3. The second point we raised was, whether a dethronement, or an alteration of polity, or a secession, may be brought about, not indeed at discretion for any cause, but under pressure of dire injustice. It comes to this: May the civil power be resisted when it does grievous wrong? Let us begin our reply with another question: May children strike their parents? No. Not even in self-defence? when the parent is going about to do the child some grievous bodily hurt? That is an unpleasant question, but the answer is plain. We can make no exceptions to the rule of self-defence. Self-defence in extreme cases may raise the arm of a child against its parent: in a similar extremity it may set a people in conflict with their civil ruler. Still we regard with horror the idea of striking a parent, and speak of it generally as a thing never to be done: so should we regard and speak of rebellion. We should not parade it before men's eyes as a deed to be contemplated, admired, and readily put in execution. "I confess to you, Sir," writes Burke, "I never liked this continual talk of resistance and revolution, or the practice of making the extreme medicine of the constitution its daily bread."
4. The conditions under which the civil authority may be withstood in self-defence, are fairly stated in the Dublin Review for April, 1865, p. 292. We must premise, that such a course of self-defence once publicly entered upon is like a rock rolled over the brow of a steep mountain: down it rolls and rebounds from point to point, gathering momentum in the descent, till in the end the ruler, once defied, has to be dethroned, the polity subverted, the empire rent, or they who made the resistance must perish.
"Resistance is lawful:—(1) When a government has become substantially and habitually tyrannical, and that is when it has lost sight of the common good, and pursues its own selfish objects to the manifest detriment of its subjects, especially where their religious interests are concerned. (2) When all legal and pacific means have been tried in vain to recall the ruler to a sense of his duty. (3) When there is a reasonable probability that resistance will be successful, and not entail greater evils than it seeks to remove. (4) When the judgment formed as to the badness of the government, and the prudence of resistance thereto, is not the opinion only of private persons or of a mere party: but is that of the larger and better portion of the people, so that it may morally be considered as the judgment of the community as a whole."
5. Side by side with this we will set the teaching of Leo XIII., Encyclical, Quod Apostolici.
"If ever it happens that civil power is wielded by rulers recklessly and beyond all bounds, the doctrine of the Catholic Church does not allow of insurgents rising up against them by independent action (proprio marte), lest the tranquillity of order be more and more disturbed, or society receive greater injury thereby: and when things are come to such a pass that there appears no other ray or hope of preservation, the same authority teaches that a remedy must be sought in the merits of Christian patience and in earnest prayers to God."
The words we have italicized seem to point to conditions (4) and (3) respectively, as laid down by the writer in the Dublin Review.
For an instance of a king dethroned, not proprio marte, but with every appearance at least of an act of the whole nation, see the dethronement of Edward II., as related by Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, I., pp. 186, 187, Rolls Series.
6. "We save ourselves the more virulent and destructive diseases of revolution, sedition, and civil war, by submitting to the milder type of a change of ministry." (Times, April 7, 1880.)
7. It is not monarchical governments alone that can ever be resisted lawfully: but what is sauce for the king's goose is sauce also for the people's gander. There is no special sanctity attaching to democracy.
It might seem that, since resistance requires to be justified by the approval of "the larger and better portion of the people" (n. 4, condition [4]) no just resistance can ever be offered to the will of the democratic majority. But the said majority may be in divers ways coerced and cajoled, a mere packed majority, while the malcontents may be, if not "the larger," clearly "the better" portion of the community. (s. iv., n. 5, p. 321.)