History of the Origin of Representative Government in Europe

by François Guizot

But though right in standing upon this foundation, which is its principal characteristic, the philosophic school is often mistaken when it attempts to go farther. We say that it is mistaken, philosophically speaking, and independently of all ideas of application and practical danger.

Its two chief errors, in my opinion, are these:

I. Its researches after right are misdirected; and,
II. It mistakes the conditions under which right can be realised.

It is not by considering man in isolation, in his single nature, and individually, that his rights may be discovered. The idea of right implies that of relation. Right can be declared only when relation is established. The fact of a connexion, of an approximation, in a word, of society, is implied in the very word right. Right originates with society. Not that society, at its origin, created right by an arbitrary convention. Just as truth exists before man becomes acquainted with it, so does right exist before it is realised in society. It is the legitimate and rational rule of society in every step of its development, and at every moment of its existence. Rules exist before their application; they would still exist even if they were never applied. Man does not make them. As a reasonable being, he is capable of discovering and understanding them. As a free being, he can either obey or violate them; but whether he be ignorant of them or knowingly violate them, their reality, so far as they are rules, that is to say, their rational and moral reality, is independent of him, superior and antecedent to his ignorance or his knowledge, to the respect or neglect with which he treats them. Laying down this principle then on the one side, that rule virtually exists before the relation or society to which it corresponds, and on the other side, that it is not manifested and declared until society is established, that is to say, that it can only be applied when society really exists, we inquire, What is this right and how can it be discovered?

Right, considered in itself, is the rule that each individual is morally bound to observe and respect in his relations with another individual; that is to say, the moral limit at which his lawful liberty is arrested and ceases in his action on that individual; or, in other words, the right of a man is the limit beyond which the will of another man cannot morally be exercised over him in the relation which unites them.

True Rule Of Social Relations.

Nothing can be more certain than that every man in society has a right to expect that this limit will be maintained and respected as regards himself by other men and by society itself. This is the primitive and unalterable right which he possesses in virtue of the dignity of his nature. If the philosophic school had confined itself to laying down this principle, it would have been perfectly correct, and would have reminded society of the true moral rule. But it has attempted to go further: it has pretended to determine, beforehand and in a general way, the exact limit in every instance in which the will of individuals over each other, or of society over individuals, ceases to be legitimate. It has not contented itself with establishing right in principle, but has considered itself capable of enumerating all social rights à priori, and of reducing them to certain general formulæ which should comprise them all, and might thus be applied to every relation to which society gives birth. By this it has been led to overlook many very positive rights, and to create many pretended rights which have no reality. If it be true, as we have laid it down, that right is the legitimate rule of a relation, it is plain that the relation must be known before the right which ought to govern it can be understood. Now social relations, whether between one man and another, or between one and several, are neither simple nor identical. They are infinitely multiplied, varied, and interwoven; and right changes with relation. An example will best explain our meaning. We will select the most simple and natural of social relations, that of the father to the child. Nobody will presume to assert that here no right exists, that is to say, that neither the father nor the child have any respective rights to be mutually observed, and that their will alone should arbitrarily regulate their reciprocal relations. In the outset, whilst the child is devoid of reason, his will has little or no right: the right belongs entirely to the will of the father, which even then is, doubtless, legitimate only so far as it is conformable to reason, but which is not and cannot be subordinate to that of the child, on which it is exercised and which it directs. In proportion as reason becomes developed in the child, the right of the father's will becomes restricted; this right is always derived from the same principle, and ought to be exercised according to the same law; but it no longer extends to the same limit, but becomes changed and narrowed day by day with the progress of the intellectual and moral development of the child, up to the age when at length the child, having become a man, finds himself in a totally different relationship to his father—a relationship in which another right holds sway, that is to say, in which the paternal right is enclosed within entirely different limits, and is no longer exercised in the same way.

If, in the most simple of social relations, the right, though immutable in its principle, suffers so many vicissitudes in its application,—if the limit at which it stops is so continually altered, according as this relation changes in nature and character—to a far greater extent will this be the case in all other social relations, which are infinitely more changeful and complicated. Every day old rights will perish; every day new ones will arise; that is to say, different applications will daily be made of the principle of right; and each occasion will vary at the limits at which the right ceases, either on one side or the other, in the innumerable relations which constitute society.

It is not, then, a simple matter to determine right, nor can it be done once for all, and according to certain general formulae. Either these formulæ must be reduced to this dominant truth, that no will, whether that of man over man, of society over the individual, or of the individual over society, ought to be exercised contrary to justice and reason—or else these formulæ are vain; that is to say, they confine themselves to expressing the principle of right, or try unsuccessfully to enumerate and regulate beforehand all its applications.