James Fenimore Cooper Quote

"Commerce is entitled to a complete and efficient protection in all its legal rights, but the moment it presumes to control a country, or to substitute its fluctuating expedients for the high principles of natural justice that ought to lie at the root of every political system, it should be frowned on, and rebuked."

by:	James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) American Novelist
Source:	The American Democrat, 1838
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Categories:	Commerce, Control, Justice, Law, Politics, Rights, Safety
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As true today,as it was all those years ago!  -- Anonymous
Interesting how things don't change, or we don't learn.  -- M. Brown, Florida
Ha, and who will stand and rebuke to the faces of those who control the corporate system of slavery for their own benefit? Who will challenge them on their authority? America is a land of cowards today and thier bravery is stymied by fear.  -- Anon
et, tu, anonymous?  -- Allen, DC
There is a lawful (beyond legal) entitlement to all rights. Only a tangible individual has inalienable / unalienable / inherent rights. Commerce (complete with its mediums of exchange) is not a tangible entity, but rather a definable extension of the individual. Individual right extends through commerce. As is obvious to a law abiding moral individual, my rights end at your nose. Any 'commerce', 'political system', or otherwise extension of the individual sovereign that ascends to status of 'entity' (one among many identifying traits is having separate or inherent rights), defines despotism and tyranny and the end of freedom and liberty. The moment said intangible entity, at de facto form, assumes control of a country, substituting its fluctuating expedients for high principles, the Laws of Nature and Nature's God and, natural justice are temporarily set aside. Such intangible entity needs be rebuked.  -- Mike, Norwalk
For clarification, a tangible medium of exchange, having intrinsic value to the individual, was not counted here with commerce's abstract considerations.  -- Mike, Norwalk
The economic system be it capitalism, feudalism, or communism is not sacred. There is something more sacred than property rights, profits, etcetera if only we could put our finger on what it is.  -- Waffler, Smith
Yeah, all "rights" are alienable and merely objective to Waffler; he says he believes in America, but he denies the ideas, philosophy, and ethic that made it the country that it has been. Natural rights are inalienable, although tyrannical governments have infringed upon these rights. If someone holds my head in a bucket of water and I suffocate, I have never abdicated my right to breathe -- I have merely been unjustly forced, and the ability of expressing and acting in my rights has been limited. If my right to breathe could be taken away, then there should be no penalty for the man who intentionally murdered, because there was no violation of rights -- merely the abdication. Government may force us, but they cannot take away the inalienable right; governments that do not act in accordance with inalienable rights act in usurpation and tyranny. This is the philosophy of our American foundation and is beyond contest. You can deny the foundational premise behind such belief, but this was the foundation of our country. Nothing is more sacred than property in a Constitutional Republic; you are severely ignorant and lack any understanding of our American foundational theory if you believe otherwise. Read a book, get educated, and go back to school before you comment next time. Get in touch with your inner Locke and then get back to us there, chief.  -- Logan, Memphis, TN
This guy from Memphis also thinks America is a "republic not a democracy" and of course therefore he will also never understand the nuances of Fenimore's quote above. Anyone of his ilk and ignorance has no right to talk of education to anyone.  -- Waffler, Smith
The guy from Memphis is right.  -- Anonymous
Waffler, have you found any quotes from the founders where they expressly purported Democracy? I have nearly 15 direct references to where they stated their near hatred for such a system. I have, in addition, several quotes where our founders argued for a Republic (while arguing against a Democracy). I've read the philosophers of the past -- you know, the people who actually defined the terms of Republic and Democracy -- and they draw a huge fundamental and principled differentiation between the two. Why do you think they did that? Why do you think that the political philosophers (those that have historically defined political terms) who have ever purported a Republic has despised Democracies? Furthermore, why do you think that the definitions of these terms have been purposefully changed over the last 100 years away from their original context? Get an education there son, and then get back us...  -- Logan, Memphis, TN
-- E Archer, NYC
A Republic is a Democracy a Democracy is a Republe. We've been there Archer. Will you ever learn? I know the answer to that question, you will not Sir you will not! To be ignorant is no sin to want to be ignorant is!  -- Waffler, Smith

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