United States or Costa Rica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We have constitutions in civilized communities to prevent robbery and the injustice of majorities upon minorities. We have sheriffs, police, and military power to enforce the edict of right, when once the highest tribunal has made the nearest possible human approach to justice.
Senator Fessenden, echoing Stevens had said, "There is no limit on the powers of Congress; everything must yield to the force of martial law as resolved by Congress." "There, sir," said Browning, "is as broad and deep a foundation for absolute despotism as was ever laid." He rang the changes on the need to "protect minorities from the oppression and tyranny of excited majorities."
The conduct of administration, however, received the full approbation of large majorities; but the triumph these victories in Parliament afforded them was of short duration. The disastrous issue of an expedition from which the most sanguine expectations had been formed, was soon known, and the mortification it produced was extreme.
No man can be a true leader of men who is not prepared to stand alone, if need be, against overwhelming majorities. Gordon had the courage of his convictions, and no amount of pressure, no weight of public opinion, could deter him when once the path of duty was clear. The time-server does not ask, What is right? What is my duty? but, What will pay? What will public opinion think?
The Queen's Speech, therefore, of October 27th, 1705, expressed strong resentment at this representation of the Church in danger; both Houses, by considerable majorities, voted the Church to be "in a most safe and flourishing condition"; and a royal proclamation censured both the book and its unknown author, a few months after it had been presented by the Grand Jury of the City, and publicly burnt by the hangman.
The Administration ticket had been defeated in the elections of the preceding month in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, while in other loyal States the majorities had fallen off the total returns showing the election of fifty-nine Republican Representatives against forty Democratic Representatives.
In the winter of 1861, just after the election of Lincoln, the abolitionists decided to hold a series of conventions in the chief cities of the North. All their available speakers were pledged for active service. The Republican party, having absorbed the political abolitionists within its ranks by its declared hostility to the extension of slavery, had come into power with overwhelming majorities.
Meanwhile Congress had met. And at once, the most characteristic peculiarity of the moment was again made emphatic. The popular majorities and the political machines did not coincide. Both in the North and in the South a minority held the situation in the hollow of its hand.
You only want to have your heads set straight, to take the right side; so bear in mind that majorities, especially respectable ones, are nine times out of ten in the wrong; and that if you see a man or boy striving earnestly on the weak side, however wrong-headed or blundering he may be, you are not to go and join the cry against him.
Addington's majorities fell off every day, in the House of Commons; and by Pitt's intrigues and management he was at length left in a minority; and, as it was considered much too disgraceful a thing even by Addington to hold his place after he had been left in the minority, he resigned, and William Pitt once more wielded the destinies of England, he being appointed prime minister on the twelfth of May, 1804.
Word Of The Day