CHAPTER IV.

POLITICAL DUTIES.

1. WE come now to the consideration of a class of duties of the most interesting and important character, called Political Duties. The duty of obedience to civil magistrates, and of conformity to the laws, and the correlative duty of legislators to make just and equal laws, and of magistrates to administer those laws with equity, are evidently founded upon the benefits which society derives from a settled government, and from just laws faithfully administered and submissively obeyed.

Hence, in all forensic codes of morals, when the government is administered in such a way as to produce more harm than good, or much less good than it might or ought to produce; when laws are enacted injurious to the public; when government, instead of contributing to the benefit of all, is made an instrument for elevating or enriching one or a few at the expense of the many, civil obedience is no longer esteemed a duty; in fact, it may become a duty to disobey, and even to rebel.

It is, however, a matter so nice and difficult to determine when that point is reached which makes rebellion, civil war, and the danger of anarchy preferable to further submission to a tyrannical government and unjust, or in other words, unequal laws, that all cases of disobedience and rebellion give rise

to infinite controversies and disputes, both as to the rectitude of the rebellion itself, and as to the motives and moral character of those engaged in it. In this case, as in several others, for want of any better test, vulgar opinion is commonly decided by the failure or success of the enterprise; though that success often depends upon circumstances impossible for those who commence a revolution to foresee. We shall show, however, in the Theory of Politics, that in this particular case, this vulgar method of judging is not destitute of a solid foundation.

2. Mystic morality views this matter in a very different light. Having laid it down as a first principle, that man has been created by God, solely for God's pleasure, hence it follows, as we have seen already, that it is man's duty to serve God in every thought, word, and deed, and to obey him in all things. But how are the will and wishes of God to be known, except from those to whom he specially communicates them, and whom he has established as a separate and distinct order, peculiarly devoted to his service, and the special interpreters of his will? Hence the duty which priests have always taught, of an implicit and absolute submission on the part of the laity, not only so far as regards actions, but even as regards thoughts, to the control of the priesthood, the select and inspired interpreters of the will and pleasure of God.

3. Thus, wherever mystical doctrines have obtained complete sway, a theocratic despotism has been the result; as, at one time, in ancient Egypt, among the Jews, among the Mexicans, and Peruvians, and

at present, in the territories of the Pope and the Lama. The Saracen Caliphs, the successors of Mahomet, claimed to be God's supreme vicegerants upon earth, and the present Turkish sultans pretend to be the successors of the caliphs, and to be entitled to exercise the same spiritual despotism. The emperor of Russia is head of the church as well as of the state, and there can be no perfect and permanent despotism, where these functions are not united. It seems likely that theocracy prevailed at one time throughout India. It existed among the Druids, in ancient Gaul and Britain, and, perhaps, had some influence in making the inhabitants of those countries, already accustomed to servitude, fall a prey to Roman conquerors whom the freer Germans successfully resisted.

Wherever theocracy has long prevailed, it has produced an enervating effect, against which even the fervors of religious enthusiasm, which are always limited to a few, and which soon become exhausted, furnish but a doubtful and unsteady counterbalance. Theocracy, during the Middle Ages, came to the very point of consolidating all Europe into one great papal monarchy. Evident traces, even very perfect specimens of it, are to be found among the most savage tribes of Africa, America, and the South Sea. It has laid the foundation of many empires, and has prevailed so universally, that even the candid, acute, and philosophic Guizot has been seduced into the conclusion, that it is an element essential to civilization. Without stopping here to controvert that opinion, we will only remark, that wherever theocracy has been permanently established, or has approached

towards establishment, as in modern Spain and Italy, and in the Spanish and Portuguese conquests and colonies, it has proved the most fatal bar to all freedom, whether of thought or action; and has congealed society to a condition almost perfectly stationary.*

The struggle of Christian mysticism, and of the theocracies attempted to be founded upon it, first, with Paganism, the ancient philosophies, and the civil institutions of Rome; next with the superstitions of the North, and those moral and political customs and ideas which the destroyers of the Roman Empire brought with them from the woods of Germany and the plains of Sarmatia; thirdly, with numberless new systems of mysticism, which, under the name of heresies, have been constantly springing out of its own bosom; fourthly, with the simpler, more rational, and in some respects, more captivating doctrine preached by Mahomet; fifthly, with the kings, princes, nobles, and burghers of Europe; and sixthly, with the advancing knowledge and philosophy of modern times; these events form the most interesting and instructive leaf in the fragments which we possess, of the history of mankind.

4. The priesthood, alike during the infant weakness of theocracy, and when it begins to tremble under the decrepitude of age, have affected to content themselves with controlling the thoughts and private actions of mankind; and have courted the aid, or at least the countenance, of the civil magistrates, by ostentatiously yielding up to them all

* This subject will be fully considered in the Theory of Politics.

control of civil and political affairs.

Hence the doc

trine, that those who have power govern by divine ordination; and that passive obedience to the powers that be, is a duty to God. This, indeed, is an obvious and necessary deduction from that pure mysticism which ascribes all existences and events to immediate volitions of the Deity.

5. This doctrine is equally applicable to all forms of government. When it is kings who are in power, kings have a divine right to govern. Under aristocracies, this same divine right belongs to the aristocracy; and whenever democracy begins to rear its head, we presently begin to hear of the divine right of democracies. Indeed, it is an ancient mystical maxim, that the voice of the people is the voice of God; a maxim which came into vogue at a time when the priesthood were the people's spokesmen, and when they employed the name and the strength of the people for the accomplishment of their own private ends.*

The priesthood, in every age and country, readily become the advocates of those who rule de facto. Whoever gets the power, no matter how, the priests are ready to crown and consecrate. A Charlemagne, a Bonaparte, a William the Third, a George the First, a Louis-Philippe, have, in their eyes, a much

*

As, for instance, during the civil wars of France, when the populace of Paris and the large towns was leagued with Philip the Second of Spain, the Pope, and the Guises, against Henry the Fourth, and the Protestants. The Jesuits held doctrines, at that time, as to the right of the people to depose kings, not at all short of those which, two centuries after, brought Louis the Sixteenth to the block.