Who Made Our Laws?
It is a characteristic of every succeeding century to consider itself much wiser than any or all that have preceded it. In this respect our beloved Nineteenth is no exception; in fact, with a vanity that may be palliated, if not excused, it considers that, comparatively speaking, the world has hitherto been in its schoolboy days, and only attained its majority on the first day of January, 1800. It is true that the great advances made in the physical sciences, in chemistry, astronomy, and geology, and in the application of steam and electricity, have marked our age as one of true progress in a certain direction, and are substantial subjects of self-congratulation; but it must also be remembered that very little of the genuine happiness of mankind in general depends upon any or all of these discoveries and appliances. Man, being an intellectual as well as an animal being, must look to spiritual discoveries and mental agencies for his chief sources of enjoyment; and, as the soul controls the body, as his main duty in this life is to qualify that soul for an eternity of bliss, as the unlimited future is superior to the limited present, it follows that the things merely of this world play a small and insignificant part in the real drama of the life of a human being. The sad misconception of this solution of the problem of man's destiny has been the principal mistake of materialists, and their consequent punishment here below has been so marked that the criticism of the charitable is considerately withheld.
Fortunately for us Catholics, the great desideratum—the law that includes all laws—is immovably fixed, and no new discoveries, no alleged progress, no experiment, can disturb it. Immutable as the eternal hills, it stands to-day as when promulgated in Judæa over eighteen hundred years ago by its Divine Founder, and though the heavens and earth may pass away, we have the assurance that it shall not. But there have sprung out of the operation of this great law other laws which may be called secondary or subsidiary, which have long affected the welfare of Christendom, and upon the observance or rejection of which much of the welfare or misery of nations has depended and must for ever depend. Political justice, social order, art, science, and literature, everything which relates to the relations of man with his fellows, and brightens and [pg 578] beautifies life, have a great deal more to do with forming the character and insuring the purity of a people, as well as the regulation of their actions justly, than railroads, telegraphs, and anæsthetic agents. Respect for the memory of the dead and charity for the living prevent us from pointing out individual instances where men, remarkable for their skill and perseverance in forwarding the latter projects, have neither been distinguished for their truthfulness, liberality, nor for any moral quality typical of intelligent Christians. The best of these men are simply clever mechanists, increasing, it is true, our sum of knowledge of the effect of certain forces in nature, yet without being able to reveal the nature of the forces themselves, which seems impossible; but whoever teaches us true ideas regarding the active agencies that govern ordinary life is the true benefactor of his species, and is the governor of his audience or race. Have our discoveries in this science of making mankind more moral, humane, and refined kept pace with our more intimate acquaintance with the secrets of nature and the laws of mechanism, or have we to look back to the despised past for all our ideas of rectitude in legislation, honesty in the administration of government, and truthfulness in the plastic arts? We fear that a candid answer to this question would involve some loss of our self-esteem. While, like the degenerate Hebrews, we have been worshipping graven images, the work of men's hands, we have been neglecting the Tables of the Law.
All national governments reflect more or less correctly the ideas of the people governed. The absolutism of Russia is as much the reflex of the mental status of the inhabitants of that vast and semi-civilized empire as that of the United States is of our busy, hasty, and heterogeneous population. The first is a necessity growing out of a peculiar order of things, wherein many tribes and barbarous races are to be found struggling towards light and civilization; the other is the creation of the matured minds of experienced and profound statesmen, acting as the delegates of a self-reliant and self-sustaining people. Still, though the framework of the government is unique, the ideas of justice and equality which underlie it are old. In one sense they are not American, but European, for it cannot be denied that the principles of our constitutions, state and national, the laws accepted or enacted in harmony therewith, and the modes of their interpretation and administration, are taken from the civil polity of the nations of the Old World, as those again have been the direct and palpable result of the teachings of the Catholic Church. Russia to-day is mainly barbarous, and subject to the unfettered will of one man, because centuries ago the East broke away from the centre of Catholic unity, and, in losing the Apostolic authority, lost all its vivifying power, and the ministers of the so-called Greek Church their capacity and efficiency as civilizers and law-givers.
The West was more loyal, and consequently more fortunate. If we consider for a moment the chaotic condition of the greater part of Europe when the church commenced to spread far and wide the teachings of the Gospel, slowly but steadily pursuing her holy mission, we may be able to appreciate the herculean task before her. Then, in every part of Europe, from the pole to the Mediterranean, from the Carpathians to the Atlantic, disorder, ignorance, and rapine prevailed. Wave after wave of Northern and Eastern hordes had swept over the continent and most of the islands, submerging the effete nations of the South, and carrying [pg 579] destruction and death wherever they surged. The old Roman civilization, such as it was, was entirely obliterated, all municipal law was abolished, the conquered masses were reduced to the condition of serfs, and, as each successive leader of a tribe rested from his bloody labors and built a stronghold for his occupancy, he reserved to himself the exclusive monopoly of plunder and spoliation in his own particular neighborhood. This of course led to rivalry and unceasing warfare between rival marauders, and the incessant slaughter and oppression of their retainers and tenants.
It was with these fierce and lawless nobles, as they loved to style themselves, that the church for centuries waged most persistent and uncompromising warfare, and against them she hurled her most terrible anathemas. It was she who taught the sanguinary barons and chieftains that there was a moral power greater than armed force and stronger than moated and castellated tower, who took by the hand the downtrodden, impoverished serf, freed him from his earthly bonds, taught him the knowledge of God's law, the principles of eternal justice and the rights of humanity, and instilled into his heart those ideas of human liberty which have since fructified and now permeate every free or partially free government in both hemispheres. Those great results were achieved in many ways, as local circumstances required; by teaching and exhorting, by persuasion or threats, by taking the serf into the ministry of the church and thereby making him the superior of his former master, by introducing gradually just and equitable laws, and when necessary forcing their adoption on unwilling sovereigns and reluctant nobles, and, perhaps, most potently by the example of her own organization, which permitted the humblest of her children to be crowned by a free election with the tiara of the successors of S. Peter.
The influence of the church in secular affairs was particularly remarkable in England, from which we have drawn so many of our political opinions and principles. The early missionaries to the Britons and Saxons were doubtless men of high intelligence as well as sanctity; but the Norman and Anglo-Norman ecclesiastics who came into the country with William the Conqueror and clustered around his sons and successors were still more remarkable for astuteness and breadth of view. For many generations after the Conquest they may be said to have governed England in so far as they framed her laws, conducted her ordinary jurisprudence, and mainly directed her foreign and domestic policy. The most interesting, though by no means the most impartial, chapters in Hallam and Blackstone are those devoted to the struggles between the lay lawyers supported or subsidized by the nobility, and the clerical jurists who defended the privileges of their order and the natural rights of the oppressed masses. The Great Charter, of which we hear so much from persons who very probably never read it, was undoubtedly the work of the latter, though signed by all the barons with their seal or mark; trial by jury, the germs of which may be traced into remote antiquity, was systematized and as far as possible perfected under their auspices; courts of equity, for the rectification of “injustice which the law from its generality worketh to individuals,” were their creation, and even until comparatively late years were presided over by them; and representative or parliamentary government may justly be said to have been the fruit of their fertile and ever-active brains. Its founder, in England at least, was de Montfort, who, though not in orders, was the follower, [pg 580] if not the pupil, of the great S. Bernard.
It is thus that we, the ungrateful or forgetful eulogists of the XIXth century, while laying the flattering unction to our souls that we have done more than put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, ignore the long, painful, and continuous efforts of our spiritual forefathers to christianize, civilize, and make free our ancestors in the order of nature whom pagan despotism and barbaric cupidity sought to degrade and brutalize. In our self-glorification we forget that all we have in legislation, of which we are naturally so proud and for which we never can be too thankful, is the product of long years of toil and reflection of humble priests and learned prelates, whose names are now scarcely remembered. The ideas of justice and clemency generated in the minds of those men of the past by the spirit of Catholicity are the same which govern our daily actions, and regulate the most important affairs of our lives and of those most dear to us, though we are so occupied or so ungrateful that we fail to acknowledge the sources from whence they arose.
For instance, the possession of real estate forms one of the principal attractions for the ambition of industrious Americans, yet how few of them ever think that the laws regulating its disposition, acquisition, and inheritance are the very enactments framed by monks, hundreds of years ago, and recognized by armed laymen after long and at times doubtful contests with the advocates of the arbitrary feudal system. Personal liberty, speedy trial by our peers, were first secured in an incontestable form by an archbishop of the church which some of our so-called and “loudly called” preachers are never tired of denouncing as tyrannical. That the right of the people governed, to elect representatives to make laws affecting their “lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness,” was obtained and carried into practical effect by a Catholic statesman many centuries before Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin were born, seems to have been forgotten by our pseudo-liberals; while the grand principle of political equality which lies at the foundation of our republic, instead of being less than a hundred years old, is coeval with Christianity itself, and in its operation within the church is more expansive and less discriminating as regards social rank and condition.