| Edition |
3d edition |
| Phys Descr |
xix, 929 pages 24 cm |
| Note |
Includes bibliographical references |
| Contents |
I. New Foundations for Liberty and Authority in the Old World -- Essay -- The poorest in England has a life to live as the richest / Col. Thomas Rainboro (Debates on the Putney Project, 1647) -- If there be any foundation of liberty, it is that those who choose the lawmakers shall be men freed from dependence on others / Lieut. Gen. Henry Ireton (Debates on the Putney Project, 1647) -- The law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men / John Locke (Second Treatise on Civil Government, 1690) -- The liberty of a commonwealth consists in the empire of her laws / James Harrington (The Commonwealth of Oceana, 1656) -- Every man invested with power is apt to abuse it / Baron Charles-Louis de Secondat de Montesquieu (The Spirit of Laws, 1721) -- II. Authoritarian Theology and Democratic Dissent in the New World -- Essay -- He that is willing to tolerate any unsound opinion that his own may also be tolerated hangs God's Bible at the devil's girdle / Nathaniel Ward (The Simple Cobler of Aggawam, 1647) -- If you will be satisfied to enjoy such lawful liberties as God allows you, then you will cheerfully submit to that authority set over you / John Winthrop (Little Speech on Liberty, 1645) |
|
If there be power given to speak great things, then look for great blasphemies, look for licentious abuse of it / John Cotton (Limitation of Government, 1646) -- God's people were and ought to be non-conformists / Roger Williams (The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed: and Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and Answered, 1644) -- Man's original liberty ought to be cherished in all wise governments / John Wise (A Vindication of the Government of New England Churches, 1717) -- Rulers have no authority from God to do mischief / Jonathan Mayhew (A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers, 30 January 1750) -- III. Revolutionary Ideas in Ferment -- Essay -- I look upon the colonies as so many countries gained to Great Britain / Benjamin Franklin (to Governor William Shirley, 22 December 1754) -- America must become a great country, populous and mighty / Benjamin Franklin (to Lord Kames, 11 April 1767) -- Power in the nature of the thing is given in trust / James Otis (The Rights of the British Colonies, 1764) -- The cause of liberty is a cause of too much dignity to be sullied by turbulence and tumult / John Dickinson (Letters from a Farmer, 1767-68) -- Allegiance to the king and obedience to parliament are founded on different principles / James Wilson (Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament, 71 August 1774) -- Americans are entitled to freedom upon every rational principle / Alexander Hamilton (A Full Vindication, 15 December 1774) |
|
The right of colonists to exercise a legislative power is no natural right / Samual Seabury (A View of the Controversy Between Great Britain and Her Colonies, 24 December 1774. A Letter to the Author of A Full Vindication) -- Rebellion is the most atrocious offense that can be perpetrated by man / Daniel Leonard (Massachusettenis, Letters Addressed to the Inhabitants of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1775) -- Our provincial legislatures are the only supreme authorities in the colonies / John Adams (Novanglus, Letters Addressed to the Inhabitants of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1775) -- A government of our own is our natural right / Thomas Paine (Common Sense, January 1776) -- We hold these truths / The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America, 4 July 1776 -- IV. The Unfinished Revolution -- Essay -- The blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government / John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776) -- Unlimited power can not be safely trusted to any man or set on men on earth / Thomas Burke (To the Governor of North Carolina, 11 March and 29 April 1777) -- The fundamental defect is want of power in Congress / Alexander Hamilton (To James Duane, 3 September 1780) -- As too much power leads to despotism, too little leads to anarchy / Alexander Hamilton, (The Continentalist, 12 July 1781 and 4 July 1782) -- We desire and instruct you strenuously to oppose all encroachments upon the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the separate states / Instructions from Fairfax County, Virginia to its representatives in the Virginia legislature, 30 May 1783) -- Our Independence is acknowledged only in our united character as an empire / George Washington (To Governor William Livingston, 12 June 1783) |
|
We are apprehensive ... / Reply of Massachusetts delegates in Congress to instructions from the Massachusetts legislature directing them to introduce a resolution in Congress calling for a constitutional convention, 3 September 1785) -- An elective despotism was not the government we fought for / Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia, 1781-82) -- The injustice of state laws has brought into question the fundamental principle that the majority is the safest guardian of public good and private rights / James Madison (Vices of the Political System of the United States, April 1787) -- To give the people uncontrolled power is not the way to preserve liberty / John Adams (A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787-88) -- V. Toward A More Perfect Union -- Essay -- Let it be tried, then, whether any middle ground can be taken / James Madison (To Edmund Randolph, 8 April 1787) -- I doubt whether any other Convention will be able to make a better Constitution / Benjamin Franklin (The Federal Convention, 1787) -- VI. Getting the Constitution Adopted: The Ratification Debates -- Essay -- We object to consolidation of the United States into one government / Robert Yates and John Lansing (To the Governor of New York, Containing Their Reasons for not Subscribing to the Federal Convention, 1787) -- The time may come when it shall be the duty of a state to have recourse to the sword / Luther Martin (Genuine Information ... Relative to the Proceedings of the General Convention, delivered to the Legislature of the State of Maryland, 1787) -- The change now proposed transfers power from the many to the few / Richard Henry Lee (Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican, 1787) -- I am bold to assert that it is the best form of government ever offered to the world / James Wilson (State House Speech in Philadelphia, 10 October 1787) |
|
I anticipate annihilation of the state governments, which would destroy civil liberties / Antifederalist Whitehill, in the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, 1787) -- In parting with the coercive authority over the states as states, there must be a coercion allowed as to individuals / James Iredell (Reply to George Mason's Objections, 1788) -- This system does not secure the unalienable rights of free men / Antifederalist Lenoir in the North Carolina Ratifying Convention, 1788 -- This power in the judicial will enable them to mould the government into almost any shape they please / Robert Yates (Letters of Brutus, 1788) -- The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid consent of the people / Alexander Hamilton (The Federalist, 1787-88) -- The proposed constitution is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal constitution, but a composition of both / James Madison (The Federalist, 1787-88) -- VII. Getting The Bill of Rights Adopted: Jefferson and Madison -- Essay -- A bill of rights are what the people are entitled to against every government on earth / Thomas Jefferson (To James Madison, 20 December 1787) -- I have never found the omission of a bill of rights a material defect / James Madison (To Thomas Jefferson, 17 October 1788) -- You omit an argument which has great weight with me / Thomas Jefferson (To James Madison, 15 March 1789) -- We act the part of wise and liberal men to make these alterations / James Madison (Speech Placing the Proposed Bill of Rights Amendments before the House of Representatives, 8 June 1789) -- VIII. Establishing National Power: Hamilton and Marshall -- Essay -- A national debt is a national blessing, but ... / Alexander Hamilton (First Report on the Public Credit, 14 January 1790) |
|
Every power vested in government is in its nature sovereign / Alexander Hamilton (Opinion on the Constitutionality of the Bank of the United States, 23 February 1791) -- What can be so useful as promoting and improving industry? / Alexander Hamilton (Report on Manufactures, 1791) -- Among those dispose to narrow federal authority, Jefferson and Madison / Alexander Hamilton (To Colonel Edward Carrington, 20 May 1792) -- A well-organized republic can scarcely lose its liberty from any other source than that of anarchy / Alexander Hamilton (on the Whisky Rebellion, 28 August 1794) -- The very essence of judicial duty / Chief Justice John Marshall (Marbury volume Madison, 1803) -- The power to create implies the power to preserve / Chief Justice John Marshall (M'Culloch volume Maryland, 1819) -- IX. Establishing National Power: Jefferson and Taylor -- Essay -- The earth belongs in usufruct to the living / Thomas Jefferson (To James Madison, 6 September 1789) -- I unbosom myself fully / Thomas Jefferson (To Elbridge Gerry, 26 January 1799) -- Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government / Thomas Jefferson (To Gideon Granger, 13 August 1800) -- In a republic there must be absolute acquiescence in the will of the majority, but that will to be rightful must be reasonable / Thomas Jefferson (First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1801) -- Two principles divide our fellow citizens into two parties / Thomas Jefferson (To Dr. Benjamin Rush, 16 January 1811) -- The party called Republican is steadily for the support of the present Constitution / Thomas Jefferson (To John Melish, 13 January 1813) -- The natural aristocracy I consider the most precious gift of nature / Thomas Jefferson (To John Adams, 28 October 1813) -- There is not a word in the Constitution giving judges exclusive authority to declare laws invalid / Thomas Jefferson (To W.H. Torrance, 11 June 1815) |
|
Our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected / Thomas Jefferson (To John Taylor, 28 May 1816) -- An idea quite unfounded, on entering into society, we give up any natural right / Thomas Jefferson (To Francis W. Gilmer, 7 June 1816) -- I am not among those who fear the people / Thomas Jefferson (To Samuel Kercheval, 12 July 1816) -- The Constitution did not create a concentrated supremacy in the national government / John Taylor (New Views of the Constitution of the United States, 1823) -- X. Expanding the Base of Popular Power -- Essay -- It must always be a question of highest moment how the property-holding part of the community may be sustained against the inroads of poverty and vice / Joseph Story (Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, 1820) -- Political power naturally goes into the hands of those which hold property / Daniel Webster (Speech in the Massachusetts Convention, 1820-21) -- The tendency of universal suffrage is to jeopardize the rights of property and principles of liberty / Chancellor James Kent (New York Constitutional Convention, 1821) -- Character does not spring from the ground / P.R. Livingston (New York Constitutional Convention, 1821) -- Let us not brand the Constitution with any odious distinction as to property / John Cramer (New York Constitutional Convention, 1821) -- Arguments drawn from the state of European society are not applicable here / David Buel, Jr. (New York Constitutional Convention, 1821) -- The very desire for property implies the desire to possess it securely / John R. Cooke (Virginia Constitutional Convention, 1829-30) |
|
There is a majority in interest as well as a majority in numbers / Judge Abel P. Upshur (Virginia Constitutional Convention 1829-30) -- The two sexed do no more certainly gravitate to each other than power and property / John Randolph (Virginia Constitutional Convention, 1829-30) -- XI. Jackson and Revolution -- Essay -- The duties of public officers are so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance / Andrew Jackson (First Annual Message to Congress, 8 December 1829) -- Rich men have besought us to make them richer by acts of Congress / Andrew Jackson (Veto of the Bank Bill, 10 July 1832) -- Our Constitution is no longer a doubtful experiment, but ... / Andrew Jackson (Farewell Address, 4 March 1837) -- All communities are apt to look to government for too much / Martin Van Buren (Special Session Message, 4 September 1837) -- The best government governs least / John L. O'Sullivan (Democratic Review, 1837) -- The object and end of all government is to promote the happiness and prosperity of the community / Chief Justice R.B. Taney (Charles River Bridge volume Warren Bridge, 1837) -- The great work of this age and the coming is to raise up the laborer / Orestes A. Brownson (The Laboring Classes, 1840) -- XII. Romantic Individualism -- Essay -- The antidote to the abuse of formal government is the growth of the individual / Ralph Waldo Emerson (Politics, 1841) -- There will never be a really free state until the individual is recognized as a higher and independent power / Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience, 1849) -- The purpose of democracy is to illustrate that man properly trained in sanest, highest freedom may and must become a law unto himself / Walt Whitman (Democratic Vistas, 1871) -- XIII. Chattel Slavery |
|
Essay -- Man cannot hold property in man / William Lloyd Garrison (Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Convention, 1833) -- The Liberties of a people ought to tremble until every man is free / William Ellery Channing (Slavery, 1841) -- The greatest truths are often the most unpopular and exasperating / William Ellery Channing (Tribute to the American Abolitionists, 1836) -- Inequality of condition is a necessary consequence of liberty / John C. Calhoun (Disquisition on Government, 1850) -- The Negro slaves of the South are the freest people in the world -- George Fitzhugh (Cannibals All!, 1856) -- Man is born to subjection / William Harper (Slavery in the Light of Social Ethics, 1837) -- Most governments have been based on the denial of equal rights of men; ours began by affirming those rights / Abraham Lincoln (Fragments on Slavery, 1 July 1854) -- Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature / Abraham Lincoln (Speech at Peoria, Illinois, In Reply to Senator Stephen A. Douglas, 16 October 1854) -- The Declaration of Independence looks toward a progressive improvement in the condition of all men / Abraham Lincoln (Speech in Springfield, Illinois, 26 June 1857) -- Republicans are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar / Abraham Lincoln (To Henry L. Pierce and other Boston Republicans, 6 April 1859) -- XIV. The Nature of the Union -- Essay -- The donor did not intend that one donation should pilfer another / John Taylor (Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated, 1820) -- The great end of the Supreme Court is to act as an umpire between the States and the Confederacy / Hugh S. Legare (Review of Kent's Commentaries on American Law, 1828) -- It is, sir, the people's Constitution / Daniel Wesbter (Second Speech on Foot's Resolution, Reply to Hayne, 26 January 1830) |
|
The numerical majority is as truly a single power as the absolute government of one / John C. Calhoun (A Disquisition on Government, 1850) -- The Constitution is a national fundamental law, establishing a complete national government, an organism of national life / Francis Lieber (Two Lectures on the Constitution of the United States, 1851) -- The Union is much older than the Constitution / Abraham Lincoln (First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1861) -- The Constitution looks to an indestructible Union of indestructible states / Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, Texas volume White, 1869) -- XV. Plutocracy or Social Democracy? -- Essay -- A free man in a free democracy has no duty whatever toward other men of the same rank and standing / William Graham Sumner (What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, 1883) -- Nothing is more obvious than the inability of capital or private enterprise to take care of itself unaided by the state / Lester F. Ward (Plutocracy and Paternalism, November 1895) -- I say, get rich, get rich! / Russell H. Conwell (Acres of Diamonds, 1861) -- It is a waste of time to criticize the inevitable / Andrew Carnegie (Wealth, 1889) -- The worst thing ye can do for any man is to do him good / Finley Peter Dunne (The Carnegie Libraries, 1906) -- The force of the religious spirit should be bent toward asserting the supremacy of life over property / Walter Rauschenbusch (Christianity and Social Crisis, 1907) -- We must make land common property / Henry George (Progress and Poverty, 1879) -- All men who do their best do the same / Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward, 2000-1887, 1889) -- Liberty and monopoly cannot live together / Henry Demarest Lloyd (Wealth Against Commonwealth, 1894) -- Socialism will be government's answer to monopoly / John Dewitt Warner (Consolidation of Wealth: Political Aspects, 1902) -- Only the collective popular will can decree it shall not be / W.J. Ghent (Benevolent Feudalism, 1902) -- The people need not let monopoly develop at all / John B. Clark (Feudalism or Commonwealth, 1902) -- XVI. The Progressive Impulse -- Essay -- The problem belongs to the American national democracy, and its solution must be attempted chiefly by means of official national action / Herbert Croly (The Promise of American Life, 1909) -- Whenever the alternative must be faced, I am for men and not for property / Theodore Roosevelt (Speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, 31 August 1910) -- The goal to secure for labor a larger share of the national income / Samuel Gompers (The American Labor Movement, Its Makeup, Achievements and Aspirations, 1914) -- In America, as nowhere else, has the sacredness of pecuniary obligation so permeated the common sense of the community / Thorstein Veblen (The Theory of Business Enterprises, 1904) -- The capitalist is essentially a revolutionist / Brooks Adams (The Theory of Social Revolutions, 1913) |
|
In the long run industrial absolutism and democracy cannot exist in the same community / Louis D. Brandeis (Testimony before the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, 23 January 1915) -- Democracy's goal is the socialization of industry / Walter Weyl (The New Democracy, 1912) -- Men will do almost anything but govern themselves / Walter Lippmann (Drift and Mastery, 1914) -- Human freedom consists in perfect adjustments of human interests, human activities and human energies / Woodrow Wilson (The New Freedom, 1913) -- XVII. Judicial Response -- Essay -- The salvation of the nation, a strengthened judiciary / Justice David J. Brewer (The Movement of Coercion, An Address before the New York State Bar Association,17 January1893) -- Fixing the outside border of reasonable legislative action leaves the Court a great and stately jurisdiction / James Bradley Thayer (The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law, An Address before the Congress on Jurisprudence and Law Reform, 9 August 1893) -- Fear of socialism has influenced judicial decisions / O.W. Holmes (The Path of the Law, 8 January 1897) -- We need to learn to transcend our own convictions / O.W. Holmes (Law and the Court, 15 February 1913) -- I leave absolute truth for those who are better equipped / O.W. Holmes (Ideals and Doubts, 1915) -- Certitude is not the test of certainty / O.W. Holmes (Natural Law, 1915) -- Democracy is bound to stop short of social democracy / Arthur Twining Hadley (The Constitutional Position of Property in America, 9 April 1908) -- To the civilized man the rights of property are more important than the right to life / Paul Elmer More (Property is the Basis of Civilization, 1915) -- Society has lost its onetime feeling that law is the basis of its peace, its progress, its prosperity / Woodrow Wilson (The Lawyer and the Community, An Address before the American Bar Association, 1910) -- Our country is not a country of dollars but of ballots / Louis D. Brandeis (The Opportunity in the Law, 1905) -- The law must keep pace with our longing for social justice / Louis D. Brandeis (The Living Law, 1916) -- XVIII. Cynicism, Normalcy, Optimism, Realism -- Essay -- War is the health of the state / Randolph Bourne (Unfinished Fragment on the State, 1918) |
|
Irresponsible teachers and professors constitute the worst menace to sound government / Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt, 1922) -- Democracy is idiotic, it destroys itself / H.L. Mencken (Notes on Democracy, 1926) -- Certain social and economic laws are beyond human direction and control / George Sutherland (Principle or Expedient?, 1921) -- I don't believe in apologies for power / Mr. Justice Holmes (Tyson volume Banton, 1927) -- Poverty will be banished from this nation / Herbert Hoover (Accepting the Republican Nomination for the Presidency, 1928) -- The modern industrial corporation is the dominant institution of the modern world / Adolf A. Berle, Jr., and Gardiner C. Means (The Modern Corporation and Private Property, 1932) -- I doubt whether a student can do a greater work for his nation than to detach himself from its preoccupations / Walter Lippmann (The Scholar in a Troubled World, 1932) -- XIX. The New Deal -- Essay -- New conditions impose new requirements on government / Franklin D. Roosevelt (Campaign Address, Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, 23 September 1932) -- An enduring democracy can be secured only by promoting balance among all producing groups / Henry Wallace (New Frontiers, 1934) -- We have built up new instruments of public power / Franklin D. Roosevelt (Annual Message to Congress, 3 January 1936) -- The New Deal, foreign slave trail of arbitrary government / Raoul E. Desvernine (Democratic Despotism, 1936) -- The New Deal, European planned existence / Herbert Hoover (The Road to Freedom, 10 June 1936) -- I do not believe that Americans will give up without a wholehearted effort to make democracy a living reality / John Dewey (Liberalism and Social Action, 1935) -- XX. Inevitable Conflict -- Essay -- We want a Supreme Court under the Constitution / Franklin D. Roosevelt (Reorganizing the Federal Judiciary, 9 March 1937) -- Let there be no change by usurpation / Adverse Report of the Senate Judiciary Committee, 1937 -- The folklore during the Great Depression was that principles could be more trusted than organizations / Thurman W. Arnold (The Folklore of Capitalism, 1937) -- Herbert Spencer's work of 1851 is the answer to Mr. Roosevelt and his entourage / Albert J. Nock (Introduction to Spencer's Man Versus the State, 1940) -- We look forward to a world founded on four essential freedoms / Franklin D. Roosevelt (The Four Freedoms address, 6 January 1941) |
|
Three is a fifth freedom / Herbert Hoover (Address: The Fifth Freedom, 1941) -- War controls have no place in peacetime economy / Merle Thorpe (Freedom is not Free, Editorial, 1943) -- How can we safeguard free enterprise? / Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney (The Preservation of Economic Freedom, 11 March 1941) -- We have come to a clear realization that individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence / Franklin D. Roosevelt (Address on the State of the Union, 11 January 1944) -- XXI. Continuing Predicament -- Essay -- Irresponsible Power -- Monster business is undemocratic, inhuman and not socially responsible / Theodorse K. Quinn (I Quit Monster business, 1948) -- We may find an alternative to socialist collectivism in the modern business corporation / Adolf A. Berle, Jr. (The Emerging Common Law of Free Enterprise: Antidote to the Omnipotent State, 1951) -- A community which fails to preserve the discipline of competition exposes itself to the discipline of absolute authority / Henry C. Simons (Some Reflections on Syndicalism, March 1944) -- We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military industrial complex / Dwight D. Eisenhower (Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People, 17 January 1961) -- This is a republic, not a democracy; let's keep it that way / Beliefs and Principles of the John Birch Society, 1962) We believe that grave imbalance now exists / Lloyd W. Lowry (Amending the Constitution to Strengthen the States in the Federal System. Statement of Principles, December 1962) -- Only an emergency can justify repression. Such must be the rule if authority is to be reconciled with freedom / Justice Brandeis (concurring in Whitney volume California, 1927) -- We must not sacrifice the liberties of our citizens in a misguided attempt to achieve national security / Harry S. Truman (Veto message withholding approval of the Internal Security Act of 1950) -- We are drawing about ourselves a cultural curtain similar to the iron curtain of our adversaries / George F. Kennan (Seek the Finer Flavor, 1954) -- We need the non-conformist / Learned Hand (A Plea for the Freedom of Dissent, 1955) -- The Race Issue -- In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress / Booker T. Washington (The Atlanta Exposition Address, 1895) |
|
I don't think you can live with yourself when you are humiliating the man next to you / Robert Penn Warren (Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South, 1956) -- Neither satisfaction nor peace can come from any coercive mingling of the white and black races against the will of either / William D. Workman, Jr. (The Case for the South, 1960) -- If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail / Martin Luther King, Jr. (Letter from Birmingham City Jain, 16 April 1963) -- Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house? / James Baldwin (Letter from a Region in my Mind, 1963) -- Reappraisals -- Whoever heard of economic theory with poets, painters, and philosophers among the premises? / W.H. Ferry (Caught on the Horn of Plenty, 1962) -- We supposed that our revelation was democracy revolutionizing the world, but in reality it was abundance revolutionizing the world / David M. Potter (People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and American Character, 1954) -- In the maintenance of a true community the articulate public philosophy is the thread which holds the pieces of the fabric together / Walter Lippmann (The Public Philosophy, 1955) -- Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary / Reinhold Niebuhr (The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 1944) -- To overcome violence and bigotry we must alter some of the basic assumptions in American life and politics / J. William Fulbright (The Strain of violence, 1963) |
|
The struggle for security and peace will not be finished perhaps in our lifetime on this planet / John F. Kennedy (Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961) -- The Constitution of the United States |
| Subject |
Constitutional history -- United States -- Sources
|
| OCLC # |
498102 |
|
