History of the Origin of Representative Government in Europe

by François Guizot

Reason The Source Of Power.

Let me remind you of another fact. When any man is well known to be mad or idiotic, it is customary to deprive him of his full liberty. On what grounds? has his will perished? if it is the principle of legitimate power, is it not always there to exercise it? The will is still there; but the true sovereign of the man, the lord of the will itself, reasoning intelligence, has departed from the individual. It must therefore be supplied to him from another source,—a reason external to himself must govern him, since his own has become incapable of controlling his will.

What is true concerning the child and the imbecile is true of man in general: the right to power is always derived from reason, never from will. No one has a right to impose a law because he wills it; no one has a right to refuse submission to it because his will is opposed to it;—the legitimacy of power rests in the conformity of its laws to the eternal reason—not in the will of the man who exercises, nor of him who submits to power.

If therefore philosophers desired to give a principle of legitimacy to power, and to restrain it within the limits of right, instead of raising all individual wills to the position of sovereigns and of rivals in sovereignty, they should have brought them all into the condition of subjects, and appointed over them one sovereign. Instead of saying that every man is his own absolute master, and that no other man has a right over him against his will, they should proclaim that no man is the absolute master either of himself or of any other person, and that no action, no power exercised by man over man, is legitimate if it wants the sanction of reason, justice, and truth, which are the law of God. In one word, they should everywhere proscribe absolute power, instead of affording it an asylum in each individual will, and allow to every man the right, which he does in fact possess, of refusing obedience to any law that is not a divine law, instead of attributing to him the right, which he does not actually possess, of obeying nothing but his own will.

True Doctrine Of Representation.

I may now return to the particular question which I proposed in starting, and determine what representation truly is, thus justifying in its principle as in its results, the system of government to which this name is applied.

We are no longer concerned to represent individual wills, which is really an impossibility, as Rousseau has fully demonstrated, though he was mistaken in thinking that this is the aim of representation. We are not, therefore, careful to evade this impossibility, and so fall into inconsistency, as has been done by other political theorists. These attempts, illegitimate in principle and vain in their issues, are, besides, chargeable with the immense mischief of deceiving men; for they profess to establish themselves on a principle which they constantly violate; and by a culpable falsehood, they promise to every individual a respect for his individual will,—whether enlightened or ignorant, reasonable or unreasonable, just or unjust—such as, in fact, they cannot give to it, and which they are of necessity obliged to deny.

The true doctrine of representation is more philosophical and more sincere. Starting from the principle that truth, reason, and justice,—in one word, the divine law,—alone possess rightful power, its reasoning is somewhat as follows:—Every society, according to its interior organization, its antecedents, and the aggregate of influences which have or do still modify it, is placed to a certain extent in a position to apprehend truth and justice as the divine law, and is in a measure disposed to conform itself to this law. Employing less general terms:—there exists in every society a certain number of just ideas and wills in harmony with those ideas, which respect the reciprocal rights of men and social relations with their results. This sum of just ideas and loyal wills is dispersed among the individuals who compose society, and unequally diffused among them on account of the infinitely varied causes which influence the moral and intellectual development of men. The grand concern, therefore, of society is—that, so far as either abiding infirmity or the existing condition of human affairs will allow, this power of reason, justice, and truth, which alone has an inherent legitimacy, and alone has the right to demand obedience, may become prevalent in the community. The problem evidently is to collect from all sides the scattered and incomplete fragments of this power that exist in society, to concentrate them, and from them, to constitute a government. In other words, it is required to discover all the elements of legitimate power that are disseminated throughout society, and to organize them into an actual power; that is to say, to collect into one focus, and to realize, public reason and public morality, and to call them to the occupation of power.