Quotes About Magistracy

There was no other God, religion, or lawful magistracy, than conscience, which teaches all men the precepts of Justice, to do no injury, to live honestly, and give everyone his due.

In any real democracy, magistracy isn't a benefit—it's a burdensome responsibility that can't fairly be imposed on one individual rather than another

No person is more convinced than I am of the necessity of giving great splendour and energy to the great hereditary magistracy exercised by the king; but in a free country, there can only be citizens and public officers.

When legislative power is united with executive power in a single person or in a simple body of magistracy, there is no liberty, because one can fear that the same monarch or senate that makes tyrannical laws will execute them tyrannically. . . .

Governor Winthrop despised democracy, which he brusquely labeled "the meanest and worst of all forms of Government." For Puritans, the church and state worked in tandem; the coercive arm of the magistracy was meant to preserve both public order and class distinctions.