THE
AMERICAN REPUBLIC: CHAPTER 5
ITS
CONSTITUTION TENDENCIES AND DESTINY
Orestes A. Brownson LL. D
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT—CONTINUED
The tendency of the last century was to individualism; that of the
present is to socialism. The theory of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and
Jefferson, though not formally abandoned, and still held by many, has
latterly been much modified, if not wholly transformed. Sovereignty,
it is now maintained, is inherent in the people; not individually,
indeed, but collectively, or the people as society. The constitution
is held not to be simply a compact or agreement entered into by the
people as individuals creating civil society and government, but a law
ordained by the sovereign people, prescribing the constitution of the
state and defining its rights and powers.
This transformation, which is rather going on than completed, is, under
one aspect at least, a progress, or rather a return to the sounder
principles of antiquity. Under it government ceases to be a mere
agency, which must obtain the assassin's consent to be hung before it
can rightfully hang him, and becomes authority, which is one and
imperative. The people taken collectively are society, and society is
a living organism, not a mere aggregation of individuals. It does not,
of course, exist without individuals, but it is something more than
individuals, and has rights not derived from them, and which are
paramount to theirs. There is more truth, and truth of a higher order,
in this than in the theory of the social compact. Individuals, to a
certain extent, derive their life from God through society, and so far
they depend on her, and they are hers; she owns them, and has the right
to do as she will with them. On this theory the state emanates from
society, and is supreme. It coincides with the ancient Greek and Roman
theory, as expressed by Cicero, already cited. Man is born in society
and remains there, and it may be regarded as the source of ancient
Greek and Roman patriotism, which still commands the admiration of the
civilized world. The state with Greece and Rome was a living reality,
and loyalty a religion. The Romans held Rome to be a divinity, gave
her statues and altars, and offered her divine worship. This was
superstition, no doubt, but it had in it an element of truth. To every
true philosopher there is something divine in the state, and truth in
all theories. Society stands nearer to God, and participates more
immediately of the Divine essence, and the state is a more lively image
of God than the individual. It was man, the generic and reproductive
man, not the isolated individual, that was created in the image and
likeness of his Maker. "And God created man in his own image; in the
image of God created he him; male and female created he them."
This theory is usually called the democratic theory, and it enlists in
its support the instincts, the intelligence, the living forces, and
active tendencies of the age. Kings, kaisers, and hierarchies are
powerless before it, and war against it in vain. The most they can do
is to restrain its excesses, or to guard against its abuses. Its
advocates, in returning to it, sometimes revive in its name the old
pagan superstition. Not a few of the European democrats recognize in
the earth, in heaven, or in hell, no power superior to the people, and
say not only people-king but people-God. They say absolutely, without
any qualification, the voice of the people is the voice of God, and
make their will the supreme law, not only in politics, but in religion,
philosophy, morals, science, and the arts. The people not only found
the state, but also the church. They inspire or reveal the truth,
ordain or prohibit worships, judge of doctrines, and decide cases of
conscience. Mazzini said, when at the bead of the Roman Republic in
1848, the question of religion must be remitted to the judgment of the
people. Yet this theory is the dominant theory of the age, and is in
all civilized nations advancing with apparently irresistible force.
But this theory has its difficulties. Who are the collective people
that have the rights of society, or, who are the sovereign people? The
word people is vague, and in itself determines nothing. It may include
a larger or a smaller number; it may mean the political people, or it
may mean simply population; it may mean peasants, artisans,
shopkeepers, traders, merchants, as distinguished from the nobility;
hired laborers or workmen as distinguished from their employer, or
slaves as distinguished from their master or owner. In which of these
senses is the word to be taken when it is said, "The people are
sovereign?" The people are the population or inhabitants of one and
the same country. That is something. But who or what determines the
country? Is the country the whole territory of the globe? That will
not be said, especially since the dispersion of mankind and their
division into separate nations. Is the territory indefinite or
undefined? Then indefinite or undefined are its inhabitants, or the
people invested with the rights of society. Is it defined and its
boundaries fixed? Who has done it? The people. But who are the
people? We are as wise as we were at starting. The logicians say that
the definition of idem per idem, or the same by the same, is simply no
definition at all.
The people are the nation, undoubtedly, if you mean by the people the
sovereign people. But who are the people constituting the nation? The
sovereign people? This is only to revolve in a vicious circle. The
nation is the tribe or the people living under the same regimen, and
born of the same ancestor, or sprung from the same ancestor or
progenitor. But where find a nation in this the primitive sense of the
word? Migration, conquest, and intermarriage, have so broken up and
intermingled the primitive races, that it is more than doubtful if a
single nation, tribe, or family of unmixed blood now exists on the face
of the earth. A Frenchman, Italian, Spaniard, German, or Englishman,
may have the blood of a hundred different races coursing in his veins.
The nation is the people inhabiting the same country, and united under
one and the same government, it is further answered. The nation, then,
is not purely personal, but also territorial. Then, again, the question
comes up, who or what determines the territory? The government? But
not before it is constituted, and it cannot be constituted till its
territorial limits are determined. The tribe doubtless occupies
territory, but is not fixed to it, and derives no jurisdiction from it,
and therefore is not territorial. But a nation, in the modern or
civilized sense, is fixed to the territory, and derives from it its
jurisdiction, or sovereignty; and, therefore, till the territory is
determined, the nation is not and cannot be determined.
The question is not an idle question. It is one of great practical
importance; for, till it is settled, we can neither determine who are
the sovereign people, nor who are united under one and the same
government. Laws have no extra-territorial force, and the officer who
should attempt to enforce the national laws beyond the national
territory would be a trespasser. If the limits are undetermined, the
government is not territorial, and can claim as within its jurisdiction
only those who choose to acknowledge its authority. The importance of
the question has been recently brought home to the American people by
the secession of eleven or more States from the Union. Were these
States a part of the American nation, or were they not? Was the war
which followed secession, and which cost so many lives and so much
treasure, a civil war or a foreign war? Were the secessionists
traitors and rebels to their sovereign, or were they patriots fighting
for the liberty and independence of their country and the right of
self-government? All on both sides agreed that the nation is
sovereign; the dispute was as to the existence of the nation itself,
and the extent of its jurisdiction. Doubtless, when a nation has a
generally recognized existence as an historical fact, most of the
difficulties in determining who are the sovereign people can be got
over; but the question here concerns the institution of government, and
determining who constitute society and have the right to meet in
person, or by their delegates in convention, to institute it. This
question, so important, and at times so difficult, the theory of the
origin of government in the people collectively, or the nation, does
not solve, or furnish any means of solving.
But suppose this difficulty surmounted there is still another, and a
very grave one, to overcome. The theory assumes that the people
collectively, "in their own native right and might," are sovereign.
According to it the people are ultimate, and free to do whatever they
please. This sacrifices individual freedom. The origin of government
in a compact entered into by individuals, each with all and all with
each, sacrificed the rights of society, and assumed each individual to
be in himself an independent sovereignty. If logically carried out,
there could be no such crime as treason, there could be no state, and
no public authority. This new theory transfers to society the
sovereignty which that asserted for the individual, and asserts social
despotism, or the absolutism of the state. It asserts with sufficient
energy public authority, or the right of the people to govern; but it
leaves no space for individual rights, which society must recognize,
respect, and protect. This was the grand defect of the ancient
Graeco-Roman civilization. The historian explores in vain the records
of the old Greek and Roman republics for any recognition of the rights
of individuals not held as privileges or concessions from the state.
Society recognized no limit to her authority, and the state claimed
over individuals all the authority of the patriarch over his household,
the chief over his tribe, or the absolute monarch over his subjects.
The direct and indirect influence of the body of freemen admitted to a
voice in public affairs, in determining the resolutions and action of
the state, no doubt tempered in practice to some extent the authority
of the state, and prevented acts of gross oppression; but in theory the
state was absolute, and the people individually were placed at the
mercy of the people collectively, or, rather, the majority of the
collective people.
Under ancient republicanism, there were rights of the state and rights
of the citizen, but no rights of man, held independently of society,
and not derived from God through the state. The recognition of these
rights by modern society is due to Christianity: some say to the
barbarians, who overthrew the Roman empire; but this last opinion is
not well founded. The barbarian chiefs and nobles had no doubt a
lively sense of personal freedom and independence, but for themselves
only. They had no conception of personal freedom as a general or
universal right, and men never obtain universal principles by
generalizing particulars. They may give a general truth a particular
application, but not a particular truth—understood to be a particular
truth—a general or universal application. They are too good logicians
for that. The barbarian individual freedom and personal independence
was never generalized into the doctrine of the rights of man, any more
than the freedom of the master has been generalized into the right of
his slaves to be free. The doctrine of individual freedom before the
state is due to the Christian religion, which asserts the dignity and
worth of every human soul, the accountability to God of each man for
himself, and lays it down as law for every one that God is to be obeyed
rather than men. The church practically denied the absolutism of the
state, and asserted for every man rights not held from the state, in
converting the empire to Christianity, in defiance of the state
authority, and the imperial edicts punishing with death the profession
of the Christian faith. In this she practically, as well as
theoretically, overthrew state absolutism, and infused into modern
society the doctrine that every individual, even the lowest and
meanest, has rights which the state neither confers nor can abrogate;
and it will only be by extinguishing in modern society the Christian
faith, and obliterating all traces of Christian civilization, that
state absolutism can be revived with more than a partial and temporary
success.
The doctrine of individual liberty may be abused, and so explained as
to deny the rights of society, and to become pure individualism; but no
political system that runs to the opposite extreme, and absorbs the
individual in the state, stands the least chance of any general or
permanent success till Christianity is extinguished. Yet the assertion
of principles which logically imply state absolutism is not entirely
harmless, even in Christian countries. Error is never harmless, and
only truth can give a solid foundation on which to build. Individualism
and socialism are each opposed to the other, and each has only a
partial truth. The state founded on either cannot stand, and society
will only alternate between the two extremes. To-day it is torn by a
revolution in favor of socialism; to-morrow it will be torn by another
in favor of individualism, and without effecting any real progress by
either revolution. Real progress can be secured only by recognizing
and building on the truth, not as it exists in our opinions or in our
theories, but as it exists in the world of reality, and independent of
our opinions.
Now, social despotism or state absolutism is not based on truth or
reality. Society has certain rights over individuals, for she is a
medium of their communion with God, or through which they derive life
from God, the primal source of all life; but she is not the only medium
of man's life. Man, as was said in the beginning, lives by communion
with God, and he communes with God in the creative act and the
Incarnation, through his kind, and, through nature. This threefold
communion gives rise to three institutions—religion or the church,
society or the state, and property. The life that man derives from God
through religion and property, is not derived from him through society,
and consequently so much of his life be holds independently of society;
and this constitutes his rights as a man as distinguished from his
rights as a citizen. In relation to society, as not held from God
through her, these are termed his natural rights, which, she must hold
inviolable, and government protect for every one, whatever his
complexion or his social position. These rights—the rights of
conscience and the rights of property, with all their necessary
implications—are limitations of the rights of society, and the
individual has the right to plead them against the state. Society does
not confer them, and it cannot take them away, for they are at least as
sacred and as fundamental as her own.
But even this limitation of popular sovereignty is not all. The people
can be sovereign only in the sense in which they exist and act. The
people are not God, whatever some theorists may pretend—are not
independent, self-existent, and self-sufficing. They are as dependent
collectively as individually, and therefore can exist and act only as
second cause, never as first cause. They can, then, even in the limited
sphere of their sovereignty, be sovereign only in a secondary sense,
never absolute sovereign in their own independent right. They are
sovereign only to the extent to which they impart life to the
individual members of society, and only in the sense in which she
imparts it, or is its cause. She is not its first cause or creator,
and is the medial cause or medium through which they derive it from
God, not its efficient cause or primary source. Society derives her
own life from God, and exists and acts only as dependent on him. Then
she is sovereign over individuals only as dependent on God. Her
dominion is then not original and absolute, but secondary and
derivative.
This third theory does not err in assuming that the people collectively
are more than the people individually, or in denying society to be a
mere aggregation of individuals with no life, and no rights but what it
derives from them; nor even in asserting that the people in the sense
of society are sovereign, but in asserting that they are sovereign in
their own native or underived right and might. Society has not in
herself the absolute right to govern, because she has not the absolute
dominion either of herself or her members. God gave to man dominion
over the irrational creation, for he made irrational creatures for man;
but he never gave him either individually or collectively the dominion
over the rational creation. The theory that the people are absolutely
sovereign in their own independent right and might, as some zealous
democrats explain it, asserts the fundamental principle of despotism,
and all despotism is false, for it identifies the creature with the
Creator. No creature is creator, or has the rights of creator, and
consequently no one in his own right is or can be sovereign. This third
theory, therefore, is untenable.
IV. A still more recent class of philosophers, if philosophers they may
be called, reject the origin of government in the people individually
or collectively. Satisfied that it has never been instituted by a
voluntary and deliberate act of the people, and confounding government
as a fact with government as authority, maintain that government is a
spontaneous development of nature. Nature develops it as the liver
secretes bile, as the bee constructs her cell, or the beaver builds his
dam. Nature, working by her own laws and inherent energy, develops
society, and society develops government. That is all the secret.
Questions as to the origin of government or its rights, beyond the
simple positive fact, belong to the theological or metaphysical stage
of the development of nature, but are left behind when the race has
passed beyond that stage, and has reached the epoch of positive
science, in which all, except the positive fact, is held to be unreal
and non-existent. Government, like every thing else in the universe, is
simply a positive development of nature. Science explains the laws and
conditions of the development, but disdains to ask for its origin or
ground in any order that transcends the changes of the world of space
and time.
These philosophers profess to eschew all theory, and yet they only
oppose theory to theory. The assertion that reality for the human mind
is restricted to the positive facts of the sensible order, is purely
theoretic, and is any thing but a positive fact. Principles are as
really objects of science as facts, and it is only in the light of
principles that facts themselves are intelligible. If the human mind
had no science of reality that transcends the sensible order, or the
positive fact, it could have no science at all. As things exist only
in their principles or causes, so can they be known only in their
principles and causes; for things can be known only as they are, or as
they really exist. The science that pretends to deduce principles from
particular facts, or to rise from the fact by way of reasoning to an
order that transcends facts, and in which facts have their origin, is
undoubtedly chimerical, and as against that the positivists are
unquestionably right. But to maintain that man has no intelligence of
any thing beyond the fact, no intuition or intellectual apprehension of
its principle or cause, is equally chimerical. The human mind cannot
have all science, but it has real science as far as it goes, and real
science is the knowledge of things as they are, not as they are not.
Sensible facts are not intelligible by themselves, because they do not
exist by themselves; and if the human mind could not penetrate beyond
the individual fact, beyond the mimetic to the methexic, or
transcendental principle, copied or imitated by the individual fact, it
could never know the fact itself. The error of modern philosophers, or
philosopherlings, is in supposing the principle is deduced or inferred
from the fact, and in denying that the human mind has direct and
immediate intuition of it.
Something that transcends the sensible order there must be, or there
could be no development; and if we had no science of it, we could never
assert that development is development, or scientifically explain the
laws and conditions of development. Development is explication, and
supposes a germ which precedes it, and is not itself a development; and
development, however far it may be carried, can never do more than
realize the possibilities of the germ. Development is not creation,
and cannot supply its own germ. That at least must be given by the
Creator, for from nothing nothing can be developed. If authority has
not its germ in nature, it cannot be developed from nature
spontaneously or otherwise. All government has a governing will; and
without a will that commands, there is no government; and nature has in
her spontaneous developments no will, for she has no personality.
Reason itself, as distinguished from will, only presents the end and
the means, but does not govern; it prescribes a rule, but cannot ordain
a law. An imperative will, the will of a superior who has the right to
command what reason dictates or approves, is essential to government;
and that will is not developed from nature, because it has no germ in
nature. So something above and beyond nature must be asserted, or
government itself cannot be asserted, even as a development. Nature is
no more self-sufficing than are the people, or than is the individual
man.
No doubt there is a natural law, which is law in the proper sense of
the word law; but this is a positive law under which nature is placed
by a sovereign above herself, and is never to be confounded with those
laws of nature so-called, according to which she is productive as
second cause, or produces her effects, which are not properly laws at
all. Fire burns, water flows, rain falls, birds fly, fishes swim, food
nourishes, poisons kill, one substance has a chemical affinity for
another, the needle points to the pole, by a natural law, it is said;
that is, the effects are produced by an inherent and uniform natural
force. Laws in this sense are simply physical forces, and are nature
herself. The natural law, in an ethical sense, is not a physical law,
is not a natural force, but a law impose by the Creator on all moral
creatures, that is, all creatures endowed with reason and free-will,
and is called natural because promulgated in natural reason, or the
reason common and essential to all moral creatures. This is the moral
law. It is what the French call le droit naturell, natural right, and,
as the theologians teach us, is the transcript of the eternal law, the
eternal will or reason of God. It is the foundation of all law, and
all acts of a state that contravene it are, as St. Augustine maintains,
violences rather than laws. The moral law is no development of nature,
for it is above nature, and is imposed on nature. The only development
there is about it is in our understanding of it.
There is, of course, development in nature, for nature considered as
creation has been created in germ, and is completed only in successive
developments. Hence the origin of space and time. There would have
been no space if there had been no external creation, and no time if
the creation had been completed externally at once, as it was in
relation to the Creator. Ideal space is simply the ability of God to
externize his creative act, and actual space is the relation of
coexistence in the things created; ideal time is the ability of God to
create existences with the capacity of being completed by successive
developments, and actual time is the relation of these in the order of
succession, and when the existence is completed or consummated
development ceases, and time is no more. In relation to himself the
Creator's works are complete from the first, and hence with him there
is no time, for there is no succession. But in relation to itself
creation is incomplete, and there is room for development, which may be
continued till the whole possibility of creation is actualized. Here
is the foundation of what is true in the modern doctrine of progress.
Man is progressive, because the possibilities of his nature are
successively unfolded and actualized.
Development is a fact, and its laws and conditions may be
scientifically ascertained and defined. All generation is development,
as is all growth, physical, moral, or intellectual. But everything is
developed in its own order, and after its kind. The Darwinian theory of
the development of species is not sustained by science. The development
starts from the germ, and in the germ is given the law or principle of
the development. From the acorn is developed the oak, never the pine or
the linden. Every kind generates its kind, never another. But no
development is, strictly speaking, spontaneous, or the result alone of
the inherent energy or force of the germ developed. There is not only a
solidarity of race, but in some sense of all races, or species; all
created things are bound to their Creator, and to one another. One and
the same law or principle of life pervades all creation, binding the
universe together in a unity that copies or imitates the unity of the
Creator. No creature is isolated from the rest, or absolutely
independent of others. All are parts of one stupendous whole, and each
depends on the whole, and the whole on each, and each on each. All
creatures are members of one body, and members one of another. The
germ of the oak is in the acorn, but the acorn left to itself alone can
never grow into the oak, any more than a body at rest can place itself
in motion. Lay the acorn away in your closet, where it is absolutely
deprived of air, heat, and moisture, and in vain will you watch for its
germination. Germinate it cannot without some external influence, or
communion, so to speak, with the elements from which it derives its
sustenance and support.
There can be no absolutely spontaneous development. All things are
doubtless active, for nothing exists except in so far as it is an
active force of some sort; but only God himself alone suffices for his
own activity. All created things are dependent, have not their being
in themselves, and are real only as they participate, through the
creative act, of the Divine being. The germ can no more be developed
than it could exist without God, and no more develop itself than it
could create itself. What is called the law of development is in the
germ; but that law or force can operate only in conjunction with
another force or other forces. All development, as all growth, is by
accretion or assimilation. The assimilating force is, if you will, in
the germ, but the matter assimilated comes and must come from abroad.
Every herdsman knows it, and knows that to rear his stock he must
supply them with appropriate food; every husbandman knows it, and knows
that to raise a crop of corn, he must plant the seed in a soil duly
prepared, and which will supply the gases needed for its germination,
growth, flowering, boiling, and ripening. In all created things, in
all things not complete in themselves, in all save God, in whom there
is no development possible, for He is, as say the schoolmen, most pure
act, in whom there is no unactualized possibility, the same law holds
good. Development is always the resultant of two factors, the one the
thing itself, the other some external force co-operating with it,
exciting it, and aiding it to act.
Hence the praemotio physica of the Thomists, and the praevenient and
adjuvant grace of the theologians, without which no one can begin the
Christian life, and which must needs be supernatural when the end is
supernatural. The principle of life in all orders is the same, and
human activity no more suffices for itself in one order than in another.
Here is the reason why the savage tribe never rises to a civilized
state without communion in some form with a people already civilized,
and why there is no moral or intellectual development and progress
without education and instruction, consequently without instructors and
educators. Hence the value of tradition; and hence, as the first man
could not instruct himself, Christian theologians, with a deeper
philosophy than is dreamed of by the sciolists of the age, maintain
that God himself was man's first teacher, or that he created Adam a
full-grown man, with all his faculties developed, complete, and in full
activity. Hence, too, the heathen mythologies, which always contain
some elements of truth, however they may distort, mutilate, or travesty
them, make the gods the first teachers of the human race, and ascribe
to their instruction even the most simple and ordinary arts of
every-day life. The gods teach men to plough, to plant, to reap, to
work in iron, to erect a shelter from the storm, and to build a fire to
warm them and to cook their food. The common sense, as well as the
common traditions of mankind, refuses to accept the doctrine that men
are developed without foreign aid, or progressive without divine
assistance. Nature of herself can no more develop government than it
can language. There can be no language without society, and no society
without language. There can be no government without society, and no
society without government of some sort.
But even if nature could spontaneously develop herself, she could never
develop an institution that has the right to govern, for she has not
herself that right. Nature is not God, has not created us, therefore
has not the right of property in us. She is not and cannot be our
sovereign. We belong not to her, nor does she belong to herself, for
she is herself creature, and belongs to her Creator. Not being in
herself sovereign, she cannot develop the right to govern, nor can she
develop government as a fact, to say nothing of its right, for
government, whether we speak of it as fact or as authority, is distinct
from that which is governed; but natural developments are nature, and
indistinguishable from her. The governor and the governed, the
restrainer and the restrained, can never as such be identical.
Self-government, taken strictly, is a contradiction in terms. When an
individual is said to govern himself, he is never understood to govern
himself in the sense in which he is governed. He by his reason and
will governs or restrains his appetites and passions. It is man as
spirit governing man as flesh, the spiritual mind governing the carnal
mind.
Natural developments cannot in all cases be even allowed to take their
own course without injury to nature herself. "Follow nature" is an
unsafe maxim, if it means, leave nature to develop herself as she will,
and follow thy natural inclinations. Nature is good, but inclinations
are frequently bad. All our appetites and passions are given us for
good, for a purpose useful and necessary to individual and social life,
but they become morbid and injurious if indulged without restraint.
Each has its special object, and naturally seeks it exclusively, and
thus generates discord and war in the individual, which immediately
find expression in society, and also in the state, if the state be a
simple natural development. The Christian maxim, Deny thyself, is far
better than the Epicurean maxim, Enjoy thyself, for there is no real
enjoyment without self-denial. There is deep philosophy in Christian
asceticism, as the Positivists themselves are aware, and even insist.
But Christian asceticism aims not to destroy nature, as voluptuaries
pretend, but to regulate, direct, and restrain its abnormal
developments for its own good. It forces nature in her developments to
submit to a law which is not in her, but above her. The Positivists
pretend that this asceticism is itself a natural development, but that
cannot be a natural development which directs, controls, and restrains
natural development.
The Positivists confound nature at one time with the law of nature, and
at another the law of nature with nature herself, and take what is
called the natural law to be a natural development. Here is their
mistake, as it is the mistake of all who accept naturalistic theories.
Society, no doubt, is authorized by the law of nature to institute and
maintain government. But the law of nature is not a natural
development, nor is it in nature, or any part of nature. It is not a
natural force which operates in nature, and which is the developing
principle of nature. Do they say reason is natural, and the law of
nature is only reason? This is not precisely the fact. The natural law
is law proper, and is reason only in the sense that reason includes
both intellect and will, and nobody can pretend that nature in her
spontaneous developments acts from intelligence and volition. Reason,
as the faculty of knowing, is subjective and natural; but in the sense
in which it is coincident with the natural law, it is neither
subjective nor natural, but objective and divine, and is God affirming
himself and promulgating his law to his creature, man. It is, at
least, an immediate participation of the divine by which He reveals
himself and His will to the human understanding, and is not natural,
but supernatural, in the sense that God himself is supernatural. This
is wherefore reason is law, and every man is bound to submit or conform
to reason.
That legitimate governments are instituted under the natural law is
frankly conceded, but this is by no means the concession of government
as a natural development. The reason and will of which the natural law
is the expression are the reason and will of God. The natural law is
the divine law as much as the revealed law itself, and equally
obligatory. It is not a natural force developing itself in nature,
like the law of generation, for instance, and therefore proceeding from
God as first cause, but it proceeds from God as final cause, and is,
therefore, theological, and strictly a moral law, founding moral rights
and duties. Of course, all morality and all legitimate government rest
on this law, or, if you will, originate in it. But not therefore in
nature, but in the Author of nature. The authority is not the
authority of nature, but of Him who holds nature in the hollow of His
hand.
V. In the seventeenth century a class of political writers who very
well understood that no creature, no man, no number of men, not even,
nature herself, can be inherently sovereign, defended the opinion that
governments are founded, constituted, and clothed with their authority
by the direct and express appointment of God himself. They denied that
rulers hold their power from the nation; that, however oppressive may
be their rule, that they are justiciable by any human tribunal, or that
power, except by the direct judgment of God, is amissible. Their
doctrine is known in history as the doctrine of "the divine right of
kings, and passive obedience." All power, says St. Paul, is from God,
and the powers that be are ordained of God, and to resist them is to
resist the ordination of God. They must be obeyed for conscience' sake.
It would, perhaps, be rash to say that this doctrine had never been
broached before the seventeenth century, but it received in that
century, and chiefly in England, its fullest and most systematic
developments. It was patronized by the Anglican divines, asserted by
James I. of England, and lost the Stuarts the crown of three kingdoms.
It crossed the Channel, into France, where it found a few hesitating
and stammering defenders among Catholics, under Louis XIV., but it has
never been very generally held, though it has had able and zealous
supporters. In England it was opposed by all the Presbyterians,
Puritans, Independents, and Republicans, and was forgotten or abandoned
by the Anglican divines themselves in the Revolution of 1688, that
expelled James II. and crowned William and Mary. It was ably refuted
by the Jesuit Suarez in his reply to a Remonstrance for the Divine
Right of Kings by the James I.; and a Spanish monk who had asserted it
in Madrid, under Philip II., was compelled by the Inquisition to
retract it publicly in the place where he had asserted it. All
republicans reject it, and the Church has never sanctioned it. The
Sovereign Pontiffs have claimed and exercised the right to deprive
princes of their principality, and to absolve their subjects from the
oath of fidelity. Whether the Popes rightly claimed and exercised that
power is not now the question; but their having claimed and exercised
it proves that the Church does not admit the inamissibility of power
and passive obedience; for the action of the Pope was judicial, not
legislative. The Pope has never claimed the right to depose a prince
till by his own act he has, under the moral law or the constitution of
his state, forfeited his power, nor to absolve subjects from their
allegiance till their oath, according to its true intent and meaning,
has ceased to bind. If the Church has always asserted with the Apostle
there is no power but from God—non est potestas nisi a Deo—she has
always through her doctors maintained that it is a trust to be
exercised for the public good, and is forfeited when persistently
exercised in a contrary sense. St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and Suarez
all maintain that unjust laws are violences rather than laws, and do
not oblige, except in charity or prudence, and that the republic may
change its magistrates, and even its constitution, if it sees proper to
do so.
That God, as universal Creator, is Sovereign Lord and proprietor of all
created things or existences, visible or invisible, is certain; for the
maker has the absolute right to the thing made; it is his, and he may
do with it as he will. As he is sole creator, he alone hath dominion;
and as he is absolute creator, he has absolute dominion over all the
things which he has made. The guaranty against oppression is his own
essential nature, is in the plenitude of his own being, which is the
plenitude of wisdom and goodness. He cannot contradict himself, be
other than he is, or act otherwise than according to his own essential
nature. As he is, in his own eternal and immutable essence, supreme
reason and supreme good, his dominion must always in its exercise be
supremely good and supremely reasonable, therefore supremely just and
equitable. From him certainly is all power; he is unquestionably King
of kings, and Lord of lords. By him kings reign and magistrates decree
just things. He may, at his will, set up or pull down kings, rear or
overwhelm empires, foster the infant colony, and make desolate the
populous city. All this is unquestionably true, and a simple dictate of
reason common to all men. But in what sense is it true? Is it true in
a supernatural sense? Or is it true only in the sense that it is true
that by him we breathe, perform any or all of our natural functions,
and in him live, and move, and have our being?
Viewed in their first cause, all things are the immediate creation of
God, and are supernatural, and from the point of view of the first
cause the Scriptures usually speak, for the great purpose and paramount
object of the sacred writers, as of religion itself, is to make
prominent the fact that God is universal creator, and supreme governor,
and therefore the first and final cause of all things. But God creates
second causes, or substantial existences, capable themselves of acting
and producing effects in a secondary sense, and hence he is said to be
causa causarum, cause of causes. What is done by these second causes
or creatures is done eminently by him, for they exist only by his
creative act, and produce only by virtue of his active presence, or
effective concurrence. What he does through them or through their
agency is done by him, not immediately, but mediately, and is said to
be done naturally, as what he does immediately is said to be done
supernaturally. Natural is what God does through second causes, which
he creates; supernatural is that which he does by himself alone,
without their intervention or agency. Sovereignty, or the right to
govern, is in him, and he may at his will delegate it to men either
mediately or immediately, by a direct and express appointment, or
mediately through nature. In the absence of all facts proving its
delegation direct and express, it must be assumed to be mediate,
through second causes. The natural is always to be presumed, and the
supernatural is to be admitted only on conclusive proof.
The people of Israel had a supernatural vocation, and they received
their law, embracing their religious and civil constitution and their
ritual directly from God at the hand of Moses, and various individuals
from time to time appear to have been specially called to be their
judges, rulers, or kings. Saul was so called, and so was David. David
and his line appear, also, to have been called not only to supplant
Saul and his line, but to have been supernaturally invested with the
kingdom forever; but it does not appear that the royal power with which
David and his line were invested was inamissible. They lost it in the
Babylonish captivity, and never afterwards recovered it. The Asmonean
princes were of another line, and when our Lord came the sceptre was in
the hands of Herod, an Idumean Or Edomite. The promise made, to David
and his house is generally held by Christian commentators to have
received its fulfilment in the everlasting spiritual royalty of the
Messiah, sprung through Mary from David's line.
The Christian Church is supernaturally constituted and supernaturally
governed, but the persons selected to exercise powers supernaturally
defined, from the Sovereign Pontiff down to the humblest parish priest
are selected and inducted into office through human agency. The
Gentiles very generally claimed to have received their laws from the
gods, but it does not appear, save in exceptional cases, that they
claimed that their princes were designated and held their powers by the
direct and express appointment of the god. Save in the case of the
Jews, and that of the Church, there is no evidence that any particular
government exists or ever has existed by direct or express appointment,
or otherwise than by the action of the Creator through second causes,
or what is called his ordinary providence. Except David and his line,
there is no evidence of the express grant by the Divine Sovereign to
any individual or family, class or caste of the government of any
nation or country. Even those Christian princes who professed to reign
"by the grace of God," never claimed that they received their
principalities from God otherwise than through his ordinary providence,
and meant by it little more than an acknowledgment of their dependence
on him, their obligation to use their power according to his law and
their accountability to him for the use they make of it.
The doctrine is not favorable to human liberty, for it recognizes no
rights of man in face of civil society. It consecrates tyranny, and
makes God the accomplice of the tyrant, if we suppose all governments
have actually existed by his express appointment. It puts the king in
the place of God, and requires us to worship in him the immediate
representative of the Divine Being. Power is irresponsible and
inamissible, and however it may be abused, or however corrupt and
oppressive may be its exercise, there is no human redress. Resistance
to power is resistance to God. There is nothing for the people but
passive obedience and unreserved submission. The doctrine, in fact,
denies all human government, and allows the people no voice in the
management of their own affairs, and gives no place for human activity.
It stands opposed to all republicanism, and makes power an hereditary
and indefeasible right, not a trust which he who holds it may forfeit,
and of which he may be deprived if he abuses it.
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