Chapter VII: On Piety Toward the Fatherland

What fatherland is. The fatherland of someone is a legitimately constituted community, which surrounds, helps, and guards his family and person, not from some accidental fact, but of itself, in a universal way, and thus mediately assists his good birth and institution. Today it is usually at the same time bound to a territory, and sufficiently coincides with the political State, while in a tribe which wanders the fatherland can be detached from a territory, and once fatherland was said more of a city, of a town, than of a republic. That we may propose the matter more adequately, municipalities, province, state, a broader Federation which joins various States, can participate in the ratio of fatherland, and that unequally according to their various juridical condition and power. Wherefore, today, because of close civil unity, the proper place of birth is fatherland only in a secondary ratio; and the action and authority of province is usually less than that of place. Concerning Federation something is to be said otherwise elsewhere. Indeed, it can happen that in a broader use fatherland seems to exceed political boundaries. But it is not ours to discuss the notion of fatherland and the connected political questions.

Moreover, to the fatherland, or to that community, all offices of piety are to be exhibited. By love, we shall be impelled to peculiar affective and effective benevolence, and we shall try to foster concord of citizens; by reverence, we shall be led to that manner of acting, especially public, which procures honor and glory for the fatherland; by obedience, we shall become prompt for executing the commands of those who rule in the name of the fatherland.

The offices of piety can be violated by an action whose end is to be reproved, as one which tends toward dissolving the unity of the fatherland; or which pursues a good end by dishonorable means, as if recourse is had to violent and unjust arts, or the subordination of utilities is contemned, by which a political party is below the nation, and a city or province below the republic. And again difficult questions arise. For there are parts even of one republic which by their nature must be reduced into a certain new unity. Thus colonies at first preserve a close bond with the state by which they were founded, but gradually, as if emancipated, they wish to be in their own right. At what moment they can demand autonomy or independence will be defined with difficulty, and usually the knot will be solved by a certain political disturbance. Thus not rarely God converts evil into good. Yet it belongs to those who grieve that these things do not happen without sins.

Finally, when necessity or law urges, the offices of piety are intensified by legal justice, so that to the fatherland, insofar as it is a perfect community, certain things are owed which are never owed to the family, as when, in war, life itself must be exposed to certain danger.

The community itself, or those who rule it, must fulfill the offices of piety toward citizens, families, and lesser societies. And it happens that an imprudent or condemnable action gives cause for just complaints and prepares an excuse for a lesser society why it can legitimately strive toward effecting another unity.

Positive offices toward citizens, as such, seem to add no grave specific obligation to the common offices toward neighbor.

Someone's fatherland is a legitimately constituted community, which guards and fosters his family and person not by accident but of itself, and thus contributes to his good birth and institution. Today it is usually bound to a territory and coincides with the State. To that community all offices of piety are to be exhibited; indeed these, when necessity or law urges, can oblige more severely, so that certain things, for example the sacrifice of life, which are never owed to the family, cannot be denied to the fatherland. Chiefly to be commemorated here is the office by which citizens are held to exercising political rights for the common good; which office becomes one of justice in those who have assumed the function of deputies.

By the community or its rulers, offices of piety and distributive justice must also be fulfilled toward citizens, families, and lesser societies. But a grave specific obligation of piety does not seem to exist among the citizens themselves.