But the “immortal principles” have changed all that, according to Sganarelle; so their work, in its final analysis, results in a disorder without name.
The external disorder is visible and pretty generally acknowledged; but the moral disorder passes unperceived. By means of equality on the one hand, and of the secularization of the law on the other, they arrive at this frightful result: for example, that regicide and parricide are, in justice, but ordinary crimes; if, moreover, regicide profits the people, it is worthy of eulogy. Sacrilege is nothing more than a superstitious fiction. In fine, respect being no longer possible nor even reasonable, according to the prediction of Burke,[70] “the laws have no other guardian than terror, … and in perspective, from our point of view, we see but scaffolds,” or courts-martial, which amount to the same thing.
IX.—CONSEQUENCES OF THE SECULARIZATION OF LAW.
How often do we not hear it said that almost all our misfortunes, and, above all, our inability to repair our losses, come from the little respect we have for the law! This statement, which has become almost trite, indicates most frequently a strange wandering. After having destroyed respect for persons, is it not absurd to claim it for their works? But they have done more: they have denied the mission of a legislator. The secularization of the law—that is to say, the denial of a divine sanction applied to law—has no other meaning. Legislators being no longer the mandataries of God, or not wishing to be such, now speak only in virtue of their own lights, and have no real commission. By what title, then, would you have us respect them? Every one is at liberty to prefer his own lights and to believe that he would have done better.
I hear the reply: “It is to the interest of all that order should reign, were it but materially, and the law is the principal means of maintaining order.” You may hence conclude that it would be more advantageous to see the laws obeyed; but a motive of interest is not a motive of respect, and there is a certain class of individuals who may gain by the disorder. No, you will have the right to claim respect for the law only when you shall have rendered the law truly respectable; and to do this you must prove that you have the mission to make the law, even were you the élite of our statesmen and doctors of the law, and much more if you are but a collection of the most uncultivated tax-payers in the world.
Knowledge is something; it is something also to represent real and considerable interests; and I do not deny the relative importance of the elements of which legislative bodies are composed. But nothing of all this can supply the place of a commission; and you will have that only when you shall have consented, as legislators, to acknowledge the existence of God, to submit yourselves to his laws, and to conform your own thereto.
People have but a very inadequate idea of the disastrous consequences which, one day or other, may ensue from the secularization of law. Until now the only danger of which they have dreamed is that with which extreme revolution menaces us.
This is a danger so imminent, so undisguised, that every one sees it; and some have ended by understanding that without a return to God society is destined to fall. Nay, more, the Assembly now sitting at Versailles has made an act of faith by ordering public prayers; and this first step has caused hope to revive in the hearts of men of good-will. But it is not, perhaps, inopportune to draw the attention of serious men to another phase of the question.
What would happen if modern law should go so far as to enjoin a crime upon Christians? The hypothesis is not purely imaginary; and although, happily, thanks to Heaven, it has not yet come to pass, there is a whole party which threatens to reach this extreme. In other countries there has been something like a beginning of its realization. I would like to speak of the school law and the avowed project of imposing a compulsory and lay education. We know what is meant by lay in such a case; and experience proves that the state schools are often entrusted to men whose avowed intention is to bring up the children in infidelity. What would happen if such a law were passed, which supposes that everywhere, at the same time, parents would be compelled to put their children in imminent danger of losing their faith? The Catholic Church is very explicit in her doctrine on the obligation of obeying even a bad government; she orders that useless, unjust, and even culpable laws be borne with, so long as this can be done without exposing one’s self to commit a sin. Neither plunder nor the danger of death excuses revolt in her eyes. But in this case do we understand to what we would be reduced? To resist passively, and to allow one’s self to be punished by fines, by prison, by torture, or by death, would not remedy the evil; the soul of the child remains without defence, and the father is responsible for it. This kind of persecution is, then, more serious in its consequences, and may lead to deeper troubles, than even the direct persecution, which might consist, for example, in exacting apostasy from adults. In this last case the martyr bears all, and the first Christians have shown us the way; but here the torments of the parents cannot save the children, and the parents cannot abandon them; whatever becomes of the body, the soul must be guarded until death.