Right of revolution

Throughout Chinese history, rebels who opposed the ruling dynasty made the claim that the Mandate of Heaven had passed, giving them the right to revolt.

Ruling dynasties were often uncomfortable with this, and the writings of the Confucian philosopher Mencius (372–289 BCE) were often suppressed for declaring that the people have the right to overthrow a ruler that did not provide for their needs.

He strengthened his argument by highlighting the precedent of the overthrow of Tarquin the Proud "when he acted wrongfully; and for the crime of one single man, the ancient government under which Rome was built was abolished forever.

Believing they had the right to violently rebel to get better treatment and greater appreciation from the state, he rhetorically asked the common soldiery why they submitted to the centurions while military life entailed such low pay and so many years in service.

According to the historian Tacitus, "The throng applauded from various motives, some pointing to the marks of the lash, others to their grey locks, and most of them to their threadbare garments and naked limbs.

Another example were the semi-mythical Charters of Sobrarbe, allegedly issued in the Pyrenees in the 850s, which enshrined the Iberian legal principle that "laws come before kings.

The Jesuits, especially Robert Bellarmine and Juan de Mariana, were widely known and often feared for advocating resistance to tyranny and often tyrannicide—one of the implications of the natural law focus of the School of Salamanca.

[16] The Catholic Church shared Calvin's prudential concerns – the Pope condemned Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot, and Regnans in Excelsis was widely considered to be a mistake.

He explains why contemporary circumstances justify the Medici's right of revolution: Italy, left without life, waits for him who shall yet heal her wounds and put an end to the ravaging and plundering of Lombardy, to the swindling and taxing of the kingdom and of Tuscany, and cleanse those sores that for long have festered.

The popular insurrection that ends in the death or deposition of a Sultan is as lawful an act as those by which he disposed, the day before, of the lives and fortunes of his subjects.

He reaffirms this repeatedly in The Metaphysics of Morals, stating that "there is no right of sedition, and still less of revolution", the reason being that "it is only by submission to the universal legislative will, that a condition of law and order is possible."

Moreover, Kant believed that any "forcible compulsion of [the dethronement of a monarch], on the part of the people, cannot be justified under the pretext of a right of necessity (casus necessitatis)".

[25] John Stuart Mill believed in a morally justifiable form of right to revolution against tyranny, placing him firmly in the tradition of Aquinas, Locke, and Rousseau.

[27] Scottish biographer James Boswell noted the literary critic Samuel Johnson's attack on the widespread assumption that "the King can do no wrong": If the abuse be enormous, Nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.Boswell emphasised this sentence "with peculiar pleasure, as a noble instance of that truly dignified spirit of freedom which ever glowed in his heart".

28, Alexander Hamilton successfully made the case for a federal standing army, in opposition to Locke's principle that a republican government rules not by violence, but by law.

"[34] The inherent (rather than constitutional) right to revolt was cited in the year prior the civil war's start as justifying the secession of the Confederate States of America.

[38] In the second of his Two Treatises of Government, John Locke quotes the jurist William Barclay as stating "That particular men are allowed ... to have no other remedy but patience; but the body of the people may with, with respect, resist intolerable tyranny, for when it is moderate they ought to endure it.

Declaration of Independence states that "when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government" (emphasis added).

The phrase "long train of abuses" is a reference to John Locke's similar statement in the Second Treatise of Government, where he explicitly established overthrow of a tyrant as an obligation.

[42] Although Plato argued that a dissident should openly criticise his nation's policies, "provided that his words are not likely either to fall on deaf ears or to lead to the loss of his own life", he also stipulated against seemingly necessary violent insurrection: "force against his native land he should not use in order to bring about a change of constitution, when it is not possible for the best constitution to be introduced without driving men into exile or putting them to death".

[44] Michel de Montaigne was equally cautious, warning that "to establish a better regimen in the stead of that which a man has overthrown, many who have attempted it have foundered".

He states that "they that are subjects to a monarch cannot without his leave cast off monarchy and return to the confusion of a disunited multitude; nor transfer their person from him that beareth it to another man, or other assembly of men".

Alexander Hamilton justified American resistance as an expression of "the law of nature" redressing violations of "the first principles of civil society" and invasions of "the rights of a whole people".

Jefferson's litany of colonial grievances was an effort to establish that Americans met their burden to exercise the natural law right of revolution.

[57] For instance, constitutions considered to be "conservative", such as those of post-revolutionary Massachusetts in 1780, preserved the people's right "to reform, alter, or totally change" government not only for their protection or safety but also whenever their "prosperity and happiness require[d] it".

[70] During the Stamp Act crisis of the 1760s the Massachusetts Provincial Congress considered resistance to the king justified if freedom came under attack from "the hand of oppression" and "the merciless feet of tyranny".

[71] A decade later the "indictment" of George III in the Declaration of Independence sought to end his sovereign reign over the colonies because he violated the original constitutional contract.

American revolutionaries accused George III of breaching his implied duty of protection under that contract, thereby releasing the people in the colonies from their allegiance.

The sovereign's breach of the hypothetical contract gave rise to the subjects' right of revolution – grounded on both natural law and English constitutional doctrine.

The faith of the people of Texas stands pledged to the preservation of a republican form of government, and, subject to this limitation only, they have at all times the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their government in such manner as they may think expedient.Article 11: Any act directed against a person, apart from the cases and without the forms determined by law, is arbitrary and tyrannical; if attempt is made to execute such act by force, the person who is the object thereof has the right to resist it by force.