Articles of the Irish Tribune’s Faith

From The Irish Tribune, June 10^th, 1848.

1. After the will of God the will of a people is almighty.
2. In the words of the English parliament of 1648, ‘the people are, under God, the original of all just powers.’
3. A people may form for itself any system of government which it may deem best for its interests, always provided that that form of government be consistent with liberty, freedom being a sacred trust confided to men by the Creator, not only for his own immediate use and enjoyment, but to be preserved by him for posterity.
4. The power which creates can de-create a government.
5. A nation can no more surrender, de jure, its liberty, than an individual can sell himself to slavery or commit suicide.
6. A nation which surrenders its liberty is accountable to posterity, and brands itself indelibly with infamy.
7. A nation has no power over its distinct nationality; it holds it but as a trust to be transmitted pure and entire to succeeding generations.
8. The acts of a nation cannot bind its posterity but inasmuch as they are consistent with justice and honour.
9. The right of the people to reconstruct its suppressed nationality cannot be limited by time.
10. Death is to be preferred to submission to foreign rule.
11. The majority of a nation is the nation.
12. A nation cannot commit treason.
13. He who speaks the sentiments of the nation cannot commit treason.
14. Treason is the betrayal of the interests or honour of the nation.
15. To oppose by force the expressed will of the nation is treason.
16. To act against the national independence of the nation is treason.
17. Man’s first duty is loyalty to his country; next to the institutions of his country as long as they fulfil the objects for which they were created, and possess the confidence of the nation.
18. Sovereignty is an attribute of a nation, and its duration is co-existent with that of the nation.
19. A nation which establishes a monarchical form of government gives simply concentrated visible form to its sovereignty.
20. The majesty of the monarch is but the representative of the majesty of the nation – is, in fact, but the substitute – the shadow of the reality.
21. The monarch or person filling the office of royalty is but the first of the paid servants of the state.
22. The divine right of kings is twaddle.
23. In respecting the monarch as long as he fulfils the duties of the office to which he has been elected, the state respects itself.
24. Should the monarch neglect or surpass his duties, or act contrary to the interests or expressed will of the state, he ceases to exist, and the sovereign power returns into the hands of the people.
25. According to Paley, if public expediency be the foundation, it is also the measure of civil obedience; the obligation of subjects and sovereigns is reciprocal; the duty of allegiance is neither unlimited nor unconditional; and the submission, which surrenders the liberty of a nation and entails slavery upon future generations, is enjoined by no law of rational morality.
26. To be loyal to the monarch who acts against the interests or independence of the country, is criminal in the citizen.
27. The object of a government should be, to extend and not restrict the liberties and privileges of the people.
28. A constitutional government depends solely on the confidence reposed in it by the nation.
29. The better armed the people are, and the more skilled in military exercises, the stronger must be a constitutional government.
30. For a constitutional government to attempt to disarm the people, is to proclaim that it no longer possesses the confidence of the nation – is, in fact, to declare its own extinction.
31. A government which demands powers for the better securing of itself, cannot possess the confidence of the people – cannot, therefore, be a constitutional government.
32. To assert that the powers of a constitutional parliament are unlimited, that it can, in fact, do all and everything it may choose, and that under no circumstance is resistance to its decrees justifiable on the part of the nation, is contrary to common sense.
33. The armed force of a state belongs to the state, and cannot be used against the state.
34. A regular standing army is instituted to resist foreign invasion and make justifiable war.
35. To use the regular army for the purpose of intimidating or crushing the will of the nation is treason, and those who obey equally with those who command are traitors.
36. It is consistent with liberty that the regular army do the police of the state.
37. Every citizen has the right to possess arms, learn the use of them, and form a part of the armed force of the state.
38. There can be no true liberty in a state, where there is a large standing army at the disposal of government on the one side, and an unarmed population on the other.