Usurpation

“ They cannot stop after having once begun. They must go further; for usurpation has but one means to sustain itself, and that is further usurpation. They must proceed or give it up entirely — and who of them did ever speak of giving it up? [Cheers.]
Do not lull your fears into sleep by the idle delusion that the Constitution will prevent them from attempting faurther encroachments; that the Constitution will protect you. Let the annals of this country teach you that the Constitution is no barrier to any kind of tyranny, if the general government have the exclusive authority to construe it. ”

“ You apprehend that a single executive, with, eminence of talent, and destitution of principle, equal to the object, might, by usurpation, render his powers hereditary. Yet I think history furnishes as many examples of a single usurper arising out of a government by a plurality, as of temporary trusts of power in a single hand rendered permanent by usurpation. I do not believe, therefore, that this danger is lessened in the hands of a plural executive. Perhaps it is greatly increased, by the state of inefficiency to which they are liable from feuds and divisions among themselves. ”

“ The crime of usurpation is the greatest and most enormous a subject can perpetrate; but what epithet can there be given to him who, to preserve an authority unlawfully acquired, asssociates in his guilt a Supreme Pontiff, whom the multitude is accustomed to reverence as the representative of their God, but who, by this act of scandal and sacrilege, descends to a level with the most culpable of men? ”

“ Exhortations to disregard domestic usurpation, until foreign danger shall have passed, is an artifice which may be forever used; because the possessors of power, who are the advocates for its extension, can ever create national embarrassments, to be successively employed to soothe the people into sleep, whilst that power is swelling, silently, secretly, and fatally. ”

“ From the rapid step of usurpation, whether we now act or not, the day of open opposition to the pretended powers of the Constitution cannot be far off, and it is that it may not go down in blood that we now call upon you to resist. We feel ourselves standing underneath its mighty protection, and declaring forth its free and recorded spirit, when we say we must resist. ”

“ But, should mysterious fate decree her fall, may that power which knows the vice and horrors which accompany a tyrant's reign, terminate the existence of a people who can no longer preserve their lives but by receiving laws from usurpation! ”

“ A nation has but two sorts of usurpation to fear; one from their neighbours, and another from their own magistrates: Nor is a foreign usurpation more formidable than a domestick, which is the most dangerous of the two, by being hardest to remove; and generally stealing upon the people by degrees, is fixed before it is scarce felt or apprehended: Like wild beasts in a wood, beset with toils as yet unseen by them, they think themselves free ”

“ Would they not be likely to prefer a conduct better adapted to their own immediate aggrandizement? Would they not rather boldly resolve to perpetuate themselves in office by one decisive act of usurpation, than to trust to precarious expedients which, in spite of all the precautions that might accompany them, might terminate in the dismission, disgrace, and ruin of their authors? ”

“ The palatines in England and Germany, whose jurisdiction and authority have been established by time, and whose governments have acquired firmness and stability, would probably have deemed this usurpation illegal and rebellious, and punished the authors and abettors of it. No doubt a firm yet moderate opposition to the measures of government in defence of the rights and liberties of the people, differs as much from usurpation, as a wholesome remedy to a disordered constitution differs from deadly poison. ”

“ This sudden usurpation had so overpowered the imaginations of men, that they began to consider it as the only evil that had ever existed in the world, and that with it, all tyranny and ambition would cease. ”

“ As soon as the intention of trying the king was known in foreign countries, so enormous an action was exclaimed against by the general voice of reason and humanity; and all men, under whatever form of government they were born, rejected the example, as the utmost effort of undisguised usurpation, and the most heinous insult on law and justice. ”

“ Calumny is forbidden by the laws, usurpation by the Constitution. Calumny injures individuals, usurpation, States. Calumny may be redressed by the common judicatures; usurpation can only be controlled by the act of society. Ought usurpation, which is most mischievous, to be rendered less hateful by calumny, which, though injurious, is in a degree less pernicious? ”

“ The newspapers of the country, voicing the sentiments of the people, literally hiss into silence any man who has the courage to protest against the prevailing tendency to lawlessness [III 4] and bare-faced usurpation; while parties have ceased to deal with the question for other than purposes of political capital. Even this fruitful mine is well-nigh exhausted. A few more years, and the usurper and the man of violence will be left in undisputed possession of his blood-stained inheritance. No man will attempt to deter him from sowing broadcast the seeds of revolution and death. ”

“ Usurpation, which is a kind of domestic conquest, gives no more right to obedience than unjust war; it is necessary that the people should both be at liberty to consent, and have actually consented to allow and confirm a power which the constitution of their commonwealth does not recognise. [960] But tyranny may exist without usurpation, whenever the power reposed in anyone’s hands for the people’s benefit is abused to their impoverishment or slavery. Force may never be opposed but to unjust and unlawful force ”

“ Now, sir, I have to follow the Senator from Indiana and the Senator from New Jersey a little further in their discoveries. All Constitutional argument, it seems, having failed, the defense of the President's act of usurpation resorts to the last, and, as I look upon it, the most dangerous and desperate expedient, a justification by precedent. I call it a most dangerous and desperate expedient, for the justification of evil deeds by precedent once recognized as generally admissible would be utterly subversive of all our public and private morals. ”

“ In the first instance, the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in the last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people who can, by the election of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers. ”

“ As for usurpation, or a perpetuation of his authority, independent of the popular will, that is hopeless, until the period shall have arrived, in which the people are ready to barter their liberties, and are ready to become the voluntary slaves of any despot. [192] Whenever that period shall arrive, it will be useless to speak of guardians, or of rights. Where all are corrupt, it is idle to talk of virtue. Quis custodiet custodies? Who shall keep watch over the people, which they choose to betray themselves? ”

“ But when it is evident that the exercise of any power not given up would be a usurpation, it would be not only useless, but dangerous, to enumerate a number of rights which are not intended to be given up; because it would be implying, in the strongest manner, that every right not included in the exception might be impaired by the government without usurpation ”

“ It would be no exaggeration to say that government itself began in usurpation, in the feudalism of the soldier and the bigotry of the priest; that liberty and civilization are only fragments of rights wrung from the strong hands of wealth and book-learning. ”

“ It is true it was acquired by the valor and with the wealth of the whole nation. But we hold, nevertheless, no arbitrary power over it. We hold no arbitrary authority over anything, whether acquired lawfully or seized by usurpation. ”

“ Whatever may be the limits or modifications of the powers of the Union, it is easy to imagine an endless train of possible dangers; and by indulging an excess of jealousy and timidity, we may bring ourselves to a state of absolute scepticism and irresolution. I repeat here what I have observed in substance in another place, that all observations founded upon the danger of usurpation ought to be referred to the composition and structure of the government, not to the nature or extent of its powers. The State governments, by their original constitutions, are invested with complete sovereignty. ”

“ How can it abstain from promoting a complete and despotic neutralization of power, since that is the natural consequence of systematic usurpation once commenced? — Such is the power we have to struggle against; a power aspiring, grasping, unscrupulous, consolidated and despotic by nature. ”

“ It is a supposition not to be endured for a moment, that three fourths of the states would conspire in any deliberate, dangerous, and palpable breach of the constitution. And if the judicial department alone should attempt any usurpation, congress, in its legislative capacity, has full power to abrogate the injurious effects of such a decision. Practically speaking, therefore, there can be very little danger of any such usurpation or deliberate breach.
§ 380. But it is always a doubtful mode of reasoning to argue from the possible abuse of powers, that they do not exist. ”

“ Turning back, wherever there is light to guide us, we may everywhere see that in their first perceptions, all peoples have recognized the common ownership in land, and that private property is an usurpation, a creation of force and fraud. ”

“ And to apply this to France, I see no reason to believe that the present usurpation will be more permanent than any other military despotism which has been established by the same means, and with the same defiance of public opinion. ”

“ If, therefore, there should be a corrupt co-operation of three fourths of the states for permanent usurpation, (a case not to be supposed, or if supposed, it differs not at all in principle or redress from the case of a majority of a state or nation having the same intent,) the case is certainly irremediable under any known forms of the constitution. ”

“ It is a usurpation of the-same character as it would be for a portion of the people of any State of the Union to undertake to establish a separate government, within its limits, for the purpose of redressing any grievance, real or imaginary, of which they might complain, against the legitimate State government, touch a principle, if carried into execution, would destroy all lawful authority and produce universal anarchy. ”

“ It was evident to every reasonable man that a republican government, being adverse to the prepossessions of a great majority of the people, could only be brought about and maintained by the force of usurpation. ”

“ Here, usurpation is the rule there is no recognition of legal authority; they brave the King, the ministers, the judges, the Assembly, the municipality, the mayor, the commandant of the National Guard. Nature and principle raise them above the law ”

“ And this favor must not be considered as restitution. "Far from accepting the property of individuals society despoils them of it, simply converting the usurpation into a veritable right, the enjoyment of it into proprietorship." Previous to the social contract I was possessor not by right but in fact and even unjustly if I had large possessions; for, "every man has naturally a right to whatever he needs," and I have robbed other men of all that I possessed beyond my subsistence. ”

“ They are apt to forget, that an assumed power to do good, in most cases implies an assumption of power to do evil. And when that restriction is once disregarded, when that limit of delegated authority is once overstepped, where are new limits to be found? Usurpation cannot defend and sustain itself but by new and repeated usurpation. Having originated in an unauthorized accumulation of power, it must try further to accumulate in order not to lose the store of authority already laid up. It never will, it never can stop of itself — it must be stopped by others.
Let us return to the constitution. ”

“ We have warned them, for time to time, of attempts, by their legislature, to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us; we have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here; we have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity. And we have conjured them, by the tie of common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. ”

“ Every municipal regulation, then, of any State, or any of its peculiar institutions, which makes man property, is a violation of this great law of nature, and is founded in usurpation and tyranny, and is accomplished by force, fraud, or an abuse of power. ”

“ Accordingly, election or self government being a right fatal to usurpation, whenever some portion of it could no longer be withheld from the people, usurpers have laboured to defeat it, first, by restricting it to the idea of an indulgence ”

“ AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage. When the governor, however intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion. ”