The People

But unhappily for the argument, our nation created their governments.

But it may be objected, if sovereignty and despotism are synonimous terms, that the sovereignty of the people is also a despotism.

and as sovereignty implies individuality, we are reduced to the necessity, to satisfy its meaning, of looking for this essential quality.

” And now, in every criminal trial, the jury are told that the accused “has, for trial, put himself upon the country;

“The trial by jury,” then, is a “trial by the country”—that is, by the people—as distinguished from a trial by the government.

In order to effect this end, it is indispensable that the people, or “the country,” judge of and determine their own liberties against the government;

This evil will be still greater, if the laws be written in a language unknown to the people;

This may seem a paradox to vulgar minds, which are more strongly affected by the smallest disorder before their eyes, than by the most pernicious, though remote, consequences produced by one false principle adopted by a nation.

It is then they begin to conceive, and acknowledge the most palpable truths, which, from their very simplicity, commonly escape vulgar minds, incapable of analysing objects, accustomed to receive impressions without distinction, and to be determined rather by the opinions of others, than by the result of their own examination.

It happened that I was sent as trierarch round the Peloponnesus, and from thence I had to carry to Sicily the ambassadors whom the people had elected.

When it came to fixing the penalty, the jurymen wished to impose a sentence of death upon him, but I begged them to do nothing like that on a prosecution brought by me, and I agreed to the fine of a talent which these men themselves proposed,—not that I wished to save Arethusius from the death penalty (for he deserved death on account of the wrongs which he had committed against me), but that I, P …

A reason which the people of Marseilles urged in the dispute between Caesar and Pompey.

And surely no one could find grounds to praise the mildness of the Thirty as against that of the people’s rule!

for they believed that the rest of the people would reflect the character of those who were placed in charge of their affairs.

And yet how can we praise or tolerate a government which has in the past been the cause of so many evils and which is now year by year ever drifting on from bad to worse?

and especially those which teach how men in power should deal with the people, and how the rank and file should be disposed to their rulers.

but I desired both to put myself as far above such suspicions as possible and at the same time to set up my conduct as a pattern to my people, knowing that the multitude are likely to spend their lives in practices in which they see their rulers occupied.

—that the persons on whom it bears hardest, are those on whom a burthen of any kind lies heaviest, and that they compose the great majority of the people:

From this statement it needs not much study to perceive, that for the bulk of the community, as far as ordinary cases of the civil kind are concerned, justice is but an empty name.

Will it be said that abolishing the taxes on justice would not answer the purpose, for that supposing them all abolished, justice would still remain inaccessible to the body of the people?

The answer to this argument is, that the actual slaveholders were few in number compared with the whole people;

There very probably may have been a general belief among the people, that slavery would for a while live on, on sufferance;

Of course the intentions of the people at large are the only ones, that are of any importance to be regarded in determining the legal meaning of the instrument.

When the Pajriya people call upon you two, O Aśvins — come with food and prizes to the knower.

You know the poor, then?

And you know the rich too?

The poorer classes, I presume.