The Origin of Civil Power and the Social Contract

1. Definition.—Man is not a lone individual, but a social being.¹ That is evident not only from the innate attraction he feels for his fellowmen, but likewise, and in a particular manner, from his physical and intellectual dependence upon others. In the words of Jesus, the son of Sirach, “all flesh consorts with the like of itself, and every man shall associate himself to his like.”²

¹ ζῷον πολιτικόν, animal rationale et sociale.—Cfr. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 1a, qu. 96, art. 4; 2a 2ae, qu. 109, art. 3, ad 1; qu. 114, art. 2, ad 1; qu. 129, art. 6, ad 1; 3a, qu. 65, art. 1. The term animal rationale et sociale in Scholastic parlance means a rational and social being, not animal. Animal is brutum. Animal in Latin is a generic term comprising homo and brutum.

² “Every man shall associate with one like himself.”—Ecclus. XIII, 20.

“Man’s natural instinct,” says Pope Leo XIII in his famous encyclical on the Christian Constitution of States, “moves him to live in civil society, for he cannot, if dwelling apart, provide himself with the necessary requirements of life, nor procure the means of developing his mental and moral faculties. Hence it is divinely ordained that he should lead his life—be it family, social or civil—with his fellowmen, amongst whom alone his several wants can be adequately supplied.”³

³ Encyclical “Immortale Dei,” Nov. 1, 1885: “It is implanted in man by nature that he should live in civil society: for if he lives in solitude, he cannot obtain the necessary sustenance and preparation for life, nor likewise the perfection of mind and soul; therefore it has been divinely ordained that he should be born for union and human association, both domestic and civil, which alone can furnish the perfect sufficiency of life.” (The Pope and the People, p. 73.)

Another proof that men are destined to consort with their like is the gift of language, by which they can communicate to one another their thoughts, desires, and aspirations. Finally mutual love also has its part in the constitution of society.

The principal requirements of a society are: (a) multiplicity of individuals, (b) a common end, and (c) a stable union for the attainment of that end. A single individual can not constitute a society. It is only when several persons come together and unite their aims for the attainment of a common object that a society is established. Since rational beings alone are capable of forming such a union, which involves rights and duties on the part of each member, the term society is inapplicable to irrational brutes, no matter how many analogies may be found among them reminding us of human society, as in a colony of bees or ants.⁴

⁴ V. Cathrein, S. J., Moralphilosophie, Vol. II, 4th ed., p. 377; M. Cronin, The Science of Ethics, Vol. II, pp. 385 sqq.

An essential requirement flowing from the very nature of society is authority, i. e., the right of certain members to compel others to do or to omit certain things in relation to the common purpose. In view of its object, authority can be but one, and must always remain the same, so that it becomes extinguished only when the society itself ceases to exist or undergoes an essential change. Being a moral person with well-defined objects and scope, every society is the bearer of rights and duties, towards other societies as well as towards its own members. Hence a society may be more comprehensively defined as the permanent union of a number of free beings who, under the direction of an authority, strive by common effort to achieve a common purpose.

2. Division.—Societies are distinguished from one another in purpose, origin, and extent.

a) In regard to its purpose a society may be perfect or imperfect, according as its object is to procure for its members all the things they need for their welfare, and it possesses all the means necessary for this purpose within itself, or according as it aims only at the one or other necessity, and consequently requires to be supplemented in its efforts by other societies. The State (civitas sive communitas civilis) is a perfect society because it possesses all the means required for the attainment of its objects and is self-sufficient within the natural order. The Church, too, is a perfect society, because it is equipped by its Divine Founder with all the means necessary to attain its end. The family (familia domestica), on the other hand, consisting of father, mother, and children, is an imperfect society, for the reason that, though it aims at providing its members with all they need, it cannot fully attain this purpose without the aid of other social organisms of a wider scope, namely, State and Church.⁵

⁵ St. Thomas, Comment. in Polit., I, l. 1: “Since every association of all men is ordered to something necessary for life, that community will be perfect which is ordered to this: that man have sufficiently whatever is necessary for life; but such a community is the State.”—Cfr. V. Cathrein, S. J., Phil. Mor., n. 433: “For a twofold reason a society can be called perfect: 1. because it is ordered to the perfect sufficiency of human life and is sufficient unto itself for this end, and in this sense it is the same as a society complete intrinsically and extrinsically; 2. because it possesses in and of itself (actually or virtually) the means necessary for attaining its end, and does not depend, at least directly, upon other societies: in this sense both the State and the Church are perfect societies; all the others are imperfect.”—Cfr. M. Cronin, The Science of Ethics, Vol. II, pp. 388 sq.

b) In respect to its origin a society is either natural (necessary) or free, according as its peculiar character is based upon the very nature of man or depends upon free choice, exercised within the limits of justice and order.

c) In regard to extent, a society is either general or particular, according as it includes all men or only one race, community, or body of men. The only general society in this sense is that which comprises the whole race, human society, i. e., all men, in as far as all have the same final end, namely, to glorify God and work out their eternal salvation, and in so far as they are all subject to one supreme Legislator and bound together by mutual rights and duties. This general society—“society” par excellence—is divided into a large number of particular societies, of which the basic groups are the family and the State.⁶

⁶ Is. XLVIII, 11; Prov. XVI, 4; Gal. VI, 2; Jas. IV, 12.—Conc. Vatic., Sess. III, c. 1.—St. Augustine, De Bono Coniugali, c. 1: “Since every man is a part of the human race, and human nature is something social and has the great and natural good of the power of friendship, for this reason God willed to create all men from one, so that in their society they might be held together not only by likeness of kind but also by the bond of kinship. Therefore the first natural bond of human society is husband and wife. God did not create even these as separate individuals and join them as strangers, but created the one from the other, signifying also the power of union in the side from which she was taken and formed (Gen. II, 21–22). For those are joined at their sides who walk together and together look to where they walk. There follows the connection of society in children, who are the one honorable fruit, not of the union of male and female, but of intercourse. For in each sex there could have been, even without such commingling, a certain friendly and genuine union, the one ruling, the other obeying.” (Migne, P. L., XL, 373).

The respective relations to State and Church give rise to the further distinction between public and private so- cieties. Public societies are those which are acknowledged as juridical persons by the authority, either of State or Church, and enjoy definite public rights. All others are private.

Readings.—Theo. Meyer, S. J., Inst. Iuris Naturalis, Vol. I, n. 347 sqq.—V. Cathrein, S. J., Moralphilosophie, Vol. II, 5th ed., pp. 388 sqq.—M. Cronin, The Science of Ethics, Vol. II, pp. 385 sqq.—J. E. Ross, C. S. P., Christian Ethics, pp. 190 sqq.—C. Antoine, S. J., Cours d’Economie Sociale, Intr. and Ch. I of Part I.—T. Slater, S. J., Questions of Moral Theology, pp. 191 sqq.

1. As marriage gives rise to the family, so the family is the nursery of the State,¹ which may be defined as a perfect and self-sufficient society, consisting of many families, united together under a common ruler and governed by the same laws, for the attainment of complete life and welfare of all the members. The State owes its existence to the natural needs of men as social beings, which compel them to unite in larger (political) communities. For neither as an individual nor as a family member is a man able to supply even his own urgent needs.

¹ Cicero, De Offic., l. I, c. 17: “Since it is common to living creatures by nature to have the desire to procreate, the first society is in marriage itself, the next in children, then one household, all things in common. And this is the beginning of the city and, as it were, the nursery of the commonwealth. Next come the unions of brothers, afterward those of first cousins and second cousins, who, when they can no longer be contained in one household, go out into other houses as into colonies. Next come marriages and affinities, from which there are yet more relatives. This propagation and offspring will be the origin of commonwealths. Moreover, blood relationship and benevolence bind men by charity.”

Now, as it would be impossible to preserve order in the family without some higher (paternal or parental) authority, so, too, the permanent cohabitation of many families would not be possible without a common leader.² History teaches that in matter of fact there is not and never was a nation or State that wholly lacked political organization, no matter what form of public policy it adopted.

² Prov. XI, 14.—St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 1a, qu. 96, art. 4: “The social life of many could not exist unless someone presided who aimed at the common good. For many of themselves aim at many things, but one at one thing. And therefore the Philosopher says that whenever many things are ordered to one, one is always found as principal and director.”

But the State is not only a spontaneous outgrowth of sheer natural necessity, it is at the same time a free and voluntary product of human intelligence. It furnishes a fruitful soil for countless moral relations which are sustained and regulated by the ideas of social order, right, and justice,—ideas implanted by the Creator Himself in the minds and hearts of men. Accordingly the State or civil society is not a purely human invention, but instituted by God; for, as St. Paul says, “there is no power but from God, and those that are, are ordained of God.”³ “Because no society can hold together unless some one be over all,”—writes Leo XIII in his famous encyclical “Immortale Dei,”—“directing all to strive ear- nestly for the common good, every civilized community must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its author. Hence it follows that all public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world, to whom everything without exception must be subject, and whom everything must serve: so that whosoever holds the right to govern, holds it from one sole and single source, namely, from God, the Sovereign Ruler of all.”⁴

³ Rom. XIII, 1; cfr. Prov. VIII, 15 sq.

⁴ Encycl. “Immortale Dei,” Nov. 1, 1885: “Since no society can hold together unless someone presides over all, moving each person toward the common purpose with an efficacious and simultaneous impulse, it follows that an authority by which it is ruled is necessary to the civil community of men; this authority, no less than society, arises from nature and therefore from God Himself as author. From this it follows that public power in itself is from none but God. For God alone is the truest and supreme Lord of things, to whom all things whatsoever must be subject and must serve; so that whoever possesses the right of command receives it from no other source than from God, that supreme Prince of all.”—Cfr. J. A. Ryan, The State and the Church, pp. 2 sq., 26 sqq.

Yet, though political power is from God, Divine Revelation has not prescribed any particular form of government,⁵ but leaves men free to choose whichever form they prefer, and civil society is a moral entity precisely by the fact that it is based in part upon a free agreement, that it is sustained by the voluntary co-operation of its members, and that the individual finds within it ample scope for free activity. This liberty, however, like human liberty in general, is not merely legal, derived from positive law, but has its root in the divine will, and, ultimately, in the eternal and imperishable ideas of right and justice as they exist in God.

⁵ Rom. XIII, 1–7; 1 Pet. II, 13–19. Cfr. Linsenmann, Moraltheol., pp. 621 sqq.; G. v. Hertling, Kleine Schriften, pp. 41 sqq., 61 sqq., 91 sqq., 470 sqq.; M. Cronin, The Science of Ethics, Vol. II, pp. 557 sqq.; J. A. Ryan, op. cit., p. 28 sq.

The influence of Christianity on the development of political life shows itself especially in this that the Church of Christ inculcates a higher conception of justice and goodness. She is the authorized interpreter of the natural law. And since the human race is not intended to work out its destiny exclusively on this earthly planet, but has a truly transcendental aim and purpose,⁶ the State does not contain its ultimate purpose within itself, in other words, it is not absolute, but merely a means to an end. This end is to help humanity reach its temporal and eternal destiny. “Nature did not fashion society with the intent that man should seek in it his last end, but that in it and through it he should find suitable means to attain to his own perfection.”⁷

⁶ Mark VIII, 36 sq.; Luke IX, 25; X, 42.—St. Augustine, Confess., l. I, c. 1: “Thou [Lord] dost stir us, that it may delight us to praise Thee, because Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.” (Migne, P. L., XXXII, 661).

⁷ Leo XIII, Encycl. “Sapientiae Christianae,” Jan. 10, 1890: “Nature did not beget society for this reason, that man should pursue it as an end, but that in it and through it he should find helps suited to his perfection.”

2. The end or purpose of the State may be briefly described as the promotion of the public welfare (salus sive prosperitas publica). This means that the State must by proper laws and institutions insure the preservation of good morals and the proper government of families, inculcate respect for religion, enforce the demands of justice, secure the prosperity of business, trade, and commerce, etc., because upon the promotion of these things the welfare and happiness of civil society mainly depends.⁸

⁸ Cfr. Rom. XIII, 3 sq.—Cathrein, Moralphilosophie, Vol. II, 5th ed., pp. 525 sqq.—Leo XIII, Encycl. “Immortale Dei,” Nov. 1, 1885; IDEM, Encyclical letter “Rerum Novarum,” March 15, 1891.

The object of the State, therefore, is the preservation of civil society on the basis of justice and order. Still law and order are not the last and highest purpose, but means for the attainment of a still higher one, which is contained in the very destiny of man himself, namely, culture and civilization in the fullest and most perfect sense of the term. The State must create such conditions of law and order as are suitable to a nation’s state of culture and apt to lead the people to a still higher plane of morality. Law and order must be directed toward good morals. Hence it belongs to the State not only to protect its citizens against external and internal enemies, and to protect private property, but likewise to prevent and punish all public violations of morality and to promote every form of true culture and civilization,—education, religion, science and art.⁹

⁹ J. A. Ryan, The State and the Church, pp. 195 sqq.; Linsenmann, Moraltheologie, p. 620.

The State has its natural basis in nationality. But History shows that a nation (in the strict sense) can very well comprise several States, and that a State may comprise people of different nationalities. Both the undue suppression of national aspirations and the undue exaltation of the principle of nationality are moral defects and therefore illicit.¹⁰

¹⁰ Ibid., pp. 615 sqq.—Cfr. Stöckl, Das Christentum, Vol. II, pp. 389 sqq.; W. Frind, Das sprachliche und sprachlich-nationale Recht in polyglotten Staaten und Ländern, Mayence 1899; W. Haidegger, Der nationale Gedanke im Lichte des Christentums, 2nd ed., Brixen, 1902; A. Vermeersch, S. J., Quaestiones de Iustitia, 2nd ed., pp. 6 sqq.

READINGS.—F. X. Linsenmann, Lehrbuch der Moraltheologie, pp. 619 sqq.—V. Cathrein, S. J., Moralphilosophie, Vol. II, 5th ed., pp. 462 sqq.—IDEM, Die Staatsgewalt und ihre Grenzen, Freiburg i. B. 1882.—G. v. Hertling, Recht, Staat und Gesellschaft, Kempten 1906.—B. Seidel, Die Lehre des hl. Augustinus vom Staate, Breslau 1909.—M. Cronin, The Science of Ethics, Vol. II, pp. 461 sqq., 507 sqq.—J. A. Ryan, The State and the Church, N. Y. 1922, pp. 62 sqq., 195 sqq., 221 sqq.—Th. Meyer, S.J., Inst. Iuris Nat., Vol. II, pp. 241 sqq., 266 sqq., 303 sqq.—J. E. Ross, C.S.P., Christian Ethics, pp. 395 sqq., 433.—P. Tischleder, Ursprung und Träger der Staatsgewalt nach der Lehre des hl. Thomas und seiner Schule, M. Gladbach 1923.

1. The highest government official in a country, whether his title be emperor, king, or president, is the representative of God, appointed for the purpose of enforcing justice and promoting the common welfare.¹ St. Thomas² describes his duties in a classical passage as threefold: “(1) That he establish a good life among the subject multitude; (2) That he preserve what has been established; (3) That he promote what has been preserved toward better things.” The institutio bonae vitae comprises: (a) that the people live in unity of peace; (b) that, united by the bonds of peace, they be directed in doing good; (c) that by the industry and foresight of their ruler they be provided plentifully with the necessaries of life.³

¹ Rom. XIII, 3 sq.

² De Regimine Principum, l. I, c. 15.

³ Ibid.: “(a) That the multitude be established in the unity of peace; (b) that the multitude, united by the bond of peace, be directed to acting well; (c) that through the ruler’s industry there be a sufficient abundance of the things necessary for living well.”

The conservatio bonae vitae implies: (a) a just administration by, and a proper succession of, officials; (b) proper laws and precepts, re- wards to encourage civic virtue and punishments to deter the people from wrongdoing; (c) safety of the commonwealth against exterior and interior enemies.⁴ The promotio bonae vitae implies: (a) correcting crimes, misdemeanors, and serious faults; (b) supplying the things that are necessary for the welfare of the nation, and (c) introducing indispensable and advisable reforms.⁵ The principal duty of the regent is to dispense justice to all. Hence he must never violate justice, or permit others to violate it; he must render to each what is his due, reward or punish all according to their deserts, combine firmness with paternal kindness and charity, and be ever mindful of the account he will one day have to render to God.⁶

⁴ Ibid.: “(a) Care concerning the succession of men and the substitution of those who preside over the various offices; (b) that by his laws and precepts, punishments and rewards, he restrain the men subject to him from iniquity; (c) that the subject multitude be rendered safe against enemies.”

⁵ Ibid.: “(a) In each of the things set forth above, if anything is disordered, to correct it; (b) if anything is lacking, to supply it; (c) if anything can be done better, to bring it to completion.”—Cfr. Aug. Lehmkuhl, Theol. Mor., Vol. I, 11th ed., n. 952.

⁶ Ps. II, 10, 12; Wisd. I, 1; VI, 2–4; VI, 7; cfr. Jas. II, 13.

“The right to rule,” says Leo XIII, “is not necessarily bound up with any special mode of government. It may take this or that form, provided only that it be of a nature to insure the general welfare. But whatever be the nature of the government, rulers must always bear in mind that God is the paramount Ruler of the world, and must set Him before themselves as their exemplar and law in the administration of the State.... They, therefore, who rule, should rule with even-handed justice, not as masters, but rather as fathers, for the rule of God over man is most just, and is tempered always with a father’s kindness. Government should, moreover, be administered for the well-being of the citizens, because they who govern others possess authority solely for the welfare of the State. Furthermore, the civil power must not be subservient to the advantage of any one individual or of some few persons, inasmuch as it was established for the common good of all. But if those who are in authority rule unjustly, if they govern overbearingly or arrogantly, and if their measures prove hurtful to the people, they must remember that the Almighty will one day bring them to account, the more strictly in proportion to the sacredness of their office and the pre-eminence of their dignity.”⁷

⁷ Encyclical “Immortale Dei,” Nov. 1, 1885: “The right of command is not of itself necessarily joined to any form of commonwealth: it can rightly assume this form or that, provided it is in fact effective for the common utility and good. But in every kind of commonwealth princes must altogether look to God, the supreme Governor of the world, and set Him before themselves as an exemplar and law in administering the state.... Government, therefore, ought to be just, not masterly, but as it were paternal, because God’s most just power over men is joined with paternal goodness.... But if those who are in authority slip into unjust domination, if they sin through arrogance or pride, if they take bad counsel for the people, let them know that they will someday have to render an account to God, and that the reckoning will be so much stricter, the more sacred the office in which they have been engaged or the higher the degree of dignity they have obtained.”—Cfr. J. A. Ryan, The State and the Church, pp. 3, 26 sqq.

Least of all is a ruler permitted to employ his power against God, i. e., to the detriment of religion;—on the contrary, it is one of his first and most sacred duties to protect and foster religion, inasmuch as fidelity to God and to His holy law is a necessary condition of the temporal no less than of the spiritual welfare and prosperity of nations as well as individuals.⁸

⁸ Ibid., pp. 4 sqq., 29 sqq. Cfr. Ecclus. XIX, 18; 1 Tim. IV, 8.

“All who rule,” says Leo XIII, “should hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule.”⁹

⁹ Encyclical “Immortale Dei”: “The name of God must be holy among princes; and it must be placed among their chief duties to embrace religion with favor, to protect it with benevolence, to cover it with the authority and sanction of the laws, and neither to institute nor decree anything contrary to its safety. They owe this also to the citizens over whom they preside.” (Ryan, op. cit., pp. 4 sq., 29 sqq.)

2. Public officials are the organs of the supreme ruler and entrusted with the duty of promoting the welfare of the people in their respective spheres, whether these be large or small.¹⁰

¹⁰ St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 67–71; Lehmkuhl, Theol. Mor., Vol. I, 11th ed., n. 960–987.

The statement is frequently made in the United States that public officials are merely public servants. This, says Dr. Ryan, is incorrect. “They are, indeed, the servants of the people, but they are also something more. Inasmuch as their function is that of public service, they may properly be regarded as public servants; inasmuch as their position gives them the authority to enact laws which are morally binding on the people, they are not servants, but masters. Their character as public servants does not depend upon the fact that they are elected by the people; for hereditary kings are likewise bound to serve the common welfare. In a republic the members of legislatures may in a special sense be regarded as servants of the people, whenever they are instructed by the electors to carry out certain political policies. Their promise to pursue this course creates a particular responsibility to the people, and renders their position analogous to that of servants or agents. Nevertheless, they are masters and rulers when they enact the legislation necessary to carry out the policies to which they have committed themselves.”¹¹

¹¹ The State and the Church, p. 263.

One of the primary duties of public officials, according to the same writer, is “to possess an adequate knowledge of what constitutes the common welfare and of the means by which it is best promoted. This obligation is disregarded by a large proportion of those who seek public office. Men who are otherwise conscientious assume that good will and right motives are a sufficient equipment for public service. When we consider the enormously extended functions of the modern State, the numerous and profound ways in which its activities affect the welfare of all the people, and the consequent complexity of legislating and governing wisely, we see that this notion is utterly mistaken. Only in local governments and subordinate official positions is it true that common honesty plus common sense suffice for those who are charged with the duty of caring for the public welfare. In all the more important legislative and executive officers a considerable amount of special and specific knowledge is essential to an adequate discharge of official obligations.”¹²

¹² Ryan, op. cit., p. 262.

Other important duties of public officials are: fidelity and conscientiousness in fulfilling the particular obligations of their state and impartiality in the administration of justice.¹³ They should also strive to be models of all other Christian virtues, especially of prudence, mildness, and benevolence. Here, too, what St. Paul says is true, that “love is the fulfilling of the law.”¹⁴ If public officials intentionally or out of culpable ignorance violate the rights of the people, or cause them material damage, they are guilty of sin and must make restitution. Thus, for example, a judge who, in a gravely culpable way, either because of ignorance or carelessness, has pronounced an unjust judgment, must repair the damage that results therefrom, because he is in duty bound to administer his office fairly and justly. If he has erred without grave fault, he is bound to correct his mistake as far as lies within his power.

¹³ Ex. XXIII, 2 sq., 6 sqq.; Lev. XIX, 15, 35; XXIV, 22; Deut. I, 17; XVI, 18 sq.; XXIV, 17; XXV, 1 sq.; Ps. LXXXI, 3 sq.; Is. I, 17; XXXII, 1; LVI, 1; Jer. XXII, 3; Zach. VIII, 16; Wisd. I, 1; Ecclus. XX, 31; Rom. XIII, 3 sq.; Jas. II, 1–9.—St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, l. IV, c. 4: “Justice removed, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves but little kingdoms?” (Migne, P. L., XLI, 115).—Cicero, De Offic., l. II, c. 11: “Such is the power of [justice] that not even those who feed upon wrongdoing and crime can live without some particle of justice.”

¹⁴ Rom. XIII, 10; cfr. Zach. VIII, 19; Eph. IV, 15; Col. III, 14.—Sallust, Iugurth., 10: “By concord small things grow; by discord the greatest things fall apart.”

“The man who regards public office as an opportunity for private gain, except incidentally and as a necessary consequence of faithful public service, is false to his trust and violates legal justice. To accept a bribe for aid in the enactment of a bad law, for negligent or oppressive administration of the law, or for unjust judicial conduct, is an evident moral wrong. To obtain some advantage on the occasion of proper official actions, for example, through some form of ‘graft,’ is likewise a violation of legal justice. Such conduct is generally forbidden by the civil law; at any rate, it renders right judgment and adequate performance of official duties extremely difficult. Public officials are not justified in exposing themselves to such a grave temptation. What is true of their own private advantage, applies also to that of their friends. In their enactment or administration of the law they may not extend favors of any sort to any individual or class of individuals. The common good must be preferred to the good of individuals, and all individuals must be treated with exact justice.”¹⁵

¹⁵ J. A. Ryan, The State and the Church, pp. 260 sq.

What would become of a State without justice? It would fall to pieces, for injustice breeds anarchy, and anarchy causes the disruption of all social bonds. When a State departs from the laws of justice, therefore, it courts destruction.

Every public official ought to be a vessel and an organ for the manifestation of justice within the sphere of his jurisdiction. He must be incorruptible, because justice cannot coexist with bribery. He must be impartial, for without impartiality his judgments would be unjust. He must be unselfish, for selfishness would render him susceptible to bribery. He must be discreet, for without discretion he cannot acquire and hold the confidence either of his superior or of the public. He must be diligent and punctual in the performance of his duties, else he cannot be a model to others. He must be chaste and temperate in all things, for he who is guilty of immoderate indulgence in the pleasures of the flesh can be neither assiduous nor impartial. Where would a slave of lust find the courage to sacrifice himself for the welfare of his country?¹⁶ He must be a man of superior culture, for without true culture there can be no wisdom, without wisdom no religion, without religion neither justice nor true benevolence.

¹⁶ J. M. Sailer, Handbuch der christl. Moral, Vol. III, p. 51, note 1: “History and philosophy both admit the influence of the current immorality on the conduct of public business.”—Tacitus says: “Nothing honorable resides in a mind corrupted by lust.”—Aristotle asks: “What difference does it make whether women govern, or whether those who govern are governed by women?”—Cfr. Polit., l. II, c. 9 (Op., II, 1269; III, 629).

The most indispensable qualities of a true statesman are: justice, wisdom, incorruptibility, and discretion; and the higher his office, the greater is his responsibility, and the more assiduously should he cultivate these virtues.

As justice is the very life and foundation of the State, and its administration is formally entrusted to the judges, their duties demand a special treatment.

a) A judge can pronounce official judgment only in matters over which the law gives him jurisdiction.

b) He must be familiar with the law so that he can apply it correctly to the concrete cases submitted for his decision.

c) He must be guided by a firm purpose of administering justice and, therefore, love justice above all things, as the embodiment of the divine will.

d) He must render his decisions according to the letter of the law, but never against its spirit, for this would be to disregard its very essence.

e) He must examine every case without prejudice, and preserve this impartial attitude until he has rendered judgment.

f) He must hear and examine all witnesses who are able and willing to tell the truth, and discount the testi- mony of those who are incompetent or addicted to falsehood.

270. The limits within which intervention is to be made in all these matters are determined by the end itself or the cause of intervening: "the same cause," says Leo XIII, "which asks the help of laws, determines the limits." Therefore:

1. "It is not right, as we have said, for the citizen or the family to be absorbed by the republic; it is equitable that the faculty of acting with liberty be permitted to each, as much as can be done with the common good unharmed and without injury to anyone."

Pius XI has most recently applied this to the various groups and associations of orders: "Just as those things which can be accomplished by individual men by their own initiative and their own industry must not be taken away from them and handed over to the community, so also those things which can be effected and furnished by lesser and inferior communities, to call these away to a greater and higher society is at once an injury, a grave damage, and a disturbance of right order; since every social work by its force and nature ought to bring aid to the members of the social body, but never to destroy and absorb them.

"Therefore the supreme authority of the republic ought to permit affairs and concerns of lesser moment, by which otherwise it would be especially detained, to be dispatched by inferior groups; by which it will happen that it may execute more freely, strongly, and efficaciously all those things which pertain to it alone, as things which it alone can furnish: by directing, watching over, urging, restraining, according as the case bears and necessity demands."

2. The common good is to be promoted of the whole society and of the individual parts, as Leo XIII shows: "Those who command must see to it that they protect the community and its parts. The community indeed, since nature has entrusted it to the supreme power to be preserved, to such a degree that the guarding of public safety is not only the supreme law but the whole cause and reason of rulership; the parts, moreover, because both philosophy and the Christian faith equally agree that the administration of the republic by nature pertains not to the utility of those to whom it has been entrusted, but to those who have been entrusted. And since the faculty of commanding proceeds from God, and is a certain communication of His supreme principate, it must be carried on according to the example of divine power, which consults with paternal care no less for singular things than for universal things.⁷ If, therefore, any detriment has been brought or threatens either to common affairs or to the interests of individual orders, which cannot be healed or prevented in another way, it is necessary that it be met by public authority."

⁷ St. Thomas already has the same thing, De Reg. princ., I, c. 12 at the end: "Let the king know that he has taken up this office, that he be in the kingdom as the soul in the body and as God in the world"; and c. 15 at the beginning: "The king, just as he ought to be subject to the dominion and governance which is administered through the office of the priesthood, so also ought to preside over all human offices and order them by the command of his rule."

3. In warding off evil, "not more things must be undertaken by laws, nor must progress be made farther, than the healing of inconveniences or the repulsion of danger requires."

Thus in governing society, the middle way must be held between socialism, which takes away the liberty of individuals and contends that all things be defined by the State, and individualism or liberalism, which thinks that the State is composed of individuals alone, with intermediate associations removed, in such a way that, says Pius XI, "almost only individual men and the republic remained, to no small detriment of the republic itself, which, having lost the form of social governance and having taken up all the burdens which those destroyed associations formerly bore, has been overwhelmed and oppressed by affairs and offices almost infinite."

271. Notice. — The civil State by which intervention is to be made in the aforesaid matters and limits is any State whatever, and not the State insofar as it exists under a special form in this or that people: for the motive of intervention is by no means the quality or particular form of the State, but the natural requirement itself of things. Hence Leo XIII: "By republic in this place we understand not the republic such as one or another people uses, but such as right reason, congruent with nature, both wills, and the documents of divine wisdom approve."

This text of the holy Pontiff could not be understood in that sense in which some would wish, that the ideal State alone intervenes, and one which is already perfect. Such an interpretation is contrary to the obvious sense itself, and to the very nature of the matter; for a) the intervention of which it has been spoken is an office derived from the nature of things, and on that account imprescriptible; — b) if the interpretation which we reject were true, there would have been no need for the Pontiff to demand this part of the remedy from the State, since the perfect State already furnishes all those things which the holy Pontiff recalls as to be furnished; — c) he would also have spoken in vain, since now nowhere in the world does such a perfect State exist in fact. It is added that such an interpretation is opposed to the common doctrine of the scholastics.

It is certain that such infidel Princes, or even private persons, are capable of dominion. And indeed to have dominion over goods is defined by Paulus III. in a certain Bull cited by Coninch. disput. 1. dub. 10. num. 160. Of dominion also over persons as over slaves, it is certain that it can be with them if they hold slaves by a just title, say a just war, etc.

From many Scriptures S. Doct. shows that jurisdiction can be in infidels over the faithful. First from 1. a Petri 2. Subiecti estote omni humanae creaturae propter Deum: sive Regi, tanquam praecellenti. Be subject to every human creature for God's sake: whether to the King, as preeminent.

Next by that of Rom. 13. Omnis anima potestatibus sublimioribus subdita sit. Et infra: Non solum propter iram, sed etiam propter conscientiam. Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. And below: Not only because of wrath, but also because of conscience. Finally from the other epistles of Paul S. Doctor gathers the same.

Thirdly from that of Matth. 22. Reddite ergo, quae sunt Caesaris, Caesari. Render therefore to Caesar what is Caesar's. The Apostles inculcated this precept to refute the calumny, as if our faith denied obedience to Princes. Whence Paul ad Titum 3: Admone illos, ut Principibus obediant. Admonish them, that they obey Princes. The same precept the PP. enjoined: Clemens P. lib. 4. constitut. cap. 12. et lib. 7. cap. 17. Tertullianus lib. ad scapulam, cap. 2. Polycarpus cited by Euseb. lib. 4. hist. cap. 14. Basil. in Moral. reg. 79. Hieron. epist. 4. Chrysostomus homil. 23. in epist. ad Rom. Origenes lib. 9. in eandem epist. Oecumenius, Nazianzenus, Epiphan. and others, whom Suarez relates de defensione fidei, lib. 3. cap. 1.

It is proved fourthly by S. Doct. by the reason of the Apostle. Omnis potestas est a Deo, atque ordinata; et qui ei resistit, Deo resistit, et damnationem incurrit: All power is from God and ordained; and he who resists it resists God and incurs damnation: but by the law of nature many are given having power of jurisdiction, by a just title, whether by war, or custom, or prescription, or translation of dominion, whether into a true person, as is a King; or a fictitious one, such as a Republic. Nor indeed is it once acquired lost on account of the infidelity of the Prince, or through the faith of subjects; for an infidel can well rule the faithful people of God, even with just laws.

It is confirmed by D. Bonav. because to serve is not an evil, but meritorious: Therefore by Baptism we are not absolved from that servitude.

Of dominion therefore even real over faithful slaves it is proved by S. Doct. from that of Ephes. 6. Servi obedite Dominis carnalibus cum timore, et tremore, in simplicitate cordis vestri, sicut Christo: non ad oculum servientes, quasi hominibus placentes, sed ut servi Christi, facientes voluntatem Dei ex animo, cum bona voluntate servientes, sicut Domino, et non hominibus: Servants, obey your carnal masters with fear and trembling, in the simplicity of your heart, as to Christ: not serving to the eye, as pleasing men, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, serving with good will, as to the Lord, and not to men: The same he repeats ad Coloss. 3. ad Titum 2. But then all the princes were, nay, almost all even private masters, infidels. But Peter speaks of the slaves of infidel masters epist. 1. cap. 2. in those words: Servi subditi estote in omni timore dominis, non tantum bonis, et modestis, sed etiam discolis, Servants, be subject in all fear to your masters, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward: as S. Bonaventura observes, and Lugo num. 133. S. Bonav. renders the reason of this fundamento 4. with D. August. in Psalm. 124. because Christ did not make free men of slaves, but of bad slaves, good slaves, which S. August. also confirms conc. 31. in Psal. 118. and the author of the qq. novi, et veteris testamenti, under the name of August: quaest. 15. and in the Council of Gangra can. 3. it is related cap. si quis servum 17. quaest. 14. that anathema is inflicted on him who, under pretext of religion, urged a slave to flee. It was however celebrated in the time of Pope Sylvester, in which Gentile masters had many Christian slaves.

The authors of the contrary opinion object first, from that of 1 Cor. 7. Nolite fieri servi hominum, pretio empti estis. Do not become the slaves of men; you were bought with a price.

Some answer with Suarez, that Paul is not there speaking of civil, or penal servitude: for of this he had said a little before: Servus vocatus es? non sit tibi curae. Were you called a slave? let it not be a care to you. And he concludes: Unusquisque in quo vocatus est fratres, in this let each remain with God. He speaks therefore of vitious servitude, by which one, in order to serve another, offends God: Nemo enim potest duobus dominis servire. For no one can serve two masters.

Cornelius there, Lugo n. 136. and others affirm that the exposition of D. Bonau. in the body of the text is BETTER, that those words are to be understood of civil servitude also, namely, that those compelled indeed into servitude ought patiently to bear it; yet if they are not compelled, and can be free, they ought not to reduce themselves into the servitude of infidels, for thus they will be able more promptly, more readily, and more freely to attend to religion, and the preceding words intimate this, as S. Doct. relates Servus vocatus es? non sit tibi curae: sed et si potes fieri liber, magis utere, that is, if it is in your power not to be a slave, use it: but if you have been compelled, bear it patiently.

Yet it SEEMS that by fundamento 4. he does not reject the exposition of others on these words, namely, that even if one could go out from servitude, it is meritorious to remain in it; and therefore on this occasion it is to be used for the merit of humility. Indeed S. Doct. shows that they can sell themselves, 4. dist. 36. dub. 3. Simply however, that servants ought to obey their Princes, and Masters, the Apostle enjoins also 1 Timot. VI. Quicumque sunt sub iugo servitutis, dominos suos omni honore dignos arbitrentur, ne nomen Domini, et doctrina blasphemetur. Si quis aliter docet, et non acquiescit sanis sermonibus Domini nostri Iesu Christi: superbus est, et nihil sciens. Whoever are under the yoke of servitude, let them judge their masters worthy of all honor, lest the name of the Lord and his doctrine be blasphemed. If anyone teaches otherwise, and does not assent to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ: he is proud, and knowing nothing. And he proves this earnestly ad Rom. 13.

They OBJECT secondly, that the Evangelical Law carries liberty with it: For therefore, when Matth. 17. the tribute was demanded from the Apostles, the Lord asked Peter: Reges terrae a quibus accipiunt tributum, vel censum? a filiis suis, an ab alienis? The Kings of the earth, from whom do they receive tribute, or custom? from their own sons, or from strangers? Christ concluded: Ergo liberi sunt filii. Therefore the sons are free. In which place, under the name of sons, he seems to have understood all the faithful, as Lyra and Hieronymus indicate.

Suarez relates the VARIOUS expositions of that passage, lib. 1. cit. cap. 4. and lib. 4. cap. 5. and cap. 8.

S. Doct. ANSWERS that Christ ascribes this immunity to himself, as being the son of God by nature. Therefore from this passage the Fathers prove the natural filiation of God, because by it he declares himself not to be subject to the paying of tribute. So Chrysost. and Hilar. cited by Suarez cap. 5. num. 5. But they say he could have extended this exemption to his family, the Apostles, and others, who left all things and followed him, and Hieronymus speaks in this sense: but he communicated it especially to Peter, and his successors, as those words signified: Ut autem non scandalizemuseos, solve pro me, et te, But that we may not scandalize them, pay for me and you; for with the scandal removed, Peter could have not paid, the immunity having been communicated to him by Christ, as Lugo notes n. 138. with D. Bonau. prima parte Centil. sect. 31. Tannerus subscribes disp. 1. quaest. 9. dub. 2. num. 44.

They OBJECT thirdly from the first of Iacobi: Qui autem perspexerit in lege perfecta libertatis, But he that has looked into the perfect law of liberty, where the Gloss: Lex libertatis est lex Evangelica. The law of liberty is the Evangelical law.

S. Doct. ANSWERS that the Evangelical Law makes us free from the servitude of sin, and the servitude of the old law, as is said Rom. 8. Non accepistis spiritum servitutis iterum in timore, sed accepistis Spiritum adoptionis filiorum, in quo clamamus: Abba, (Pater.) You have not received again the spirit of servitude in fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption of sons, in which we cry: Abba, (Father.)

They OBJECT fourthly. The law of charity, composing all into one, makes all things common; whence 1 Cor. 3. Omnia vestra sunt, sive mors, sive vita. All things are yours, whether death, or life. And ad Ephes. et Coloss. Omnes sumus in Christo, etc. We are all in Christ, etc.

S. Doct. ANSWERS that charity makes us one by a certain communication of graces, and affections; but not of temporal dominion; otherwise it would be forbidden that even some Christians be unequal, say one a King: another a prisoner in the Ergastulum.

They OBJECT fifthly. The bond of the Divine law is greater than that of the human; but the Evangelical law absolves from the obligation of the old divine law: Therefore.

S. Doct. ANSWERS that it is not alike; for the new Law evacuates the old law, as truth the figure; but it is not thus with human Law, which aids the Divine to be observed: Whence the Apostle 1. Timot. 2. commands that prayer be made for Princes, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life under them.

They OBJECT sixthly. Christ willed to redeem us by himself, that he might restore us to our pristine liberty, and that man might be subject to himself, as S. Anselmus says Lib. Cur Deus homo, cap. 5. since therefore we have been bought with the great price of the blood of Christ the Lord; we are his alone: Therefore it seems that a Christian, who has been reborn in Christ, is not bound to any servitude.

S. Doct. ANSWERS that we do not attain the liberty bought for us by Christ, unless translated into glory. Whence here liberty is begun from guilt; but there it is consummated, liberty from misery, and from every human power; Whence it does not follow that, if we are bought by Christ, we are not the servants of any man: The dominion indeed of the devil, or of sin, is excluded, according to that Matth. 6. Non potestis Deo servire, et Mammonae. You cannot serve God and Mammon.

But there is still a controversy: whether the Church can deprive infidel Princes of the temporal dominion which they exercise over the faithful.

INDIRECTLY indeed the Church has this power, by the right of defense, and the right of governance, because the Church can rule her faithful everywhere. So D. Thom. quaest. 10. art. 1. and Bannes, Aragon there, Valentia quaest. 10. p. 8. and Tanner. says it probable disp. 1. quaest. 9. dub. 2. num. 53.

COMMONLY however the Doctors hold that the Church does not have this indirect power over infidel Princes, precisely as they are infidels, unless it redound to the prejudice of the faith. So Bellarm. Tom. 1. lib. 5. de Romano Pontifice, cap. 7. Lorca, Caietanus, and others cited by Hurtadum disp. 77. sect. 2. Coninch. disp. 18. dub. 10. num. 160. Turrianus disp. 52. dub. 1. Castro Palao T. 1. tract. 4. disp. 2. p. 8. num. 6. who adduces others; and Tannerus judges it probable in the place cited.

There is REQUIRED therefore, that the Church be compelled by a persecuting infidel Prince, or that a moral danger of persecution be imminent, as Suarez notes sect. 5. Lugo sect. 1. num. 148. See also D. Bonau. serm. 16. in Hexaëmerone, indicating some things.

1. Thomas Hobbes, than whom never was greater genius for riding an idea, right or wrong, to the full length that it will go, was born in 1588: and notwithstanding his twelve pipes of tobacco daily, his vigorous constitution endured to his ninety-second year. The first half of his life fell in with the age of the greatest predominance of Calvinism. In religion he was scarcely a Calvinist, indeed he laboured under a suspicion of atheism: but his philosophy is accurately cast in the mould of the grim theology of Geneva. We may call it the philosophy of Calvinism. It has for its central tenet, that human nature either was from the first, or is become, bad, "desperately wicked," depraved, corrupt, and utterly abominable, so that whatever is natural to man, in so far forth as it is natural, is simply evil. The remedy for our evil nature Hobbes finds in no imputed merits of a Redeemer, no irresistible victorious grace, but in the masterful coercion of a despotic civil power. But, lest any one should suspect that there was at least this good in man, a propensity to civil society and obedience to the rulers of cities, Hobbes insists that man is by nature wholly averse to society with his kind: that the type of the race is an Ishmael, "a wild man, his hand against all men, and all men's hands against him:" in fact that the state of nature is a state of war all round. He writes (Leviathan, c. xiii.): "Men have no pleasure, but on the contrary a great deal of grief, in keeping company where there is no power able to overawe them all. For every man looketh that his companion should value him at the same rate he sets on himself; and upon all signs of contempt or undervaluing naturally endeavours, as far as he dares (which among them that have no common power to keep them quiet, is far enough to make them destroy each other), to extort a greater value from his contemners by damage, and from others by the example…. Hereby it is manifest, that during the time that men live without a power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man…. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth: no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea: no commodious building: no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force: no knowledge of the face of the earth: no account of time: no arts, no letters, no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short…. To this war of every man against every man this also is consequent, that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power there is no law: where no law, no injustice…. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct, but only that to be every man's that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it."

2. Such is what Hobbes is pleased to call "the natural condition of mankind," a condition which man would have every natural reason for getting out of with all speed, were he ever so unhappy as to fall into it. It is true that, apart from civil government, violence would reign on earth. But it is not true that to live apart from civil government is the natural condition of mankind. It is not true that the only motive which draws men into civil society is the fear of violence, as though there were no such facts and exigencies of human nature as sympathy, friendship, intellectual curiosity, art, religion. It is not true that the one reason for the existence of the civil power consists in this, that without the restraining hand of the magistrate men would bite and devour one another. Lastly, it is not true that all rights, notably rights of property, are the creation of the State. A man is a man first and a citizen afterwards. As a man, he has certain rights actual and potential (c. v., s. i., p. 244): these the State exists, not to create, for they are prior to it in the order of nature, but to determine them, where indeterminate, to sanction and to safeguard them.

Natural rights go before legal rights, and are presupposed to them, as the law of nature before that law which is civil and positive. It is an "idol of the tribe" of lawyers to ignore all law but that upon which their own professional action takes its stand.

3. "In considering man as he must have come from the hands of nature," writes Jean Jacques Rousseau, "I behold an animal less strong than some, less active than others, but upon the whole in organism having the advantage of them all. I behold him appeasing his hunger under an oak, slaking his thirst in the first brook, finding a bed at the foot of the same tree that furnished his repast, and there you have all his cravings satisfied." (Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité.) This noble savage—quite a contrast to Hobbes's ruffian primeval, "nasty, brutish," and short-lived—observes and imitates the industry, and gradually raises himself to the instinct, of the beasts among whom he lives. His constitution is robust, and almost inaccessible to malady. He attains to old age, free from gout and rheumatism. He surpasses the fiercest wild beasts in address as much as they surpass him in strength, and so arrives to dwell among them without fear. Yet withal he is distinguished from brutes by freewill and perfectibility, qualities which gradually draw him out of his primeval condition of tranquil innocence, lead him through a long course of splendours and errors, of vices and virtues, and end by making him a tyrant at once over nature and over himself.

4. Rousseau's life, 1715-1778, was a continual protest against the formalism, affectation, pedantry and despotism of the age of the Bourbons. His ideal of man was the unconventional, unconstrained, solitary, but harmless and easy-going savage. Hobbes was the growth of a sterner and more serious age. The only reality to him in heaven and on earth was force: his one idea in philosophy was coercion. Human nature to him was an embodiment of brute violence ever in need of violent restraint. Rousseau, an optimist, saw nothing but good in man's original nature: to the pessimist mind of Hobbes all was evil there. Neither of them saw any natural adaptation to social life in the human constitution. To live in society was, in both their views, an artificial arrangement, an arbitrary convention. But Hobbes found in the intolerable evils of a state of nature an excellent reason why men should quit it for the unnatural condition of citizens. Rousseau found no reason except, as he says, quelque funeste hasard. The problem for Hobbes stood thus: how men, entering society, might be "cribbed, cabined, and confined" to the utmost in order to keep down their native badness. Rousseau's concern was, how one might so become a citizen as yet to retain to the full the delightful liberty of a tropical savage. Hobbes's solution is the Leviathan, Rousseau's the Social Contract. The prize, we think, rests with the Englishman: but the reader shall judge.

5. And first of the Social Contract. Rousseau proposes "to find a form of association which shall defend and protect with all the strength of the community the person and the goods of each associate, and whereby each one, uniting himself to all, may nevertheless obey none but himself and remain as free as before." (Contrat Social, i. 6.) This proposal is hopeless, it is a contradiction in terms. No man can contract and remain as free as before, but he binds himself either under a wider obligation to do or abstain, where he was not bound before, or under a stronger obligation where he was bound already. Nevertheless Rousseau finds a means of accomplishing the impossible and the self-contradictory. "Each of us puts into a common stock his person and all his power under the supreme direction of the general will; and we receive in our turn the offering of the rest, each member as an inseparable part of the whole. Instantly, instead of the private person of each contracting party, this act of association produces a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the assembly has voices, which body receives by this same act its unity, its common Ego, its life and its will." (ib.) This awful signing away of all your rights, so that your very personality is merged in that of the community—a self-renunciation going far beyond that of profession in any religious order—ought certainly, as Rousseau says, to be "the most voluntary act in the world;" and he adds the characteristic reason: "every man being born free and master of himself, none can, under any pretence whatsoever, subject him without his own consent." (Contrat Social, iv. 2.) Then you ask: When have I made this large contract by the most voluntary act in the world? Rousseau replies: "When the State is instituted, consent is in residing." (ib.) But, you reply, my residence is anything but the most voluntary act in the world: it would be awkward for me to emigrate; and if I did emigrate, it would only be to some other State: I cannot possibly camp out and be independent in the woods, nor appease my hunger under an oak. To this plea Rousseau quite gives in, remarking that "family, goods, the want of an asylum, necessity, violence, may keep an inhabitant in the country in spite of himself; and in that case his mere sojourn no longer supposes his consent to the contract." (ib.) Then none of us have made the contract, for we have never had the option of living anywhere except in some State.

6. Hobbes, after laying down the necessity of men combining for protection against mutual injustice, observes that a mere promise or agreement not to injure any one will not suffice: "for the agreement of men is by covenant only, which is artificial; and therefore no wonder if there be something else required besides covenant to make their agreement constant and lasting, which is a common power to keep them in awe and to direct their actions to the common benefit." He continues: "The only way to erect such a common power … is to confer all their power and strength upon one man or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills by plurality of voices unto one will: which is as much as to say, to appoint one man or assembly of men to bear their person; and every one to own, and to acknowledge himself to be the author of, whatsoever he that so beareth their person shall act or cause to be acted in those things which concern the common peace and safety; and therein to submit their wills every one to his will, and their judgments to his judgment. This is more than consent or concord,—it is a real unity of them all in one and the same person, made by covenant of every man with every man, in such manner as if every man should say to every man: I authorise, and give up my right of governing myself to this man or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner. This done, the multitude so united in one person is called a commonwealth, in Latin civitas. This is the generation of that great Leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god, to whom we owe under the immortal God our peace and defence." (Leviathan, c. xvii.) This idea of all the rights and personalities of the individuals who contract to live socially being fused and welded together into the one resultant personality and power of the State, has evidently been borrowed by Rousseau from Hobbes. We shall deal with the idea presently. Meanwhile several points claim our notice.

7. The hideous piece of cynicism whereby Rousseau (Contrat Social, iv. 2), after promising you that, if you join his commonwealth, you shall obey none but yourself, then goes on to tell you that you obey yourself in obeying the will of the majority, even when it puts you in irons or leads you to death—because as a citizen you have once for all renounced your own will, and can only wish what the majority wishes,—has its root in the position of Hobbes, that "every subject is author of every act the sovereign doth." (Leviathan, c. xxi.)

8. A real and important difference between the Leviathan and the Social Contract, is that Hobbes (c. xix.) allows various distributions of sovereign power, but prefers monarchy: Rousseau (l. ii., c. i.) will have it that sovereignty is vested inalienably in the people: of which doctrine more to follow.

9. Men are by nature equal, say Rousseau and Hobbes and many more respectable authors. Yes, in their specific nature, that is, they are all equally men. Similarly you have it that all triangles are equal, if that is a proposition of any value. But men as individuals are not all equal. One is stronger in body, another more able in mind: one predisposed to virtue, another to vice: one born in affluence and honour, another in squalor. Not men in the abstract, but living men, start at different points of vantage, and the distance between them widens as they run the race of life. We may lay it down as an axiom, in diametric opposition to Rousseau, that inequalities are natural, equalities artificial.

10. Man is born free: so opens the first chapter of the Contrat Social. If free of all duties, then void of all rights (c. v., s. i., nn. 5, 7, pp. 246, 247): let him then be promptly knocked on the head as a sacrifice to Malthas; and with the misformed children born in Plato's Republic, "they will bury him in a secret and unseen spot, as is befitting."

11. Hobbes and Rousseau go upon this maxim, which has overrun the modern world, that no man can be bound to obedience to another without his own consent. The maxim would be an excellent one, were men framed like the categories of Aristotle—substance, quantity, quality, relation, and the rest—each peering out of his own pigeon-hole, an independent, self-sufficient entity. But men are dependent, naturally dependent whether they will or no, every human being on certain definite others,—the child on the parent, the citizen on the State whose protection he enjoys, and all alike on God. These natural dependences carry with them natural uncovenanted obediences,—to parents, filial duty—to country, loyalty—to God, piety: all which are embraced in the Latin term pietas. (See St. Thomas, 2a 2æ, q. 101, art. 1, in corp.) The fatal maxim before us is the annihilation of pietas. In lieu of loyal submission we get a contract, a transaction of reasoned commercial selfishness between equal and equal. This perverse substitution has called forth Leo XIII.'s remark on the men of our time, "Nothing comes so amiss to them as subjection and obedience," Nihil tam moleste ferunt quam subesse et parere. (Encyclical on Christian Marriage.)

12. The common extravagance of the Leviathan and the Social Contract is the suppression of the individual, with his rights and his very personality, which is all blended in the State. (See Rousseau's words above quoted, n. 5, and those of Hobbes, n. 6.) The reservations in favour of the individual made by Hobbes, Leviathan, c. xxi., and by Rousseau, Contrat Social, l. ii., c. iv., are either trifles or self-contradictions. But it is not in man's power by any contract thus to change his nature, so as to become from autocentric heterocentric (c. ii., s. i., n. 2, p. 203; c. v., s. i., n. 1, p. 244), from a person a thing, from a man a chattel, void of rights and consequently of duties, and bound to serve this Collective Monster, this Aggregated Idol, with the absolute devotedness that is due to God alone. The worship of the new Moloch goes well with the dark misanthropism of Hobbes: but in Rousseau, the believer in the perfect goodness of unrestrained humanity, it is about the most glaring of his many inconsistencies. It is of course eagerly taken up by the Socialists, as carrying all their conclusions. It is the political aspect of Socialism.

Reading.—Burke, Warren Hastings, Fourth Day, the passage beginning, "He have arbitrary power!"

1. The Greeks had a name [Greek: eranos], which meant a feast where the viands were supplied by each guest contributing in kind. If, in a party of four, one man brought a ham, another a rabbit, a third a dish of truffles, and a fourth a salmon, no one would expect that, when the cover was raised, there should appear a pigeon-pie. That would not be in the nature of an [Greek: eranos]. Now not only Hobbes and Rousseau, but Locke and a great multitude of modern Englishmen with him, hold that the power of the State is an aggregate, the algebraic sum of the powers whereof the component members would have stood possessed, had they lived in what is called, by a misleading phrase, "the state of nature," that is, the condition of men not subject to civil authority. These powers,—either, as Hobbes and Rousseau virtually say, all of them, or, as Locke and the common opinion has it, only some of them, —men are supposed to resign as they enter into the State. If therefore there appears in the City, Nation, State, or Commonwealth, a certain new and peculiar power, which belongs to no individual in the "state of nature," or, as I prefer to call it, the extra-civil state, then what we may designate as the Aggregation Theory breaks down, and another origin must be sought of civil principality. But there is such a power in the State, new and peculiar, and not found in any of the component individuals: it is the power and authority to punish on civil grounds. It is the right of the rods and axes, that were borne before the Roman magistrate. It is, in its most crucial form, the right to punish with death.

2. We are not here concerned with proving the existence of this right. It is generally admitted: we assume it accordingly, and shall prove it later on. Nor are we concerned with domestic punishment, inflicted by the head of a family within his own household, for the good of that household, stopping short of any irreparable harm to the sufferer. (St. Thos., 2a 2æ, q. 65, art. 2, ad. 2.) Leaving this aside, we say, and have proved already, that one private individual has no right to punish another, neither medicinally for the amendment of the delinquent, nor by way of deterrent for the good of the community, nor in the way of retribution for his own satisfaction. He has the right of self-defence, but not of punishment: the two things are quite different. He may also exact restitution, where restitution is due: but that again is not punishing. If he is in the extra-civil state, he may use force, where prudence allows it, to recover what he has lost. This right of private war really is surrendered by the individual, when the State is established: but war and punishment are two totally different ideas. Subjects are punished: war is levied on independent powers. (Ethics, c. ix., s. iii., nn. 4-6, pp. 171-174; Natural Law, c. ii., s. ii., n. 6, p. 212.)

3. Opposite is the opinion of Locke, who writes:

"The execution of the law of nature is in that state [of nature] put into every man's hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree as may hinder its violation: for the law of nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world, be in vain, if there were nobody that in the state of nature had a power to execute that law." We observe that the punishment of offenders against the law of nature, as such, belongs to the Legislator, who is God alone. Certainly it is well, nay necessary, that there should be human law to bear out the law of nature: but human law is the creation of human society in its perfection, which is the State. Man is punished by man for breaking the laws of man, not—except remotely—for breaking the laws of God. Nor would it be any inconvenience, if the law of nature were in vain in a state wherein nature never intended men to live, wherein no multitude of men ever for any notable time have lived, a state which is neither actual fact nor ideal perfection, but a mere property of the philosophic stage, a broken article, an outworn speculation. Such is "the state of nature," as identified with the extra-civil state by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.

1. The State is deemed by Aristotle (Politics, III., ix., 14): "the union of septs and villages in a complete and self-sufficient life." The first and most elementary community is the family, [Greek: oikia]. A knot of families associating together, claiming blood-relationship and descent, real or fictitious, from a common ancestor, whose name they bear, constitute a [Greek: genos], called in Ireland a sept, in Scotland a clan, nameless in England. When the sept come to cluster their habitations, or encampments, in one or more spots, and to admit strangers in blood to dwell among them, these hamlets, or camps, gradually reach the magnitude of a village. When a number of these villages, belonging to different septs, come to be contiguous to one another, this mere juxtaposition does not make of them a State. Nor does interchange of commodities, nor intermarriage, nor an offensive and defensive alliance: these are the mutual relations of a confederacy, [Greek: xymmaxia], but all these and more are needed for a State, [Greek: polis]. To be a State, it is requisite that these septs and villages should agree to regulate the conduct of their individual members by a common standard of social virtue, sufficient for their well-being as one community. This common standard is fixed by common consent, or by the decision of some power competent to act for all and to punish delinquents. The name of this common standard is law. (Ethics, c. vii., n. 1, p. 126.) The community thus formed leads a life complete and self-sufficient, not being a member of another, but a body by itself,—not part of any ulterior community, but complete in the fulness of social good and social authority.

2. Among the ancient Greeks and Italians, and to some extent also in mediæval Italy and Germany, the city or municipality, with the small country district attached, was the State. With us the nation is the State; and accordingly we say my country where the Greek said my city. Bearing this difference in mind, as also the fact that the sept is not known amongst us except to antiquarians, and likewise that the village with us coincides with the parish, and that there are town as well as country parishes,—upon these modern data we may amend Aristotle's definition thus: The State is the union of parishes and municipalities in a perfect and self-sufficient community.

3. The City State is well illustrated in the following narrative of Thucydides (ii., 15):

"In the time of Cecrops and the early kings as far as Theseus, Attica was always divided among several independent cities, with their own town-halls and magistrates; and when there was no alarm of an enemy, the inhabitants did not resort for common deliberation to the King, but severally managed their own affairs and took their own counsel, and some of them even went to war. But when Theseus came to the throne, he abolished the council-chambers and magistracies of the other cities, and centralised all the people in what is now the city [of Athens], where he appointed their one council-chamber and town-hall; and while they continued to occupy their own properties as before, he forced them to recognise this as their one city and State." Attica before Theseus was a confederacy, [Greek: xymmaxia], not a State, [Greek: polis].

4. A citizen is defined: "one who has access to a share in deliberative and judicial functions." (Ar., Pol. III., i., 12.) It is not necessary that he actually should share these functions, but the way to them should lie open to him: he should be a person qualified to share in them. There are various degrees of citizenship. Under a parliamentary government, we distinguish the member of parliament, the elector, and him who will be an elector as soon as he gets a house of his own; and again, the judge, and him who is liable to serve on juries. In an absolute monarchy there are no citizens, only subjects.

5. "The distribution of power in the State, and especially of the sovereign power, is called the polity" ([Greek: politeia], Ar., Pol., III., vi., 1),—a word immortalised by the judicious Hooker, and happily recovered recently to the English language. The polity then is the distribution of the sovereignty. The person, singular or collective, in whose hands the full sovereignty rests, is called the ruler. Be it observed that what we call the ruler is never one man, except in absolute monarchy. By the theory of the British Constitution, the ruler is King, Lords, and Commons, together.

6. Nature requires that men generally live in society, domestic and civil, so that the individual be of the family, and families form associations, which again conspire to form one perfect community, which is the State. The requirement of nature may be gathered from the universal practice of mankind. "If it (the word savage) means people without a settled form of government, without laws and without a religion, then, go where you like, you will not find such a race." (Max Müller, in Nineteenth Century, Jan. 1885, p. 114.) The same may be gathered from a consideration of what the State is, and of the ends which it serves. The State, as we have seen (n. 2), is a union of septs and villages, or of parishes and municipalities. The individual is born and nurtured in the family, and ordinarily becomes in time the parent of a new family. Families must combine to form septs by blood, or villages (or parishes) by locality. Municipalities we may leave aside, for a municipality is a potential State. But we must consider the sept, village, or parish, which is the community intermediate between family and State. Among the cogent reasons which require families to enter into this association, we may mention friendship, intermarriage, the interchange of services and commodities, the cultivation of the arts, the preservation of traditions and inventions.

7. But it is further necessary that these septs, villages, or parishes, should band together and combine to form a higher community, self-sufficient and perfect,—for the determining of rights which Natural Law leaves undetermined,—for the punishing of disturbers of the peace, if need be, even with death,—for defence against a common enemy,—for a union of counsels and resources to the execution of magnificent works. This self-sufficient and perfect community, which is not part of any higher community, is the State.

8. We may observe that the whole reason for the being of the State is not mutual need, nor the repression of violence. Main reasons these are, no doubt, but not the whole main reason. Even if men had no need of one another for the supply of their animal wants, they would still desire to converse for the satisfaction of their intellectual curiosity and their social affections. And even if we had all remained as void of guile, and as full of light and love, as our first parents were at their creation, we should still have needed the erection of States. In a State there are not only criminal but civil courts, where it is not wicked men alone who come to be litigants. From sundry passages of Scripture it would appear that even angels may disagree as to what is best and proper: angelic men certainly may and do. It is a mistake to look upon civil government, with its apparatus of laws and judgments, simply as a necessary evil, and remedy of the perverseness of mankind. On the contrary, were all men virtuous, States would still be formed, towering in magnificence above the States known to history, as the cedars of Lebanon above the scanty growths of a fell-side in our north country.

9. There can be no State without a power to guide and govern it. It has indeed become the fashion to repeat, as the latest discovery in politics, that what a State needs is not government but administration. This saying comes of a theory, to be examined presently, that sovereign power abides permanently with the people at large, and that the sole function of princes, cabinets, and parliaments, is to provide means of giving effect to the popular will. This however is not quite a repudiation of government, but a peculiar view as to the seat and centre of government. Those who hold it, vigorously maintain the right of the Many to govern, control, and command the Few. The need of some governing authority in a State can be denied by none but an Anarchist, a gentleman who lives two doors beyond Rousseau on the side of unreason.

10. Every State is autonomous, self-governing, independent. Either the whole people taken collectively must rule the same whole taken distributively, or a part must rule the rest. The ruler is either the whole commonwealth, or more frequently a part of the commonwealth. An autocrat is part of the State which he governs. Sovereignty whole and entire is intrinsic to the State. A community that is to any extent governed from without, like British India or London, is not a State, but part of a State, for it is not a perfect community.

11. We have it therefore that man is a social animal. Naturally he is a member of a family. Nature requires that families should coalesce into higher communities, which again naturally converge and culminate in the State. Nature further requires that in every State there should be an authority to govern. But authority to govern and duty to obey are correlatives. Nature therefore requires submission to the governing authority in the State. In other words, Nature abhors anarchy as being the destruction of civil society, and as cutting the ground from under the feet of civilised man. The genuine state of nature, that state and condition, which nature allows and approves as proper for the evolution of the human faculties, is the state of man in civil society. That is lost where there is no judge in the land.

12. There are men full of a sentimental deference to authority and professions of obedience, who yet will not obey any of the authorities that actually are over them. These are disobedient men. He is an anarchist in practice, who meditates treason and rebellion against the "powers that be" actually over him in the State wherein he lives. To obey no actual power is to obey no power, as to wear no actual clothes is to go naked. To keep up the comparison,—as a man may change his clothes upon occasion, and thus go through a brief interval of unclothedness without injury to health or violation of decency, notwithstanding the requirement of nature to wear clothes: so it may be or it may not be consonant with the exigency of our nature at times to subvert by insurrection the existing government in order to the substitution of a new authority; that does not concern us here. We are stating the general rule under ordinary circumstances. The submission to civil authority, which nature requires of us, must be paid in the coin of obedience to the actual established "powers that be."

13. Any one who understands how morality comes from God (Ethics, c. vi., s. ii. nn. 6-9, 13, pp. 119-125), can have no difficulty in seeing how civil power is of God also. The one point covers the other. We need no mention of God 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 God forbids are against the good of man. Their being evil is distinguishable from their being prohibited, and antecedent to it. Now as drunkenness and unchastity are evil for man, so too is anarchy. The one remedy for anarchy is civil government. Even if there were no God, it would be still imperatively necessary, as we have seen, for mankind to erect political institutions, and to abide by the laws and ordinances of constitutional 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 God 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, God forbids anarchy, and enjoins obedience to the civil power, under pain of sin and damnation. "They that resist, purchase to themselves damnation" (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. God 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 God, and that the powers that be are ordained of God. (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) God commands whatever is necessary to human nature. (f) God commands obedience to the civil power. (g) God commissions the civil power to rule.

15. If any one asks how the State and the civil power is of God 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 God. Why God leaves man to cope with such evils, is not the question here.

Readings.—Ar., Pol., I., ii.; III., i.; III., ix.: nn. 5-15.

The ruler is the servant of the good of the people, not of the will of the people, except inasmuch as—

a. the will of the people is an indication of their good, of which they are probable judges;

b. it is usually impossible to do good to the people against their steady will.

§ 3. Civil Authority.

227. That the common good may be attained, the members of which civil society is made up often stand in need of direction, and sometimes of compulsion. The power thus to direct and compel is called civil authority; it is, as it were, the soul or animating principle of the body politic. What rights should belong to this authority must be inferred from its purpose, which is the attainment of the end of civil society. Civil authority, therefore, is to possess all those rights which are necessary to direct, and even compel, the citizens to tend towards the end of the State, i. e., public peace, the protection of rights, the more perfect attainment of happiness for all, provided the means employed be consistent with individual rights.

228. But may not the common good require the sacrifice of individual or private rights? As the common good consists principally in the defense of the private rights of individuals and families, it cannot require such a sacrifice. Exceptions in this matter are more apparent than real. Yet, aside from the forfeiture of personal rights or privileges for certain misdeeds, cases may arise in which individuals or families have to forego private advantages in order to serve the common good: as when a citizen is called upon to expose his life for the defense of his country. In this case his right is not violated; the State does not take away his life, but it obliges him to expose himself to danger for a greater good, in accordance with the demands of duty.

229. In levying taxes, the State distributes the common burden of expenses incurred for the public good. The right of eminent domain (No. 177) suspends a private right according to the principles explained in a preceding book (No. 121). The tendency of certain agitators in politics and political economy is to extend the powers of the State beyond all just limits, to the prejudice of private rights. This tendency, whether it is manifested in the advocacy of unjust taxation, in special class legislation, or in meddling with parental rights of education, is directly at variance with the purposes of civil government, and opposed to the spirit of our Constitution. Civil government exists for the welfare of the people and the protection of private rights. When, therefore, the government usurps the rights of individuals, it becomes a form of tyranny, quiet submission to which is not patriotism, but slavery.

230. Whence comes the authority of the State? The question may refer to civil authority in the abstract or in the concrete. Civil authority in the concrete regards the particular form of government which a particular State or nation has come to assume. It is evidently a matter of historical fact: certain events have brought about the assumption of that manner of government.

Supposing now that a State or government exists, we may inquire whence it derives authority; i. e., the right to govern its subjects. This latter is a consideration of authority in the abstract and is an ethical question.

231. Thesis VI. Civil authority is derived from God, and can impose conscientious obligations.

Proof. As in every society (No. 196), so in civil society, authority is necessary; it is the very form or animating principle of civil society (No. 227). Now, God is the founder of civil society, since it is natural to man; and God necessarily wills that everything He makes shall possess all powers necessary for the purposes for which He made it. But authority is necessary for the purpose of civil society; therefore, it possesses this authority from God.

From this principle, it follows that civil government can impose obligations in conscience. Authority means the moral right to govern. Now, such a right implies on the part of the governed the moral obligation to obey. Nevertheless, the authority thus bestowed is limited to those purposes for which it was intrusted to the State — namely, to procure the end of civil government by just means. Hence, an unlawful use of authority imposes no moral obligation.

232. It has been much debated whether civil authority comes immediately from God to the ruler, or through the medium of the people, by whom it is intrusted to the rulers. Certainly, it can hardly be said that such authority resides with an unorganized multitude; yet, as soon as the community has become an organized body, it has the moral power of civil government. It may intrust this power to one or more persons, and it may place restrictions upon these both with regard to the time and the manner of exercising the authority thus bestowed.

233. One thing is certain — namely, that civil authority is not a mere collection of private rights intrusted by all the individuals of a community to the management of one or more chosen members. The civil power has the right to inflict the death penalty (No. 249) in punishment of enormous crimes. But such a right could not belong to a merely voluntary association of individuals, since they cannot give to any person or persons a right which they do not possess. Therefore, civil authority is not a mere collection of private rights. This principle is further explained in the following thesis:

234. Thesis VII. The doctrine of the social contract maintained by Rousseau is illogical.

Explanation. According to the fanciful theory of the "social contract" devised by Jean Jacques Rousseau, the citizens, when they obey the authority of the State, obey themselves or fulfill their own commands; for civil authority he declared to be nothing else than the free union of individual wills. He supposed that the members of a community have agreed to intrust the exercise of their individual rights to one or more men, who thus become their agents for the administration of these associated rights, just like the agents of a business firm, and who may be, like such agents, dismissed at the pleasure of their employers. As forms of government have existed from time immemorial, the supposed contract must have been entered into by our remote ancestors.

Proof 1. Either the citizens are bound by the agreement of their ancestors to a civil compact or they are not so bound. If such an obligation exists, they do not render obedience to themselves, as Rousseau would have it, but to their ancestors; hence, they would be bound by a will not their own. If, however, no such obligation exists, then there is no civil authority at all; for that is no authority which every one is free at any moment to set aside. There can be no true right to command where there is no corresponding duty to obey.

Proof 2. This theory could never explain the right, admitted by all nations, of inflicting capital punishment; for no one can give to another what he does not himself possess — the right to take away his life.

§ 4. The Means Employed by Civil Authority.

235. The means employed to obtain the end of civil government are of three kinds:

1. Acts commanded as necessary for this end, such as the payment of taxes, or the raising and equipment of armies in time of war.

2. Acts forbidden as injurious to private rights or to the common good. On both these points there is need of great care that, by the promotion of certain lawful objects or the protection of certain rights, other rights be not violated, especially those of a more sacred character; this would defeat the very purpose for which civil government exists.

3. The organization of the government, or the civil polity which is to direct the means to the end.

236. There are various forms of organization:

1. The monarchical, in which all civil power is vested in one man, whether he be called king or emperor or by any other title.

2. The aristocratic, in which power is vested in a few individuals or families.

3. The democratic, in which the people hold the power; it is then usually administered by representatives whom the people have chosen. These are the simple forms of government organization. Mixed forms are those in which the simple forms are variously combined. In the British Government, for instance, the supreme power is vested in the crown — king or queen — and in Parliament, which consists of the House of Lords, as the aristocratic element, and the House of Commons, as the democratic element, the members of the latter House being elected by the people.

237. Practically, that form of government is the best for any people which is best adapted to obtain for them the end or purpose of civil power; that form, namely, which, account being taken of the character, traditions, and various circumstances of the people, is best suited for the defense of their private rights, for the maintenance of peace at home and abroad, and for the development of the country's resources; which will thus contribute to the common happiness on earth, and enable every member of the community to attain his last end.

People in general have a vague and confused conception of this matter. You will hear the people talk of the "sovereignty of the State," "the life of the State," "the power of the State," "the absolute authority of the State," "the paramount allegiance due to the State," etc., etc. Not only the Public at large, but even those who assume to lead and direct public opinion, are constantly blundering on this subject.

There is nothing so fertile as an idea; it will, like every other germ or seed, bring forth in time according to its kind. If it be a good one, it will bring forth good fruit; if it be a false or bad one, it will spread its evil fruits over society. Be it one or the other, it is never barren; sooner or later, the idea or maxim takes form and substance in an Institution; then it operates, in a material manner, for good or evil.

To illustrate: a false conception of the nature and authority, of the legitimate functions, rights and duties of what is called the "State," has led, and will, if not corrected, ever lead to the most deplorable political, social, and religious disorder and oppression. As diverging lines in mathematics can never approximate, but must continue to widen as they are extended, so a false departure from a political "standpoint" can never be rectified unless by a return to correct first principles. This is what is meant by the democratic maxim, "that a frequent return to first principles is necessary to secure the ends of public liberty."

Indeed, this error, this diverging point in constitutional interpretation, has been the real cause—the "causa causarum"—of the late war; and not the "negro," or "cotton," or the "spirit of domination," or "difference of race," or what not, might serve as the "proximate cause," but the real cause lay far back of them. I am willing to admit that political events do not always proceed on a strictly logical order, but nevertheless there is a sequence, indeed an inevitable chain of cause and effect in the progress of public affairs, such as we see in individual conduct, but only on a broader scale.

Now what is the civil power, or State; what its origin, its authority, its legitimate functions, its rights and duties? Here I must, of necessity, be very brief. The State originated from the natural desire which men experience to obtain certain goods, such as peace, security of life and property, of personal rights and privileges, etc., etc. These are goods which neither individuals, nor families, nor private corporations can procure for themselves satisfactorily. People therefore unite to establish a State, in order to attain, through the State, what they cannot do by their own private exertions. The State, then, is made by the people and for the people. In our form of government it is a mere corporate agency. Its duty is to see that justice is administered, and personal rights and property protected. It holds the sword of justice not for itself, but for others; it is the servant, and not the master. The people were not made for the State, or given to the State, but the State is posterior to the people; it was, as I said before, established by the people and for the people. In them, under God, resides the sovereignty and ultimate permanent authority. The right of the State is to discharge the duties assigned it within the sphere of its delegated authority—that is all.

That sphere of action of the State in this country is clearly defined in the written Constitution. The State, then, must scrupulously abstain from violating any of the rights it was organized to protect.

There never has been, and never will be, but two forms of government—one seeking to restrain, the other to enlarge, the liberties of the people. To the former belong the centralized and despotic governments of the past and present; to the latter, the limited and representative ones.

The State, then, is a moral person, and a fortiori, a religious person, for there can be no morality without religion. But though religion, in a general sense, be recognized by the State, it has no authority to control or direct it. It must respect the conscience of an individual. This is his birthright, and cannot be voted away, whether to support Public Schools or Public Churches.