Government

"Shall we judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely."

"If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view, justify revolution—certainly would if such a right were a vital one."

"A power has arisen up in the Government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks."

"For where's the State beneath the Firmament, That doth excell the Bees for Government?"

"What constitutes a state? . . . . . . Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain. . . . . . . And sovereign law, that state's collected will, O'er thrones and globes elate, Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill."

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free."

"England is the mother of parliaments."

"Nothing's more dull and negligent Than an old, lazy government, That knows no interest of state, But such as serves a present strait."

"Though the people support the government the government should not support the people."

"Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation."

"There was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was petticoat government."

"Excise, a hateful tax levied upon commodities."

"This end (Robespierre's theories) was the representative sovereignty of all the citizens concentrated in an election as extensive as the people themselves, and acting by the people, and for the people in an elective council, which should be all the government."

"I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females."

"It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king."

""Whatever is, is not," is the maxim of the anarchist, as often as anything comes across him in the shape of a law which he happens not to like."

"So then because some towns in England are not represented, America is to have no representative at all. They are "our children"; put when children ask for bread we are not to give a stone."

"Support a compatriot against a native, however the former may blunder or plunder."

"And the first thing I would do in my government, I would have nobody to control me, I would be absolute; and who but I: now, he that is absolute, can do what he likes; he that can do what he likes, can take his pleasure; he that can take his pleasure, can be content; and he that can be content, has no more to desire; so the matter's over."

"They have proved themselves offensive partisans and unscrupulous manipulators of local party management."

"Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving how not to do it."

"A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy."

"Perish commerce. Let the constitution live!"

"No sooner does he hear any of his brothers mention reform or retrenchment, than up he jumps."

"Of the various executive abilities, no one excited more anxious concern than that of placing the interests of our fellow-citizens in the hands of honest men, with understanding sufficient for their stations. No duty is at the same time more difficult to fulfill. The knowledge of character possessed by a single individual is of necessity limited. To seek out the best through the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect."

"The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth."

"The Americans equally detest the pageantry of a king and the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop."

"Salus populi suprema lex."

"Misera contribuens plebs."

"The Congress of Vienna does not walk, but it dances."

"States are great engines moving slowly."

"Adeo ut omnes imperii virga sive bacillum vere superius inflexum sit."

"Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness we bring A Church without a bishop, a State without a King."

"Yet if thou didst but know how little wit governs this mighty universe."

"I am for Peace, for Retrenchment, and for Reform,—thirty years ago the great watchwords of the great Liberal Party."

"Well, will anybody deny now that the Government at Washington, as regards its own people, is the strongest government in the world at this hour? And for this simple reason, that it is based on the will, and the good will, of an instructed people."

"And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them."

"When bad men combine, the good must associate."

"Consider in fact, a body of six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous persons, set to consult about "business," with twenty-seven millions, mostly fools, assiduously listening to them, and checking and criticising them. Was there ever, since the world began, will there ever be till the world end, any "business" accomplished in these circumstances?"

"There are but two ways of paying debt—increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out."

"There was a State without kings or nobles; there was a church without a bishop; there was a people governed by grave magistrates which it had elected, and equal laws which it had framed."

"Who's in or out, who moves this grand machine, Nor stirs my curiosity nor spleen: Secrets of state no more I wish to know Than secret movements of a puppet show: Let but the puppets move, I've my desire, Unseen the hand which guides the master wire."

"I have considered the pension list of the republic a roll of honor."

"The communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness which assiduously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of misrule."

"The country has, I think, made up its mind to close this career of plundering and blundering."

"The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants, but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress, and without it governments sink into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob."

"Fellow-citizens: Clouds and darkness are around Him; His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds; justice and judgment are the establishment of His throne; mercy and truth shall go before His face! Fellow citizens! God reigns and the Government at Washington lives."

"When constabulary duty's to be done A policeman's lot is not a happy one."

"Unnecessary taxation is unjust taxation."

"That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."