GOVERNMENT
/ JUST PRINCIPLES
Though you have doubtless heard most of the
proceedings of the States General since my last, I will take up the
narration where that left it, that you may be able to separate the
true from the false accounts you have heard. A good part of what was
conjectured in that letter, is now become true history. . . . The
Natonal Assembly then (for that is the name they take),
having shown through every stage of these transactions a coolness,
wisdom, and resolution to set fire to the four corners of the
kingdom and to perish with it themselves, rather than to relinquish
an iota from their plan of a total change of government, are now in
complete and undisputed possession of the sovereignty. The executive
and aristocracy are at their feet; the mass of the nation, the mass
of the clergy, and the army are with them; they have prostrated the
old government, and are now beginning to build one from the
foundation. A committee, charged with the arrangement of their
business, gave in, two days ago, the following order of proceedings.
"1. Every government should have for its only end, the
preservation of the rights of man; whence it follows, that to recall
constantly the government to the end proposed, the constitution
should begin by a declaration of the natural and imprescriptible
rights of man.
"2. Monarchical government being proper to maintain those
rights, it has been chosen by the French nation. It suits especially
a great society; it is necessary for the happiness of France. The
declaration of the principles of this government, then, should
follow immediately the declaration of the rights of man.
"3. It results from the principles of monarchy, that the
nation, to assure its own rights, has yielded particular rights to
the monarch; the constitution, then, should declare, in a precise
manner, the rights of both. It should begin by declaring the rights
of the French nation, and then it should declare the rights of the
King.
"4. The rights of the King and nation not existing but for the
happiness of the individuals who compose it, they lead to an
examination of the rights of citizens.
"5. The French nation not being capable of assembling
individually, to exercise all its rights, it ought to be
represented. It is necessary, then, to declare the form of its
representation and the rights of its representatives.
"6. From the union of the powers of the nation and King,
should result the enacting and execution of the laws; thus, then, it
should first be determined how the laws shall be established,
afterwards should be considered, how they shall be executed.
"7. Laws have for their object the general administration of
the kingdom, the property and the actions of the citizens. The
execution of the laws which concern the general administration,
requires Provincial and Municipal Assemblies. It is necessary to
examine, therefore, what should be the organization of the
Provincial Assemblies, and what of the Municipal.
"8. The execution of the laws which concern the property and
actions of the citizens, call for the judiciary power. It should be
determined how that should be confided, and then its duties and
limits.
~ For the execution of the laws and the defence of the kingdom,
there exists a public force. It is necessary, then, to determine the
principles which should direct it, and how it should be employed.
"Recapitulation.
"Declaration of the rights of man. Principles of the monarchy.
Rights of the nation. Rights of the King. Rights of the citizens. "Organization
and rights of the National Assembly. Forms necessary for the
enaction of laws. Organization and functions of the Provincial and
Municipal Assemblies. Duties and limits of the judiciary power.
Functions and duties of the military power." You see that these
are the materials of a superb edifice, and the hands which have
prepared them, are perfectly capable of putting them together, and
of filling up the work of which these are only the outlines. While
there are some men among them of very superior abilities, the mass
possess such a degree of good sense, as enables them to decide well.
I have always been afraid their numbers might lead to confusion.
Twelve hundred men in one room are too many. I have still that fear.
Another apprehension is, that a majority cannot be induced to adopt
the trial by jury; and I consider that as the only anchor ever yet
imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles
of its constitution. |
Thomas
Paine
11 Jul 1789 |
GOVERNMENT
/ POWER
… I am not a friend to a very energetic
government. It is always oppressive. It places the governors indeed
more at their ease, at the expense of the people. The late rebellion
in Massachusetts has given more alarm, than I think it should have
done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen States in the course
of eleven years, is but one for each State in a century and a half.
No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of
power in the hands of government, prevent insurrections. . . . And
say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to
the government, or information to the people. This last is the most
certain, and the most legitimate engine of government Educate and
inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is
their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve
them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince
them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation
of our liberty. After all, it is my principle that the will of the
majority should prevail. If they approve the proposed constitution
in all its parts, I shall concur in it cheerfully, in hopes they
will amend it, whenever they shall find it works wrong. This
reliance cannot deceive us, as long as we remain virtuous; and I
think we shall be so, as long as agriculture is our principal
object, which will be the case, while there remain vacant lands in
any part of America. When we get piled upon one another in large
cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go
to eating one another as they do there. |
James
Madison
20 Dec 1787 |
GOVERNMENT
/ PUBLIC REVENUE AND DEBT
It is a wise rule, and should be fundamental in
a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to
restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, "never
to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for
paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term;
and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public
faith." On such a pledge as this, sacredly observed, a
government may always command, on a reasonable interest, all
the lendable money of their citizens, while the necessity of an
equivalent tax is a salutary warning to them and their constituents
against oppressions, bankruptcy, and its inevitable consequence,
revolution. But the term of redemption must be moderate, and at any
rate within the limits of their rightful powers. But what limits, it
will be asked, does this prescribe to their powers? What is to
hinder them from creating a perpetual debt? The laws of nature, I
answer. The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. …We
may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by
the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the
succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
…Suppose the annual births of the State of New York to be
twenty-three thousand nine hundred and m.nety4our; the whole number
of its inhabitants, according to Buffon; will be six hundred and
seventeen thousand seven hundred and three, of all ages. Of these
there would constantly be two hundred and sixty-nine thousand two
hundred and eighty-six minors, and three hundred and forty-eight
thousand four hundred and seventeen adults, of which last, one
hundred and seventy four thousand two hundred and nine will be a
majority. Suppose that majority, on the first day of the year 1794;
had borrowed a sum of money equal to the fee-simple value of the
State, and to have consumed it in eating, drinking and making merry
in their day; or; if you please, in quarrelling and fighting with
their unoffending neighbors. Within eighteen years and eight months,
one-half of the adult citizens were dead. Till then, being the
majority, they might rightfully levy the interest of their debt
annually on themselves and their fellow revelers, or fellow
champions. But at that period, say at this moment, a new majority
have come into place, in their own right, and not under the rights,
the conditions, or laws of their predecessors. Are they bound to
acknowledge the debt, to consider the preceding generation as having
had a right to eat up the whole soil of their country, in the course
of a life, to alienate it from them, (for it would be an alienation
to the creditors,) and would they think themselves either legally or
morally bound to give up their country and emigrate to another for
subsistence? Every one will say no; that the soil is the gift of God
to the living, as much as it had been to the deceased generation;
and that the laws of nature impose no obligation on them to pay this
debt. And although, like some other natural rights, this has not yet
entered into any declaration of rights, it is no less a law, and
ought to be acted on by honest governments. It is, at the same time,
a salutary curb on the spirit of war and indebtment, which, since
the modern theory of the perpetuation of debt, has drenched the
earth with blood, and crushed its in-habitants under burdens ever
accumulating. |
John
W. Eppes
24 Jun 1813 |
GOVERNMENT
/ PUBLIC REVENUE
I have read and considered your report on the
operations of the sinking fund, and entirely approve of it, as the
best plan on which we can set out. I think it an object of great
importance, to be kept in view and to be undertaken at a fit season,
to simplify our system of finance, and bring it within the
comprehension of every member of Congress. Hamilton set out on a
different plan. In order that he might have the entire government of
his machine, he determined so to complicate it as that neither the
President nor Congress should be able to understand it, or to
control him. He succeeded in doing this, not only beyond their
reach, but so that he at length could not unravel it himself. He
gave to the debt, in the first instance, m funding it, the most
artificial and mysterious form he could devise. He then moulded up
his appropriations of a number of scraps and remnants, many of which
were nothing at all, and applied them to different objects in
reversion and remainder, until the whole system was involved in
impenetrable fog; and while he was giving himself the airs of
providing for the payment of the debt, he left himself free to add
to it continually, as he did in fact, instead of paying it. I like
your idea of kneading all his little scraps and fragments into one
batch, and adding to it a complementary sum, which, while it forms
it into a single mass from which everything is to be paid, will
enable us, should a breach of appropriation ever be charged on us,
to prove that the sum appropriated, and more, has been applied to
its specific object.
But there is a point beyond this on which I should wish to keep my
eye, and to which I should aim to approach by every tack which
previous arrangements force on us. That is, to form into one
consolidated mass all the moneys received into the treasury, and to
the several expenditures, giving them a preference of payment
according to the order in which they should be arranged. As for
example. 1. The interest of the public debt. 2. Such portions of
principal as are exigible. 3. The expenses of government. 4. Such
other portions of principal as, though not exigible, we are still
free to pay when we please. The last object might be made to take up
the residuum of money remaining in the treasury at the end of every
year, after the three first objects were complied with, and would be
the barometer whereby to test the economy of the administration. It
would furnish a simple measure by which every one could mete their
merit, and by which every one could decide when taxes were deficient
or superabundant. If to this can be added a simplification of the
form of accounts in the treasury department, and in the organization
of its officers, so as to bring everything to a single centre, we
might hope to see the finances of the Union as clear and
intelligible as a merchant's books, sd that every member of
Congress, and every man of any mind in the Union, should be able to
comprehend them to investigate abuses, and consequently to control
them. |
Albert
Gallatin
(Secretary of the Treasury)
1 Apr 1802 |
GOVERNMENT
/ PUBLIC REVENUE AND DEBT
Although a century of British experience has
proved to what a wonderful extent the funding on specific redeeming
taxes enables a nation to anticipate in war the resources of peace,
and although the other nations of Europe have tried and trodden
every path of force or folly in fruitless quest of the same object,
yet we still expect to find in juggling tricks and banking dreams,
that money can be made out of nothing, and insufficient quantity to
meet the expenses of a heavy war by sea and land. It is said,
indeed, that money cannot be borrowed from our merchants as from
those of England. But it can be borrowed from our people. They will
give you all the necessaries of war they produce, if, instead of the
bankrupt trash they now are obliged to receive for want of any
other, you will give them a paper promise funded on a specific
pledge, and of a size for common circulation. But you say the
merchants will not take this paper. What the people take, the
merchants must take, or sell nothing. All these doubts and fears
prove only the extent of the dominion which the banking institutions
have obtained over the minds of our citizens, and especially of
those inhabiting cities or other banking places; and this dominion
must be broken, or it will break us. But here, as in the other case,
we must make up our minds to suffer yet longer before we can get
right. The misfortune is, that in the meantime we shall plunge
ourselves in unextinguishable debt, and entail on our posterity an
inheritance of eternal taxes, which will bring our government and
people into the condition of those of England, a nation of pikes and
gudgeons, the latter bred merely as food for the former.
|
James
Monroe
1 Jan 1815 |
GOVERNMENT
/ PURPOSE OF
The only orthodox object of the institution of
government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to
the general mass of those associated under it. |
M.
Van der Kemp
1812 |
GOVERNMENT
/ REPUBLICAN
You have successfully and completely pulverized
Mr. Adams' system of orders and his opening the mantle of
republicanism to every government of laws, whether consistent or not
with natural right. Indeed, it must be acknowledged that the term "republic"
is of very vague application in every language. Witness the
self-styled republics of Holland, Switzerland, Genoa, Venice,
Poland. Were I to assign to this term a precise and definite idea, I
would say purely and simply it means a government by its citizens in
mass, acting directly and personally, according to rules established
by the majority, and that every other government is more or less
republican in proportion as it has in its composition more or less
of this ingredient of the direct action of the citizens. Such a
government is evidently restrained to very narrow limits of space
and population. I doubt if it would be practicable beyond the extent
of a New England township. …Other shades of republicanism may
be found in other forms of government where the executive,
judiciary, and legislative functions, and the different branches of
the latter, are chosen by the people more or less directly for
longer terms of years, or for life, or made hereditary; or where
there are mixtures of authorities, some dependent on, and others
independent of, the people. The further the departure from direct
and constant control by the citizens, the less has the government of
the ingredient of republicanism; evidently none where the
authorities are hereditary, as in France, Venice, etc., or
self-chosen, as in Holland, and little, where for life, in
proportion as the life continues in being after the act of election.
The purest republican feature in the government of our own State is
the House of Representatives. The Senate is equally so the first
year, less the second, and so on. The Executive still less, because
not chosen by the people directly. The Judiciary seriously
anti-republican, because for life, and the national arm wielded, as
you observe, by military leaders irresponsible but to themselves.
Add to this the vicious constitution of our county courts (to whom
the justice, the executive administration, the taxation, police, the
military appointments of the county, and nearly all our daily
concerns are confided), self-appointed, self-continued, holding
their authorities for life, and with an impossibility of breaking in
on the perpetual succession of any faction once possessed of the
bench. They are in truth the executive, the judiciary, and the
military of their respective counties, and the sum of the counties
makes the State. And add also that one half of our brethren who
fight and pay taxes are excluded like helots from the rights of
representation, as if society were instituted for the soil and not
for the men inhabiting it, or one half of these could dispose of the
rights and the will of the other half without their consent.
What constitutes a State?
Not high-raised battlements, or labor'd mound, Thick wall, or
moated gate;
Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd; No! men,
high-minded men;
Men, who their duties know;
But know their rights; and knowing, dare maintain; These
constitute a State.
In the General Government, the House of
Representatives is mainly republican; the Senate scarcely so at all,
as not elected by the people directly and so long secured even
against those who do elect them; the Executive more republican than
the Senate, from its shorter term, its election by the people in
practice, (for they vote for A only on an assurance that he will
vote for B), and because, in practice also, a principle of rotation
seems to be in a course of establishment; the judiciary independent
of the nation, their coercion by impeachment being found nugatory.
If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their
government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know
no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much
less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other
words, that the people have less regular control over their agents
than their rights and their interests require. And this I ascribe,
not to any want of republican dispositions in those who formed these
constitutions, but to a submission of true principle to European
authorities, to speculators on government, whose fears of the people
have been inspired by the populace of their own great cities and
were unjustly entertained against the independent, the happy, and
therefore orderly citizens of the United States. …
On this view of the import of the term "republic,"
instead of saying, as has been said, "that it may mean anything
or nothing," we may say with truth and meaning that governments
are more or less republican as they have more or less of the element
of popular election and control in their composition; and believing
as I do that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of
their own rights, and especially that the evils flowing from the
duperies of the people are less injurious than those from the egoism
of their agents, I am a friend to that composition of government
which has in it the most of this ingredient. And I sincerely believe
with you that banking establishments are more dangerous than
standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid
by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity
on a large scale. |
John
Taylor
28 May 1816 |
GOVERNMENT
/ RESPONSIBILITIES OF
Although the power to regulate commerce does
not give a power to build piers, wharves, open ports, clear the beds
of rivers, dig canals, build warehouses, build manufacturing
machines, set up manufactories, cultivate the earth, to all of which
the power would go if it went to the first, yet a power to provide
and maintain a navy, is a power to provide receptacles for it, and
places to cover and preserve it. In choosing the places where this
money should be laid out, I should be much disposed, as far as
contracts will permit, to confine it to such place or places as the
ships of war may lie at, and be protected from ice; and I should be
for stating this in a message to Congress, in order to prevent the
effect of the present example. This act has been built on the
exercise of the power of building light houses, as a regulation of
commerce. But I well remember the opposition, on this very ground,
to the first act for building a light house. The utility of the
thing has sanctioned the infraction. But if on that infraction we
build a second, on that second a third, etc., any one of the powers
in the Constitution may be made to comprehend every power of
government. |
Albert
Gallatin
13 Oct 1802 |
GOVERNMENT
/ RESPONSIBILITIES OF
… the great mass of our people are
agricultural; and the commercial cities, though, by the command of
newspapers, they make a great deal of noise, have little effect in
the direction of the government. They are as different in sentiment
and character from the country people as any two distinct nations,
and are clamorous against the order of things established by the
agricultural interest. Under this order, our citizens generally are
enjoying a very great degree of liberty and security in the most
temperate manner. Every man being at his ease, feels an interest in
the preservation of order, and comes forth to preserve it at the
first call of the magistrate. We are endeavoring, too, to reduce the
government to the practice of a rigorous economy, to avoid burdening
the people, and arming the magistrate with a patronage of money,
which might be used to corrupt and undermine the principles of our
government. |
Pictet
5 Feb 1803 |
GOVERNMENT
/ RESPONSIBILITIES OF
The objects of finance in the United States
have hitherto been very simple; merely to provide for the support of
the government on its peace establishment, and to pay the debt
contracted in the Revolutionary war, a war which will be sanctioned
by the approbation of posterity through all future ages. The means
provided for these objects were ample, and resting on a consumption
which little affected the poor, may he said to have been sensibly
felt by none. The fondest wish of my heart ever was that the surplus
portion of these taxes, destined for the payment of that debt,
should, when that object was accomplished, be continued by annual or
biennial re-enactments, and applied, in time of peace, to the
improvement of our country by canals, roads and useful institutions,
literary or others. |
John
W. Eppes
11 Sep 1813 |
GOVERNMENT
/ RESPONSIBILITIES OF / EDUCATION
…I wish I could give you any news which
would interest you, but withdrawn entirely from all attention to
public affairs, I neither know nor enquire what Congress are doing.
You will probably know this better than myself from the newspapers,
which I have ceased to read in a great degree.
A single measure in my own State has interested me much. Our
legislature some time ago appropriated a fund of a million and a
half dollars to a system of general education. After two or three
projects proposed and put by I ventured to offer one which, although
not adopted, is printed and published for general consideration to
be taken up at the next session. It provides an elementary school in
every neighborhood of fifty or sixty families, a college for the
languages, mensuration, navigation and geography within a day's ride
of every man's house, and a central university of the sciences for
the whole State of eight, ten or twelve professors. But it has to
encounter ignorance, malice, egoism, fanaticism, religious,
political and local perversities. |
Albert
Gallatin
15 Feb 1818 |
GOVERNMENT
/ RESPONSIBILITIES OF / PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS / THE ERIE CANAL
In our America we are turning to public
improvements. Schools, roads, and canals are everywhere either in
operation or contemplation. The most gigantic undertaking yet
proposed, is; that of New York, for drawing the waters of Lake Erie
into the Hudson. The distance is 353 miles, and the height to be
surmounted 661 feet. The expense will be great, but its effect
incalculably powerful in favor of the Atlantic States. Internal
navigation by steamboats is rapidly spreading through all our
States, and that by sails and oars will ere long be looked back to
as among the curiosities of antiquity. We count much, too, on its
efficacy for harbor defence; and it will soon he tried for
navigation by sea. We consider the employment of the contributions
which our citizens can spare, after feeding, and clothing, and
lodging themselves comfortably, as more useful, more moral, and even
more splendid than that preferred by Europe, of destroying human
life, labor and happiness. |
Alexander
von Humboldt
13 Jun 1817 |
GOVERNMENT
/ U.S. SUPREME COURT / APPOINTMENT
At length, then, we have a chance of getting a
republican majority in the supreme judiciary. For ten years has that
branch braved the spirit and will of the nation, after the nation
had manifested its will by a complete reform in every branch
depending on them. The event is a fortunate one, and so timed as to
be a God-send to me. I am sure its importance to the nation will be
felt, and the occasion employed to complete the great operation they
have so long been executing, by the appointment of a decided
republican, with nothing equivocal about him. But who will it be?
Was there ever a profound common lawyer known in any of the Eastern
States? There never was, nor never can be one from those States. The
basis of their law is neither common nor civil; it is an original,
if any compound can so be called. Its foundation seems to have been
laid in the spirit and principles of Jewish law, incorporated with
some words and phrases of common law, and an abundance of notions of
their own. |
Albert
Gallatin
27 Sep 1810 |
|
