presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can do, or say that a king cannot do this or that; but rest in that which is the king's revealed will in his law. 79. The theory of Louis XIV. The following extract is taken from a treatise prepared by Bossuet, the preceptor of the son of Louis XIV, for the purpose of giving him a proper idea of the position and responsibilities of kingship : We have already seen that all power is of God. The ruler, adds St. Paul, is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." Rulers then act as the ministers of God and as his lieutenants on earth. It is through them that God exercises his empire. Think ye "to withstand the kingdom of the Lord in the hand of the sons of David?" 2 Consequently, as we have seen, the royal throne is not the throne of a man, but the throne of God himself. Moreover, that no one may assume that the Israelites were peculiar in having kings over them who were established by God, note what is said in Ecclesiasticus: "God has given to every people its ruler, and Israel is manifestly reserved to him." " He therefore governs all peoples and gives them their kings, although he governed Israel in a more intimate and obvious manner. It appears from all this that the person of the king is sacred, and that to attack him in any way is sacrilege. . . . Kings should be guarded as holy things, and whosoever neglects to protect them is worthy of death. . . . The prince need render account of his acts to no one. "I counsel thee to keep the king's commandment, and that in regard of the oath of God. Be not hasty to go out of his sight: stand not on an evil thing, for he doeth whatsoever pleaseth him. Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him, What doest thou? Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing." Without this absolute authority the king could neither do good nor repress evil. . . . Finally, let us put together the things so great and so august which we have said about royal authority. Behold an immense people united in a single person; behold this holy power, paternal and absolute; behold the secret cause which governs the whole body of the State, contained in a single head: you see the image of God in the king. 1 Romans xiii, 1-7. 2 Chronicles xiii, 8. 8 Ecclesiasticus xvii, 14-15. V. THE SOCIAL-CONTRACT THEORY 80. The "Leviathan" of Hobbes. The following extracts show Hobbes's idea as to the nature of the contract in which the state originated : For the laws of nature, as justice, equity, modesty, mercy, and, in some, doing to others, as we would be done to, of themselves, without the terror of some power, to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural passions, that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge, and the like, and covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all. . . . A commonwealth is said to be instituted, when a multitude of men do agree, and covenant, every one, with every one, that to whatsoever man, or assembly of men, shall be given by the major part, the right to present the person of them all, that is to say, to be their representative; every one, as well he that voted for it, as he that voted against it, shall authorize all the actions and judgments, of that man, or assembly of men, in the same manner, as if they were his own, to the end, to live peaceably amongst themselves, and be protected against other men. . . . Because the right of bearing the person of them all, is given to him they make sovereign, by covenant only of one to another, and not of him to any of them; there can happen no breach of covenant on the part of the sovereign; and consequently none of his subjects, by any pretense of forfeiture, can be freed from his subjection. 81. The "Two Treatises of Government" of Locke. Locke, writing to confute Filmer's "Patriarcha," and to uphold the accession of William III, makes his theory the support of constitutional monarchy: To understand political power aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature; without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. . . . Whenever therefore any number of men are so united into one society, as to quit every one his executive power of the law of nature, and to resign it to the public, there and there only is a political, or civil society. . . . Hence it is evident that absolute monarchy, which by some men is counted the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil government at all. . . . The majority having, as has been shown, upon men's first uniting into society, the whole power of the community naturally in them, may employ all that power in making laws for the community from time to time, and executing those laws by officers of their own appointing. 82. The "Social Contract" of Rousseau. The following extracts indicate Rousseau's idea of the social contract, of the nature of government, and of popular sovereignty: and Since no man has any natural authority over his fellow men, since force is not the source of right, conventions remain as the basis of all lawful authority among men. Now, as men cannot create any new forces, but only combine and direct those that exist, they have no other means of self-preservation than to form by aggregation a sum of forces which may overcome the resistance, to put them in action by a single motive power, and to make them work in concert. This sum of forces can be produced only by the combination of many. . . "To find a form of association which may defend and protect with the whole force of the community the person and property of every associate, and by means of which each, coalescing with all, may nevertheless obey only himself, and remain as free as before." Such is the fundamental problem of which the social contract furnishes the solution. . . If then we set aside what is not of the essence of the social contract, we shall find that it is reducible to the following terms: "Each of us puts in common his person and his whole power under the supreme direction of the general will, and in return we receive every member as an indivisible part of the whole." But the body politic or sovereign, deriving its existence only from the contract, can never bind itself, even to others, in anything that derogates from the original act, such as alienation of some portion of itself, or submission to another sovereign. To violate the act by which it exists would be to annihilate itself, and what is nothing produces nothing... It follows from what precedes, that the general will is always right and always tends to the public advantage. The public force, then, requires a suitable agent to concentrate it and put it in action according to the directions of the general will, to serve as a means of communication between the state and the sovereign, to effect in some manner in the public person what the union of soul and body effects in a man. This is, in the State, the function of government, improperly confounded with the sovereign of which it is only the minister. . . It is not sufficient that the assembled people should have once fixed the constitution of the state by giving their sanction to a body of laws. . . . Besides the extraordinary assemblies which unforeseen events may require, it is necessary that there should be fixed and periodical ones which nothing can abolish or prorogue; so that, on the appointed day, the people are rightfully convoked by the law, without needing for that purpose any formal summons. So soon as the people are lawfully assembled as a sovereign body, the whole jurisdiction of the government ceases, the executive power is suspended, and the person of the meanest citizen is as sacred and inviolable as that of the first magistrate, because where the represented are, there is no longer any representative. VI. THE ORGANIC THEORY 83. Society as an organism. Spencer states the analogy between the organization and functions of society and of the living organism as follows: The reasons for asserting that the permanent relations among the parts of a society are analogous to the permanent relations among the parts of a living body, we have now to consider. . . . Compared with things we call inanimate, living bodies and societies so conspicuously exhibit augmentation of mass, that we may fairly regard this as characterizing them both. . . ... It is also a character of social bodies, as of living bodies, that while they increase in size they increase in structure. . . . This community will be more fully appreciated on observing that progressive differentiation of structures is accompanied by progressive differentiation of functions. Evolution establishes in them both, not differences simply, but definitely-connected differences - differences such that each makes the others possible. . . . How the combined actions of mutually-dependent parts constitute life of the whole, and how there hence results a parallelism between social life and animal life, we see still more clearly on learning that the life of every visible organism is constituted by the lives of units too minute to be seen by the unaided eye. The relation between the lives of the units and the life of the aggregate, has a further character common to the two cases. By a catastrophe the life of the aggregate may be destroyed without immediately destroying the lives of all its units; while, on the other hand, if no catastrophe abridges it, the life of the aggregate is far longer than the lives of its units. . . In both cases, too, the mutually-dependent functions of the various divisions, being severally made up of the actions of many units, it results that these units dying one by one, are replaced without the function in which they share being sensibly affected. . . . Hence arises in the social organism, as in the individual organism, a life of the whole quite unlike the lives of the units; though it is a life produced by them. . . Societies, like living bodies, begin as germs-originate from masses which are extremely minute in comparison with the masses some of them eventually reach. . . The growths of individual and social organisms are allied in another respect. In each case size augments by two processes, which go on sometimes separately, sometimes together. There is increase by simple multiplication of units, causing enlargement of the group; there is increase by union of groups, and again by union of groups of groups. Thus the increasing mutual dependence of parts, which both kinds of organisms display as they evolve, necessitates a further series of remarkable parallelisms. Coöperation being in either case impossible without appliances by which the coöperating parts shall have their actions adjusted, it inevitably happens that in the body politic, as in the living body, there arises a regulating system; and within itself this differentiates as the sets of organs evolve. The coöperation most urgent from the outset is that required for dealing with environing enemies and prey. Hence the first regulating center, individual and social, is initiated as a means to this coöperation; and its development progresses with the activity of this coöperation. . . . ... To this chief regulating system, controlling the organs which carry on outer actions, there is, in either case, added during the progress of evolution, a regulating system for the inner organs carrying on sustentation; and this gradually establishes itself as independent. . . And then the third or distributing system, which, though necessarily arising after the others, is indispensable to the considerable development of them, eventually gets a regulating apparatus peculiar to itself. 84. The organic nature of the state. Bluntschli considers the state as an organism of a higher nature than that of other living beings. |