Category: Politics & Law

“Those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments; of the most free, as well as of the most despotical.” – Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. One

“Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.” – Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, private correspondence, June 1815

“The firefight that you lose is usually your last one.” – Roland Bartetzko, Quora Digest

“We cannot but wonder and grieve that we should appear so despicable in your eyes as to be thought unworthy to petition or represent our grievances to this honourable House. Have we not an equal interest with the men of this nation in those liberties and securities contained in the Petition of Right, and other the good laws of the land? Are any of our lives, limbs, liberties, or goods to be taken from us more than from men, but by due process of law and conviction of twelve sworn men of the neighbourhood? And can you imagine us to be so sottish or stupid as not to perceive, or not to be sensible when daily those strong defences of our peace and welfare are broken down and trod underfoot by force and arbitrary power?” – from “A Petition of Women, Affecters and Approvers of the Petition of Sept. 11, 1648 ” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“The truth is (and we see we must either now speak or for ever be silent), we have long expected things of another nature from you, and such as . . . That you would not have followed the example of former tyrannous and superstitious Parliaments in making orders, ordinances or laws, or in appointing punishments, concerning opinions or things supernatural, styling some blasphemies, others heresies, whenas you know yourselves easily mistaken and that divine truths need no human helps to support them; such proceedings having been generally invented to divide the people amongst themselves, and to affright men from that liberty of discourse by which corruption and tyranny would be soon discovered.” – from the Levellers’ “Petition to the House of Commons” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“It is an ordinance amongst men, and for men, that all men may have a human subsistence and safety, to live as men amongst men, none to be excepted from this human subsistence but the unnatural and the inhuman. It is not for this opinion or that faction, this sect or that sort, but equally and alike indifferent for all men that are not degenerated from humanity and human civility in their living and neighbourhood. And therefore the destroyers and subverters of human society, safety, cohabitation, and being, are to be corrected, expulsed, or cut off for preservation of safety and prevention of ruin, both public and private.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“All degrees and titles magisterial are all subservient to popular safety, all instituted and ordained only for it. For without it can be no human society, cohabitation, or being; which above all earthly things must be maintained as the earthly sovereign good of mankind, let what or who will, perish or be confounded. For mankind must be preserved upon the earth, and to this preservation all the children of men have an equal title by birth.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“The safety of the people is the reason and end of all governments and governors. Salus popidi est suprema lex : the safety of the people is the supreme law of all commonwealths.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“All just human powers are but betrusted, conferred, and conveyed by joint and common consent; for to every individual in nature is given an individual propriety by nature, not to be invaded or usurped by any; for every one as he is himself hath a self propriety—else could he not be himself—and on this no second may presume without consent; and by natural birth all men are equal, and alike born to like propriety and freedom, every man by natural instinct aiming at his own safety and weal. And so it is that there is a general communication amongst men from their several innate properties to their elected deputies for their better being, discipline, government, property, and safety.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“All authority is fundamentally seated in the office, and but ministerially in the persons. Therefore, the persons in their ministrations degenerating from safety to tyranny, their authority ceaseth, and is only to be found in the fundamental original rise and situation thereof, which is the people, the body represented. For though it ceaseth from the hands of the betrusted, yet it doth not, neither can it, cease from its being.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“All betrusted powers, if forfeit, fall into the hands of the betrusters, as their proper centre. And where such a forfeit is committed, there it disobligeth from obedience, and warranteth an appeal to the betrusters, without any contempt or disobedience to the powers in the least; for such an appeal in that case is not at all from the power, but from the persons; not forsaking the power, but following of it in its retreat to the fountain.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“The equity of the law is superior to the letter, the letter being subordinate and subject thereto. And look how much the letter transgresseth the equity, even so much it is unequal, of no validity and force.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Nothing which is against reason is lawful, reason being the very life of the law of our land; so that should the law be taken away from its original reason and end, it would be made a shell without a kernel, a shadow without substance, a carcass without life, which presently turns to putrefaction. And as reason only gives it a legal being and life, so it only makes it authoritative and binding. If this be not granted, lust, will, pride (and what the devil and corruption will) may be a law. For if right reason be not the only being and bounder of the law over the corrupt nature of man (that what is rational, the which injustice and tyranny cannot be, may only and at all times be legal, and what is legal, to be simply and purely rational, the which mercy and justice must be whensoever, wheresoever, and by whomsoever it be), all would fall into confusion, disorder, madness, and cruelty; and so magistracy would cease, and be converted into inhumanity and tyranny.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Reason hath no precedent; for reason is the fountain of all just precedents. Therefore where that is, there is a sufficient and justifiable precedent. And if this principle must be granted of, and obeyed by all (as by no rational man can be denied), then the act of appeal in this nature, if grounded upon right reason, is justifiable and warranted, even by that which gives an equitable authority, life, and being, to all just laws, precedents, and forms of government whatsoever. For reason is their very life and spirit, whereby they are all made lawful and warrantable both for settlement, administration, and obedience; which is the highest kind of justification and authority for human actions, that can be, for greater is that which gives being and justifieth than that which receiveth and is justified. All forms of laws and governments may fall and pass away, but right reason (the fountain of all justice and mercy to the creature) shall and will endure for ever. It is that by which in all our actions we must stand or fall, be justified or condemned; for neither morality nor divinity amongst men can or may transgress the limits of right reason. For whatsoever is unreasonable cannot be justly termed moral or divine, and right reason is only commensurable and discernible by the rule of merciful justice and just mercy. It is gradual in its quantity, but one in its quality.” – Richard Overton, “An Appeal from the Commons to the Free People” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Permit the free discussion of truth without any hazard to the author, or any subjection to the caprice of an individual, which is the best way to make truth flourish and knowledge abound.” – John Milton, “Defensio Secunda” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Since there are often in a state men who have the same itch for making a multiplicity of laws as some poetasters have for making many verses, and since laws are usually worse in proportion as they are more numerous, I trust that you will not enact so many new laws as you abrogate old ones which do not operate so much as warnings against evil but rather as impediments in the way of good; and that you will retain only those which are necessary, which do not confound the distinctions of good and evil, and which, while they prevent the frauds of the wicked, do not prohibit the innocent freedoms of the good, which punish crimes without interdicting those things which are lawful, only on account of the abuses to which they may occasionally be exposed. For the intention of laws is to check the commission of vice; but liberty is the best school of virtue, and affords the strongest encouragements to its practice. Then, I trust that you will make a better provision for the education of our youth.” – John Milton, “Defensio Secunda” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Absolute lordship and Christianity are inconsistent.” – John Milton, “Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Civil power neither hath right nor can do right by forcing religious things.” – John Milton, “Of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“The laws of nature and of common equity are the foundation of all laws (truly and properly so called) and whatsoever venditateth itself under the name or notion of a law, being built besides this foundation, wanteth the essence and true nature of a law, and so can be but equivocally such.” – John Goodwin, “Right and Might Well Met” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“When any two laws encounter one the other in any such exigent or strait of time that both of them cannot be obeyed, the law of inferior consequence ought to give place to that of superior, and the duty enjoined in this to be done though that required in the other be left undone.” – John Goodwin, “Right and Might Well Met” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“It is a ruled case amongst wise men, ‘that if a people be depraved and corrupt, so as to confer places of power and trust upon wicked and undeserving men, they forfeit their power in this behalf unto those that are good, though but a few.’” – John Goodwin, “Right and Might Well Met” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“When the pilot or master of a ship at sea be either so far overcome and distempered with drink or otherwise disabled, as through a phrenetical passion or sickness of any kind, so that he is incapable of acting the exigencies of his place for the preservation of the ship, being now in present danger either of running upon a quick sand or splitting against a rock, &c, any one or more of the inferior mariners, having skill, may, in order to the saving of the ship and of the lives of all that are in it, very lawfully assume, and act according to, the interest of a pilot or master, and give orders and directions to those with them in the ship accordingly, who stand bound, at the peril of their lives, in this case to obey them.” – John Goodwin, “Right and Might Well Met” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“A contract, the conditions whereof are violated by neither side, cannot be dissolved but by the joint consent of both; and in buying and selling, and in all contracts unviolated, the sole will of neither side can violate the contract; of this speaketh the law. We hold that the law saith with us that vassals lose their farm if they pay not what is due. Now what are kings but vassals to the state, who, if they turn tyrants, fall from their right?” – Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“There is not a stricter obligation moral betwixt king and people than betwixt parents and children, master and servant, patron and clients, husband and wife, the lord and the vassal; between the pilot of a ship and the passengers, the physician and the sick, the doctor and the scholars; but the law granteth, if these betray their trust committed to them, they may be resisted.” – Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Simply and absolutely the people is above and more excellent than the king, and the king in dignity inferior to the people.” – Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“There be no mutual contract made upon certain conditions, but if the conditions be not fulfilled the party injured is loosed from the contract.” – Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“Every man by nature is a free man born, that is, by nature no man cometh out of the womb under any civil subjection to king, prince, or judge, to master, captain, conqueror, teacher, &c, because freedom is natural to all.” – Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“The first, the ultimate, and native subject of all power is the community, as reasonable men naturally inclining to a society ; but the ethical and political subject, or the legal and positive receptacle, of this power is various, according to the various constitutions of the policy.” – Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“If all men be born, as concerning civil power, alike (for no man cometh out of the womb with a diadem on his head, or a sceptre in his hand), and yet men united in a society may give crown and sceptre to this man, and not to this man, then this power was in this united society.” – Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex” (in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)

“It most seldom chanceth that kings so temper themselves that their will never swerveth from that which is just and right; again, that they be furnished with so great sharpness of judgment and wisdom that every one of them seeth so much as is sufficient. Therefore the fault or default of men maketh that it is safer and more tolerable that many should have the government, that they may mutually one help another, one teach and admonish another, and if any advance himself higher than is meet, there may be overseers and masters to restrain his wilfulness.” – John Calvin, “Institution of Christian Religion” (trans. Thomas Norton, in A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty)