Thus we have heard S. Paul tell us that he who resists power resists the order of God, and draws damnation on his head. This sentence, we know, does not agree with the verdict of public opinion, as indulgent in regard to political crimes as it is severe against those which come under the head of crimes of common right.
On which side is the truth? If public power is the indispensable bulwark of individual rights, can the attempt be made to overthrow it, without, at the same time, attacking all those rights? If a man, who, during the night, forces his entrance into a house, and seeks to enrich himself to the prejudice of the legitimate possessor, is thrown into prison as a criminal unworthy of compassion, how can he merit less severe punishment who shakes the entire social edifice, to gratify his cupidity and ambition at the expense of the public peace? Nothing is clearer: in listening to the revolutionary theories in preference to the Christian doctrine, public opinion is in complete disagreement with reason.
Would to God that it was all limited to a theoretical opposition! Unfortunately, nothing is more practical than revolutionary error; as, for a century, the conclusions to which logic has led us have been but too well confirmed by experience. Nothing, then, is wanting to enable us to judge the two rival doctrines with full knowledge of the case. We have seen them at work—one for fourteen centuries, the other during the age nearest our own time; they have given their measure, and are known by their fruits. One, in semi-barbarous times, endowed France with the unity, glory, concentration of strength, and expansion which placed her in the first rank among the nations of the world; the other, in an age of advanced civilization and unheard-of material progress, heaped ruins upon ruins on our unfortunate country—religious ruin, moral ruin, social ruin, political ruin, financial ruin, military ruin—nothing remained standing when with the principle of authority the necessary foundation of society was overthrown.
And let it not be imagined that, in thus delivering the social body to the ravages of anarchy, the revolutionary principle guarantees it against the rigors of tyranny. No; it condemns it inevitably to suffer those rigors. At the same time that it disarms power with regard to the wicked passions, it arms it with an all-powerful force against the most sacred rights. Rousseau avowed it frankly; and, from the Convention to Prince Bismarck, all revolutionary governments have practised this lesson. Nothing escapes the sovereignty of the state from the moment that the state is emancipated from the authority of God. The soul of the citizen belongs to it with the same title as his body; the questions of doctrine are not more independent of its control than those of policy; the church and the school are under its jurisdiction as well as the public streets and the prison.
Since society recognizes no authority above it, and the state represents the social will, it is absolute master, it is all-powerful, it is God. It is the state that makes justice and truth, that creates rights, that is the supreme arbiter of conscience; and its omnipotence, as unlimited as fragile, leaves to the citizen but the choice between two expedients: either to bend with docility under its yoke by abdicating all moral dignity, or to overthrow it, with the certainty of seeing it replaced by an equal tyranny.
Thus the revolutionary theory, which is permanent anarchy, is at the same time organized despotism. At other periods, we have seen society, deprived of its equilibrium, oscillate between these two extremes, passing in turn from anarchy to tyranny, and from tyranny to anarchy. Thanks to revolutionary progress, we can enjoy simultaneously the advantages of these two states, and taste the vexations of despotism, without escaping the agitations of anarchy. Since the proclamation of the pretended liberal principles, we have seen disappear the liberties which, under the most absolute systems, were considered as inviolable. Provincial and communal franchises, the rights of the father over his children, of the proprietor over his possessions, of the testator over his estate—all have been grasped by the iron hand of the state. It has broken all counterbalancing influences, and those that it has not completely annihilated only subsist during its good pleasure.
How different is the theory of power, regarded by the light of Christian principle! Instituted for the protection of rights and the repression of injustice, it extends its jurisdiction only by the means necessary for attaining its end. As soon as it would leave that sphere, it becomes an usurper. Its power is limited in every sense by divine law and by the pre-existing rights of the subjects; for, instead of the revolutionary theory that the state creates the rights of private individuals, it is Christian doctrine that the rights of individuals incapable of defending themselves rendered necessary the creation of the state.
According to the first, society is everything, the individual nothing; according to the second, the individual alone has immortal destinies, and civil society is but a temporary means to facilitate the accomplishment of those destinies. The least of the subjects has, then, the right to oppose his conscience as a brazen wall against the unjust will of a despot; and, if this protestation is not heeded, another voice will soon be heard which will resound to the extremities of the universe—the voice of the incorruptible defender of justice, and the protector of oppressed weakness; of him whom God has placed on the earth to speak in his name, to promulgate his law, and to recall alike princes and people to the respect of justice.
It is not necessary to give further proof of the doctrine we have endeavored to explain. There is not one of our readers who will not instantly understand the principle whose restoration we have declared indispensable for putting an end to the fatal reign of the Revolution. We were not wrong in giving it the name of principle, as from it flow all the laws of political order, at the same time that itself is immediately derived from the very idea of that order. It is, then, necessary, universal, and absolute; it extends to all times, all forms of government, all degrees of civilization. At once political and religious, rational and revealed, it belongs to universal ethics, and is part of the traditional dogma. He who denies it will be condemned by the church as a heretic, and will be disowned by reason, as both a rebel against evidence, and guilty of an attack on the essential laws of social order.