. Among the chief functions of sovereign power is legislation. ”

“ 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. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Many argue that the whole idea of sovereignty is modern and imported; but it seems impossible that anything so foolish should have been suddenly devised, and the constitution bears on its front the marks of dotage. ”

“ This sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called LIBERTY. Where two or several of these sovereignties associate, the State begins. ”