Temporal sovereignty

“ Whether we reason from the late wars or from those menacing symptoms which now appear in Europe, it is manifest that if a convulsion should take place in any of those countries it will proceed from causes which have no existence and are utterly unknown in these States, in which there is but one order, that of the people, to whom the sovereignty exclusively belongs. ”

“ If sovereignty be surrendered and transferred, in part or entirely, by the several States, it must be transferred to somebody; and the question is, to whom? Not, certainly, to the government — as has been thoughtlessly asserted by some; for that would subvert the fundamental principle of our system — that sovereignty resides in the people. But if not to the government, it must be transferred — if at all — to the people, regarded in the aggregate, as a nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This was the plausible and attractive sentiment of State pride, concealing in itself the idea of perfect sovereignty, with the right of nullification and secession. With consummate ability, with untiring industry and perseverance, and without a moment's cessation for more than a quarter of a century, this fruitful but pernicious seed of disorganization was sown broadcast among the Southern people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nature is [Pg 285] stronger than man. She will not permit her laws to be violated with impunity, and if this war does not separate these two nations, other wars will. If we succeed in preserving the principle of State sovereignty—the only principle which can save this whole country, North and South, from utter wreck and ruin—all will be well, whatever combinations of particular States may be made, from time to time. ”

“ But the Compromise of 1850 had loosed from its Pandora's box another fomenter of trouble, in the idea of leaving to the people of the Territories the settlement of whether their incoming States should be slave or free,--the doctrine of "popular sovereignty" as it was called. The nation had accepted that theory as a makeshift for the emergency of that day ”

“ The political and commercial combinations against the north are gaining in strength and confidence every day. Political, sectional, and local questions, that I had hoped were buried with the dead of the past four years, are revived. Independent sovereignty, State rights, and nullification, where the power to nullify is revoked, are openly discussed. ”

“ Tenthly, is annexed to the sovereignty the choosing of all counsellors, ministers, magistrates, and officers, both in peace and war. For seeing the sovereign is charged with the end, which is the common peace and defence, he is understood to have power to use such means as he shall think most fit for his discharge. ”

“ It is one of the essential attributes of sovereignty which belongs to every independent nation, to determine for itself, how it will deal with rebels and insurgents against its authority and government. ”

“ It is again not true that the territorial character of sovereignty was always recognised, for long after the dissolution of the Roman dominion the minds of men were under the empire of ideas irreconcileable with such a conception. An old order of things, and of views founded on it, had to decay—a new Europe, and an apparatus of new notions congenial to it, had to spring up—before two of the chiefest postulates of International Law could be universally conceded. ”

“ Our fair and sunny land is threatened with invasion by the Vandals of the North, and it becomes every man’s duty to resist them. We are clearly on the side of right. The original compact of the thirteen States was, most evidently, no surrender of sovereignty. ”

“ As I have already remarked, I apprehend that sovereignty is a variable quantity of administrative energy, which, in civilizations which we call advancing, tends to accumulate with a rapidity proportionate to the acceleration of movement. ”

“ A chain of subordination from sovereign power downwards, is necessary for its preservation; and instead of snapping asunder the link between sovereignty and its highest agency, ought to be the strongest, because that agency is uniformly its destroyer, whenever a new sovereignty is erected upon the ruins of the old. Otherwise the sovereignty in its interval of torpidness, must submit to behold its agents, like Persian satraps, go to war with each other for itself. ”

“ With a large body of discontented gentry everywhere, and whole clusters of native princes and chiefs interspersed through our dominions, it is idle to say that the continuance of our sovereignty depends from one day to another on anything except the army. ”

“ Heretofore, the nearest approach to a universal state has been an empire like that of Egypt or Rome built by conquest and maintained by military authority exercised by the imperial nucleus over its associated and subordinated territories. The universal state described above would be an association of sovereign states, each delegating a sufficient measure of its sovereignty to enable the World Federation to act as a responsible planet-wide government. ”

“ This sovereignty may—nay, it must—remain in abeyance until society becomes sufficiently strong and stable to be entitled to its full exercise, as sovereignty does not belong to the general government, and its exercise is a marked usurpation. ”

“ Lacking a common tie of sufficient strength, the States would inevitably drift toward independent sovereignty, and they had given signal proof in the matter of raising troops, contributing money, and in their everlasting disputes about boundary lines, as to the absolute lack of any common public spirit. ”

“ The people of the South, contending for the doctrine of State sovereignty, and pledging their fortunes and their lives in defence of a supposed inalienable right, and the masses of the North as strenuously opposing this theory, and asserting that no emergency could arise whereby a member of the Union might reclaim its sovereignty from the national compact, presented an issue altogether susceptible of settlement. ”

“ And the friction between them was largely due to the circumstance that they both aimed at universal sovereignty, and had a similar international organisation, a similar net thrown over the nations, and in a like way mysteries, dogmas, and rites. ”

“ Out of the natural right of self preservation, sovereignties of all forms have collected the same right, as inherent without the formality of a positive stipulation. There never has occurred the least occasion to convince an aristo eratical or monarchical sovereignty, that periodical agents, above their intermediate control, would speedily subvert their sovereignties. ”

“ It is evident, that the continuance of the balance of power is not now to be perceived by its natural consequences, tranquillity and liberty; the whole continent is now in confusion, laid waste by the ravages of armies, subject to one sovereign to-day, and to-morrow to another: there is scarcely any place where the calamities of war are not felt or expected, and where property, by consequence, is not uncertain, and life itself in continual danger. ”

“ Dear Sir,—The fundamental article of my political creed is, that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor; equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It may appear surprising that the Great Powers so readily gave their support to the new method of obtaining an apparently limited control over the conquered territories, and did not seek to obtain complete sovereignty over them. It is not necessary to look far for a sufficient and very practical reason. ”

“ In the succession of the previous forms of government, the empire itself was not in any particular peril. They gave place, each to its successor, without any subversion of the government. But when the seventh head ceased to exercise sovereignty, the beast itself was apparently dead. The wound, however, did not prove mortal. The beast still lived. Its [pg 172] sovereignty was perpetuated by the decemregal governments; which constituted the eighth form of government—symbolized by the beast that was, is not, and yet is again in existence and will continue till the day of perdition, 17:11 ”

“ To ponder too curiously the question why a State declines is like pondering too curiously the question why a man dies. In the vicissitudes of States we are on the threshold of the same Mystery as in the vicissitudes of nature and of human life. The tracts and regions governed by cause and effect are behind us. An empire, like a work of art, is an end in itself, but duration in the former is an integral portion or phase of that end. ”

“ Nothing is permanent in this world except change. The great problems of statesmanship can be given only a temporary solution. States and nations rise, grow, stand still, decline, decay, and ultimately disappear. ”

“ The approach of spring lowered the fate of empire, the birth of nations, and the painful convulsions experienced by every state, struggling to retrieve and permanently secure the rights of nature, seized or curtailed by the strong hand of power. ”

“ Now, as then, the Empire will emerge from a war for existence, in which mother and daughter lands alike have shared. Now, as then, the strain and pressure of the war will have brought to light deficiencies in the system of the Empire. Now, as then, the most patent of these deficiencies will be the fact that, generous as the self-governing powers of the great Dominions have been, they still have limits; and the irresistible tendency of self-government to work towards its own fulfilment will once more show itself. ”

“ Sovereigns die and Sovereignties: how all dies, and is for a Time only; is a 'Time-phantasm, yet reckons itself real!' The Merovingian Kings, slowly wending on their bullock-carts through the streets of Paris, with their long hair flowing, have all wended slowly on,—into Eternity. ”

“ To guard the sovereign openly is equivalent to an admission of the weakness of his governmental organization.
Our sovereign, when amidst his people, will always appear to be surrounded by a crowd of curious men and women, who will stand beside him as though accidentally and will hold back the other people as though through respect for order. ”

“ I point these things out here only to carry home the fact that the ideas of sovereign isolation and detachment that were perfectly valid in 1900, the self-sufficient empire, Imperial Zollverein and all that stuff, and damn the foreigner! are now, because of the enormous changes in range of action and facility of locomotion that have been going on, almost as wild—or would be if we were not so fatally accustomed to them—and quite as dangerous, as the idea of setting up a free and sovereign state in the Isle of Dogs. All the European empires are becoming vulnerable at every point. ”

“ Our manifest national policy has been foreshadowed by the conditions that have been created. Averse to wars of conquest, and free from disturbing visions of imperial power and grandeur, the nation has become great beyond the dreams of its founders. A new era is upon it—a condition and not a theory confronts it. Its traditions must be partially shattered and its policy revised and shaped with reference to the exigencies of the times. ”

“ For better or worse, in 1975 and the years immediately succeeding, we will be living on a planet divided into some 140 politically sovereign states. In view of the widespread pressure toward self-determination, the number of sovereign states has increased considerably, especially since war's end in 1945. ”

“ In the unification era, a city imposes itself over the other ones in the geographical area, forming the imperial power and the first unification nucleus of the era or first empire, in the true sense of the word. This first nucleus presents a first phase that is its first aggressive process, it then falls, this would be its phase of great depression, afterwards it rises again: second process. Now the military disaster follows so that the empire enters in its phase of conservation and afterwards in the phase of disintegration. ”

“ But a time of war is the time when the power would probably be exerted to any extent. Let us, however, consider the consequences of a limitation of this power to a time of war only. One moment's consideration will show the impolicy of it in the most glaring manner. We certainly ought to guard against the machinations of other countries. We know not what designs may be entertained against us ”

“ He thinks it like a bicycle, which must fall when it comes to a standstill. It is an awkward result of this doctrine that when there is no more room for expansion, and a time must come, perhaps soon, when there will be no more room, the empire will begin to decline. ”

“ It is fit that nations should have a moment's breathing-time; the period has arrived when they should cease to tear out each other's entrails; it is time that thrones should be consolidated, and that our enemies be deprived of the plea that we are forever striving to carry into the world the torch of revolution. ”