Reading.—The Month for July, 1886, pp. 338, seqq.
SECTION VI.—Of the Elementary and Original Polity.
1. "All things are double, one against another." (Ecclus. xlii. 25.) The son of Sirach may have had in view the human body as divisible by a vertical median line into two symmetrical halves. But in each of the halves thus made, the same organ or limb is never repeated twice in exact likeness, nor do any two parts render exactly the same service. This variety of organs in the bodies of the higher animals is called differentiation. As we descend in the animal series we find less and less of differentiation, till we reach the lowest types, which are little more than a mere bag, whence their name of Ascidians. In that State which has London for its capital city, we behold one of the highest types of political existence. Sovereignty is there divided, as usual in modern States, into three branches, Legislative, Judicial, and Executive. Each of these branches is shared among many persons in various modes and degrees, so that in practice it is not easy to enumerate and specify the holders of sovereignty, nor to characterize so complex a polity. At the other end of the scale we may represent to ourselves 250 "squatters" forming an independent State in the far West of America. They are a pure democracy, and the sovereignty belongs to them all jointly. Is a man to be tried for his life? The remaining 249 are his judges. Is a tax to be levied on ardent spirits? The 250 vote it. Is there a call to arms? The 250 marshal themselves to war. That clearly is the condition of minimum differentiation, where one citizen is in all political points the exact counterpart of all the rest. Of all polities it is the most simple and elementary possible. And so far forth as the natural order of evolution in polities, as in all other things, is from simple to compound, this is also the original polity. It is also the residuary polity, that, namely, which comes to be, when all other government in the State vanishes. Thus, if the Powder Plot had succeeded, and King James I., with the royal family, Lords and Commons, with the judges and chief officers of the Executive, had all perished together, the sovereign authority in England would have devolved upon the nation as a whole.
2. Certain monarchical writers shrink from the recognition of pure democracy as either the first or the last term of the series of polities. They do not recognize it as a polity at all. When there is no governing body distinct from the mass of people at large, a government must be formed, they say, by popular suffrage. Meanwhile, according to them, the sovereign power rests not with the body of electors: either it is not yet created, or it has lapsed: but as soon as the election is made, they see sovereignty breaking forth like the sun rising, in the person, single or composite, who is the object of the people's choice. This would be the correct view of the matter, if no choice were left to the electors, but they were obliged to acquiesce in some prearranged polity, as a Monarchy, or a Council of Ten, and could do nothing more than designate the Monarch or the Council. Under such a restriction the Cardinals elect the Pope. But our electors can institute any polity they see fit. They are a Constituent Assembly. They may fix upon a monarchy or a republic, two or one legislative chambers, a wide or a narrow franchise, home rule or centralization: or they may erect a Provisional Government for five years with another appeal to the people at the end of that term. More than that. They could impose a protective duty upon corn, or endow the Roman Catholic religion, making such protection or endowment a fundamental law (s. iv., n. 8, p. 323), and withholding from the government, which they proceed to set up, the power of meddling with that law. They are then not only a Constituent but likewise a Legislative Assembly. But this power of making laws and moulding the future constitution of the State, what else is it but sovereign power, and indeed the very highest manifestation of sovereignty?
3. So far we follow Suarez in his controversy with James I. The natural order of evolution certainly is, that the State should be conceived in pure democracy, and thence develop into other polities. But in speaking as though the natural order had always been the actual order, Suarez seems to have been betrayed by the ardour of controversy into the use of incorrect expressions. It is true in the abstract, as he says, that "no natural reason can be alleged why sovereignty should be fixed upon one person, or one set of persons, rather than upon another, short of the whole community." This is true, inasmuch as in the abstract we view men as men, in which specific character they are all equal. But in the concrete and real life, the primeval citizens who start a commonwealth are rarely alike and equal, as the founders of the American Republic at the separation from Great Britain pretty well were, but some men, or some order of men, will so much excel the rest in ability, position, or possessions, that the rest have really no choice but to acquiesce in those gifted hands holding the sovereignty.
Readings.—Suarez, De Legibus, III., iii., 6; ib., III., iv., nn. 2, 3, 4; Defensio Fidei, III., ii., nn. 7, 8, 9; Ar., Pol., III., xiv., 12; ib., VIII., x., nn. 7, 8; The Month for July, 1886, pp. 342-345.
SECTION VII.—Of Resistance to Civil Power.
"When they say the King owes his crown to the choice of his people, they tell us that they mean to say no more than that some of the King's predecessors have been called to the throne by some sort of choice. Thus they hope to render their proposition safe by rendering it nugatory." (Burke, Reflections on French Revolution.)
1. The great question about civil power is, not whence it first came in remote antiquity, but whence it is now derived and flows continually as from its source, whether from the free consent of subjects so long as that lasts, or whether it obtains independently of their consent. Can subjects overthrow the ruler, or alter the polity itself, as often as they have a mind so to do? or has the ruler a right to his position even against the will of his people? A parallel question is, can a province annexed to an empire secede when it chooses, as South Carolina and other Confederates once attempted secession from the American Union?
2. These questions raise two totally different issues, which must be first carefully distinguished and then severally answered. The first point at issue is whether subjects may dethrone their ruler, a people alter their polity, or a province secede from an empire, at discretion. The second point is, whether the same may be done under pressure of dire injustice. One little matter of phraseology must be rectified before an answer is returned to this first point. The question whether subjects may dethrone their ruler at discretion, from the terms in which it is drawn, can lead to none but a negative answer. From the fact that they are subjects, and this man, or this body of men, their ruler, their allegiance cannot be wholly discretionary. That sovereign is a mere man of straw, there is no soul and substance of sovereign power in him, who may be knocked down and carted away for rubbish, any moment his so-called subjects please. Rousseau is quite clear on this point. The true debateable form of the question is, whether the people, being themselves sovereign, can remove at will the official persons who actually administer the State; whether they can change the polity, and whether the inhabitants of a province can secede. The answer now is simple: all depends upon the polity of the particular country where the case comes for discussion. And if so it be that the constitution makes no provision one way or another, any dispute that may occur must be settled by amicable arrangement among the parties concerned: if they cannot amicably agree, they must fight. To save this last eventuality, it were well that any claim which the people in any country may have to remove princes and statesmen from office, to alter the polity, or to divide the empire, should be made matter of the clearest understanding and most express and unambiguous stipulation. Even so, such a provision must be generally viewed with disfavour by the political philosopher, seeing how it tends to the weakening and undermining of government; whereas the same considerations that make out government to be at all a boon and a necessity to human nature, argue incapacity and instability in the governing power to be a deplorable evil. We must add, that where the people keep in their hands any power to alter the polity, or transfer the administration to other hands, there they hold part at least of the sovereignty; and the alteration or transference is effected by them, not as subjects, but as partial ruler.