The cause being competent, the law of operation natural, and the result consequently legitimate, can another’s idea of right step in to sit in judgment over the action, and render a verdict of justice to the actor?
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
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No argument is needed to prove this proposition; and the legitimate deduction to be drawn from it is, that no judgment of the action of the individual, by others, is just that does not take into consideration all the various points in…
All men, and women, too, are born free and equal, entitled to certain natural rights, which no government has the right to take from them.
Change upon change will come in the future, as it has in the past, until government will become so simplified as to have for its foundation nothing but an annunciation of general principles of justice and equity, as self-evident truths…
Whether a government founded or administered upon any other basis than the eternal principles of right and justice can or cannot be enduring, is a proposition the simplest mind may solve.
In such government and legislation the eternal principles of right, which are God’s laws, are in full force and effect, and man, thus far, an authorized competent agent in the administration of His decrees in the material world.
To solve all these questions it becomes necessary to determine what the fundamental principles of government must be, to be in harmony with the laws of God, and to adopt them and to follow them out to all their legitimate conclusions and…
The only modification of this question required to be considered is, How far man is or can be the authorized, competent agent of the Almighty in working out His purposes?
The subject of government and the solution of all its difficulties seem to hinge upon the question, Where does God’s government drop its sway (if it does so at all), and where does man take it up, on his own account, by inherent natural…
The tendencies of the government being dangerous to the liberties of the people, their demand for reform is earnest, and must be heeded.
The machinery of the government has become so complex and unwieldy—so full of departmental and petty offices—that it is utterly beyond the power of one man, though he be “a great and mighty President,” to understand and control it.
So general and earnest has the demand for reform become that something must be done; the gathering masses of corruption all over the body will soon have ripened to bursting; and who can tell how much the body itself has become involved.