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of light; so your aristocrat comes to you, in these days and in this country, always disguised as an ultra-democrat. No man has so much confidence in the people; no man has so deep, so ardent a love for the hard-handed and sunburnt-faced many; none so ready and willing to defer to the wishes, the opinions, the instincts, the will of the masses. He has no interest, no opinion, no will of his own; he is one of the people, and knows only one thing, to serve the people by merging his feelings, wishes, interests and convictions in theirs. Find a man who so professes, and you find one you may set down to be Satan attempting to disguise himself as an angel of light. Every such man is at heart the enemy of democracy, the enemy of the people, and he defers to the people only that he may use them for his own profit. The young, the ingenuous, the inexperienced, should be on their guard against these wolves in sheep's clothing, and not through their deceit be led to take up doctrines as democratic which cannot fail, if persisted in, one day to prove the total overthrow of democracy and civil freedom, and both public and private prosperity.

But it is a mistake to represent the right of the majority as a natural right, an ordinance of God. It is not a natural right, but a mere civil regulation. By the law of nature, the majority have no more right to govern than the minority. When the majority are said to have the natural right to govern, we are led to infer that it is only the minority that naturally need to be governed. The majority, in that it governs, governs only the minority. But the majority are as liable to be in the wrong as are the minority, and stand as much, and full as often, in need of being governed. Truth and justice are, in this world, oftener on the side of the minority than on the side of the majority; all progress is effected by the few in opposition to the many; the Reformer treads always the winepress alone, and of the people there are none with him. It is absurd then to pretend that the minority alone need governing. The rule of the majority is in no country universally adopted, but where it is adopted, it is adopted only as a wise and convenient regulation and within certain limits; and it is only within certain limits that it obtains,

or ever has obtained with us. All constitutional governments are contrivances for restraining it, and for introducing other elements of power. Instead of lying at the bottom, ready to start up at any moment and throw off constitutional restraints, it is itself a creature of the constitution, and has validity only within the sphere assigned to it by the constitution. The sooner we learn this the better will it be for democracy and for the commonwealth. The true watchword and battle-cry for us is not, The majority have the right to govern, but THE CONSTITUTION must govern.

But it is time to leave these false theories concerning the origin and ground of government, and proceed to discuss the true theory. All power is of God, and in the last analysis, no government is legitimate that does not subsist by Divine Right. The notion that men do or can institute government, establish an authority which they themselves are bound to obey, to which they are bound to be loyal, we look upon as a gross absurdity. No government of merely human origin is or can be legitimate. So much must be conceded in the outset to the advocates of the jus divinum. The error of the advocates of the Divine Right of civil government, is not in contending that no government not founded in Divine Right can be legitimate, but in claiming this Divine Right for particular administrations, ministries or forms of government, which cannot plead it in their own behalf.

The theory of government which prevailed throughout Europe, though not without many dissentient voices, from the final settlement of the Barbarians on the ruins of the Roman Empire, till the Revival of Letters and the Protestant Reformation, was that government existed by Divine Appointment. The real sovereign on earth, representative of Divine Sovereignty, the Sovereign of sovereigns, was the Christian Church, a Divine institution, through which God ruled spiritually, but really. The authority of the Church was not the authority of the men composing the assembly of the faithful, but of the Holy Ghost; that is to say, of God himself, who dwelt in the Church,-its continuous life and inspiration. Civil governments were held

to be not co-ordinate governments with the ecclesiastical, but sub-ordinate. They were, properly speaking, the lieutenants of the Church, or its vicegerents, acting in its place, by its authority, and responsible to it for the discharge of their trusts. Loyalty was in this case due to the Church, and only obedience to the civil government, and obedience only because enjoined by the Church.

I confess that I have a strong predilection for this theory. It is the only theory of government which I am acquainted with, that can legitimate resistance to the civil ruler without legitimating rebellion, which is incompatible, as we have seen, with government itself. The Church commands the individual to be in subjection to the powers that be, never permitting individual citizens or subjects on their own responsibility to resist the constituted authorities; but claims the right, when these authorities oppress their subjects, to absolve their subjects from their obligation to obey, and to authorize them even to resist, and by force of arms to depose, the tyrant. This power was claimed and exercised by the Catholic Church, and always to the restricting of the power of the civil ruler, and to the enlarging of the liberty of the subject; and I confess that the triumph of the civil government, and its supremacy as established by Protestantism, does not strike me as a progress, but, in fact, as a return towards the paganism of Greece and Rome. The Church held as supreme, as the legitimate sovereign, there is always a legitimate authority to command us to obey or to resist the civil government.

But, in asserting all this, I am aware that I may appear to outrage the convictions and feelings of the great mass of my countrymen of all parties, sects, and schools; and yet, why so? Because we all feel that we should in this case only escape from the civil tyrant to come under the ecclesiastical tyrant. We hold that there is as much danger to be apprehended to liberty from the Church as from civil government itself, and, in fact, more too. distrust the Church. But, wherefore? If we believed the Church to be a Divine Institution, the real Body of our Lord, the Ground and Pillar of the

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Truth, the House of God, in which God's Spirit resides, and therefore, that it is by Divine Authority that it exists and acts, should we distrust it, believe it capable of tyrannizing? Can God be a tyrant? Of course not. Then this distrust of the Church proves that we do not believe the Church, that we do not hold it to be a Divine Institution, but a mere human institution. This, I suppose, is the secret of our hostility to ecclesiastical authority, and of our repugnance to the theory in question; but this is a hostility, a repugnance which I cannot share, because I believe the Holy Catholic Church is a Divine Institution, and that Christ himself, who has the right to reign over all, is always with it and in it unto the end of the world.

But, as hostile as we may be to this theory, we do all really believe and contend for what is equally objectionable, though, doubtless, without being conscious of so doing. None amongst us, after all their talk about the right of the majority to govern, the sovereignty of the people, will maintain in general thesis, that the people or the majority can will no wrong, or that their will ought to prevail when it is wrong. They do recognize then a somewhat above the people, of which the popular will must partake, or to which it must conform, in order to be legitimate. This somewhat is the Ideal, the Right, the Just, that and that only which we feel we ought to labor to actualize. It is to this, as to a touchstone, we bring governments and laws, the acts of the legislature, the decisions of the judiciary. It is the SOVEREIGN; and we feel that all governmental acts, not in conformity with it, are illegitimate, and all laws not enacted by it are null and void from the beginning. It is on this ground that men justify themselves in their resistance to the civil ruler. They say he has ceased to be just; his acts are unjust; tyrannical; and, therefore, he loses his legitimacy; ceases to have the right to command; and, therefore, again, to resist him is not to resist lawful government. "RESISTANCE TO TYRANTS IS OBEDIENCE ΤΟ GOD." Certainly; and in so saying, we recognize an authority above the civil magistrate, which we are bound to obey, even though it command us to

resist the magistrate himself. Thus far we all say precisely what said and what says the Churchman.

But has this Higher than the people, this sovereign of sovereigns, any outward visible embodiment? In other words, has he on earth a regular, formal, authorized interpreter of his will? If you say yes, you must make that interpreter either the State or the Church. It cannot be the State, for it has the power to absolve us from our allegiance to the State, and to arm us against it. It must then be the Church, as the Catholic in the Middle Ages contended. If you say no, that it has no authorized interpreter; how will you determine when you have a right to resist government and when you have not: when civil government is just, and therefore legitimate, or when not? Will you make the individual the judge and interpreter? You then raise the individual above government, and authorize him to sit, in his own right, in judgment on government, which is incompatible with government, subordination, or social order. This would be extreme Individualism, which cannot coexist with government; because all government demands social co-operation, subordination, and subjection. What then is the interpreter, for interpreter there must be? It can only be what is called the public conscience, that is to say, the sense of right expressed in what we recognize as the highest and most sacred among us. And this, by whatever name it goes, is our Church, our Divine Institution. This it is, whether it be called the pulpit, the press, the lyceum.

So that we after all are obliged to come round to the fact we began by rejecting; and the only difference there is or can be between the view we condemn and the view we as a people accept, is the difference between a formal, regularly constituted Church, able to trace its descent from the Apostles, and to show that it speaks by divine authority, and an informal Church, intangible, and at best only partially able to demonstrate its legitimacy. In the first case we call it THE CHURCH; in the last we call it PUBLIC SENTIMENT; but in reality the exponents of it are in either case for the most part the same individuals. We have then in the case of enthroning public sentiment, all that we find objectionable in the supremacy of the

Church, without any of the advantages. But let this pass, upon which I have touched merely to show that, after all, the authentic belief of Christendom is, that government is founded in Divine Right, and its legitimacy is in its justice, and in its justice alone.

It will be seen then that I find the origin and ground of government in Divine Right, and declare no government legitimate that is not founded in Divine Right. "Is Mr. Brownson," asks the Editor of the Democratic Review, "aware how near his doctrine approaches the principle of the Divine Right?" Most assuredly is he; and he intentionally accepts that principle; and has not for years admitted any other. Here is what he published on this subject in October, 1839:

"The Christian doctrine is, that gov ernment is of Divine Origin, and rests for its legitimacy on the authority of God. This we take it is the meaning of that famous passage of Saint Paul, the pow

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Apostle, we apprehend, was not so much intent on asserting the Divine appointment of the then, or any actually ruling magistrate, as on asserting the Divine institution of government itself, as the foundation of the virtue of loyalty, which he was enforcing. According to Christianity, man is bound to obey no authority but that of God; consequently he can owe allegiance to no earthly government, unless it be of Divine ordination. Either, then, give up the duty of obedience, and consequently all government, or assert that government is of Divine origin. It is oppression, it is rank tyranny, to com

To this pel me to obey my fellow man. as a Christian I will not submit, for I have but one master, and he is in heaven. Consequently all governments resting on human authority are illegitimate, are usurpations; their acts are not and cannot be laws, and therefore can they never have the right to demand, much less to coerce obedience.

"On this ground, which, if we rightly comprehend it, is that of the most perfect freedom, the whole Christian Church has ever taken its stand. The Catholic Church has always taught the princes that they have no right to reign in their own name; but that they must reign as the servants, the deputies of God. Bossuet thundered in the ears of the Grand Monarque' himself, that kings reign only by the authority which they receive from God, and are as much bound to obey God as the meanest of their subjects. King James,

in his Remonstrance for the Right of Kings, is merely defending the Divine Right of civil government against the exclusive claims of the Pope for the Church. He would merely show that kings receive their crowns from as high and as sacred a source as the bishops their mitres. The great idea in the minds of the advocates of the Divine Right of Kings, and of passive obedience, who fill so much space in the history of England during the seventeenth century and the first part of the eighteenth, was that mere human authority is not obligatory on men, that allegiance to a king is due only on the ground that he is the representative of the will of God. They dared not declare the king's will the law, and teach men that they were bound to obey it. The king was to be obeyed only as the lieutenant of the Almighty; consequently, God only was in reality acknowledged to be sovereign. This, at the moment, was supposed to favor absolutism, and to clothe the tyrant with divine authority. In this sense it was urged. It was no doubt urged against subjects in favor of kings; but who sees not that it may be urged with equal force against kings in favor of the people? Government is of Divine appointment, and because it is of Divine appointment, you are bound to obey it; herefore obey the king. Stop there, if you please. We admit your premises, but deny your conclusions. We believe government is a Divine ordinance, and that we are bound to obey God; but prove to us that the king is God's lieutenant, that God speaks through him; for this is not quite so clear to us. But be this as it may, that civil government is of Divine origin, and for this reason, and this alone, obligatory, endowed with the right to exact obedience, is the great idea which lies at the bottom of the doctrines of the Divine Right of kings, and of Passive Obedience, and of their apparent antipodes, the doctrine of the Fifth Monar.

chy men in England, Samuel Gorton, Roger Williams, and others in our colonial days, and the non-resistants and nogovernment men of our own times. The doctrine, however it may have been perverted to purposes of tyranny or of anarchy, is in fact the only solid and enduring ground on which government can be established; for it is the only ground on which the legitimacy of government can be maintained, and disloyalty made a crime in oro conscientia. It is also the only ground on which freedom can be safely rested; for freedom consists not in the absence of restraint, but in being subjected to no restraint but the will of God.

"Let no one start at the doctrine we here put forth. We all feel that the word of God is our supreme law. This word is Truth, is Justice, is Love, whatever is to us the Highest. How it has been or may be uttered we do not now inquire. Whether it has pealed in thunders from heaven on the ears of startled Humanity, and been caught up and recorded in a book, or whether it has sounded out in that voice which comes to us from all nature, declaring its wondrous beauty and harmony, and revealing the law by which it is governed; or whether it has been whispered to the soul in its moments of quiet, in the still small voice of conscience; or whether it has been uttered in all these ways, is foreign to our present purpose. God is the creator of the universe; he is its sovereign; and his WORD, whether speaking through hierarchies, monarchies, aristocracies, democracies, inspired prophets, or the reason with which we are endowed, is our SUPREME LAW, and obedience to this, and this alone, is FREEDOM. No man feels that he is oppressed because he is bound to conform to truth; to obey justice; to be holy; and to conform to truth, to obey justice, to be holy, is precisely what is meant, if we understand ourselves, by obedience to the will of God."*

• Boston Quarterly Review, October, 1839, pp. 494-497. Art. Democracy and Reform. I have quoted this article, because it was designedly an elaborate defence of the Democratic party, and because, at the time of its publication, it was received in all parts of the country with considerable favor. Many of the leading organs of the party quoted it with approbation, and none to my knowledge objected to it. This fact leads me to infer that, after all, I speak much more truly the real sentiments of the great mass of the Democratic party, than they do who would seem to condemn me, ex cathedra, as a political heretic. I plead "not guilty" to this charge of heresy. The simple truth is, that the Democratic party of this country has, and always has had, so to speak, an instinctive sense of justice and of freedom; what it has desired, what it has aimed to secure, has been social order as the condition of individual freedom and progress. It has aimed at the moral, the intellectual, and the social elevation of the great mass of mankind, especially of those classes which hitherto in the history of the world have been merely "the hewers of wood and the drawers of water" to the few. It has also for the most part, with singular sagacity and firmness,

But we are not yet through with our difficulties. We have, it is true, found the origin and ground of government, and in the will of God, in what is called Divine Right; but we have by so doing answered our question only for the Ideal, not as yet for the Actual, the Practical. The Lord, he is king; his will is sovereign; his word is law; but if there be no established medium through which his word speaks, no authorized interpreter of his will, having the right to speak to us in the name of the sovereign, and to enforce our obedience, we are practically as if we had no sovereign, and actually living in a state of anarchy. Who or what has the right to speak to us in the name of God, and to command us as his representative? How can civil governments, which must, from the nature of the case, be managed by men, be authorized to speak in the name of God, and have the right to our obedience on the ground that they are the authoritative interpreters of his will? The power or authority having the right to speak in the name of God, to represent the Divine Sovereignty in human affairs, though not itself sovereign, is what in mere politics we call

the sovereign, because in fact it stands in the place of sovereign to the citizen or subject. Whence or what is this authority? This is really our most difficult question, for it is the practical question.

One class of politicians tell us that the people are the Ideal sovereign, and that the practical sovereign, the government, or ministry, as I term it, is the power or authority having the right to speak imperatively in their name. These make the people ultimate; the will of the people the supreme law; and therefore contend that the practical contrivance called in modern political language the constitution, which it is essential to adopt, is merely a contrivance for collecting and rendering effective the will of the people. these we now see are wrong; the people are not ultimate; are not sovereign in their own right; and have no power not derived from God, the source of all power. Therefore the practical contrivance or constitution we want, is not a contrivance for collecting and rendering effective in human affairs the will of the people, as such, but the will of God.

But

Another class of politicians agree with us in our premises, admit that

seized and supported such measures as were, under the actual circumstances, best adapted to secure this end. But when we go back of the practical measures to be supported, to the principles on which all government must rest for its legitimacy, there has always been in the party, and is now, a great diversity of opinion. In other words, while we have had a Democratic policy, we have not had a universally received Democratic philosophy of government. The leading statesmen in the time of the Revolution and of the adoption of the constitution, were formed in the school of English whiggism, at the head of which stood the philosopher John Locke, with views modified on the one hand by the doctrines of the English Puritan Republicans, who founded the Commonwealth of England, and whose tendencies were more democratic than those of the English Whigs; and on the other hand by Montesquieu, Rousseau, and the French philosophers. The greater part of them were men of firm faith in the Christian religion, men of ardent piety, as well as of liberal politics; these would naturally refer government to a divine origin; others were rationalists, materialists, dreading nothing so much as what they termed priestly domination; and these gave to government a human origin. These differences touching the philosophy of government have continued to the present moment. The Editor of the Boston Quarterly Review attempted, in 1838 and 1839, to bring out and settle a Democratic philosophy of government. He took then, as now, the principle that all power is of God, and gave to government its foundation in divine right. He did not say with one of his esteemed friends, "Democracy is practical Christianity," but "Democracy is neither more nor less than the great principles of Christianity applied to our social and political relations." Now this Christian philosophy, which I then and now set forth as the Dmocratic philosophy of government, I contend is that which, at bottom, the Democratic party, by an overwhelming majority, virtually accepts, though perhaps not formally. The Democratic party is not an infidel party, but a truly believing party; and it has been, as it were, only by accident that so much infidel philosophy has now and then appeared in the writings of some of its advocates. I insist, then, that in assigning the origin I do to government, I am not only philosophically correct, but I am really a true interpreter of the dominant faith of my party.

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