1. "Those old fanatics of arbitrary power dogmatized as if hereditary monarchy were the only lawful government in the world, just as our new fanatics of popular arbitrary power maintain that a popular election is the only lawful source of authority." (Burke, Reflections on French Revolution.)
We here stand between two idols of the tribe of politicians. We may call them Gog and Magog: Gog, the divine right of kings; Magog, the inalienable sovereignty of the people.
2. The position known in history as "the divine right of kings" may be best described as a political popedom. It is the belief of Catholics that our Divine Redeemer, instituting His Church by His own personal act as a perfect society and spiritual commonwealth, instituted in like manner the polity under which He willed it to be governed, namely, the Papal monarchy, begun in St. Peter and carried to completion according to our Lord's design under the line of Popes, Peter's successors. The monarchy thus established is essential to the Catholic Church. We speak not here of the temporal power which the Pope once enjoyed in the Roman States, but of his spiritual sovereignty over all Christendom. The Pope cannot validly resign and put out of his own and his successors' hands, nor can the Cardinals take away from him, nor the Episcopate, one jot or tittle of this spiritual prerogative. He cannot, for instance, condition his infallibility on the consent of a General Council, or surrender the canonization of saints to the votes of the faithful at large. Such are the inalienable, Christ-given prerogatives of the Papacy. Henry VIII. feloniously set himself up for Pope within the realm of England. Blending together temporal and spiritual jurisdiction, he made out his rights and prerogatives as a monarch, even in the civil order, to be inalienable as in the spiritual. Spiritual and civil attributes together formed a jewelled circlet, one and indivisible, immoveably fixed on the brow of the King's Most Sacred Majesty. Grown and swollen by their union with the spirituality, the civil attributes of the Crown were exaggerated to the utmost, and likewise declared inalienable. They were exaggerated till they came to embrace all the powers of government. The privileges of Parliament, and the limitations to the royal authority, set forth in the Petition of Right in 1628, were regarded as mere concessions tenable at the King's pleasure: from which point of view we understand the readiness of so conscientious a monarch as Charles I. to act against such privileges after he had allowed them. But to vest all the powers of government inalienably in the King, so that whoever else may seem to partake in them, shall partake only by royal sufferance, is tantamount to declaring monarchy the sole valid and lawful polity. This declaration the ministers, lay and clerical, of our Charleses and Jameses do not seem to have made in express terms. It is, however, contained by implication in their celebrated phrase of "the inalienable prerogatives of the Crown," as interpreted by the stretches of prerogative which they advised. They virtually asserted of one particular polity, or distribution of civil power (c. viii., s. iii., n. 5, p. 312), that which is true only of civil power taken nakedly, apart from the mode of its distribution—they said of monarchy what is true of government—that the sum of its power is a constant quantity (c. viii., s. iv., n. 7, p. 322), and that it is of God antecedently to and irrespectively of any determination of popular will. (c. viii., s. iv., n. 10, p. 325.)
3. Such a position is easily refuted, negatively, by its being wholly unproven, unless the English Reformation, and the servile spirit in Church and State that promoted and was promoted by the Reformation, can pass for a proof; and again the position is positively refuted, when we come to consider how all that nature requires and God commands, is government under some polity, not government everywhere under monarchy; there being many workable polities besides monarchy. (s. iv., nn. 1-4, p. 319.)
4. The same argument that demolishes Gog, also overturns Magog. The two idols, opposed to one another, stand upon the same pedestal, the identification of government in general with one particular polity, as though a polity were the polity. The great assertor and worshipper of the inalienable sovereignty of the people is Jean Jacques Rousseau. He starts from postulates which we have already rejected—that all men are equal (c. viii., s. i., n. 9, p. 305)—that man is born free (ib., n. 10)—that none can be bound to obey another without his own consent (ib., n. 11)—that civil society is formed by an arbitrary convention (ib., n. 4)—which convention is the Social Contract. (ib., n. 5.) From these unreasonable postulates Rousseau draws the conclusion, logically enough, that the sovereign will in every State is the will of the majority of the citizens: but the will of the majority, he goes on, cannot be alienated from the majority: therefore neither can the sovereignty be alienated, but must abide permanently with the people ruling by a majority of votes. The argumentation is excellent, but the premisses are all false. The conclusion is vastly popular, few minds considering from what premisses it is drawn.
5. If sovereignty rests inalienably with the people, the one valid polity is pure democracy. This proposition, however, Rousseau was not forward to formulate. The Stuarts had shrunk from formulating a similar proposition about monarchy, though they virtually held and acted upon it. They were willing enough to allow of a parliament, whose privileges and functions should be at His Majesty's gracious pleasure. Thus Rousseau will allow you to have your senate, king, emperor, if you will: only remember that he is the prince, not the sovereign. (Contrat Social, l. iii., c. i.) The people collectively are the sovereign, always sovereign. The prince, that is, he or they to whom the administration is entrusted—since all the citizens cannot administer jointly—is the mere official and bailiff of the Sovereign People, bound to carry out their mandate in all things, and removable at their pleasure. The people must meet periodically, not at the discretion of the prince. "These meetings must open with two questions, never to be omitted, and to be voted on separately. The first is: Whether it pleases the Sovereign (People) to continue the present form of government. The second is: Whether it pleases the People to leave the administration to the persons at present actually charged with it." (Contrat Social, ,l. iv., c. xviii.)
6. The claim of a pure democracy like this to supersede all other polities cannot be established by abstract arguments. That we have seen in examining the Social Contract. The alternative way of establishing such an exclusive claim would be to prove that the practical efficiency of pure democracy immeasurably transcends the efficiency of every other possible polity. There is indeed yet a third mode of proof resorted to. It is said that pure democracy everywhere is coming and must come; and that what is thus on the line of human progress must be right and best for the time that it obtains. A grand invention this of Positivist genius, the theory, that whatever is is right; and the practice, always to swim with the stream! But supposing that pure democracy is coming, how long is it likely to last? The answer may be gathered from a review of the working difficulties of such a polity.
7. It is made only for a small State. Railway and telegraph have indeed diminished the difficulty; and have removed the need of all the voters meeting in one place, as was done at Athens. Newspapers echo and spread with addition the eloquence of popular orators, beyond the ears that actually listen to them. Still, think what it would be to have a general election, upon every bill that passes through Parliament: for that is what pure democracy comes to. The plan would scarcely work with a total electorate of thirty thousand. You say the people would entrust a committee with the passing of ordinary measures, reserving to themselves the supervision. I am not arguing the physical impossibility, but the moral difficulties of such an arrangement. For either the people throw the reins of government on the neck of this committee, or they keep a tight hold upon the committee and guide it. In the former case the popular sovereignty becomes like that of a monarch who leans much on favourites, a sovereignty largely participated in by others than the nominal holder of the control. On the other hand, if the people do frequently interfere, and take a lively interest in the doings of the subordinate assembly, the people themselves must be a small body. An active governing body of three hundred thousand members would be as great a wonder as an active man weighing three hundred pounds. Only in a small State is that intense political life possible, which a pure democracy must live. There only, as Rousseau requires, can the public service be the principal affair of the citizens. "All things considered," he says, "I do not see how it is any longer possible for the Sovereign (People) to preserve amongst us the exercise of his rights, if the city is not very small." (Contrat Social, l. iii., c. xv.) And the difficulty of size in a democracy is aggravated, if, as Socialists propose, the democratic State is to be sole capitalist within its own limits. The perfect sovereignty of the people means the disruption of empires, and the pushing to extremity of what is variously described as local government, home rule, autonomy, and decentralisation, till every commune becomes an independent State. But for defence in war and for commerce in peace, these little States must federate; and federation means centralisation, external control over the majority at home, restricted foreign relations, in fact the corruption of pure democracy.
8. Again, the perfect sovereignty of the people cannot subsist except upon the supposition that one man is as much a born ruler as another, which means a levelling down of the best talent of the community, for that is the only way in which capacities can be equalised—a very wasteful and ruinous expedient, and one that the born leaders of the people will not long endure. Then there is the proverbial fickleness of democracy, one day all aglow, and cooled down the next, never pursuing any course steadily, in foreign policy least of all, though there the dearest interests of the State are often at stake. As one who lived under such a government once put it: "Sheer democracy is of all institutions the most ill-balanced and ill put together, like a wave at sea restlessly tossing before the fitful gusts of wind: politicians come and go, and not one of them cares for the public interest, or gives it a thought." (Quoted by Demosthenes, Speech on the Embassy, p. 383 A.) What they do care for and think of sedulously, is pleasing the people and clinging to office. In that respect they are the counterparts of the favourites who cluster round the throne of a despotic monarch, and suck up his power by flattering him. Peoples have their favourites as well as kings. To these persons, the Cleon or Gracchus of the hour, they blindly commit the management of their concerns, as the roi fainéant of old Frankish times left everything to his Mayor of the Palace, till the Mayor came to reign in his master's stead; and so has the popular favourite ere now developed into the military despot. Strong-minded kings of course are not ruled by favourites, nor are highly intelligent and capable peoples; but it is as hard to find a people fit to wield the power of pure democracy as to find an individual fit for an absolute monarch, especially where the State is large.
9. From all this we conclude that the new-fashioned Magog of pure democracy, or the perfect sovereignty of the people, is not to be worshipped to the overthrow and repudiation of all other polities, any more than the old-fashioned Gog of pure monarchy, idolised by Stuart courtiers under the name of "the divine right of kings." Neither of these is the polity: each is a polity, but not one to be commonly recommended. The study of polities admirably illustrates the Aristotelian doctrine of the Golden Mean (Ethics, c. v., s. iv., p. 77), teaching us ordinarily to affect limited monarchy or limited democracy. But as the mean must ever be chosen in relation to ourselves, a Constantine or an Athenian Demos may represent the proper polity in place under extraordinary circumstances.