The Principles of Civil Government Familiarly Illustrated: Including a Comprehensive View of the Government of the State of Vermont, and an Abstract of the Laws Showing the Rights, Duties, and Responsibilities of Citizens in the Civil and Domestic Relations, with an Outline of the Government of the United States : Adapted to the Capacities of Children and Youth, and Designed for the Use of Families and Schools

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Stoddard & Babcock, 1848 - United States - 287 pages
 

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Page 227 - Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
Page 221 - These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel.
Page 224 - Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.
Page 230 - Observe good faith and justice towards all nations, cultivate peace and harmony with all; religion and morality enjoin this conduct, and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.
Page 208 - The congress shall have power to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States or of any particular state. SEc. 4. The United States shall guaranty to every state in this union, a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive...
Page 232 - Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Page 274 - Convention, in which two-thirds of the whole number elected shall agree; and whose duty it shall be to enquire whether the constitution has been preserved inviolate, in every part; and whether the legislative and executive branches of government have performed their duty as guardians of the people; or assumed to themselves, or exercised, other or greater powers, than they are entitled to by the constitution.
Page 148 - In all criminal prosecutions for libels, the truth may be given in evidence to the jury; and if it shall appear to the jury that the matter charged as libelous is true, and was published with good motives and for justifiable ends, the party shall be acquitted; and the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the fact.
Page 227 - The disorders and miseries which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual ; and, sooner or later, the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.
Page 227 - This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind.

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