The people will then no longer elect representatives to make laws by which they must be bound whether they approve or disapprove.
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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The referendum is what the people require, and it is what the new Constitution must provide.
So that in all future time the people themselves will be their own lawmakers—will be the government.
Every person who shall be eligible to office under the new government will be competent; and when once familiar with the duties, will not be removed to give room for the friend of some politician belonging to the party in power, since it…
All individual matters must be settled by the individuals themselves without appeal to the public.
Our present system of enforced collection of debts costs every year more than is realized, and besides maintains a vast army of lawyers, constables and court officers in unproductive employ.
All this is wrong, entailing almost untold exactions upon the producing community, who in the end are made to pay all these things.
This swearing people to tell the truth, and binding them to perform their duty, presupposes that they will lie and neglect their duty.
People are always placed upon the side of force and compulsion—never upon that of personal rectitude and honor.
There is a philosophy, too, in all these things; since in freedom only can purity exist.
Anything that is accompanied by compulsion is no proof of individual honesty.
Charity, with its long cloak of justice escaped, has long enough covered a multitude of sins.