Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain no respect.

Bancroft’s aphorism links civil rights to political power: rights are not self-enforcing ideals but depend on institutions in which the people hold real authority—through representation, suffrage, and accountable government. Where sovereignty is concentrated in a monarch, oligarchy, or unanswerable elite, “rights” tend to become permissions granted from above and can be withdrawn without remedy. The line reflects a republican view of liberty common in nineteenth-century American political thought: popular sovereignty is the practical safeguard of legal and moral claims. It also implies a warning—formal declarations of rights matter less than the distribution of power that compels rulers to respect them.