On Government

by Frederic Bastiat, 1848 I wish some one would offer a prize for a good, simple, and intelligent definition of the word "Government."

The Government! what is it? where is it? what does it do? what ought it to do? All we know is, that it is a mysterious personage; and, assuredly, it is the most solicited, the most tormented, the most overwhelmed, the most admired, the most accused, the most invoked, and the most provoked of any personage in the world.

I have not the pleasure of knowing my reader but I would stake ten to one that for six months he has been making Utopias, and if so, that he is looking to Government for the realization of them.

And should the reader happen to be a lady: I have no doubt that she is sincerely desirous of seeing all the evils of suffering humanity remedied, and that she thinks this might easily be done, if Government would only undertake it.

But, alas! that poor unfortunate personage, like Figaro, knows not to whom to listen, nor where to turn. The hundred thousand mouths of the press and of the platform cry out all at once -

"Organize labor and workmen."
"Repress insolence and the tyranny of capital."
"Make experiments upon manure and eggs."
"Cover the country with railways."
"Irrigate the plains."
"Plant the hills."
"Make model farms."
"Found social workshops."
"Nurture children."
"Instruct the youth."
"Assist the aged."
"Send the inhabitants of towns into the country."
"Equalize the profits of all trades."
"Lend money without interest to all who wish to borrow."
"Emancipate oppressed people everywhere."
"Rear and perfect the saddle-horse."
"Encourage the arts, and provide us musicians, painters, and architects."
"Restrict commerce, and at the same time create a merchant navy."
"Discover truth, and put a grain of reason into our heads. The mission of Government is to enlighten, to develop, to extend, to fortify, to spiritualize, and to sanctify the soul of the people."

"Do have a little patience, gentlemen" says Government, in a beseeching tone. "I will do what I can to satisfy you, but for this I must have resources. I have been preparing plans for five or six taxes, which are quite new, and not at all oppressive. You will see how willingly people will pay them."

Then comes a great exclamation: - "No! indeed! where is the merit of doing a thing with resources? Why, it does not deserve the name of a Government!

So far from loading us with fresh taxes, we would have you withdraw the old ones. You ought to suppress
"The tobacco tax."
"The tax on liquors."
"The tax on letters."
"Custom-house duties."
"Patents."

In the midst of this tumult, and now that the country has again and again changed the administration, for not having satisfied all its demands, I wanted to show that they were contradictory. But, what could I have been thinking about? Could I not keep this unfortunate observation to myself!

I have lost my character forever! I am looked upon as a man without heart and without feeling - a dry philosopher, an individualist, a plebeian - in a word, an economist of the practical school. But, pardon me, sublime writers, who stop at nothing, not even at contradictions. I am wrong, without a doubt, and I would willingly retract. I should be glad enough, you may be sure, if you had really discovered a beneficent and inexhaustible being, calling itself the Government, which has bread for all mouths, work for all hands, capital for all enterprises, credit for all projects, oil for all wounds, balm for all sufferings, advice for all perplexities, solutions for all doubts, truths for all intellects, diversions for all who want them, milk for infancy, and wine for old age - which can provide for all our wants, satisfy all our curiosity, correct all our errors, repair all our faults, and exempt us henceforth from the necessity for foresight, prudence, judgment, sagacity, experience, order, economy, temperance, and activity.

What reason could I have for not desiring to see such a discovery made? Indeed, the more I reflect upon it, the more do I see that nothing could be more convenient than that we should all of us have within our reach an inexhaustible source of wealth and enlightenment - a universal physician, an unlimited treasure, and an infallible counselor, such as you describe Government to be. Therefore it is that I want to have it pointed out and defined, and that a prize should be offered to the first discoverer of the phoenix. For no one would think of asserting that this precious discovery has yet been made, since up to this time everything presenting itself under the name of the Government has at some time been overturned by the people, precisely because it does not fulfill the rather contradictory conditions of the programme.

I will venture to say that I fear we are, in this respect, the dupes of one of the strangest illusions which have ever taken possession of the human mind.

Man recoils from trouble - from suffering; and yet he is condemned by nature to the suffering of privation, if he does not take the trouble to work. He has to choose, then, between these two evils. What means can he adopt to avoid both? There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others. Such a course of conduct prevents the trouble and the satisfaction from preserving their natural proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of one set of persons, and all the satisfaction that of another. This is the origin of slavery and of plunder, whatever its form may be - whether that of wars, imposition, violence, restrictions, frauds, &c. - monstrous abuses, but consistent with the thought which has given them birth. Oppression should be detested and resisted - it can hardly be called absurd.

Slavery is disappearing, thank heaven! and, on the other hand, our disposition to defend our property prevents direct and open plunder from being easy.

One thing, however, remains - it is the original inclination which exists in all men to divide the lot of life into two parts, throwing the trouble upon others, and keeping the satisfaction for themselves. It remains to be shown under what new form this sad tendency is manifesting itself.

The oppressor no longer acts directly and with his own powers upon his victim. No, our conscience has become too sensitive for that. The tyrant and his victim are still present, but there is an intermediate person between them, which is the Government - that is, the Law itself. What can be better calculated to silence our scruples, and, which is perhaps better appreciated, to overcome all resistance? We all therefore, put in our claim, under some pretext or other, and apply to Government. We say to it, " I am dissatisfied at the proportion between my labor and my enjoyments. I should like, for the sake of restoring the desired equilibrium, to take a part of the possessions of others. But this would be dangerous. Could not you facilitate the thing for me? Could you not find me a good place? or check the industry of my competitors? or, perhaps, lend me gratuitously some capital which, you may take from its possessor? Could you not bring up my children at the public expense? or grant me some prizes? or secure me a competence when I have attained my fiftieth year? By this mean I shall gain my end with an easy conscience, for the law will have acted for me, and I shall have all the advantages of plunder, without its risk or its disgrace!"

As it is certain, on the one hand, that we are all making some similar request to the Government; and as, on the other, it is proved that Government cannot satisfy one party without adding to the labor of the others, until I can obtain another definition of the word Government I feel authorized to give it my own. Who knows but it may obtain the prize? Here it is:

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

For now, as formerly, every one is, more or less, for profiting by the labors of others. No one would dare to profess such a sentiment; he even hides it from himself; and then what is done? A medium is thought of; Government is applied to, and every class in its turn comes to it, and says, "You, who can take justifiably and honestly, take from the public, and we will partake." Alas! Government is only too much disposed to follow this diabolical advice, for it is composed of ministers and officials - of men, in short, who, like all other men, desire in their hearts, and always seize every opportunity with eagerness, to increase their wealth and influence. Government is not slow to perceive the advantages it may derive from the part which is entrusted to it by the public. It is glad to be the judge and the master of the destinies of all; it will take much, for then a large share will remain for itself; it will multiply the number of its agents; it will enlarge the circle of its privileges; it will end by appropriating a ruinous proportion.

But the most remarkable part of it is the astonishing blindness of the public through it all. When successful soldiers used to reduce the vanquished to slavery, they were barbarous, but they were not absurd. Their object, like ours, was to live at other people's expense, and they did not fail to do so. What are we to think of a people who never seem to suspect that reciprocal plunder is no less plunder because it is reciprocal; that it is no less criminal because it is executed legally and with order; that it adds nothing to the public good; that it diminishes it, just in proportion to the cost of the expensive medium which we call the Government?

And it is this great chimera which the French nation, for example, placed in 1848, for the edification of the people, as a frontispiece to its Constitution. The following is the beginning of the preamble to this Constitution: -

Thus it is France, or an abstraction, which is to raise the French to morality, well-being, &c. Is it not by yielding to this strange delusion that we are led to expect everything from an energy not our own? Is it not giving out that there is, independently of the French, a virtuous, enlightened, and rich being, who can and will bestow upon them its benefits? Is not this supposing, and certainly very gratuitously, that there are between France and the French - between the simple, abridged, and abstract denomination of all the individualities, and these individualities themselves - relations as of father to son, tutor to his pupil, professor to his scholar? I know it is often said, metaphorically, "the country is a tender mother." But to show the inanity of such a constitutional proposition, it is only needed to show that it may be reversed, not only without inconvenience, but even with advantage. Would it be less exact to say:

Now, where is the value of an axiom where the subject and the attribute could change places without inconvenience? Everybody understands what is meant by this: "The mother will feed the child." But it would be ridiculous to say, "The child will feed the mother."

The Americans formed another idea of the relations of the citizens with the Government when they placed these simple words at the head of their constitution: -

Here there is no chimerical creation, no abstraction, from which the citizens may demand everything. They expect nothing except from themselves and their own energy.

If I may be permitted to criticise the first words of the French Constitution of 1848, I would remark, that what I complain of is something more than a mere metaphysical subtlety, as might seem at first sight.

I contend that this personification of Government has been, in past times, and will be hereafter, a fertile source of calamities and revolutions.

There is the public on one side, Government on the other, considered as two distinct beings; the latter bound to bestow upon the former, and the former having the right to claim from the latter, all imaginable human benefits. What will be the consequence?

In fact, Government is not maimed, and cannot be so. It has two hands - one to receive and the other to give; in other words, it has a rough hand and a smooth one. The activity of the second necessarily subordinate to the activity of the first. Strictly, Government may take and not restore. This is evident, and may be explained by the porous and absorbing nature of its hands, which always retain a part, and sometimes the whole, of what they touch. But the thing that never was seen, and never will be seen or conceived, is, that Government can restore to the public more than it has taken from it. It is therefore ridiculous for us to appear before it in the humble attitude of beggars. It is radically impossible for it to confer a particular benefit upon any one of the individualities which constitute the community, without inflicting a greater injury upon the community as a whole.

Our requisitions, therefore, place it in a dilemma. If it refuses to grant the requests made to it, it is accused of weakness, ill-will, and incapacity. If it endeavors to grant them, it is obliged to load the people with fresh taxes - to do more harm than good, and to bring upon itself from another quarter the general displeasure.

Thus, the public has two hopes, and Government makes two promises - many benefits and no taxes. Hopes and promises, which, being contradictory, can never be realized.

Now, is not this the cause of all our revolutions? For, between the Government, which lavishes promises which it is impossible to perform, and the public, which has conceived hopes which can never be realized, two classes of men interpose - the ambitious and the Utopians. It is circumstances which give these their cue. It is enough if these vassals of popularity cry out to the people: "The authorities are deceiving you; if we were in their place, we would load you with benefits and exempt you from taxes."

No sooner are their friends at the head of affairs, than they are called upon to redeem their pledge. "Give us work, bread, assistance, credit, instruction, more money," say the people; "and withal deliver us, as you promised, from the demands of the tax- gatherers."

The new Government is no less embarrassed than the former one, for it soon finds that it is much more easy to promise than to perform. It tries to gain time, for this is necessary for maturing its vast projects. At first, it makes a few timid attempts. On one hand it institutes a little elementary instruction; on the other, it makes a little reduction in some taxes. But the contradiction is forever starting up before it; if it would be philanthropic, it must attend to its exchequer; if it neglects its exchequer, it must abstain from being philanthropic.

These two promises are for ever clashing with each other; it cannot be otherwise. To live upon credit, which is the same as exhausting the future, is certainly a present means of reconciling them: an attempt is made to do a little good now, at the expense of a great deal of harm in future. But such proceedings call forth the spectre of bankruptcy, which puts an end to credit. What is to be done then? Why, then, the new Government takes a bold step; it unites all its forces in order to maintain itself; it smothers opinion, has recourse to arbitrary measures, ridicules its former maxims, declares that it is impossible to conduct the administration except at the risk of being unpopular; in short, it proclaims itself governmental. And it is here that other candidates for popularity are waiting for it. They exhibit the same illusion, pass by the same way, obtain the same success, and are soon swallowed up in the same gulf.

We had arrived at this point, in France, in February, 1849. At this time the illusion which is the subject of this article had made more way than at any former period in the ideas of the French people, in connection with Socialist doctrines. They expected, more firmly than ever, that Government, under a republican form, would open in grand style the source of benefits and close that of taxation. "We have often been deceived," said the people; "but we will see to it ourselves this time, and take care not to be deceived again?"

What could the Provisional Government do? Alas! just that which always is done in similar circumstances - make promises, and gain time.

It did so, of course; and to give its promises more weight, it announced them publicly thus: "Increase of prosperity, diminution of labor, assistance, credit, gratuitous instruction, agricultural colonies, cultivation of waste land, and, at the same time, reduction of the tax on salt, liquor, letters, meat; all this shall be granted when the National Assembly meets."

The National Assembly meets, and, as it is impossible to realize two contradictory things, its task, its sad task, is to withdraw, as gently as possible, one after the other, all the decrees of the Provisional Government. However, in order somewhat to mitigate the cruelty of the deception, it is found necessary to negotiate a little. Certain engagements are fulfilled, others are, in a measure, begun, and therefore the new administration is compelled to contrive some new taxes.

Now, I transport myself, in thought, to a period a few months hence, and ask myself, with sorrowful forebodings, what will come to pass when agents of the new Government go into the country to collect new taxes upon legacies, revenues, and the profits of agricultural traffic? It is to be hoped that my presentiments may not be verified, but I foresee a difficult part for the candidates for popularity to play.

Read the last manifesto of one of the political parties - which they issued on the occasion of the election of the President. It is rather long, but at length it concludes with these words: "Government ought to give a great deal to the people, and take little from them." It is always the same tactics, or, rather, the same mistake.

"Government is bound to give gratuitous instruction and education to all the citizens."

It is bound to give "A general and appropriate professional education, as much as possible adapted to the wants, the callings, and the capacities of each citizen."

It is bound "To teach every citizen his duty to God, to man, and to himself; to develop his sentiments, his tendencies, and his faculties; to teach him, in short, the scientific part of his labor; to make him understand his own interests, and to give him a knowledge of his rights."

It is bound "To place within the reach of all literature and the arts, the patrimony of thought, the treasures of the mind, and all those intellectual enjoyments which elevate and strengthen the soul." It is bound "To give compensation for every accident, from fire, inundation &c., experienced by a citizen." (The etcetera means more than it says.)

It is bound "To attend to the relations of capital with labor, and to become the regulator of credit."

It is bound "To afford important encouragement and efficient protection to agriculture."

It is bound "To purchase railroads, canals, and mines; and, doubtless, to transact affairs with that industrial capacity which characterizes it."

It is bound "To encourage useful experiments, to promote and assist them by every means likely to make them successful. As a regulator of credit, it will exercise such extensive influence over industrial and agricultural associations as shall insure them success."

Government is bound to do all this, in addition to the services to which it is already pledged; and further, it is always to maintain a menacing attitude toward foreigners; for, according to those who sign the programme, "Bound together by this holy union, and by the precedents of the French Republic, we carry our wishes and hopes beyond the boundaries which despotism has placed between nations. The rights which we desire for ourselves, we desire for all those who are oppressed by the yoke of tyranny; we desire that our glorious arms should still, if necessary, be the army of liberty."

You see that the gentle hand of Government - that good hand which gives and distributes, will be very busy under the government of the reformers. You think, perhaps, that it will be the same with the rough hand - that hand which dives into our pockets. Do not deceive yourselves. The aspirants after popularity would not know their trade, if they had not the art, when they show the gentle hand, to conceal the rough one. Their reign will assuredly be the jubilee of the taxpayers.

Truly, it will be a good time when the exchequer, for the sake of loading us with benefits, will content itself with curtailing our superfluities!

This is not all. The reformers intend that "taxation shall lose its oppressive character, and be only an act of fraternity." Good heavens! I know it is the fashion to thrust fraternity in everywhere, but I did not imagine it would ever be put into the hands of the tax-gatherer.

To come to the details:-Those who sign the programme say, "We desire the immediate abolition of those taxes which affect the absolute necessaries of life, as salt, liquors, &c., &c."

"Gratuitous justice - that is, the simplification of its forms, and reduction of its expenses." (This, no doubt, has reference to stamps.)

Thus, the tax on landed property, customs, patents, stamps, salt, liquors, postage, all are included. These gentlemen have found out the secret of giving an excessive activity to the gentle hand of Government, while they entirely paralyze its rough hand.

Well, I ask the impartial reader, is it not childishness, and more than that, dangerous childishness? Is it not inevitable that we shall have revolution after revolution, if there is a determination never to stop till this contradiction is realized: -"To give nothing to government and to receive much from it?"

If the reformers were to come to power, would they not become the victims of the means which they employed to take possession of it?

Citizens! In all times, two political systems have been in existence, and each may be maintained by good reasons. According to one of them, Government ought to do much, but then it ought to take much. According to the other, this two-fold activity ought to be little felt. We have to choose between these two systems. But as regards the third system, which partakes of both the others, and which consists in exacting everything from Government, without giving it anything, it is chimerical, absurd, childish, contradictory, and dangerous. Those who parade it, for the sake of the pleasure of accusing all governments of weakness, and thus exposing them to your attacks, are only flattering and deceiving you, while they are deceiving themselves.

For ourselves, we consider that Government is and ought to be nothing whatever but the united power of the people, organized, not to be an instrument of oppression and mutual plunder among citizens; but, on the the contrary, to secure to every one his own, and to cause justice and security to reign.

Unknown translator (likely someone from the FEE).

Civil Authority

Civil Authority is the moral power of command, supported (when need be) by physical coercion, which the State exercises over its members. We shall consider here the nature, sources, limits, divisions, origin, and the true and false theories of authority. Authority is as great a necessity to mankind as sobriety, and as natural. By "natural" here is meant, not what accrues to man without any effort of his own (teeth, for example), but what man must secure, even with an effort, because without it he cannot well be man. It is natural to man to live in civil society; and where there is civil society, there must be authority. Anarchy is the disruption of society. Speaking generally, we may say no man loves isolation, solitude, loneliness, the life of a hermit; on the other hand, while many dislike the authority under which they live, no man wishes for anarchy. What malcontents aim at is a change of government, to get authority into their own hands and govern those who now govern them. Even the professed anarchist regards anarchy as a temporary expedient, a preparation for his own advent to power. Authority, then, in the abstract, every man loves and cherishes; and rightly so, for it is his nature to live in society, and society is kept together by authority. The model of hermits was St. Simeon Stylites, so called from his living on the top of a style, or pillar. That was his special vocation; he was no ordinary man. But the political philosopher considers man as man ordinarily and normally is. Two things would strike a stranger from Mars looking down upon this planet: how men on earth love herding together, and how they love moving about. Ordinary man can no more afford to be solitary than he can afford to be stationary, though Simeon Stylites was both. Solitary confinement is the severest of punishments, next to death. It is hard to say whether the solitude or the confinement, proves the more irksome. This simple point, that man cannot live alone, must be insisted upon, for all errors in the theory of authority are rooted in the assumption that man's living in society, and thereby coming to be governed by social authority, is something purely optional and conventional, a fashion which man could very well discard if he would, as he might discard the wearing of green clothes. Men who would make society a conventional arrangement, and authority a fashion of the hour, have appealed to the noble savage as the standard of humanity proper, forgetting that the savage is no solitary, but a member of a horde, to separate from which would be death, and to ignore the control of which would be death also. Man must live in society, and, in point of historical fact, men have always lived in society; every human development is a social progress. It is natural to man to live in society, to submit to authority, and to be governed by that custom of society which crystallizes into law.

And as it is natural to the individual, so is it natural also for the family to unite with others. Society cannot stop short at the family. As the individual is not sell-sufficient, neither is the family. The family grows and then multiplies. We have a society of families; and that society grown great, and controlled as it needs to be controlled by some common authority, passes into a self-sufficient, autonomous society, otherwise called a State. Hence civil authority is defined as the moral power of command, supported (when need be) by physical coercion, which the State exercises over its constituent members. Civil authority is of God, not by any revelation or positive institution, but by the mere fact that God is the Author of Nature, and Nature imperatively requires civil authority to be set up and obeyed. Nature cannot tolerate intemperance, nor anarchy either. And what Nature absolutely requires, or absolutely refuses as incompatible with her well-being, God commands, or God forbids. God then forbids anarchy; and in forbidding anarchy He enjoins submission to authority. In this sense, God is at the back of every State, binding men in conscience to observe the behests of the State within the sphere of its competence. "Let every soul be subject to higher powers: for there is no power but from God: and those that are, are ordained of God. . . . Wherefore be subject of necessity, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. . . . For they are the ministers of God, . . " (Horn. xiii, 1, 5, 6).

Obedience, being a practical thing and not a speculation, cannot abstract from the concrete facts of the case; it is paid to the powers that be, to the authority actually in possession. Obedience is as disobedience; men are never disobedient except to the government of the day. But there are limits to civil obedience, and to the competence of civil authority. As domestic obedience is not to be carried to the extent of rebellion against the civil government, so neither is the State to be obeyed as against God. It is not within the competence of the State to command anything and everything. The State cannot command what God could not command, for instance, idolatry. The authority of the State is absolute, that is to say, full and complete in its own sphere, and subordinate to no other authority within that sphere. But the authority of the State is not arbitrary; it is not available for the carrying out of every whim and caprice. Arbitrary government is irrational government; now no government is licensed to set reason aside. The government of God Himself is not arbitrary; as St. Thomas says: "God is not offended by us except at what we do against our own good" (Contra Gentiles, III, 122). The arbitrary use of authority is called tyranny. Such is the tyranny of an absolute monarch, of a council, of a class, or of a majority. The liberty of the subject is based on the doctrine that the State is not omnipotent. Legally omnipotent every State must be, but not morally. A legal enactment may be immoral, and then it cannot in conscience be obeyed; or it may be ultra vires, beyond the competence of the authority that enacts it, in which case compliance with the law is not a matter of obedience, but of prudence. In either case the law is tyrannical, and "a tyrannical law, not being according to reason, is not, absolutely speaking, a law, but rather a perversion of law" (St. Thomas, Summa Theol., la, 2ae, q. 92, art. 1, ad 4). Man is not all citizen. He is a member, a part of the State, and something else besides. "Man is not subservient to the civil community to the extent of his whole self, all that he is and all that he has" (St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 1a 2ae, q. 21, art. 4, ad 3). To say nothing of his eternal interests in his relations with his Maker, man has even in this life his domestic interests in the bosom of his family, his intellectual and artistic interests, none of which can be called political interests. Social and political life is not the whole of human life. Man is not the servant of the State in his every action. The State, the majority, or the despot, may demand of the individual more than he is bound to give. Were human society a conventional arrangement, were man, being perfectly well off in isolation from his fellows, to agree by way of freak to live in community with them, then we could assign no antecedent limits to civil authority. Civil authority would be simply what was bargained for and prescribed in the arbitrary compact which made civil society. As it is, civil authority is a natural means to a natural end and is checked by that end, in accordance with the Aristotelean principle that "the end in view sets limits to the means" (Aristotle, Politics, I, 9). The immediate end of civil authority is well set forth by Suarez (De legibus, LII, xi, 7) as "the natural happiness of the perfect, or self-sufficient, human community, and the happiness of individuals as they are members of such a community, that they may live therein peaceably and justly, with a sufficiency of goods for the preservation and comfort of their bodily life, and with so much moral rectitude as is necessary for this external peace and happiness". Happiness is an attribute of individuals. Individuals are not made happy by authority, but authority secures to them that tranquillity, that free hand for helping themselves, that restful enjoyment of their own just winnings, which is one of the conditions of happiness. Nor does authority make men virtuous, except according to that rough-hewn, outline virtue, which is called "social virtue", and consists mainly of justice. When the ancients spoke of "virtue" being the concern of the State, they meant justice and efficiency. Neither the virtue nor the happiness of individuals is cared for by the State except "as they are members of the civil community". In this respect, civil differs from domestic, or paternal, authority. The father cares for the members of his household one by one, singly and individually. The State cares for its members collectively, and for the individual only in his collective aspect. Hence it follows that the power of life and death is inherent in the State, not in the family. A man is hanged for the common good of the rest, never for his own good.

This, then, is one measure of authority, the end which the State has in view. Another is the stage of development at which any given particular State has arrived. For there is not one measure of authority common to all States. As the State develops, it grows in unity, and greater unity means an ampler measure of central authority. There is far more authority in the England of to-day than in the England of the Heptarchy. There was more authority in an Anglo-Saxon kingdom than in a horde of savages. In early civil societies there is no legislative authority, and no law, but only immemorial custom. There is little judicial authority, but injured men, or their families after their death, right their own wrongs, murder is restrained, not by judge, jury, and executioner, but by blood-feud. On the other hand, in highly civilized societies, especially those of a democratic character, the will of the people continually thrusts new functions upon government, such as education, the care of public health, the carrying of letters, the sending of telegrams. The recognition of this fact has been called "the principle of voluntary control". By it civil authority may be enlarged beyond its natural and essential limits. Like other principles, "the principle of voluntary control" may be pushed too far. Pushed to the limit, it would involve Socialism. Authority, though varying in amount, is as universal as man is everywhere. Man cannot live except under authority, as he cannot live out of civil society. It is by no convention, compact, or contract, that authority takes hold of him. It is a necessity of his nature. But while civil authority, or government, is natural and universal, the distribution of authority, otherwise called the form of government, or the constitution of the State, is a human convention, varying in various countries, and in the same country at different periods of its history. It is scarcely too much to say that there are as many various distributions of civil authority, or various forms of government, as there are varieties of vertebrate animals. They are classified as monarchies, aristocracies, democracies; but no two monarchies are quite alike, nor two democracies. Thus a democracy may be direct, as in ancient Athens, or representative, as in the United States. The monarchy of Edward VII is different from that of George III.

The one point fixed by nature, and by God, is that there must be authority everywhere, and that the authority existent for the time being, under such and such a form, be under that form obeyed; for since there is no actual authority in the country except under that form, to refuse to obey that is to refuse authority simply, and to revert to anarchy, which is against nature: just as a man having nothing but bread and cheese to eat, and refusing to eat his bread and cheese, under pretence that he much prefers mutton, condemns himself to starvation, which again is unnatural. But we must beware of saying of any particular form of authority, monarchy for example, or democracy either, what is true only of authority in the abstract, namely, that all nations are bound to live under it, and that never under any pretence can it be subverted. A country, once monarchical, is not eternally bound to monarchy; and circumstances are conceivable under which a republic might pass into monarchy, as Rome did under Augustus, much to its advantage. Authority rules by Divine right under whatsoever form it is established. No one form of government is more sacred and inviolate than another. Change of persons holding office is usually provided in the constitution, sometimes by rotation, sometimes by vote of the legislative assembly. No monarchical constitution provides for the change of the person of the monarch otherwise than by death or resignation. Change of the form of government can be effected constitutionally, but, as history shows, as often as not, it is brought about unconstitutionally. When the change is complete, the new government rules by right of accomplished fact. There must be authority in the country, and theirs is the only authority available.

DIVISIONS

The progress of civilization subdivides authority into legislative, judicial, and executive, and the latter again into civil and military. The king, or president, is chief of the executive. Authority again is subdivided into imperial and local, the latter emanating from the former and subordinate to it.

ORIGIN

The question of the origin of authority seems first to have been raised by the Roman lawyers. In their hands it assumed the concrete form of the origin of the imperial power. This power they argued to reside primarily in the Roman people; the people, however, did not exercise nor retain it, but transferred it by some implicit lex regia, or king-making ordinance, as a matter of course wholly, and irrevocably to each successive emperor at his accession. With the advent of Christianity, St. Paul's doctrine came into prominence, that authority is of God; yet in no clear way was it made out how it came of God until St. Thomas Aquinas showed that it was of God inasmuch as it was an essential of the human nature which God has created, according to the doctrine of Aristotle above exposed. Before St. Thomas arose, some churchmen had shown a disposition to cry down the civil power. They could not deny that it was of God, but they regarded it as one of the consequences of the sin of Adam, and argued that, but for the Fall, man would have lived free from coercive jurisdiction. They rehearsed the legend of Romulus, and the asylum that he opened for robbers. States, they said, usually have their origin in rapine and injustice. Others invested the pope with the plenitude of secular as well as spiritual authority, by the gift of Christ, and argued that kings reigned only as his vicegerents, even in civil matters. The Aristoteleanism of St. Thomas was opposed to all this. On the other hand, the imperial and royal party made a pope of the king or emperor; the civil ruler was as much an institution of Christ as the pope himself, and, like the pope, enjoyed a God-given authority, no portion of which could validly be taken from him. This is the doctrine of "the divine right of kings". According to it, in its rigour, in a State once monarchical, monarchy is forever the only lawful government, and all authority is vested in the monarch, to be communicated by him, to such as he may select for the time being to share his power. This "divine right of kings" (very different from the doctrine that all authority, whether of king or of republic, is from God), has never been sanctioned by the Catholic Church. At the Reformation it assumed a form exceedingly hostile to Catholicism, monarchs like Henry VIII, and James I, of England, claiming the fullness of spiritual as well as of civil authority, and this in such inalienable possession that no jot or tittle of prerogative could ever pass away from the Crown. Against these monstrous pretensions were fought the battles of Marston Moor and Naseby.

Against the same pretensions a more pacific warfare was waged by Francis Suarez, S.J.Suarez argued against James I that spiritual authority is not vested in the Crown, and that even civil authority is not the immediate gift of God to the king, but is given by God to the people collectively, and by them bestowed on the monarch, according to the theory of the Roman lawyers above mentioned, and according to Aristotle and St. Thomas. Authority, he asserted, is an attribute of a multitude assembled to form a State. By their nature they must form a State, and a State must have authority. Authority, therefore, is natural to mankind collectively; and whatever is natural, and rational, and indispensable for human progress, is an ordinance of God. Authority must be, and God will have it to be; but there is no such natural necessity of authority being all centred in one person. Authority is a Divine institution, but kings are a human invention. The saying is a platitude in our time; three centuries ago, when Suarez wrote, it was a bold and startling pronouncement. Suarez saved his loyalty by the concession that the people having bestowed the supreme power on His Majesty's ancestors ages ago, their posterity could not now resume it, but it must descend, like an heirloom, from the king to the king's son for all time. This concession was not everywhere borne in mind by posterity. Indeed it would appear a restriction on the development of a State for the distribution of authority to be thus fixed forever. In England at any rate the restriction has been broken through, and the king is not what he was in Stuart times, nor the Parliament either.

THEORIES

There have been two great outbreaks against excess of royal prerogative; one in England, in the middle of the seventeenth century; another in France, at the end of the eighteenth. Each of these two periods was marked by the appearance of a great political writer, Thomas Hobbes in England, Jean Jacques Rousseau in France. Hobbes was a philosopher, Rousseau a rhetorician. Whoever knows Hobbes well can have little to learn from Rousseau. Hobbes is rigidly logical; such inconsistencies as appear in him come from a certain timidity in speaking out, and a humility that approaches nigh to hypocrisy. Rousseau always speaks boldly, makes no pretence to orthodoxy, and frequently contradicts himself. His brilliant style won him the ear of Europe; he popularized Hobbes. To the philosopher, Rousseau is contemptible, but Hobbes is an antagonist worthy of any man's steel. The best that can be said of Rousseau in philosophy is that he drew out of Hobbes's principles conclusions which Hobbes was afraid to formulate. Hobbes made of the king a despot; Rousseau showed that, on Hobbesian principles, a king is no better than the people's bailiff, unless indeed, by military force or otherwise, he can prevent the people from assembling and decreeing his deposition.

Hobbes starts, and Rousseau after him, by contradicting Aristotle. According to Aristotle, man is "by nature a State-making animal"; the individual man, if he is to thrive at all, develops into the family man, and the family man into the citizen; and wherever there is a city, or a nation, there must be self-government, or, in other words, civil authority, whether vested in one or in many. Authority is the very breath of man's nostrils, as he is a progressive being. Isolation and anarchy are fatal to human progress. Effort, without which man cannot thrive, though it be an effort, and not an initial endowment passively received, Aristotle calls "natural". The State-making effort is "natural" to man; so is authority "natural", and, as such, of God, adds Thomas Aquinas. But Hobbes took "natural" in quite another sense. That he held to be "natural" which man is, antecedently to all effort and arrangement on his part to make himself better. Further, his philosophy was tinged with the Calvinism of his day, and he took it that man is of himself "desperately wicked". What was natural, then, was bad, bad on the whole. Reason being an original endowment of man, Hobbes allowed reason to be natural. He allowed also, with Plato, that wickedness is irrational, by which concession Hobbism is marked off from a celebrated theory stated at the beginning of the second book of Plato's Republic, to which theory in other respects it bears a strong resemblance; the theory being that right by nature is the interest of the stronger, and only by convention becomes the interest of the State.

This allowing of wickedness to be against reason is a weak point in the logic of Hobbes. But Hobbes would have it that reason is by nature utterly unable to contend with wickedness, that it is overborne by, and made subservient to, passion, and so is degraded into cunning, man becoming more wicked by his possession of reason. Of himself, in his "state of nature", Hobbesian man is a savage, solitary, sensual, and selfish. When two human beings meet, the natural impulse of each is to lord it over the other. By force, if he is strong, by stratagem, if he is weak, every man seeks to kill or enslave every other man that he meets. Man's life in this state of nature, says Hobbes, is "nasty, brutish, and short." So it would be, in an English fen, and in most other places. But Rousseau's imagination carried him to the Pacific Isles; he became enamoured of "the noble savage". He fell in with Hobbes's notion of the "natural", as being what man is and has antecedently to all human effort. But the "citizen of Geneva", as he called himself, was curiously free from Calvinistic bias, and believed enthusiastically in the primitive, unmade, natural goodness of man. In Hobbes's view, though not in Rousseau's, man had every reason for getting out of his "nasty" state of nature. This was done by a pact, or convention, of every man with all the rest of mankind, to give up solitude with its charms, its independence, and its liberty of preying upon neighbours, and to live in society, the social body thus formed having all the rights of the individuals contributing to form it. This compact of man with man to quit solitude and live in society, to abandon nature and submit to convention, was called by Rousseau, "The Social Contract". The body formed by it, commonly called the State, Hobbes termed "The Leviathan", upon the text of Job, xli, 24, "there is no power upon earth that can be compared with him. . . ."

To Hobbes and to Rousseau the State is omnipotent, containing in its one self absolutely all the rights of the citizens who compose it. The wielder of this tremendous power is the General Will, measured against which the will of the individual citizen is not only powerless, but absolutely non-existent. The individual gave up his will when he made the Social Contract. "No rights against the State", is a fundamental principle with Hobbes and Rousseau. To live in the State at all means compliance with every decree of the General Will. But there is a difficulty in locating this General Will. Hobbes, with laudable perspicacity, seeing that tyranny is better wielded by one man than by a multitude, contemplates the multitude resigning all their power into the hands of a Single Person, and denying themselves the right of meeting without his calling them together; so that, by the simple expedient of never calling them together, the Single Person may incapacitate the people from ever resuming the power which is only theirs when they are all assembled. The General Will in that case is the will of the Single Person. Hobbes's location of the General Will is not lacking in clearness. But Rousseau would have the sovereign authority to be the inalienable right of the multitude -- hence called the "Sovereign People". They may, if they will, employ a king, or even an emperor; but his majesty, in Rousseau's phrase, is "Prince" not "Sovereign", and at stated times, without his calling them together, the Sovereign People must meet and decide, first, whether they will continue to support a throne at all; secondly, whether the throne shall further be filled by the present occupant. Rousseau's location is also clear, so long as it is understood that the General Will is simply the will of the numerical majority of the Sovereign People. Such a General Will is ascertained by the simple process of counting heads. If in a State of 20,000 citizens, 15,000 vote aye, aye is the General Will, not the will of the majority only, but of the whole 20,000 together; for though 5,000 persons detest the proposal, such detestation lies only in the individual will, sometimes called the "casual will", and the individual will has ceased to exist by the Compact. Personally they detest the measure, but with their "Real Will" they approve it. Thus, as Rousseau says, they remain as free as the wild man in the woods, obey none but themselves, and follow their own will everywhere.

But a canker-worm lies at the root of this, as of all ultra-democratic doctrines. All originate in a manifestly false supposition, that one man is as good as another. In any sane polity, the predominant Intelligence must guide the counsels of the State, not the predominant Will, which may be no better than caprice. But intelligence is not necessarily attached to majorities. Rousseau himself falters in presence of this awkward truth, and re-states the General Will, as the will which the people have of good in general, albeit in a particular case they are mistaken in what they take to be good. Thus they will one thing, and vote for another. The Real Will in this case is not to be gathered from the actual vote of the majority. The Real Will is of that which the majority would have voted for, had they known better. Rousseau's theory contemplates "a people of gods", so he assures us. Such a people would scarce require any government. The ideal, sylvan creatures whom his imagination brings together to form the Social Contract, if not all very intelligent, may be supposed to be all good listeners to intelligent teaching, and thus Intelligence will govern the majority, and the vote of the majority will be an ideally Real Will. Government is an easy matter on such optimistic presuppositions. The eye, however, glances back upon Hobbes's ruffian primeval, "brutish and nasty". Hobbes's view of human nature must check that of Rousseau. Both views are extreme, and the truth lies between them. The democratic rule of a numerical majority is not of universal application. One has to consider the character of the people, and peoples vary. If in one age or place the people approximate to the character of "a people of gods", or angels, in another country or another time they may be more like devils. "Force, devoid of counsel, of its own bulk comes to a crash", says Horace (Odes, III, 4). That is the danger of the General Will.

Rousseau, with Hobbes to guide him, starts from a false supposition, that the natural state of man is savage solitude, not civil society; he proceeds through the false medium of the "Social Contract", false because society is not a thing of convention; false again, because out of all keeping with the evidence of history; and he is apt to end in the tyranny of a brute majority, trampling upon the rights and consciences of individuals; or again in anarchy, his disciples putting too literal a construction upon the promise that henceforth no man shall obey any other than himself.

The doctrines of Rousseau have not escaped the censure of the Church. Rousseau may be recognized in the following propositions, condemned in the Syllabus of Pius IX: "The State is the source and origin of all rights, and its rights are unlimited" (n. 39); "Authority is nothing else than numbers, and a sum of material forces" (n. 60): "It is allowable to refuse obedience to lawful princes, and even to rebel against them" (n. 63). Leo XIII, not content with condemning, teaches positive doctrine against Rousseau, to wit: the Aristotelean and Thomist doctrine already stated. Thus the Encyclical "Immortale Dei", of November, 1885:

Man's natural instinct moves him to live in civil society; for he can not, if dwelling apart, provide himself with the necessary requirements of life, nor procure the means of developing his faculties. Hence it is Divinely ordained that he should be born into the society and company of men, as well domestic as civil. Only civil society can ensure perfect self-sufficiency of life [an Aristotelean term]. But since no society can hold together unless there be some one over all, impelling individuals efficaciously and harmoniously to one common purpose, a ruling authority becomes a necessity for every civil commonwealth of men; and this authority, no less than society itself, is natural, and therefore has God for its author. Hence it follows that public power of itself cannot be otherwise than of God.

In the theory of Hobbes and Rousseau, Authority is the outcome of contract, not between people and prince, but of every man with every other man to relinquish solitude and its rights, and live in civil society. Rousseau is instant in pronouncing that between people and prince there can be no contract, but the prince is a tenant at will, who may be turned out of doors, with or without reason, any day that the Sovereign People assemble to vote upon him. But there is another theory of contract, centuries older than Hobbes, a theory greatly cherished by Locke and the English Whigs, who found in it the justification of the expulsion of James II in 1688. In this theory, the contract is said to lie between the people and their ruler; the ruler is to be obeyed so long as he fulfils certain conditions, known as "the constitution". If he violates the constitution, he forfeits his authority and the people may cast him out. Thus ruler and subject are two "high contracting parties". The ruler has no superiority of status, but of contract only. On this it is to be observed, first, that such a contract lies not in the nature of things, and therefore is not to be taken for granted; but evidence in each particular case should be forthcoming of the contract having been made on those terms as a fact of history. Secondly, this asserted contract labours under the inconvenience that Job declared of old: " . . . in judgment. There is none that may be able to reprove both, and to put his hand between both" (Job, ix, 32, 33). The contract cannot be enforced at law, for lack of a judge; in case of dispute, each party pronounces in his own favour, and they are like to fight it out. The result is civil war, as between Charles I and his Parliament. But really ruler and subjects are not two "high contracting parties", as two nations are. The theory is prejudicial to the unity of the State, and countenances revolution. The theory was brought up to meet that delicate inquiry, "What is to be done when Government abuses its authority?" On which see "Moral Philosophy" (Stonyhurst Series), 338-343.

NEWMAN, Aristotle, Politics, (Clarendon Press, Oxford; there is a translation also by Weldon) I; ST. THOMAS, De Regimine Principum, I; LEO XIII, Encyclicals: Latin, five volumes (Tournai); English, The Pope and the People, Select Letters on Social Questions (New York); SUAREZ, Defensio Fidei, III, i, ii, iii; R. W. and A. T. CARLYLE, Medieval Political Theory in the West (London); GIERKE, Political Theories of the Middle Age, tr. by Maitland (Cambridge); RICKABY, Political and Moral Essays, The Origin and Extent of Civil Authority; HOBBES, Leviathan (Cambridge University Press); ROUSSEAU, Le contrat social (London); LOCKE, Of Civil Government; GREEN, Principles of Political Obligation (London and New York); BOSANQUET, Philosophical Theory of the State (London and New York).

JOSEPH RICKABY.
Transcribed by Douglas J. Potter
Dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ

Source: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02137c.htm

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