FROM THE FRENCH OF THE COMTE DE BREDA.
“There are laws for the society of ants and of bees; how could any one suppose that there are none for human society, and that it is left to the chance of inventing them?”—De Bonald.
I.—THE MODERN STATE.
Never before was liberty so much talked about; never before was the very idea of it so utterly lost. Tyrants have been destroyed, it is said. This is a false assertion it may be (or rather, is it not certain?) that it has become more difficult for a sovereign to govern tyrannically, but tyranny is not dead—quite the contrary.
All unlimited power is, of its own nature, tyrannical. Now, it is such a power that the modern state desires to wield. The state is held up to us as the supreme arbiter of good and evil; and, if we believe its defenders, it cannot err, its laws being in every case, and at all times, binding.
People have banished God from the government of human society; but they have made to themselves a new god, despotic and blind, without hearing and without voice, whose power knows how to reach its slaves as well in the temple as in the public places, as well in the palace as in the humblest cot.
What is there, indeed, more divine than not to do wrong? God alone, speaking to the human conscience, either directly or by his representatives, is the infallible judge of good and evil. No human power whatsoever can declare all that emanates from it to be necessarily right without usurping the place of God, and declaring itself the sovereign master of the soul as well as of the body. The last refuge of the slaves of antiquity—the human conscience—would no longer exist for the people of modern times, if it were true that every law is binding from the mere fact of its promulgation. Hence the modern state, but lately so boastful, has begun to waver and to doubt its own powers. It encounters two principal obstacles, as unlike in their form as in their origin.
On one hand it beholds Catholics, sustained by their knowledge of law, its origin and its essence, resisting passively, and preparing themselves to submit to persecutions without even shrinking. On the other it meets, in these our days, the most formidable insurrections. There are multitudes, blind as the state representatives—but excusable, inasmuch as their rebellion is against an authority which owes its sway only to caprice or theory—who reply thus to power: “We are as good as you; you have no right over us other than that of brute force; we will endeavor to oppose you with a strength equal to yours; and when we shall have gained the victory, we will make new laws and new constitutions, wherein all that you call lawful shall be called unlawful, and all that you consider crime shall be deemed virtue.”
If it were true that law could spring only from the human will, these madmen would be reasonable in the extreme. Thus the state is powerless against them. It drags on an uncertain existence, constantly threatened with the most terrible social wars, and enjoying a momentary peace only on condition of never laying down arms. Modern armies are standing ones; the modern police have become veritable armies, and they sleep neither day nor night. At this price do our states exist, trade, grow rich, and become satisfied with themselves.
These constant commotions are not alone the vengeance of the living God disowned and outraged; they are also the inevitable consequence of that extremity of pride and folly which has induced human assemblies to believe that it belongs to them to decide finally between right and wrong.