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Politics is expected to be sophistical; and in the soberest parliaments hardly an argument is used or an ideal invoked which is not an insult to reason. Majorities work by a system of bribes offered to the more barren interests of men and to their more blatant prejudices.
The committee adopted a platform, appointed an executive and a finance committee, and nominated a full ticket, distributing the candidates among both parties. All other anti-Tammany organizations endorsed this ticket, and it was elected by large majorities. The committee dissolved after having secured certain charter amendments for the city and seeing its roster of officers inaugurated.
"Yes, so you warned me; but what I find instructive is not the speaker but the crowd." "You have a crowd here." "A much smaller one." "So you are for the majorities?" Max acknowledged the stroke. "Very well," he said; "let us go back." "No, I only wanted you to notice the crowd. Did they seem interested?" "They listened."
When my successor was chosen, however, the leaders of the House and Senate, or most of them, felt that it was safe to come to a break with me, and the last or short session of Congress, held between the election of my successor and his inauguration four months later, saw a series of contests between the majorities in the two houses of Congress and the President, myself, quite as bitter as if they and I had belonged to opposite political parties.
In the fourth century alone there were thirteen councils adverse to Arius, fifteen in his favor, and seventeen for the semi-Arians in all, forty-five. Minorities were perpetually attempting to use the weapon which majorities had abused. The impartial ecclesiastical historian above quoted, moreover, says that "two monstrous and calamitous errors were adopted in this fourth century: 1.
If this vehement invective against majorities meant no more than that, in the construction of government, it is wise to provide checks and balances, so that there should be various limitations on the power of the mere majority, it would only mean what the Constitution of the United States has already abundantly provided. It is full of such checks and balances.
In vain did M. Rouher endeavor to demonstrate to the Chambers that a stable equilibrium was established, and which was of such a character as to remain by itself for an indefinite period. Nobody was convinced by his reasoning. But the Imperial majorities, recruited as they were by the system of official candidatures, asked not of the complaisant minister reasons which he had not to give.
Thus the swiftness with which the Prohibition Amendment was adopted by Congress and by State Legislatures, and the overwhelming majorities which it commanded in those bodies, is no proof either of sincere conviction on the part of the lawmakers or of their belief that they were expressing the genuine will of their constituents.
Would a police-justice discharge a drunkard who pleaded the patriarchal precedent of Noah? or would he not rather give him another month in the House of Correction for his impudence? The Anti-slavery question is not one which the Tract Society can exclude by triumphant majorities, nor put to shame by a comparison of respectabilities.
Congress at that time contained several members who perceived the advantages which would result from bestowing on the government of the nation the full power of regulating commerce, and consequently, of increasing the imports as circumstances might render advisable; but State influence predominated and they were overruled by great majorities.
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