This is not the place to decide such a difficult question, where even the supreme authority of the church has thought it often wiser to abstain. We need only state as a fact, unfortunate as inevitable, the division which springs from this conflict of duty. It will last until the illegitimate power is overthrown, or until, by the lapse of time, all trace of its origin is lost. In the first case, the transitory right which the usurping government borrowed from fact having disappeared with the fact, the power of right recovers its preponderance. In the second case, fact is transformed into right by becoming alone capable of defending society; and legitimacy, of which social interest was the base, will disappear with the real possibility of saving this supreme interest.
It is what happened in England, where the tories, the former partisans of the Stuarts, have long since adhered to the reigning dynasty. But in France, neither of the two dynasties which succeeded to that of our ancient kings established its domination firmly enough, or sufficiently renounced its revolutionary principle, to render evident to all eyes this union of right and fact. For fifty years, we have seen conservatives, religious men, and even the clergy, divided into two or three political fractions; and this division has not been one of the least causes of our weakness, and of the growing strength of the Revolution.
The evil appeared irremediable, and each day it acquired fresh gravity; for the government of fact, instead of seeing in the adhesion of men of order a motive for returning openly to conservative principles, believed it to be their interest to conciliate the men of disorder by supporting the principle of the Revolution.
Providence has drawn us from this position, apparently inextricable, and, by the result even of our faults, has made the cause of our divisions disappear. The Revolution has destroyed the governments blind enough to lean upon her. The power which exists to-day, and whose strength lies in the Assembly, has more than once acknowledged its provisional character. France is, then, free to return to the true principles of order, and to reunite under one flag all those who are sincerely devoted to the holy cause. Nothing prevents her fulfilling a celebrated prediction, and to close, by the proclamation of the rights of God, the revolution which opened with the proclamation of the rights of man.
II.
Herein lies our salvation: to the revolutionary principle, which weakens all powers and all social rights, in making them depend on man’s caprice, we must oppose the Christian principle, which gives them an immovable solidity, in reposing them on the supreme authority of God.
No innovation is required: we must simply return to the eternal law’s of social order. If imprudent architects attempt to change the laws of equilibrium, what should be done to repair the ruins accumulated by their folly? Remember those laws, and enforce their observation. There is also an equilibrium in the moral order, and it was the unpardonable fault of our fathers that they overlooked its most essential condition. Let us hasten to restore all splendor to the truth whose darkening was the cause of our misfortunes. Foreseen and accepted without dispute by the pagans themselves, this generative dogma of society was, in the dawn of Christianity, promulgated by S. Paul as one of the principal articles of revealed religion; and it did not cease to rule the nations of Europe until the epoch when, with the law of Christ, order and peace were driven from their confines. Reason and religion are in perfect harmony when they proclaim the Christian principle. They tell us, with one voice, that God, who directs all with so much wisdom in the material world, wishes equally, and with much more reason, that order should reign in the moral. In commanding men to unite in society, so as to assure by their common efforts the happiness of all, he imposes on them an obligation to bridle the selfish passions which unceasingly conspire against the general interest. And as the only efficacious means of keeping them in order is the institution of a power armed with strength for the defence of the right, God wills that this power should be created, if it does not exist, and obeyed when it exists.
Thus, according to the teaching of Christianity, civil power is divine in its origin, and, although a human element must interpose in the principle to determine the form and choose the depositary, he that is once elected commands really in the name of God. “All power comes from God,” says S. Paul; it is by order of God that it exists, and consequently it cannot be resisted without resisting the order of God, and without drawing down the damnation justly reserved for those who revolt against God.
It is evident that between this principle which belongs to Catholic faith, and the Gallican opinion of divine right, the difference is not so great as would at first appear. Both parties agree as to the origin of power, its mission, its rights, and its duties. Only on one point do they differ: according to one, the man who, in the commencement, was invested with power, received it immediately from God; while the other holds that the investiture was made by the expressed or tacit consent of society. This divergence is clearly more speculative than practical, as, with this exception, they both believe the same doctrine.
It is therefore wrong to seek any analogy between the revolutionary theory and the opinion of Catholic doctors the most favorable to the primitive rights of society. It is only necessary to thoroughly understand their doctrine to see this resemblance, which is merely apparent, instantly vanish. According to them, it is true that power depends for its first organization on those whom it will soon command; but once constituted, it is independent of them in its exercise within the limits inherent in the form of government. Society, in reality, is not the source of the authority with which it invests its elect: it is only the channel. If it has the right to determine the form and to choose the subject, it is also obliged to make use of this right, and to arm the power instituted by it with the full prerogatives necessary for the maintenance of order.