The state and its elites must be subject, in theory and in practice, to the same laws that its poorest citizens are.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own.
The state has got to be its own master. The modalities of civic life may not be prescribed for it through any power standing outside of that state - be it a private person or be it a community superior, collateral, or subordinate to that state.
IT may be proper to observe further, that this Duty is not confined to those who live under any one particular Form of Government: It extends to the Subjects of all regular States, lawfully established.
When the state is most corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied.
A nation has its first obligation to its own workers and its own poor.
A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
In America, the people are not subjects of government, the government is subject to the people.
The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.
States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.