The Philosophical Theory of the State

by Bernard Bosanquet

[2] The dangers besetting the French Republic to-day (December, 1898) are, in essence, tests applied to the strength of a national idea. If the idea cannot maintain itself, we must reluctantly suppose that it ought not—that the common life has not the necessary depth.

7. Our analysis of the Nation-State suggests a point of view which may be applied to the vexed question of whether State action is to be judged by the same moral tests as private action.

The first step is to get a clear idea of the nature of State action. It must be confined, one would think, to what is done in the name of the State, and by something approaching to an act of will on its part as a State. We only pass moral judgment on individuals in respect of their acts of will, and we ought to extend the same justice to a State. The question is complicated by the fact that a State has, as its accredited agents, individuals whose acts it must normally avow. But it can hardly be saddled with moral responsibility for their personal misdoings, except under circumstances which are barely conceivable. [1] The State, as such, can have no ends but public ends; and in practice it has none but what its organs conceive to be public ends. If an agent, even under the order of his executive superior, commits a breach of morality, bona fide in order to what he conceives to be a public end desired by the State, he and his superior are certainly {323} blamable, but the immorality can hardly be laid at the door of the public will.

[1] i.e. That it should actually order a theft, murder, or the like.

Indeed, a strict definition of State action might raise a difficulty like that of defining the General Will—if the act was immoral, can the State, as such, really have willed it? And waiving this as a mere refinement, it still seems clear that the selfishness or sensuality, which has at least a good deal to do with the immorality of private actions, can hardly be present in an act of the public will, in the same sense as in a private volition. The State, as such, certainly cannot be guilty of personal immorality, and it is hard to see how it can commit theft or murder in the sense in which these are moral offences. To speak of the question as if it concerned the conduct of statesmen and their agents, instead of the volition of a State as such, seems to introduce confusion. We are discussing the parallel between public and private acts, and we are asked to begin by treating the public acts as private.

It may be said that this distinction between public and private acts leads to the casuistry of pure intention. We are saying, it will be urged, that the State remains pure, because its will is on the whole towards a public interest, whatever crimes its agents may commit. And, no doubt, this line is often taken in practice. A successful agent finds his evil deeds are winked at; an unsuccessful one is disavowed. In either case the State pleads innocence. But this danger cannot alter the conditions of a moral action, and we cannot impute that as an action to the State, of which it knew no particulars, which it never {324} willed, and which can hardly indeed be the object of a public will. It has a duty to see to the character of its agents and punish their excesses; but the conditions under which it is true that qui facit per alium facit per se, can seldom apply to a public body with regard to actions of its agent which are not of a nature to embody public ends.

Promises and treaties, however, are acts which embody public ends. And here the State, on its side, is bound to maintain good faith; but still its agent is likely to go wrong if he mixes up the obligations of the State with his private honour. The question for him, if he has to keep or break a public undertaking, is, to what is the State substantially bound, not to what extent would he be bound if he had made the promise or engagement in question in his private capacity? He, or the power which is to act, must consider the obligations and aims of the State, as a whole, and work for the best fulfilment of them as a whole. The question may be parallel to that of a private case of honour, but it is not his honour nor his promise that is in question. Just so, if he introduces his private conscience about religion or morality into his public acts on behalf of the State, he may cause frightful persecutions or disasters. The religious persecutions, and our position in India, supply examples.

The State, then, exists to promote good life, and what it does cannot be morally indifferent; but its actions cannot be identified with the deeds of its agents, or morally judged as private volitions are judged. Its acts proper are always public acts, {325} and it cannot, as a State, act within the relations of private life in which organised morality exists. It has no determinate function in a larger community, but is itself the supreme community; the guardian of a whole moral world, but not a factor within an organised moral world. Moral relations presuppose an organised life; but such a life is only within the State, not in relations between the State and other communities.

But all this, it may be urged, is beside the question. The question is not, can a State be a moral individual (though this is certainly one question)? but, does an interest of State justify what would otherwise be immorality or wrong-doing on the part of an officer of State?

Again, I think, we must distinguish between acts essentially private and acts essentially public. To steal or murder, to lie, or to commit personal immorality, for instance, as we said, cannot be a public act. Such acts cannot embody a general interest willed by the public will. A State agent who commits them in pursuit of information or to secure a diplomatic result cannot be justified on the ground that they are not his acts but the State’s; and they are as immoral in him as in anyone else. Ultimately, indeed, it may be true that there is no act which is incapable of justification, supposing some extreme alternative; and in this sense, but in this sense only, it might be that, treating the interest of a commonwealth like any other ethically imperative interest, such acts might be relatively capable of justification. But this justification would only mean that some supreme interest was subserved by them, and would have {326} no special relation to the supposed public character of the interest. It is then a case of the conflict of duties. And the commoner occurrence, which results in doubtful acts, probably is that an agent, charged with some public service, finds it easiest to promote it by some act of rascality, and acts on his idea. But over readiness to make capital out of an apparent conflict of duties is neither made worse nor better by the fact that one of the duties is the service of the State. [1]