United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The question was to be renewed and to be decided by the people only; and since the people had the right to refuse what the Senate offered, they possessed, for the same reason, the right to give what the Senate did not offer. The moment now arrived for consulting the Council of State as to the mode to be adopted for invoking and collecting the suffrages of the people.
For a complete incorporation of the subject peoples was not to be expected from the suffrages of a dominant people, to even the poorest of whom, it would mean the cessation of highly prized privileges and immunities. The provinces would from the earliest moment of their subjection have welcomed such a change. The time was more than ripe for it when the Roman world lay at the feet of Sulla.
So Charles and Francis both intrigued and bribed the Electors; the Pope tried to avoid helping either; Wolsey promised support to both; and the Electors themselves watched for opportunities of raising the price of their suffrages.
Nor, since a rule has been established by our ancestors, that in the election of censors unless two shall obtain the legal number of suffrages, neither shall be returned, but the election deferred, will I suffer you, who could not singly be created censor, to hold the censorship without a colleague." Having spoken to this effect he ordered the censor to be seized, and borne to prison.
Yet we may certainly believe that the need of money helped him to overcome much diffidence as to publication; and we may discern something dignified in his frank avowal of this when it is taken in connexion with his scrupulous abstinence from any attempt to win the suffrages of the multitude by means unworthy of his high vocation.
To overcome the unanimous opposition he met with, he had only to show himself. He would speak briefly, and in face of the charm he exerted his opponents became his friends. The English in particular strenuously opposed his scheme; he had only to put in an appearance in England to rally all suffrages.
The late Presidential election furnishes additional evidence of public sentiment. The candidate who was the friend of President Jackson, the supporter of his administration, and the avowed advocate for the expurgation, has received a large majority of the suffrages of the whole Union, and that after an express declaration of his sentiments on this precise point.
In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions.
This minister of the Elector was in concert with the Protestant cantons, who upon his declaration at once sided with him; and who, by the money spent, the conformity of religion, the power of the Elector, the reflection of what had happened at Orange, found nearly all the suffrages favourable.
The correspondence in relation to this incident will in due course be laid before you, and will disclose the unpardonable conduct of the official referred to in his interference by advice and counsel with the suffrages of American citizens in the very crisis of the Presidential election then near at hand, and also in his subsequent public declarations to justify his action, superadding impugnment of the Executive and Senate of the United States in connection with important questions now pending in controversy between the two Governments.
Word Of The Day