A Quote by Goldwin Smith
Rome was great in arms, in government, in law.
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To the Jews, Rome constituted the quintessence of all that was odious and should be swept away from off the face of the earth. They hated Rome and her device, arma et leges, with an inhuman hatred. True, Rome had leges, laws, like the Jews. But in their very resemblance lay their difference; for the Roman laws were merely the practical application of the arma, the arms...but without the arms, the leges were empty formulae.
Since the building of Constantinople, and the removal of the seat of government to that city, no political quarrel separated Rome from Egypt. Pagan Rome, ever since the union of the two countries under Augustus, except when interrupted by the rebellions, had been eagerly copying the superstitions of Egypt, and Christian Rome still followed the same course.
I don't think the federal government has any business keeping a list of law-abiding Americans who exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
The United States, or the American Republic, has a mission, and is chosen of God for the realization of a great idea. It has been chosen not only to continue the work assigned to Greece and Rome, but to accomplish a greater work than was assigned to either. In art, it will prove false to its mission if it do not rival Greece; and in science and philosophy, if it do not surpass it. In the State, in law, in jurisprudence, it must continue and surpass Rome.
If the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of the government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law.
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.
Dictatorship played a decisive role in the North's successful effort to maintain the Union by force of arms...one man was the government of the United States...Lincoln was a great dictator....This great constitutional dictator was self appointed.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means - to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal - would bring terrible retributions.
And I myself, in Rome, heard it said openly in the streets, "If there is a hell, then Rome is built on it." MARTIN LUTHER, Against the Roman Papacy, An Institution of the Devil London is the epitome of our times, and the Rome of to-day.
Our government strives to create an independent and impartial judiciary that applies the law without bias or favoritism. And we are incorporating into our security forces all Iraqis who have taken up arms to defend their families and communities.
If wealth is accumulated in the hands of a few, either by a feudal or a stock monopoly, it carries the power also; and a government becomes as certainly aristocratical, by a monopoly of wealth, as by a monopoly of arms. A minority, obtaining a majority of wealth or arms in any mode, becomes the government.
No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.
Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
Government power is always abused by seizing and perverting the law. And with few exceptions, government always determines what is law.
Ours is a government of liberty by, through, and under the law.
A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.
Revolutionaries who come to power by force of arms usually have great crimes in their background. Leaders who survive campaigns by great powers to destroy them do not survive because they observe the niceties of law. Subversives who shape world events by covert action and violence work in shadows and detest the light of day.
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