Moral Philosophy: Ethics, Deontology and Natural Law Part 18

13. Any one who understands how morality comes from G.o.d (_Ethics_, c.

vi., s. ii. nn. 6-9, 13, pp. 119-125), can have no difficulty in seeing how civil power is of G.o.d also. The one point covers the other.

We need no mention of G.o.d to show that disobedience, lying, and the seven deadly sins, are bad things for human nature, things to be avoided even if they were not forbidden. All the things that G.o.d forbids are against the good of man. Their being evil is distinguishable from their being prohibited, and antecedent to it. Now as drunkenness and unchast.i.ty are evil for man, so too is anarchy. The one remedy for anarchy is civil government. Even if there were no G.o.d, it would be still imperatively necessary, as we have seen, for mankind to erect political inst.i.tutions, and to abide by the laws and ordinances of const.i.tutional power. But there would be no _formal obligation_ of submission to these laws and ordinances; and resistance to this power would be no more than _philosophic sin_. (_Ethics_, c.

vi., s. ii., n. 6, p. 119.) What makes anarchy truly sinful and wrong is the prohibition of it contained in the Eternal Law, that law whereby G.o.d commands every creature, and particularly every man, to act in accordance with his own proper being and nature taken as a whole, and to avoid what is repugnant to the same. (_Ethics_, c. vi., s. ii., n. 9, p. 120.)

Therefore, as man is naturally social, and anarchy is the dissolution of society, G.o.d forbids anarchy, and enjoins obedience to the civil power, under pain of sin and d.a.m.nation. "They that resist, purchase to themselves d.a.m.nation" (Rom. xiii. 2): where the theological student, having the Greek text before him, will observe that the same phrase is used as in 1 Cor. xi. 29 of the unworthy communicant, as though it were the like sin to rend our Lord's mystical Body by civil discord as to profane His natural Body by sacrilege. But to enjoin obedience and to bestow authority are the obverse and reverse of one and the same act. G.o.d therefore gives the civil ruler power and authority to command. This is the meaning of St. Paul's teaching that there is no power but from G.o.d, and that the powers that be are ordained of G.o.d.

(Rom. xiii. 1.)

14. The argument is summed up in these seven consequent propositions:

(a) Civil society is necessary to human nature.

(b) Civil power is necessary to civil society.

(c) Civil power is naught without civil obedience.

(d) Civil obedience is necessary to human nature.

(e) G.o.d commands whatever is necessary to human nature.

(f) G.o.d commands obedience to the civil power.

(g) G.o.d commissions the civil power to rule.

15. If any one asks how the State and the civil power is of G.o.d any otherwise than the railway company with its power, or even the fever with its virulence, a moment's reflection will reveal the answer in the facts, that railway communication, however convenient, is not an essential feature of human life, as the State is: while diseases are not requirements in order to good, but incidental defects and evils of nature, permitted by G.o.d. Why G.o.d leaves man to cope with such evils, is not the question here.

_Readings_.--Ar., _Pol_., I., ii.; III., i.; III., ix.: nn. 5-15.

SECTION IV.--_Of the Variety of Polities_.

1. _One polity alone is against the natural law; that is every polity which proves itself unworkable and inefficient: for the rest, various States exhibit various polities workable and lawful, partly from the circ.u.mstances, partly from the choice, of the citizens: but the sum total of civil power is a constant quant.i.ty, the same for all States_.

We proceed to establish the clauses of this statement in succession.

2. If a watch be necessary to a railway guard, and he is bound to have one accordingly, it is also necessary, and he is bound to procure it, that the watch shall go and keep time. A watch that will not keep time is an unlawful article for him to depend upon, being tantamount to no watch, whereas he is bound to have a watch. Otherwise, be his watch large or small, gold, silver, or pinchbeck, all this is indifferent, so long as it be a reliable timekeeper. In like manner, we must have a State, we must have a government, and we must have a government that can govern. Monarchy, aristocracy, parliaments, wide or narrow franchise, centralisation, decentralisation, any one of these and countless other forms--apart from the means whereby it is set up--is a lawful government, where it is a workable one; unlawful, and forbidden by G.o.d and nature, where it cannot work. A form of government that from its own intrinsic defects could nowhere work, would be everywhere and always unlawful.

3. You cannot argue from the accomplished fact the lawfulness of the means whereby it was accomplished. Nor do we say that every form of government, which succeeds in governing, was originally set up in justice; nor again that the success of its rule is necessarily due to the use of just means. The Committee of Public Safety in Paris in 1794 did manage to govern, but it was erected in blood, and it governed by an unscrupulous disregard of everybody's rights. All that we say is, that no distribution of civil power as a distribution, or no polity as a polity (s. iii., n. 5, p. 312), is unlawful, if by it the government can be carried on. And the reason is plain. For all that nature requires is that there should be an efficient civil authority, not that this man should have it, or that one man or other should have it all, or that a certain cla.s.s in council a.s.sembled should engross it, or that all the inhabitants of the country should partic.i.p.ate in it.

Any one of these arrangements that will work, satisfies the exigency of nature for civil rule, and is therefore in itself a lawful polity.

4. Working, and therefore, as explained, lawful polities are as mult.i.tudinous as the species of animals. Besides those that actually are, there is a variety without end, as of animals, so of polities, that might be and are not. We can cla.s.sify only the main types. We ground our cla.s.sification upon Ar., _Pol._, III., vii., modernising it so as to take in forms of representative government, whereof Aristotle had no conception.

(1) _Monarchy_, or the rule of the Single Person, in whose hands the whole power of the State is concentrated, e.g., Constantine the Great.

(2) _Aristocracy_, or the rule of the Few, which will be either _direct_ or _representative_, according as either they themselves by their own votes at first hand, or representatives whom they elect, make the laws.

(3) _Democracy_, or the rule of the Many, that is, of the whole community. Democracy, again, is either _direct_ (commonly called _pure_) or _representative_. The most famous approach in history to pure democracy is the government of Athens, B.C. 438-338.

(4) _Limited Monarchy_.

(a) _Monarchy with Aristocracy_, the government of England from 1688 to 1830.

(b) _Monarchy with Democracy_.

5. All civil government is for the governed, that is, for the community at large. The perversion of a polity is the losing sight of this principle, and the conducting of the polity in the interest of the governing body alone. By such perversion monarchy pa.s.ses into _tyranny_, aristocracy into _oligarchy_, and democracy into _ochlocracy_ or _mob-rule_. It might appear strange that, where the power rests with the whole people collectively, government should ever be carried on otherwise than in the interest of the entire community, did we not remember that the majority, with whom the power rests in a democracy, may employ it to trample on and crush the minority. Thus the Many may worry and hara.s.s the Few, the mean and poor the wealthy and n.o.ble: though commonly perhaps the worrying has been the other way about. Anyhow it is important to observe that there is no polity which of itself, and apart from the spirit in which it is worked, is an adequate safeguard and rock of defence against oppression.

6. The wide range of polities that history presents is not drawn out by the caprice of nations. The very fact of a certain nation choosing a certain polity, where they are free to choose, is an indication of the bent of the national character, and character is not a caprice. No North American population are ever likely to elect an absolute monarch to govern them. That polity which thrives on the sh.o.r.es of the Caspian, can strike no root on the banks of the Potomac. The choice of a polity is limited by the character of the electors and by the circ.u.mstances in which the election is made. Not every generation in a nation is free to choose its polity: but the choice and inst.i.tution of the fathers binds the children. Up to a certain point ancestral settlements must be respected, or instability ensues, and anarchy is not far off. Thus the spirit of freedom should always act as Burke says, "as if in the presence of canonized forefathers."

7. The smallest State in the world is the little republic of Andorra in the Pyrenees. Though it be a paradox to say it, there is as much political power in Andorra as in Russia,--one and the same measure of it in every State. In every State there is power for civil good to the full height of the emergencies that may arise. The same emergencies may arise everywhere, and everywhere there is full power to see that the commonwealth take no harm by them. What a great empire can do for this purpose, _e.g_., proclaim martial law, search houses, lay an embargo on the means of transport, impress soldiers, the same can the tiniest commonwealth do in the like need. And the ordinary functions of government are the same in both.

8. This seems at variance with the theory of some const.i.tutions, according to which there are certain so-called _fundamental laws_, which the legislature cannot call in question, nor deal with in any way, but must take them in all its deliberations for positions established and uncontrovertible. The British Const.i.tution recognizes no fundamental laws. There is no reform that may not legally be broached in Parliament and enacted there. Parliament is said to be "omnipotent," "able to do everything, except to make a man a woman."

But in many legislatures it is not so. At Athens of old there were certain measures which no one could introduce for discussion in the Sovereign a.s.sembly without rendering himself liable to a prosecution [Greek: graphae paranomon]. And there have been many monarchs termed absolute, who yet were bound by their coronation-oath, or by some other agreement with their people, to preserve inviolate certain inst.i.tutions and to maintain certain laws. It may be contended that such a government as we have in England, which is theoretically competent to pa.s.s any law within the limits of the natural law, has a greater range of power than a government whose operation is limited by a barrier of fundamental positive law. But this contention vanishes when we observe that there must remain in the State, which has fundamental laws, a power somewhere to reverse them. They can be reversed at least by the consent of the whole people. Thus at Athens the [Greek: graphae paranomon] could be suspended by a vote of the a.s.sembly. A people can release their monarch from his coronation-oath in such portions of it as are not binding absolutely by divine law.

Where _fundamental law_ obtains, a portion of the civil power becomes _latent_, and only a diminished remainder is left _free_ in the hands of the person or persons who are there said to rule. Such person or persons are not the _adequate ruler_ of the State, as they have not the full power, but the people, with whom rests the latent authority to cancel certain laws, are to that extent partakers in the sovereignty. Where there is agreement of the whole people, great and small, no part of the power remains _latent_, but all is set _free_.

With us, it may be observed, the omnipotence of parliament has become a mere lawyer's theory. On every great issue, other than that on which the sitting parliament has been elected, it is the practice of ministers to "go to the country" by a new General Election. Thus only a certain measure of available authority is _free_ at the disposal of parliament: the rest remaining _latent_ in the general body of the electorate. Such is our const.i.tution in practice.

9. If in any State the whole power were _free_ in the hands of one man, there we might look to see made good the _dictum_ of the judicious Hooker (_Ecclesiastical Polity_, bk. i., s. x., n. 5): "To live by one man's will became the cause of all men's misery." In a monarchy untrammelled by senate or popular a.s.sembly, it were well that some of the sovereign power should remain _latent_, and that His Majesty should rule in accordance with certain laws, not within his royal pleasure to revoke.

10. The State and the power of the State, apart from the polity, is of G.o.d. (s. iii., n. 14, p. 318.) The State under this or that polity and this or that ruler, is also of G.o.d. But, apart from the polity, the State is of G.o.d _antecedently_ to any determination of any human will: because, w.i.l.l.y nilly, man must live in civil society and G.o.d commands him so to do. But the State under _this_ polity and _this_ ruler is of G.o.d _consequently_ to some determination of human volition. In this consequent sense we write _Victoria Dei gratia_.

11. There is little use in the enquiry, Which is the best polity?

There is no polity which excels all other polities as man does the rest of animals. We judge of polities as of the various types of locomotives, according to the nature of the country where they are to run. Aristotle tells us that if we meet with a Pericles, we shall do best to make him our king, and hand over all our affairs to him. (Ar., _Pol_., III., xiii., 25: cf. Thucydides, ii., 65.) Otherwise, "for most cities and for most men, apart from exceptional circ.u.mstances, or a condition of ideal perfection, but having regard to what is ordinarily possible," he recommends a moderate republic under middle-cla.s.s rule. (Ar., _Pol_., VI., xi., Ed. Congreve.) This he calls _par excellence_ "a polity," [Greek: politeia]. _Democracy_, [Greek: deimokratia] with Aristotle, always means that perversion of democracy, which we call _mob-rule_. (Ar., _Pol._, III., vii., nn. 3, 5.)

12. In the English monarchy the whole majesty of the State s.h.i.+nes forth in the Single Person who wears the Crown. The Crown is the centre of loyalty and gives dignity to the government. The Crown is above all parties in the State, knows their secrets, their purposes when in office as well as their acts, and is able to mediate, when party feeling threatens to bring government to a standstill. The British Crown has more weight of influence than of prerogative.

[Footnote 21]

[Footnote 21: Written in the month and year of jubilee, June, 1887.]

_Readings_.--St. Thos., 1a 2ae, q. 105, art. 1, in corp., ad 2, 5; Ar., _Pol_., III., xv.; _ib_., III., xvi., nn. 5-8; _ib_., VIII. (al. V.), xi. nn. 1-3.

SECTION V.--_Of the Divine Right of Kings and the Inalienable Sovereignty of the People._

1. "Those old fanatics of arbitrary power dogmatized as if hereditary monarchy were the only lawful government in the world, just as our new fanatics of popular arbitrary power maintain that a popular election is the only lawful source of authority." (Burke, _Reflections on French Revolution_.)

We here stand between two idols of the tribe of politicians. We may call them Gog and Magog: Gog, the divine right of kings; Magog, the inalienable sovereignty of the people.

2. The position known in history as "the divine right of kings" may be best described as a _political popedom_. It is the belief of Catholics that our Divine Redeemer, inst.i.tuting His Church by His own personal act as a perfect society and spiritual commonwealth, inst.i.tuted in like manner the polity under which He willed it to be governed, namely, the Papal monarchy, begun in St. Peter and carried to completion according to our Lord's design under the line of Popes, Peter's successors. The monarchy thus established is essential to the Catholic Church. We speak not here of the temporal power which the Pope once enjoyed in the Roman States, but of his spiritual sovereignty over all Christendom. The Pope cannot validly resign and put out of his own and his successors' hands, nor can the Cardinals take away from him, nor the Episcopate, one jot or t.i.ttle of this spiritual prerogative. He cannot, for instance, condition his infallibility on the consent of a General Council, or surrender the canonization of saints to the votes of the faithful at large. Such are the inalienable, Christ-given prerogatives of the Papacy. Henry VIII.

feloniously set himself up for Pope within the realm of England.

Blending together temporal and spiritual jurisdiction, he made out his rights and prerogatives as a monarch, even in the civil order, to be inalienable as in the spiritual. Spiritual and civil attributes together formed a jewelled circlet, one and indivisible, immoveably fixed on the brow of the King's Most Sacred Majesty. Grown and swollen by their union with the spirituality, the civil attributes of the Crown were exaggerated to the utmost, and likewise declared inalienable. They were exaggerated till they came to embrace all the powers of government. The privileges of Parliament, and the limitations to the royal authority, set forth in the Pet.i.tion of Right in 1628, were regarded as mere concessions tenable at the King's pleasure: from which point of view we understand the readiness of so conscientious a monarch as Charles I. to act against such privileges after he had allowed them. But to vest all the powers of government inalienably in the King, so that whoever else may seem to partake in them, shall partake only by royal sufferance, is tantamount to declaring monarchy the sole valid and lawful polity. This declaration the ministers, lay and clerical, of our Charleses and Jameses do not seem to have made in express terms. It is, however, contained by implication in their celebrated phrase of "the inalienable prerogatives of the Crown," as interpreted by the stretches of prerogative which they advised. They virtually a.s.serted of one particular polity, or distribution of civil power (c. viii., s. iii., n. 5, p. 312), that which is true only of civil power taken nakedly, apart from the mode of its distribution--they said of _monarchy_ what is true of _government_--that the sum of its power is a constant quant.i.ty (c. viii., s. iv., n. 7, p. 322), and that it is of G.o.d _antecedently_ to and irrespectively of any determination of popular will. (c. viii., s. iv., n. 10, p. 325.)

3. Such a position is easily refuted, _negatively_, by its being wholly unproven, unless the English Reformation, and the servile spirit in Church and State that promoted and was promoted by the Reformation, can pa.s.s for a proof; and again the position is _positively_ refuted, when we come to consider how all that nature requires and G.o.d commands, is government under some polity, not government everywhere under monarchy; there being many workable polities besides monarchy. (s. iv., nn. 1-4, p. 319.)

4. The same argument that demolishes Gog, also overturns Magog. The two idols, opposed to one another, stand upon the same pedestal, the identification of government in general with one particular polity, as though _a_ polity were _the_ polity. The great a.s.sertor and wors.h.i.+pper of the inalienable sovereignty of the people is Jean Jacques Rousseau.

He starts from postulates which we have already rejected--that all men are equal (c. viii., s. i., n. 9, p. 305)--that man is born free (_ib._, n. 10)--that none can be bound to obey another without his own consent (_ib._, n. 11)--that civil society is formed by an arbitrary convention (_ib._, n. 4)--which convention is the Social Contract.

(_ib._, n. 5.) From these unreasonable postulates Rousseau draws the conclusion, logically enough, that the sovereign will in every State is the will of the majority of the citizens: but the will of the majority, he goes on, cannot be alienated from the majority: therefore neither can the sovereignty be alienated, but must abide permanently with the people ruling by a majority of votes. The argumentation is excellent, but the premisses are all false. The conclusion is vastly popular, few minds considering from what premisses it is drawn.

5. If sovereignty rests inalienably with the people, the one valid polity is pure democracy. This proposition, however, Rousseau was not forward to formulate. The Stuarts had shrunk from formulating a similar proposition about monarchy, though they virtually held and acted upon it. They were willing enough to allow of a parliament, whose privileges and functions should be at His Majesty's gracious pleasure. Thus Rousseau will allow you to have your senate, king, emperor, if you will: only remember that he is _the prince_, not _the sovereign_. (_Contrat Social_, l. iii., c. i.) The people collectively are the sovereign, always sovereign. The _prince_, that is, he or they to whom the administration is entrusted--since all the citizens cannot administer jointly--is the mere official and bailiff of the Sovereign People, bound to carry out their mandate in all things, and removable at their pleasure. The people must meet periodically, not at the discretion of the prince. "These meetings must open with two questions, never to be omitted, and to be voted on separately. The first is: Whether it pleases the Sovereign (People) to continue the present form of government. The second is: Whether it pleases the People to leave the administration to the persons at present actually charged with it." (_Contrat Social_, ,l. iv., c. xviii.)

6. The claim of a pure democracy like this to supersede all other polities cannot be established by abstract arguments. That we have seen in examining the Social Contract. The alternative way of establis.h.i.+ng such an exclusive claim would be to prove that the practical efficiency of pure democracy immeasurably transcends the efficiency of every other possible polity. There is indeed yet a third mode of proof resorted to. It is said that pure democracy everywhere is coming and must come; and that what is thus on the line of human progress must be right and best for the time that it obtains. A grand invention this of Positivist genius, the theory, that whatever is is right; and the practice, always to swim with the stream! But supposing that pure democracy is coming, how long is it likely to last? The answer may be gathered from a review of the working difficulties of such a polity.

7. It is made only for a small State. Railway and telegraph have indeed diminished the difficulty; and have removed the need of all the voters meeting in one place, as was done at Athens. Newspapers echo and spread with addition the eloquence of popular orators, beyond the ears that actually listen to them. Still, think what it would be to have a general election, upon every bill that pa.s.ses through Parliament: for that is what pure democracy comes to. The plan would scarcely work with a total electorate of thirty thousand. You say the people would entrust a committee with the pa.s.sing of ordinary measures, reserving to themselves the supervision. I am not arguing the physical impossibility, but the moral difficulties of such an arrangement. For either the people throw the reins of government on the neck of this committee, or they keep a tight hold upon the committee and guide it. In the former case the popular sovereignty becomes like that of a monarch who leans much on favourites, a sovereignty largely partic.i.p.ated in by others than the nominal holder of the control. On the other hand, if the people do frequently interfere, and take a lively interest in the doings of the subordinate a.s.sembly, the people themselves must be a small body. An active governing body of three hundred thousand members would be as great a wonder as an active man weighing three hundred pounds. Only in a small State is that intense political life possible, which a pure democracy must live. There only, as Rousseau requires, can the public service be the princ.i.p.al affair of the citizens. "All things considered," he says, "I do not see how it is any longer possible for the Sovereign (People) to preserve amongst us the exercise of his rights, if the city is not very small." (_Contrat Social_, l. iii., c. xv.) And the difficulty of size in a democracy is aggravated, if, as Socialists propose, the democratic State is to be sole capitalist within its own limits. The perfect sovereignty of the people means the disruption of empires, and the pus.h.i.+ng to extremity of what is variously described as _local government, home rule, autonomy_, and _decentralisation_, till every commune becomes an independent State. But for defence in war and for commerce in peace, these little States must federate; and federation means centralisation, external control over the majority at home, restricted foreign relations, in fact the corruption of pure democracy.

8. Again, the perfect sovereignty of the people cannot subsist except upon the supposition that one man is as much a born ruler as another, which means a levelling down of the best talent of the community, for that is the only way in which capacities can be equalised--a very wasteful and ruinous expedient, and one that the born leaders of the people will not long endure. Then there is the proverbial fickleness of democracy, one day all aglow, and cooled down the next, never pursuing any course steadily, in foreign policy least of all, though there the dearest interests of the State are often at stake. As one who lived under such a government once put it: "Sheer democracy is of all inst.i.tutions the most ill-balanced and ill put together, like a wave at sea restlessly tossing before the fitful gusts of wind: politicians come and go, and not one of them cares for the public interest, or gives it a thought." (Quoted by Demosthenes, Speech on the Emba.s.sy, p. 383 A.) What they do care for and think of sedulously, is pleasing the people and clinging to office. In that respect they are the counterparts of the favourites who cl.u.s.ter round the throne of a despotic monarch, and suck up his power by flattering him. Peoples have their favourites as well as kings. To these persons, the Cleon or Gracchus of the hour, they blindly commit the management of their concerns, as the _roi faineant_ of old Frankish times left everything to his Mayor of the Palace, till the Mayor came to reign in his master's stead; and so has the popular favourite ere now developed into the military despot. Strong-minded kings of course are not ruled by favourites, nor are highly intelligent and capable peoples; but it is as hard to find a people fit to wield the power of pure democracy as to find an individual fit for an absolute monarch, especially where the State is large.

9. From all this we conclude that the new-fas.h.i.+oned Magog of pure democracy, or the perfect sovereignty of the people, is not to be wors.h.i.+pped to the overthrow and repudiation of all other polities, any more than the old-fas.h.i.+oned Gog of pure monarchy, idolised by Stuart courtiers under the name of "the divine right of kings." Neither of these is _the polity_: each is _a polity_, but not one to be commonly recommended. The study of polities admirably ill.u.s.trates the Aristotelian doctrine of the Golden Mean (_Ethics_, c. v., s. iv., p.