The Growth of Government: A Sermon Delivered Before the Executive and Legislative Departments of the Government of Massachusetts, at the Annual Election, Wednesday, January 2, 1878

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Rand, Avery & Company, printers to the Commonwealth, 1878 - 43 pages
 

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Page 29 - We have errors to correct. We have probably had too good an opinion of human nature in forming our confederation. Experience has taught us, that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good, without the intervention of a coercive power.
Page 24 - But while the people choose to maintain it as it is, while they are satisfied with it and refuse to change it, who has given or who can give to the State legislatures a right to alter it, either by interference, construction, or otherwise ? Gentlemen do not seem to recollect that the people have any power to do anything for themselves.
Page 16 - Whereas, all the constitutional authority ever possessed by the kings of Great Britain over these Colonies or their other dominions was by compact derived from the people, and held of them for the common interest of the whole society...
Page 28 - ... rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much.
Page 30 - In his character the noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable...
Page 27 - There is a mystery, with whom relation Durst never meddle, in the soul of state ; Which hath an operation more divine Than breath or pen can give expressure to...
Page 30 - From the Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, he lived ' As ever in his great taskmaster's eye.
Page 33 - The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; .... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.
Page 28 - I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Page 23 - ... the members of which, as well as all other officers, were annually chosen. They adopted the common law of England as the general basis of their jurisprudence —varying it, however, from time to time, by municipal regulations better adapted to their situation, or conforming more exactly to their stern notions of the absolute authority and universal obligation of the Mosaic institutions.

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