II.
Herein lies our salvation: to the revolutionary principle, which weakens all powers and all social rights, in making them depend on man’s caprice, we must oppose the Christian principle, which gives them an immovable solidity, in reposing them on the supreme authority of God.
No innovation is required: we must simply return to the eternal law’s of social order. If imprudent architects attempt to change the laws of equilibrium, what should be done to repair the ruins accumulated by their folly? Remember those laws, and enforce their observation. There is also an equilibrium in the moral order, and it was the unpardonable fault of our fathers that they overlooked its most essential condition. Let us hasten to restore all splendor to the truth whose darkening was the cause of our misfortunes. Foreseen and accepted without dispute by the pagans themselves, this generative dogma of society was, in the dawn of Christianity, promulgated by S. Paul as one of the principal articles of revealed religion; and it did not cease to rule the nations of Europe until the epoch when, with the law of Christ, order and peace were driven from their confines. Reason and religion are in perfect harmony when they proclaim the Christian principle. They tell us, with one voice, that God, who directs all with so much wisdom in the material world, wishes equally, and with much more reason, that order should reign in the moral. In commanding men to unite in society, so as to assure by their common efforts the happiness of all, he imposes on them an obligation to bridle the selfish passions which unceasingly conspire against the general interest. And as the only efficacious means of keeping them in order is the institution of a power armed with strength for the defence of the right, God wills that this power should be created, if it does not exist, and obeyed when it exists.
Thus, according to the teaching of Christianity, civil power is divine in its origin, and, although a human element must interpose in the principle to determine the form and choose the depositary, he that is once elected commands really in the name of God. “All power comes from God,” says S. Paul; it is by order of God that it exists, and consequently it cannot be resisted without resisting the order of God, and without drawing down the damnation justly reserved for those who revolt against God.
It is evident that between this principle which belongs to Catholic faith, and the Gallican opinion of divine right, the difference is not so great as would at first appear. Both parties agree as to the origin of power, its mission, its rights, and its duties. Only on one point do they differ: according to one, the man who, in the commencement, was invested with power, received it immediately from God; while the other holds that the investiture was made by the expressed or tacit consent of society. This divergence is clearly more speculative than practical, as, with this exception, they both believe the same doctrine.
It is therefore wrong to seek any analogy between the revolutionary theory and the opinion of Catholic doctors the most favorable to the primitive rights of society. It is only necessary to thoroughly understand their doctrine to see this resemblance, which is merely apparent, instantly vanish. According to them, it is true that power depends for its first organization on those whom it will soon command; but once constituted, it is independent of them in its exercise within the limits inherent in the form of government. Society, in reality, is not the source of the authority with which it invests its elect: it is only the channel. If it has the right to determine the form and to choose the subject, it is also obliged to make use of this right, and to arm the power instituted by it with the full prerogatives necessary for the maintenance of order.
Nothing is wanting to authority thus understood; it has a precise end and an indispensable reason for being—the defence of individual rights, and the maintenance of public order. It has an immutable base—the will of God, the guarantee of rights and the protector of order. It has a universal and inevitable sanction—the eternal punishment which the contemners of the law cannot escape, even though they succeed in avoiding temporal chastisement. In resting social order on the first principle of all things, this doctrine places it in perfect harmony with the general order of the universe; and it is as satisfactory in theory to the mind of the philosopher as it is efficacious in practice in maintaining the order of society. Equally favorable to all legitimate interests, it elevates at the same time the majesty of power and the dignity of obedience; for, if it is glorious for rulers to command in the name of God, it is not less so for the governed to obey only God.
What, on the contrary, is the effect of the revolutionary principle? Instead of establishing authority, it destroys it; and, under the pretext of elevating obedience, degrades it.
It destroys authority; for there is no true authority, except where a superior will is invested with the right to command, and an inferior one is obliged to obey. Now, these two conditions cannot be realized in the revolutionary theory. The principle of this theory, such as Rousseau laid it down in his Social Contract, is that the power placed over civil society draws all its rights from the free concession of those whom it is called to command. It is, then, their mandatary, and not their superior; consequently, it has no more the right to command them than they are bound to obey it. Rousseau says it in these very terms: in obeying it, they only obey themselves; and, consequently, they can, when they please, dispense themselves from obedience.
Thus, instead of creating authority, the revolutionary principle renders it impossible; and since authority is the essential condition of the stability, strength, well-being, and existence even of society, it cannot be denied that this principle is the overthrow of social order.
But at the same time that it annihilates the majesty of power, it debases the dignity of obedience. It is very well to say to the members of society that, in obeying their mandatary, they only obey themselves; it will not prevent them in a thousand circumstances from being directed to do the contrary of what they would like. What will then happen? If the discontented are numerous and strong enough to make their will prevail over that of power, they will revolt; but, if resistance is impossible, they will be compelled to obey. What will be this obedience? The act of a slave who yields to force, and not the act of a reasonable man and a Christian who conforms his will to that of God.
Instead of the alliance which Christian doctrine establishes between the majesty of power and the dignity of obedience, the revolutionary theory creates an irreconcilable antagonism between these two essential elements of society; it is only by degrading the subjects that the rulers can ensure the execution of their orders.
This radical and absolute opposition between the two doctrines necessarily extends to their consequences. Whilst the Christian principle gives an inviolable stability to power, and guarantees with equal efficacy the rights of the subjects, the revolutionary principle has for result inevitable anarchy and tyranny.
Anarchy first; for how can a power which is absolutely without a base sustain itself for any length of time? Consistently with itself, the theory of the Revolution intends that society, in establishing power as its mandatary, should not strip itself in any manner of sovereignty. As society created it freely, by an act of its own will it can reverse it when it seems desirable, without any one having the right to demand an account of its acts. As a consequence, the revolutionary theory involves daily appeals to new plébiscites and to new elections for the overthrow of the established power, and the substitution of another more in accord with the present will of the nation; and, as the triumph of the discontented of yesterday will infallibly create other dissatisfied ones, these will have the right to organize to-morrow a new agitation to overthrow everything.
The constitution cannot legitimately reprove or arrest these attempts; for, emanating like the government from the national will, it is also subordinate to the fluctuations of that capricious sovereign. The small number of the agitators can be no objection; and you cannot oppose to them the wishes and rights of the majority. If there is no authority superior to that of man, all human wills are equal, and all equally sovereign. The number of those who differ from me gives them a preponderating force, but it does not confer on them a superior right. If, then, I think my sentiment the best, nothing can hinder me from working to make it prevail. By making use of intrigue and violence, the smallest minority easily becomes the majority; and, with strength, it acquires the right to do all that the revolutionary principle attributes to majorities.
What can be opposed to this argument? Is it not perfectly logical? If the consequences appear intolerable, there is but one means of escape—the return to Christian principle, alone capable of preserving social order from the convulsions to which it is condemned by these attempts against power. Christian doctrine repels the attacks made upon public order with much more severity than the violations of individual rights; it brands them as crimes of treason against society. Except in the extreme cases of which we have already spoken, it declares power inviolable; not in virtue of the personal prerogative of him who is invested with it, but in virtue of the interest of which he is the necessary guarantee.
Thus we have heard S. Paul tell us that he who resists power resists the order of God, and draws damnation on his head. This sentence, we know, does not agree with the verdict of public opinion, as indulgent in regard to political crimes as it is severe against those which come under the head of crimes of common right.
On which side is the truth? If public power is the indispensable bulwark of individual rights, can the attempt be made to overthrow it, without, at the same time, attacking all those rights? If a man, who, during the night, forces his entrance into a house, and seeks to enrich himself to the prejudice of the legitimate possessor, is thrown into prison as a criminal unworthy of compassion, how can he merit less severe punishment who shakes the entire social edifice, to gratify his cupidity and ambition at the expense of the public peace? Nothing is clearer: in listening to the revolutionary theories in preference to the Christian doctrine, public opinion is in complete disagreement with reason.
Would to God that it was all limited to a theoretical opposition! Unfortunately, nothing is more practical than revolutionary error; as, for a century, the conclusions to which logic has led us have been but too well confirmed by experience. Nothing, then, is wanting to enable us to judge the two rival doctrines with full knowledge of the case. We have seen them at work—one for fourteen centuries, the other during the age nearest our own time; they have given their measure, and are known by their fruits. One, in semi-barbarous times, endowed France with the unity, glory, concentration of strength, and expansion which placed her in the first rank among the nations of the world; the other, in an age of advanced civilization and unheard-of material progress, heaped ruins upon ruins on our unfortunate country—religious ruin, moral ruin, social ruin, political ruin, financial ruin, military ruin—nothing remained standing when with the principle of authority the necessary foundation of society was overthrown.
And let it not be imagined that, in thus delivering the social body to the ravages of anarchy, the revolutionary principle guarantees it against the rigors of tyranny. No; it condemns it inevitably to suffer those rigors. At the same time that it disarms power with regard to the wicked passions, it arms it with an all-powerful force against the most sacred rights. Rousseau avowed it frankly; and, from the Convention to Prince Bismarck, all revolutionary governments have practised this lesson. Nothing escapes the sovereignty of the state from the moment that the state is emancipated from the authority of God. The soul of the citizen belongs to it with the same title as his body; the questions of doctrine are not more independent of its control than those of policy; the church and the school are under its jurisdiction as well as the public streets and the prison.
Since society recognizes no authority above it, and the state represents the social will, it is absolute master, it is all-powerful, it is God. It is the state that makes justice and truth, that creates rights, that is the supreme arbiter of conscience; and its omnipotence, as unlimited as fragile, leaves to the citizen but the choice between two expedients: either to bend with docility under its yoke by abdicating all moral dignity, or to overthrow it, with the certainty of seeing it replaced by an equal tyranny.
Thus the revolutionary theory, which is permanent anarchy, is at the same time organized despotism. At other periods, we have seen society, deprived of its equilibrium, oscillate between these two extremes, passing in turn from anarchy to tyranny, and from tyranny to anarchy. Thanks to revolutionary progress, we can enjoy simultaneously the advantages of these two states, and taste the vexations of despotism, without escaping the agitations of anarchy. Since the proclamation of the pretended liberal principles, we have seen disappear the liberties which, under the most absolute systems, were considered as inviolable. Provincial and communal franchises, the rights of the father over his children, of the proprietor over his possessions, of the testator over his estate—all have been grasped by the iron hand of the state. It has broken all counterbalancing influences, and those that it has not completely annihilated only subsist during its good pleasure.
How different is the theory of power, regarded by the light of Christian principle! Instituted for the protection of rights and the repression of injustice, it extends its jurisdiction only by the means necessary for attaining its end. As soon as it would leave that sphere, it becomes an usurper. Its power is limited in every sense by divine law and by the pre-existing rights of the subjects; for, instead of the revolutionary theory that the state creates the rights of private individuals, it is Christian doctrine that the rights of individuals incapable of defending themselves rendered necessary the creation of the state.
According to the first, society is everything, the individual nothing; according to the second, the individual alone has immortal destinies, and civil society is but a temporary means to facilitate the accomplishment of those destinies. The least of the subjects has, then, the right to oppose his conscience as a brazen wall against the unjust will of a despot; and, if this protestation is not heeded, another voice will soon be heard which will resound to the extremities of the universe—the voice of the incorruptible defender of justice, and the protector of oppressed weakness; of him whom God has placed on the earth to speak in his name, to promulgate his law, and to recall alike princes and people to the respect of justice.
It is not necessary to give further proof of the doctrine we have endeavored to explain. There is not one of our readers who will not instantly understand the principle whose restoration we have declared indispensable for putting an end to the fatal reign of the Revolution. We were not wrong in giving it the name of principle, as from it flow all the laws of political order, at the same time that itself is immediately derived from the very idea of that order. It is, then, necessary, universal, and absolute; it extends to all times, all forms of government, all degrees of civilization. At once political and religious, rational and revealed, it belongs to universal ethics, and is part of the traditional dogma. He who denies it will be condemned by the church as a heretic, and will be disowned by reason, as both a rebel against evidence, and guilty of an attack on the essential laws of social order.