Excerpt from A Disquisition on Government: And a Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States But that constitution of our nature which makes us feel more intensely what affects us directly than what affects us indirectly through others, necessarily leads to conflict between individuals. Each, in con sequence, has a greater regard for his own safety or happiness, than for the safety or happiness of others; and, where these come in opposition, is ready to sacri fice the interests of others to his own. And hence, the tendency to a universal state of conflict, be tween individual and individual; accompanied by the connected passions of suspicion, jealousy, anger and revenge, - followed by insolence, fraud and cruel ty - and, if not prevented by some controlling power, ending in a state of universal discord and confusion, destructive of the social state and the ends for which it is ordained. This controlling power, wherever vested, or by whomsoever exercised, is government. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Although John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) remains one of the major figures in American political thought, many of his critics have tried to discredit him as merely a Southern partisan whose ideas were obsolete even during his lifetime. In Calhoun and Popular Rule, H. Lee Cheek, Jr., attempts to correct such misconceptions by presenting Calhoun as an original political thinker who devoted his life to the recovery of a "proper mode of popular rule." As the first combined evaluation of Calhoun's most important treatises, The Disquisition and The Discourse, this work merges Calhoun's theoretical position with his endeavors to restore the need for popular rule. It also compares Calhoun's ideas with those of other great political thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison--while explaining what is truly unique about Calhoun's political thought.

The conflict between power and liberty in a free government was the passionate concern of this most articulate, and often prophetic, orator and writer.

Nineteenth-century American politician John C. Calhoun occupies a paradoxical place in the history of political thought – and of critical thinking. On one hand, he is remembered as a committed advocate of slavery, consistently espousing views that are now considered indefensible and abhorrent. On the other, the political theories that Calhoun used to defend the social injustice of slavery have become the basis of the very systems by which modern democracies defend minority rights. Despite being crafted in defence of a system as unjust as slavery, the arguments that Calhoun expressed about minority rights in democracies in A Disquisition On Government remain an excellent example of how problem solving skills and reasoning can come together. The problem, for Calhoun, was both specific and general. As matters stood in the late 1840s, the majority of American states were anti-slavery, with only the minority, Southern states remaining pro-slavery. This boiled down to a crucial issue with democracy: the US government should not, Calhoun argued, only respect the wishes of the majority. Instead, democratic government must aim to harmonize diverse groups and their interests – governing, in so far as possible, for everyone. His analysis of how the Southern states could protect what he saw as their right to keep slaves led Calhoun to formulate solutions to the problem of ‘the tyranny of the majority’ that have since helped defend far worthier minority views.