What is also specially to be noticed, and what constitutes a
vital difference between the banking corporation and the
political corporation, or government, is, that in case of
controversy among the members of the banking corporation, as to
the rights of any member, the question is determined, not by any
number, either majority, or minority, of the corporation itself,
but by persons out of the corporation; by twelve men acting as
jurors, or by other tribunals of justice, of which no member of
the corporation is allowed to be a part. But in the case of the
political corporation, controversies among the parties to it, as
to the rights of individual members, must of necessity be settled
by members of the corporation itself, because there are no
persons out of the corporation to whom the question can be
referred.
Since, then, all questions as to the rights of the members of the
political corporation, must be determined by members of the
corporation itself, the trial by jury says that no man's rights,
neither his right to his life, his liberty, nor his property,
shall be determined by any such standard as the mere will and
pleasure of majorities; but only by the unanimous verdict of a
tribunal fairly representing the whole people, that is, a
tribunal of twelve men, taken at random from the whole body, and
ascertained to be as impartial as the nature of the case will
admit, and sworn to the observance of justice. Such is the
difference in the two kinds of corporations; and the custom of
managing by majorities the mere discretionary matters of business
corporations, (the majority having no power to determine the
rights of any member,) furnishes no analogy to the practice,
adopted by political corporations, of disposing of all the rightsof
their members by the arbitrary will of majorities.
But further. The doctrine that the majority have a right to rule,
proceeds upon the principle that minorities have no rights in the
government; for certainly the minority cannot be said to have any
rights in a government, so long as the majority alone determine
what their rights shall be. They hold everything, or nothing, as
the case may be, at the mere will of the majority.
It is indispensable to a "free government," (in the political
sense of that term,) that the minority, the weaker party, have a
veto upon the acts of the majority. Political liberty is liberty
for the weaker party in a nation. It is only the weaker party
that lose their liberties, when a government becomes oppressive.
The stronger party, in all governments, are free by virtue of
their superior strength. They never oppress themselves.
Legislation is the work of this stronger party; and if, in
addition to the sole power of legislating, they have the sole
power of determining what legislation shall be enforced, they
have all power in their hands, and the weaker party are the
subjects of an absolute government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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