I
| II | III
| IV
BOOK IV
1. THAT
THE GENERAL WILL IS INDESTRUCTIBLE
AS long as several men in assembly regard themselves as a single body,
they have only a single will which is concerned with their common preservation
and general well-being. In this case, all the springs of the State are
vigorous and simple and its rules clear and luminous; there are no embroilments
or conflicts of interests; the common good is everywhere clearly apparent,
and only good sense is needed to perceive it. Peace, unity and equality
are the enemies of political subtleties. Men who are upright and simple
are difficult to deceive because of their simplicity; lures and ingenious
pretexts fail to impose upon them, and they are not even subtle enough
to be dupes. When, among the happiest people in the world, bands of
peasants are seen regulating affairs of State under an oak, and always
acting wisely, can we help scorning the ingenious methods of other nations,
which make themselves illustrious and wretched with so much art and
mystery?
A State
so governed needs very few laws; and, as it becomes necessary to issue
new ones, the necessity is universally seen. The first man to propose
them merely says what all have already felt, and there is no question
of factions or intrigues or eloquence in order to secure the passage
into law of what every one has already decided to do, as soon as he
is sure that the rest will act with him.
Theorists
are led into error because, seeing only States that have been from the
beginning wrongly constituted, they are struck by the impossibility
of applying such a policy to them. They make great game of all the absurdities
a clever rascal or an insinuating speaker might get the people of Paris
or London to believe. They do not know that Cromwell would have been
put to "the bells" by the people of Berne, and the Duc de
Beaufort on the treadmill by the Genevese.
But when
the social bond begins to be relaxed and the State to grow weak, when
particular interests begin to make themselves felt and the smaller societies
to exercise an influence over the larger, the common interest changes
and finds opponents: opinion is no longer unanimous; the general will
ceases to be the will of all; contradictory views and debates arise;
and the best advice is not taken without question.
Finally,
when the State, on the eve of ruin, maintains only a vain, illusory
and formal existence, when in every heart the social bond is broken,
and the meanest interest brazenly lays hold of the sacred name of "public
good," the general will becomes mute: all men, guided by secret
motives, no more give their views as citizens than if the State had
never been; and iniquitous decrees directed solely to private interest
get passed under the name of laws.
Does it
follow from this that the general will is exterminated or corrupted?
Not at all: it is always constant, unalterable and pure; but it is subordinated
to other wills which encroach upon its sphere. Each man, in detaching
his interest from the common interest, sees clearly that he cannot entirely
separate them; but his share in the public mishaps seems to him negligible
beside the exclusive good he aims at making his own. Apart from this
particular good, he wills the general good in his own interest, as strongly
as any one else. Even in selling his vote for money, he does not extinguish
in himself the general will, but only eludes it. The fault he commits
is that of changing the state of the question, and answering something
different from what he is asked. Instead of saying, by his vote, "It
is to the advantage of the State," he says, "It is of advantage
to this or that man or party that this or that view should prevail."
Thus the law of public order in assemblies is not so much to maintain
in them the general will as to secure that the question be always put
to it, and the answer always given by it.
I could
here set down many reflections on the simple right of voting in every
act of Sovereignty — a right which no one can take from the citizens
— and also on the right of stating views, making proposals, dividing
and discussing, which the government is always most careful to leave
solely to its members, but this important subject would need a treatise
to itself, and it is impossible to say everything in a single work.
2. VOTING
IT may be seen, from the last chapter, that the way in which general
business is managed may give a clear enough indication of the actual
state of morals and the health of the body politic. The more concert
reigns in the assemblies, that is, the nearer opinion approaches unanimity,
the greater is the dominance of the general will. On the other hand,
long debates, dissensions and tumult proclaim the ascendancy of particular
interests and the decline of the State.
This seems
less clear when two or more orders enter into the constitution, as patricians
and plebeians did at Rome; for quarrels between these two orders often
disturbed the comitia, even in the best days of the Republic. But the
exception is rather apparent than real; for then, through the defect
that is inherent in the body politic, there were, so to speak, two States
in one, and what is not true of the two together is true of either separately.
Indeed, even in the most stormy times, the plebiscita of the people,
when the Senate did not interfere with them, always went through quietly
and by large majorities. The citizens having but one interest, the people
had but a single will.
At the
other extremity of the circle, unanimity recurs; this is the case when
the citizens, having fallen into servitude, have lost both liberty and
will. Fear and flattery then change votes into acclamation; deliberation
ceases, and only worship or malediction is left. Such was the vile manner
in which the senate expressed its views under the Emperors. It did so
sometimes with absurd precautions. Tacitus observes that, under Otho,
the senators, while they heaped curses on Vitellius, contrived at the
same time to make a deafening noise, in order that, should he ever become
their master, he might not know what each of them had said.
On these
various considerations depend the rules by which the methods of counting
votes and comparing opinions should be regulated, according as the general
will is more or less easy to discover, and the State more or less in
its decline.
There is
but one law which, from its nature, needs unanimous consent. This is
the social compact; for civil association is the most voluntary of all
acts. Every man being born free and his own master, no one, under any
pretext whatsoever, can make any man subject without his consent. To
decide that the son of a slave is born a slave is to decide that he
is not born a man.
If then
there are opponents when the social compact is made, their opposition
does not invalidate the contract, but merely prevents them from being
included in it. They are foreigners among citizens. When the State is
instituted, residence constitutes consent; to dwell within its territory
is to submit to the Sovereign.34
Apart from
this primitive contract, the vote of the majority always binds all the
rest. This follows from the contract itself. But it is asked how a man
can be both free and forced to conform to wills that are not his own.
How are the opponents at once free and subject to laws they have not
agreed to?
I retort
that the question is wrongly put. The citizen gives his consent to all
the laws, including those which are passed in spite of his opposition,
and even those which punish him when he dares to break any of them.
The constant will of all the members of the State is the general will;
by virtue of it they are citizens and free.35 When in the popular assembly
a law is proposed, what the people is asked is not exactly whether it
approves or rejects the proposal, but whether it is in conformity with
the general will, which is their will. Each man, in giving his vote,
states his opinion on that point; and the general will is found by counting
votes. When therefore the opinion that is contrary to my own prevails,
this proves neither more nor less than that I was mistaken, and that
what I thought to be the general will was not so. If my particular opinion
had carried the day I should have achieved the opposite of what was
my will; and it is in that case that I should not have been free.
This presupposes,
indeed, that all the qualities of the general will still reside in the
majority: when they cease to do so, whatever side a man may take, liberty
is no longer possible.
In my earlier
demonstration of how particular wills are substituted for the general
will in public deliberation, I have adequately pointed out the practicable
methods of avoiding this abuse; and I shall have more to say of them
later on. I have also given the principles for determining the proportional
number of votes for declaring that will. A difference of one vote destroys
equality; a single opponent destroys unanimity; but between equality
and unanimity, there are several grades of unequal division, at each
of which this proportion may be fixed in accordance with the condition
and the needs of the body politic.
There are
two general rules that may serve to regulate this relation. First, the
more grave and important the questions discussed, the nearer should
the opinion that is to prevail approach unanimity. Secondly, the more
the matter in hand calls for speed, the smaller the prescribed difference
in the numbers of votes may be allowed to become: where an instant decision
has to be reached, a majority of one vote should be enough. The first
of these two rules seems more in harmony with the laws, and the second
with practical affairs. In any case, it is the combination of them that
gives the best proportions for determining the majority necessary.
3. ELECTIONS
IN the elections of the prince and the magistrates, which are, as I
have said, complex acts, there are two possible methods of procedure,
choice and lot. Both have been employed in various republics, and a
highly complicated mixture of the two still survives in the election
of the Doge at Venice.
"Election
by lot," says Montesquieu, "is democratic in nature."E3
I agree that it is so; but in what sense? "The lot," he goes
on, "is a way of making choice that is unfair to nobody; it leaves
each citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country." These are
not reasons.
If we bear
in mind that the election of rulers is a function of government, and
not of Sovereignty, we shall see why the lot is the method more natural
to democracy, in which the administration is better in proportion as
the number of its acts is small.
In every
real democracy, magistracy is not an advantage, but a burdensome charge
which cannot justly be imposed on one individual rather than another.
The law alone can lay the charge on him on whom the lot falls. For,
the conditions being then the same for all, and the choice not depending
on any human will, there is no particular application to alter the universality
of the law.
In an aristocracy,
the prince chooses the prince, the government is preserved by itself,
and voting is rightly ordered.
The instance
of the election of the Doge of Venice confirms, instead of destroying,
this distinction; the mixed form suits a mixed government. For it is
an error to take the government of Venice for a real aristocracy. If
the people has no share in the government, the nobility is itself the
people. A host of poor Barnabotes never gets near any magistracy, and
its nobility consists merely in the empty title of Excellency, and in
the right to sit in the Great Council. As this Great Council is as numerous
as our General Council at Geneva, its illustrious members have no more
privileges than our plain citizens. It is indisputable that, apart from
the extreme disparity between the two republics, the bourgeoisie of
Geneva is exactly equivalent to the patriciate of Venice; our natives
and inhabitants correspond to the townsmen and the people of Venice;
our peasants correspond to the subjects on the mainland; and, however
that republic be regarded, if its size be left out of account, its government
is no more aristocratic than our own. The whole difference is that,
having no life-ruler, we do not, like Venice, need to use the lot.
Election
by lot would have few disadvantages in a real democracy, in which, as
equality would everywhere exist in morals and talents as well as in
principles and fortunes, it would become almost a matter of indifference
who was chosen. But I have already said that a real democracy is only
an ideal.
When choice
and lot are combined, positions that require special talents, such as
military posts, should be filled by the former; the latter does for
cases, such as judicial offices, in which good sense, justice, and integrity
are enough, because in a State that is well constituted, these qualities
are common to all the citizens.
Neither
lot nor vote has any place in monarchical government. The monarch being
by right sole prince and only magistrate, the choice of his lieutenants
belongs to none but him. When the Abbé de Saint-Pierre proposed
that the Councils of the King of France should be multiplied, and their
members elected by ballot, he did not see that he was proposing to change
the form of government.
I should
now speak of the methods of giving and counting opinions in the assembly
of the people; but perhaps an account of this aspect of the Roman constitution
will more forcibly illustrate all the rules I could lay down. It is
worth the while of a judicious reader to follow in some detail the working
of public and private affairs in a Council consisting of two hundred
thousand men.
4. THE
ROMAN COMITIA
WE are without well-certified records of the first period of Rome's
existence; it even appears very probable that most of the stories told
about it are fables; indeed, generally speaking, the most instructive
part of the history of peoples, that which deals with their foundation,
is what we have least of. Experience teaches us every day what causes
lead to the revolutions of empires; but, as no new peoples are now formed,
we have almost nothing beyond conjecture to go upon in explaining how
they were created.
The customs
we find established show at least that these customs had an origin.
The traditions that go back to those origins, that have the greatest
authorities behind them, and that are confirmed by the strongest proofs,
should pass for the most certain. These are the rules I have tried to
follow in inquiring how the freest and most powerful people on earth
exercised its supreme power.
After the
foundation of Rome, the new-born republic, that is, the army of its
founder, composed of Albans, Sabines and foreigners, was divided into
three classes, which, from this division, took the name of tribes. Each
of these tribes was subdivided into ten curiæ, and each curia
into decuriæ, headed by leaders called curiones and decuriones.
Besides
this, out of each tribe was taken a body of one hundred Equites or Knights,
called a century, which shows that these divisions, being unnecessary
in a town, were at first merely military. But an instinct for greatness
seems to have led the little township of Rome to provide itself in advance
with a political system suitable for the capital of the world.
Out of
this original division an awkward situation soon arose. The tribes of
the Albans (Ramnenses) and the Sabines (Tatienses) remained always in
the same condition, while that of the foreigners (Luceres) continually
grew as more and more foreigners came to live at Rome, so that it soon
surpassed the others in strength. Servius remedied this dangerous fault
by changing the principle of cleavage, and substituting for the racial
division, which he abolished, a new one based on the quarter of the
town inhabited by each tribe. Instead of three tribes he created four,
each occupying and named after one of the hills of Rome. Thus, while
redressing the inequality of the moment, he also provided for the future;
and in order that the division might be one of persons as well as localities,
he forbade the inhabitants of one quarter to migrate to another, and
so prevented the mingling of the races.
He also
doubled the three old centuries of Knights and added twelve more, still
keeping the old names, and by this simple and prudent method, succeeded
in making a distinction between the body of Knights, and the people,
without a murmur from the latter.
To the
four urban tribes Servius added fifteen others called rural tribes,
because they consisted of those who lived in the country, divided into
fifteen cantons. Subsequently, fifteen more were created, and the Roman
people finally found itself divided into thirty-five tribes, as it remained
down to the end of the Republic.
The distinction
between urban and rural tribes had one effect which is worth mention,
both because it is without parallel elsewhere, and because to it Rome
owed the preservation of her morality and the enlargement of her empire.
We should have expected that the urban tribes would soon monopolise
power and honours, and lose no time in bringing the rural tribes into
disrepute; but what happened was exactly the reverse. The taste of the
early Romans for country life is well known. This taste they owed to
their wise founder, who made rural and military labours go along with
liberty, and, so to speak, relegated to the town arts, crafts, intrigue,
fortune and slavery.
Since therefore
all Rome's most illustrious citizens lived in the fields and tilled
the earth, men grew used to seeking there alone the mainstays of the
republic. This condition, being that of the best patricians, was honoured
by all men; the simple and laborious life of the villager was preferred
to the slothful and idle life of the bourgeoisie of Rome; and he who,
in the town, would have been but a wretched proletarian, became, as
a labourer in the fields, a respected citizen. Not without reason, says
Varro, did our great-souled ancestors establish in the village the nursery
of the sturdy and valiant men who defended them in time of war and provided
for their sustenance in time of peace. Pliny states positively that
the country tribes were honoured because of the men of whom they were
composed; while cowards men wished to dishonour were transferred, as
a public disgrace, to the town tribes. The Sabine Appius Claudius, when
he had come to settle in Rome, was loaded with honours and enrolled
in a rural tribe, which subsequently took his family name. Lastly, freedmen
always entered the urban, arid never the rural, tribes: nor is there
a single example, throughout the Republic, of a freedman, though he
had become a citizen, reaching any magistracy.
This was
an excellent rule; but it was carried so far that in the end it led
to a change and certainly to an abuse in the political system.
First the
censors, after having for a long time claimed the right of transferring
citizens arbitrarily from one tribe to another, allowed most persons
to enrol themselves in whatever tribe they pleased. This permission
certainly did no good, and further robbed the censorship of one of its
greatest resources. Moreover, as the great and powerful all got themselves
enrolled in the country tribes, while the freedmen who had become citizens
remained with the populace in the town tribes, both soon ceased to have
any local or territorial meaning, and all were so confused that the
members of one could not be told from those of another except by the
registers; so that the idea of the word tribe became personal instead
of real, or rather came to be little more than a chimera.
It happened
in addition that the town tribes, being more on the spot, were often
the stronger in the comitia and sold the State to those who stooped
to buy the votes of the rabble composing them.
As the
founder had set up ten curiæ in each tribe, the whole Roman people,
which was then contained within the walls, consisted of thirty curiæ,
each with its temples, its gods, its officers, its priests and its festivals,
which were called compitalia and corresponded to the paganalia, held
in later times by the rural tribes.
When Servius
made his new division, as the thirty curiæ could not be shared
equally between his four tribes, and as he was unwilling to interfere
with them, they became a further division of the inhabitants of Rome,
quite independent of the tribes: but in the case of the rural tribes
and their members there was no question of curiæ, as the tribes
had then become a purely civil institution, and, a new system of levying
troops having been introduced, the military divisions of Romulus were
superfluous. Thus, although every citizen was enrolled in a tribe, there
were very many who were not members of a curia.
Servius
made yet a third division, quite distinct from the two we have mentioned,
which became, in its effects, the most important of all. He distributed
the whole Roman people into six classes, distinguished neither by place
nor by person, but by wealth; the first classes included the rich, the
last the poor, and those between persons of moderate means. These six
classes were subdivided into one hundred and ninety-three other bodies,
called centuries, which were so divided that the first class alone comprised
more than half of them, while the last comprised only one. Thus the
class that had the smallest number of members had the largest number
of centuries, and the whole of the last class only counted as a single
subdivision, although it alone included more than half the inhabitants
of Rome.
In order
that the people might have the less insight into the results of this
arrangement, Servius tried to give it a military tone: in the second
class he inserted two centuries of armourers, and in the fourth two
of makers of instruments of war: in each class, except the last, he
distinguished young and old, that is, those who were under an obligation
to bear arms and those whose age gave them legal exemption. It was this
distinction, rather than that of wealth, which required frequent repetition
of the census or counting. Lastly, he ordered that the assembly should
be held in the Campus Martius, and that all who were of age to serve
should come there armed.
The reason
for his not making in the last class also the division of young and
old was that the populace, of whom it was composed, was not given the
right to bear arms for its country: a man had to possess a hearth to
acquire the right to defend it, and of all the troops of beggars who
to-day lend lustre to the armies of kings, there is perhaps not one
who would not have been driven with scorn out of a Roman cohort, at
a time when soldiers were the defenders of liberty.
In this
last class, however, proletarians were distinguished from capite censi.
The former, not quite reduced to nothing, at least gave the State citizens,
and sometimes, when the need was pressing, even soldiers. Those who
had nothing at all, and could be numbered only by counting heads, were
regarded as of absolutely no account, and Marius was the first who stooped
to enrol them.
Without
deciding now whether this third arrangement was good or bad in itself,
I think I may assert that it could have been made practicable only by
the simple morals, the disinterestedness, the liking for agriculture
and the scorn for commerce and for love of gain which characterised
the early Romans. Where is the modern people among whom consuming greed,
unrest, intrigue, continual removals, and perpetual changes of fortune,
could let such a system last for twenty years without turning the State
upside down? We must indeed observe that morality and the censorship,
being stronger than this institution, corrected its defects at Rome,
and that the rich man found himself degraded to the class of the poor
for making too much display of his riches.
From all
this it is easy to understand why only five classes are almost always
mentioned, though there were really six. The sixth, as it furnished
neither soldiers to the army nor votes in the Campus Martius,36 and
was almost without function in the State, was seldom regarded as of
any account.
These were
the various ways in which the Roman people was divided. Let us now see
the effect on the assemblies. When lawfully summoned, these were called
comitia: they were usually held in the public square at Rome or in the
Campus Martius, and were distinguished as comitia curiata, comitia centuriata,
and comitia tributa, according to the form under which they were convoked.
The comitia curiata were founded by Romulus; the centuriata by Servius;
and the tributa by the tribunes of the people. No law received its sanction
and no magistrate was elected, save in the comitia; and as every citizen
was enrolled in a curia, a century, or a tribe, it follows that no citizen
was excluded from the right of voting, and that the Roman people was
truly sovereign both de jure and de facto.
For the
comitia to be lawfully assembled, and for their acts to have the force
of law, three conditions were necessary. First, the body or magistrate
convoking them had to possess the necessary authority; secondly, the
assembly had to be held on a day allowed by law; and thirdly, the auguries
had to be favourable.
The reason
for the first regulation needs no explanation; the second is a matter
of policy. Thus, the comitia might not be held on festivals or market-days,
when the country-folk, coming to Rome on business, had not time to spend
the day in the public square. By means of the third, the senate held
in check the proud and restive people, and meetly restrained the ardour
of seditious tribunes, who, however, found more than one way of escaping
this hindrance.
Laws and
the election of rulers were not the only questions submitted to the
judgment of the comitia: as the Roman people had taken on itself the
most important functions of government, it may be said that the lot
of Europe was regulated in its assemblies. The variety of their objects
gave rise to the various forms these took, according to the matters
on which they had to pronounce.
In order
to judge of these various forms, it is enough to compare them. Romulus,
when he set up curia, had in view the checking of the senate by the
people, and of the people by the senate, while maintaining his ascendancy
over both alike. He therefore gave the people, by means of this assembly,
all the authority of numbers to balance that of power and riches, which
he left to the patricians. But, after the spirit of monarchy, he left
all the same a greater advantage to the patricians in the influence
of their clients on the majority of votes. This excellent institution
of patron and client was a masterpiece of statesmanship and humanity
without which the patriciate, being flagrantly in contradiction to the
republican spirit, could not have survived. Rome alone has the honour
of having given to the world this great example, which never led to
any abuse, and yet has never been followed.
As the
assemblies by curiæ persisted under the kings till the time of
Servius, and the reign of the later Tarquin was not regarded as legitimate,
royal laws were called generally leges curiatæ.
Under the
Republic, the curiæ, still confined to the four urban tribes,
and including only the populace of Rome, suited neither the senate,
which led the patricians, nor the tribunes, who, though plebeians, were
at the head of the well-to-do citizens. They therefore fell into disrepute,
and their degradation was such, that thirty lictors used to assemble
and do what the comitia curiata should have done.
The division
by centuries was so favourable to the aristocracy that it is hard to
see at first how the senate ever failed to carry the day in the comitia
bearing their name, by which the consuls, the censors and the other
curule magistrates were elected. Indeed, of the hundred and ninety-three
centuries into which the six classes of the whole Roman people were
divided, the first class contained ninety-eight; and, as voting went
solely by centuries, this class alone had a majority over all the rest.
When all these centuries were in agreement, the rest of the votes were
not even taken; the decision of the smallest number passed for that
of the multitude, and it may be said that, in the comitia centuriata,
decisions were regulated far more by depth of purses than by the number
of votes.
But this
extreme authority was modified in two ways. First, the tribunes as a
rule, and always a great number of plebeians, belonged to the class
of the rich, and so counterbalanced the influence of the patricians
in the first class.
The second
way was this. Instead of causing the centuries to vote throughout in
order, which would have meant beginning always with the first, the Romans
always chose one by lot which proceeded alone to the election; after
this all the centuries were summoned another day according to their
rank, and the same election was repeated, and as a rule confirmed. Thus
the authority of example was taken away from rank, and given to the
lot on a democratic principle.
From this
custom resulted a further advantage. The citizens from the country had
time, between the two elections, to inform themselves of the merits
of the candidate who had been provisionally nominated, and did not have
to vote without knowledge of the case. But, under the pretext of hastening
matters, the abolition of this custom was achieved, and both elections
were held on the same day.
The comitia
tributa were properly the council of the Roman people. They were convoked
by the tribunes alone; at them the tribunes were elected and passed
their plebiscita. The senate not only had no standing in them, but even
no right to be present; and the senators, being forced to obey laws
on which they could not vote, were in this respect less free than the
meanest citizens. This injustice was altogether ill-conceived, and was
alone enough to invalidate the decrees of a body to which all its members
were not admitted. Had all the patricians attended the comitia by virtue
of the right they had as citizens, they would not, as mere private individuals,
have had any considerable influence on a vote reckoned by counting heads,
where the meanest proletarian was as good as the princeps senatus.
It may
be seen, therefore, that besides the order which was achieved by these
various ways of distributing so great a people and taking its votes,
the various methods were not reducible to forms indifferent in themselves,
but the results of each were relative to the objects which caused it
to be preferred.
Without
going here into further details, we may gather from what has been said
above that the comitia tributa were the most favourable to popular government,
and the comitia centuriata to aristocracy. The comitia curiata, in which
the populace of Rome formed the majority, being fitted only to further
tyranny and evil designs, naturally fell into disrepute, and even seditious
persons abstained from using a method which too clearly revealed their
projects. It is indisputable that the whole majesty of the Roman people
lay solely in the comitia centuriata, which alone included all; for
the comitia curiata excluded the rural tribes, and the comitia tributa
the senate and the patricians.
As for
the method of taking the vote, it was among the ancient Romans as simple
as their morals, although not so simple as at Sparta. Each man declared
his vote aloud, and a clerk duly wrote it down; the majority in each
tribe determined the vote of the tribe, the majority of the tribes that
of the people, and so with curiæ and centuries. This custom was
good as long as honesty was triumphant among the citizens, and each
man was ashamed to vote publicly in favour of an unjust proposal or
an unworthy subject; but, when the people grew corrupt and votes were
bought, it was fitting that voting should be secret in order that purchasers
might be restrained by mistrust, and rogues be given the means of not
being traitors.
I know
that Cicero attacks this change, and attributes partly to it the ruin
of the Republic. But though I feel the weight Cicero's authority must
carry on such a point, I cannot agree with him; I hold, on the contrary,
that, for want of enough such changes, the destruction of the State
must be hastened. Just as the regimen of health does not suit the sick,
we should not wish to govern a people that has been corrupted by the
laws that a good people requires. There is no better proof of this rule
than the long life of the Republic of Venice, of which the shadow still
exists, solely because its laws are suitable only for men who are wicked.
The citizens
were provided, therefore, with tablets by means of which each man could
vote without any one knowing how he voted: new methods were also introduced
for collecting the tablets, for counting voices, for comparing numbers,
etc.; but all these precautions did not prevent the good faith of the
officers charged with these functions37 from being often suspect. Finally,
to prevent intrigues and trafficking in votes, edicts were issued; but
their very number proves how useless they were.
Towards
the close of the Republic, it was often necessary to have recourse to
extraordinary expedients in order to supplement the inadequacy of the
laws. Sometimes miracles were supposed; but this method, while it might
impose on the people, could not impose on those who governed. Sometimes
an assembly was hastily called together, before the candidates had time
to form their factions: sometimes a whole sitting was occupied with
talk, when it was seen that the people had been won over and was on
the point of taking up a wrong position. But in the end ambition eluded
all attempts to check it; and the most incredible fact of all is that,
in the midst of all these abuses, the vast people, thanks to its ancient
regulations, never ceased to elect magistrates, to pass laws, to judge
cases, and to carry through business both public and private, almost
as easily as the senate itself could have done.
5. THE
TRIBUNATE
WHEN an exact proportion cannot be established between the constituent
parts of the State, or when causes that cannot be removed continually
alter the relation of one part to another, recourse is had to the institution
of a peculiar magistracy that enters into no corporate unity with the
rest. This restores to each term its right relation to the others, and
provides a link or middle term between either prince and people, or
prince and Sovereign, or, if necessary, both at once.
This body,
which I shall call the tribunate, is the preserver of the laws and of
the legislative power. It serves sometimes to protect the Sovereign
against the government, as the tribunes of the people did at Rome; sometimes
to uphold the government against the people, as the Council of Ten now
does at Venice; and sometimes to maintain the balance between the two,
as the Ephors did at Sparta.
The tribunate
is not a constituent part of the city, and should have no share in either
legislative or executive power; but this very fact makes its own power
the greater: for, while it can do nothing, it can prevent anything from
being done. It is more sacred and more revered, as the defender of the
laws, than the prince who executes them, or than the Sovereign which
ordains them. This was seen very clearly at Rome, when the proud patricians,
for all their scorn of the people, were forced to bow before one of
its officers, who had neither auspices nor jurisdiction.
The tribunate,
wisely tempered, is the strongest support a good constitution can have;
but if its strength is ever so little excessive, it upsets the whole
State. Weakness, on the other hand, is not natural to it: provided it
is something, it is never less than it should be.
It degenerates
into tyranny when it usurps the executive power, which it should confine
itself to restraining, and when it tries to dispense with the laws,
which it should confine itself to protecting. The immense power of the
Ephors, harmless as long as Sparta preserved its morality, hastened
corruption when once it had begun. The blood of Agis, slaughtered by
these tyrants, was avenged by his successor; the crime and the punishment
of the Ephors alike hastened the destruction of the republic, and after
Cleomenes Sparta ceased to be of any account. Rome perished in the same
way: the excessive power of the tribunes, which they had usurped by
degrees, finally served, with the help of laws made to secure liberty,
as a safeguard for the emperors who destroyed it. As for the Venetian
Council of Ten, it is a tribunal of blood, an object of horror to patricians
and people alike; and, so far from giving a lofty protection to the
laws, it does nothing, now they have become degraded, but strike in
the darkness blows of which no one dare take note.
The tribunate,
like the government, grows weak as the number of its members increases.
When the tribunes of the Roman people, who first numbered only two,
and then five, wished to double that number, the senate let them do
so, in the confidence that it could use one to check another, as indeed
it afterwards freely did.
The best
method of preventing usurpations by so formidable a body, though no
government has yet made use of it, would be not to make it permanent,
but to regulate the periods during which it should remain in abeyance.
These intervals, which should not be long enough to give abuses time
to grow strong, may be so fixed by law that they can easily be shortened
at need by extraordinary commissions.
This method
seems to me to have no disadvantages, because, as I have said, the tribunate,
which forms no part of the constitution, can be removed without the
constitution being affected. It seems to be also efficacious, because
a newly restored magistrate starts not with the power his predecessor
exercised, but with that which the law allows him.
6. THE
DICTATORSHIP
THE inflexibility of the laws, which prevents them from adapting themselves
to circumstances, may, in certain cases, render them disastrous, and
make them bring about, at a time of crisis, the ruin of the State. The
order and slowness of the forms they enjoin require a space of time
which circumstances sometimes withhold. A thousand cases against which
the legislator has made no provision may present themselves, and it
is a highly necessary part of foresight to be conscious that everything
cannot be foreseen.
It is wrong
therefore to wish to make political institutions so strong as to render
it impossible to suspend their operation. Even Sparta allowed its laws
to lapse.
However,
none but the greatest dangers can counterbalance that of changing the
public order, and the sacred power of the laws should never be arrested
save when the existence of the country is at stake. In these rare and
obvious cases, provision is made for the public security by a particular
act entrusting it to him who is most worthy. This commitment may be
carried out in either of two ways, according to the nature of the danger.
If increasing
the activity of the government is a sufficient remedy, power is concentrated
in the hands of one or two of its members: in this case the change is
not in the authority of the laws, but only in the form of administering
them. If, on the other hand, the peril is of such a kind that the paraphernalia
of the laws are an obstacle to their preservation, the method is to
nominate a supreme ruler, who shall silence all the laws and suspend
for a moment the sovereign authority. In such a case, there is no doubt
about the general will, and it is clear that the people's first intention
is that the State shall not perish. Thus the suspension of the legislative
authority is in no sense its abolition; the magistrate who silences
it cannot make it speak; he dominates it, but cannot represent it. He
can do anything, except make laws.
The first
method was used by the Roman senate when, in a consecrated formula,
it charged the consuls to provide for the safety of the Republic. The
second was employed when one of the two consuls nominated a dictator:38
a custom Rome borrowed from Alba.
During
the first period of the Republic, recourse was very often had to the
dictatorship, because the State had not yet a firm enough basis to be
able to maintain itself by the strength of its constitution alone. As
the state of morality then made superfluous many of the precautions
which would have been necessary at other times, there was no fear that
a dictator would abuse his authority, or try to keep it beyond his term
of office. On the contrary, so much power appeared to be burdensome
to him who was clothed with it, and he made all speed to lay it down,
as if taking the place of the laws had been too troublesome and too
perilous a position to retain.
It is therefore
the danger not of its abuse, but of its cheapening, that makes me attack
the indiscreet use of this supreme magistracy in the earliest times.
For as long as it was freely employed at elections, dedications and
purely formal functions, there was danger of its becoming less formidable
in time of need, and of men growing accustomed to regarding as empty
a title that was used only on occasions of empty ceremonial.
Towards
the end of the Republic, the Romans, having grown more circumspect,
were as unreasonably sparing in the use of the dictatorship as they
had formerly been lavish. It is easy to see that their fears were without
foundation, that the weakness of the capital secured it against the
magistrates who were in its midst; that a dictator might, in certain
cases, defend the public liberty, but could never endanger it; and that
the chains of Rome would be forged, not in Rome itself, but in her armies.
The weak resistance offered by Marius to Sulla, and by Pompey to Cæsar,
clearly showed what was to be expected from authority at home against
force from abroad.
This misconception
led the Romans to make great mistakes; such, for example, as the failure
to nominate a dictator in the Catilinarian conspiracy. For, as only
the city itself, with at most some province in Italy, was concerned,
the unlimited authority the laws gave to the dictator would have enabled
him to make short work of the conspiracy, which was, in fact, stifled
only by a combination of lucky chances human prudence had no right to
expect.
Instead,
the senate contented itself with entrusting its whole power to the consuls,
so that Cicero, in order to take effective action, was compelled on
a capital point to exceed his powers; and if, in the first transports
of joy, his conduct was approved, he was justly called, later on, to
account for the blood of citizens spilt in violation of the laws. Such
a reproach could never have been levelled at a dictator. But the consul's
eloquence carried the day; and he himself, Roman though he was, loved
his own glory better than his country, and sought, not so much the most
lawful and secure means of saving the State, as to get for himself the
whole honour of having done so.39 He was therefore justly honoured as
the liberator of Rome, and also justly punished as a law-breaker. However
brilliant his recall may have been, it was undoubtedly an act of pardon.
However
this important trust be conferred, it is important that its duration
should be fixed at a very brief period, incapable of being ever prolonged.
In the crises which lead to its adoption, the State is either soon lost,
or soon saved; and, the present need passed, the dictatorship becomes
either tyrannical or idle. At Rome, where dictators held office for
six months only, most of them abdicated before their time was up. If
their term had been longer, they might well have tried to prolong it
still further, as the decemvirs did when chosen for a year. The dictator
had only time to provide against the need that had caused him to be
chosen; he had none to think of further projects.
7. THE
CENSORSHIP
AS the law is the declaration of the general will, the censorship is
the declaration of the public judgment: public opinion is the form of
law which the censor administers, and, like the prince, only applies
to particular cases.
The censorial
tribunal, so far from being the arbiter of the people's opinion, only
declares it, and, as soon as the two part company, its decisions are
null and void.
It is useless
to distinguish the morality of a nation from the objects of its esteem;
both depend on the same principle and are necessarily indistinguishable.
There is no people on earth the choice of whose pleasures is not decided
by opinion rather than nature. Right men's opinions, and their morality
will purge itself. Men always love what is good or what they find good;
it is in judging what is good that they go wrong. This judgment, therefore,
is what must be regulated. He who judges of morality judges of honour;
and he who judges of honour finds his law in opinion.
The opinions
of a people are derived from its constitution; although the law does
not regulate morality, it is legislation that gives it birth. When legislation
grows weak, morality degenerates; but in such cases the judgment of
the censors will not do what the force of the laws has failed to effect.
From this
it follows that the censorship may be useful for the preservation of
morality, but can never be so for its restoration. Set up censors while
the laws are vigorous; as soon as they have lost their vigour, all hope
is gone; no legitimate power can retain force when the laws have lost
it.
The censorship
upholds morality by preventing opinion from growing corrupt, by preserving
its rectitude by means of wise applications, and sometimes even by fixing
it when it is still uncertain. The employment of seconds in duels, which
had been carried to wild extremes in the kingdom of France, was done
away with merely by these words in a royal edict: "As for those
who are cowards enough to call upon seconds." This judgment, in
anticipating that of the public, suddenly decided it. But when edicts
from the same source tried to pronounce duelling itself an act of cowardice,
as indeed it is, then, since common opinion does not regard it as such,
the public took no notice of a decision on a point on which its mind
was already made up.
I have
stated elsewhere40 that as public opinion is not subject to any constraint,
there need be no trace of it in the tribunal set up to represent it.
It is impossible to admire too much the art with which this resource,
which we moderns have wholly lost, was employed by the Romans, and still
more by the Lacedæmonians.
A man of
bad morals having made a good proposal in the Spartan Council, the Ephors
neglected it, and caused the same proposal to be made by a virtuous
citizen. What an honour for the one, and what a disgrace for the other,
without praise or blame of either! Certain drunkards from Samos41 polluted
the tribunal of the Ephors: the next day, a public edict gave Samians
permission to be filthy. An actual punishment would not have been so
severe as such an impunity. When Sparta has pronounced on what is or
is not right, Greece makes no appeal from her judgments.
8. CIVIL
RELIGION
AT first men had no kings save the gods, and no government save theocracy.
They reasoned like Caligula, and, at that period, reasoned aright. It
takes a long time for feeling so to change that men can make up their
minds to take their equals as masters, in the hope that they will profit
by doing so.
From the
mere fact that God was set over every political society, it followed
that there were as many gods as peoples. Two peoples that were strangers
the one to the other, and almost always enemies, could not long recognise
the same master: two armies giving battle could not obey the same leader.
National divisions thus led to polytheism, and this in turn gave rise
to theological and civil intolerance, which, as we shall see hereafter,
are by nature the same.
The fancy
the Greeks had for rediscovering their gods among the barbarians arose
from the way they had of regarding themselves as the natural Sovereigns
of such peoples. But there is nothing so absurd as the erudition which
in our days identifies and confuses gods of different nations. As if
Moloch, Saturn, and Chronos could be the same god! As if the Phoenician
Baal, the Greek Zeus, and the Latin Jupiter could be the same! As if
there could still be anything common to imaginary beings with different
names!
If it is
asked how in pagan times, where each State had its cult and its gods,
there were no wars of religion, I answer that it was precisely because
each State, having its own cult as well as its own government, made
no distinction between its gods and its laws. Political war was also
theological; the provinces of the gods were, so to speak, fixed by the
boundaries of nations. The god of one people had no right over another.
The gods of the pagans were not jealous gods; they shared among themselves
the empire of the world: even Moses and the Hebrews sometimes lent themselves
to this view by speaking of the God of Israel. It is true, they regarded
as powerless the gods of the Canaanites, a proscribed people condemned
to destruction, whose place they were to take; but remember how they
spoke of the divisions of the neighbouring peoples they were forbidden
to attack! "Is not the possession of what belongs to your god Chamos
lawfully your due?" said Jephthah to the Ammonites. "We have
the same title to the lands our conquering God has made his own."42
Here, I think, there is a recognition that the rights of Chamos and
those of the God of Israel are of the same nature.
But when
the Jews, being subject to the Kings of Babylon, and, subsequently,
to those of Syria, still obstinately refused to recognise any god save
their own, their refusal was regarded as rebellion against their conqueror,
and drew down on them the persecutions we read of in their history,
which are without parallel till the coming of Christianity.43
Every religion,
therefore, being attached solely to the laws of the State which prescribed
it, there was no way of converting a people except by enslaving it,
and there could be no missionaries save conquerors. The obligation to
change cults being the law to which the vanquished yielded, it was necessary
to be victorious before suggesting such a change. So far from men fighting
for the gods, the gods, as in Homer, fought for men; each asked his
god for victory, and repayed him with new altars. The Romans, before
taking a city, summoned its gods to quit it; and, in leaving the Tarentines
their outraged gods, they regarded them as subject to their own and
compelled to do them homage. They left the vanquished their gods as
they left them their laws. A wreath to the Jupiter of the Capitol was
often the only tribute they imposed.
Finally,
when, along with their empire, the Romans had spread their cult and
their gods, and had themselves often adopted those of the vanquished,
by granting to both alike the rights of the city, the peoples of that
vast empire insensibly found themselves with multitudes of gods and
cults, everywhere almost the same; and thus paganism throughout the
known world finally came to be one and the same religion.
It was
in these circumstances that Jesus came to set up on earth a spiritual
kingdom, which, by separating the theological from the political system,
made the State no longer one, and brought about the internal divisions
which have never ceased to trouble Christian peoples. As the new idea
of a kingdom of the other world could never have occurred to pagans,
they always looked on the Christians as really rebels, who, while feigning
to submit, were only waiting for the chance to make themselves independent
and their masters, and to usurp by guile the authority they pretended
in their weakness to respect. This was the cause of the persecutions.
What the
pagans had feared took place. Then everything changed its aspect: the
humble Christians changed their language, and soon this so-called kingdom
of the other world turned, under a visible leader, into the most violent
of earthly despotisms.
However,
as there have always been a prince and civil laws, this double power
and conflict of jurisdiction have made all good polity impossible in
Christian States; and men have never succeeded in finding out whether
they were bound to obey the master or the priest.
Several
peoples, however, even in Europe and its neighbourhood, have desired
without success to preserve or restore the old system: but the spirit
of Christianity has everywhere prevailed. The sacred cult has always
remained or again become independent of the Sovereign, and there has
been no necessary link between it and the body of the State. Mahomet
held very sane views, and linked his political system well together;
and, as long as the form of his government continued under the caliphs
who succeeded him, that government was indeed one, and so far good.
But the Arabs, having grown prosperous, lettered, civilised, slack and
cowardly, were conquered by barbarians: the division between the two
powers began again; and, although it is less apparent among the Mahometans
than among the Christians, it none the less exists, especially in the
sect of Ali, and there are States, such as Persia, where it is continually
making itself felt.
Among us,
the Kings of England have made themselves heads of the Church, and the
Czars have done the same: but this title has made them less its masters
than its ministers; they have gained not so much the right to change
it, as the power to maintain it: they are not its legislators, but only
its princes. Wherever the clergy is a corporate body,44 it is master
and legislator in its own country. There are thus two powers, two Sovereigns,
in England and in Russia, as well as elsewhere.
Of all
Christian writers, the philosopher Hobbes alone has seen the evil and
how to remedy it, and has dared to propose the reunion of the two heads
of the eagle, and the restoration throughout of political unity, without
which no State or government will ever be rightly constituted. But he
should have seen that the masterful spirit of Christianity is incompatible
with his system, and that the priestly interest would always be stronger
than that of the State. It is not so much what is false and terrible
in his political theory, as what is just and true, that has drawn down
hatred on it.45
I believe
that if the study of history were developed from this point of view,
it would be easy to refute the contrary opinions of Bayle and Warburton,
one of whom holds that religion can be of no use to the body politic,
while the other, on the contrary, maintains that Christianity is its
strongest support. We should demonstrate to the former that no State
has ever been founded without a religious basis, and to the latter,
that the law of Christianity at bottom does more harm by weakening than
good by strengthening the constitution of the State. To make myself
understood, I have only to make a little more exact the too vague ideas
of religion as relating to this subject.
Religion,
considered in relation to society, which is either general or particular,
may also be divided into two kinds: the religion of man, and that of
the citizen. The first, which has neither temples, nor altars, nor rites,
and is confined to the purely internal cult of the supreme God and the
eternal obligations of morality, is the religion of the Gospel pure
and simple, the true theism, what may be called natural divine right
or law. The other, which is codified in a single country, gives it its
gods, its own tutelary patrons; it has its dogmas, its rites, and its
external cult prescribed by law; outside the single nation that follows
it, all the world is in its sight infidel, foreign and barbarous; the
duties and rights of man extend for it only as far as its own altars.
Of this kind were all the religions of early peoples, which we may define
as civil or positive divine right or law.
There is
a third sort of religion of a more singular kind, which gives men two
codes of legislation, two rulers, and two countries, renders them subject
to contradictory duties, and makes it impossible for them to be faithful
both to religion and to citizenship. Such are the religions of the Lamas
and of the Japanese, and such is Roman Christianity, which may be called
the religion of the priest. It leads to a sort of mixed and anti-social
code which has no name.
In their
political aspect, all these three kinds of religion have their defects.
The third is so clearly bad, that it is waste of time to stop to prove
it such. All that destroys social unity is worthless; all institutions
that set man in contradiction to himself are worthless.
The second
is good in that it unites the divine cult with love of the laws, and,
making country the object of the citizens' adoration, teaches them that
service done to the State is service done to its tutelary god. It is
a form of theocracy, in which there can be no pontiff save the prince,
and no priests save the magistrates. To die for one's country then becomes
martyrdom; violation of its laws, impiety; and to subject one who is
guilty to public execration is to condemn him to the anger of the gods:
Sacer estod.
On the
other hand, it is bad in that, being founded on lies and error, it deceives
men, makes them credulous and superstitious, and drowns the true cult
of the Divinity in empty ceremonial. It is bad, again, when it becomes
tyrannous and exclusive, and makes a people bloodthirsty and intolerant,
so that it breathes fire and slaughter, and regards as a sacred act
the killing of every one who does not believe in its gods. The result
is to place such a people in a natural state of war with all others,
so that its security is deeply endangered.
There remains
therefore the religion of man or Christianity — not the Christianity
of to-day, but that of the Gospel, which is entirely different. By means
of this holy, sublime, and real religion all men, being children of
one God, recognise one another as brothers, and the society that unites
them is not dissolved even at death.
But this
religion, having no particular relation to the body politic, leaves
the laws in possession of the force they have in themselves without
making any addition to it; and thus one of the great bonds that unite
society considered in severally fails to operate. Nay, more, so far
from binding the hearts of the citizens to the State, it has the effect
of taking them away from all earthly things. I know of nothing more
contrary to the social spirit.
We are
told that a people of true Christians would form the most perfect society
imaginable. I see in this supposition only one great difficulty: that
a society of true Christians would not be a society of men.
I say further
that such a society, with all its perfection, would be neither the strongest
nor the most lasting: the very fact that it was perfect would rob it
of its bond of union; the flaw that would destroy it would lie in its
very perfection.
Every one
would do his duty; the people would be law-abiding, the rulers just
and temperate; the magistrates upright and incorruptible; the soldiers
would scorn death; there would be neither vanity nor luxury. So far,
so good; but let us hear more.
Christianity
as a religion is entirely spiritual, occupied solely with heavenly things;
the country of the Christian is not of this world. He does his duty,
indeed, but does it with profound indifference to the good or ill success
of his cares. Provided he has nothing to reproach himself with, it matters
little to him whether things go well or ill here on earth. If the State
is prosperous, he hardly dares to share in the public happiness, for
fear he may grow proud of his country's glory; if the State is languishing,
he blesses the hand of God that is hard upon His people.
For the
State to be peaceable and for harmony to be maintained, all the citizens
without exception would have to be good Christians; if by ill hap there
should be a single self-seeker or hypocrite, a Catiline or a Cromwell,
for instance, he would certainly get the better of his pious compatriots.
Christian charity does not readily allow a man to think hardly of his
neighbours. As soon as, by some trick, he has discovered the art of
imposing on them and getting hold of a share in the public authority,
you have a man established in dignity; it is the will of God that he
be respected: very soon you have a power; it is God's will that it be
obeyed: and if the power is abused by him who wields it, it is the scourge
wherewith God punishes His children. There would be scruples about driving
out the usurper: public tranquillity would have to be disturbed, violence
would have to be employed, and blood spilt; all this accords ill with
Christian meekness; and after all, in this vale of sorrows, what does
it matter whether we are free men or serfs? The essential thing is to
get to heaven, and resignation is only an additional means of doing
so.
If war
breaks out with another State, the citizens march readily out to battle;
not one of them thinks of flight; they do their duty, but they have
no passion for victory; they know better how to die than how to conquer.
What does it matter whether they win or lose? Does not Providence know
better than they what is meet for them? Only think to what account a
proud, impetuous and passionate enemy could turn their stoicism! Set
over against them those generous peoples who were devoured by ardent
love of glory and of their country, imagine your Christian republic
face to face with Sparta or Rome: the pious Christians will be beaten,
crushed and destroyed, before they know where they are, or will owe
their safety only to the contempt their enemy will conceive for them.
It was to my mind a fine oath that was taken by the soldiers of Fabius,
who swore, not to conquer or die, but to come back victorious —
and kept their oath. Christians would never have taken such an oath;
they would have looked on it as tempting God.
But I am
mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually
exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its
spirit is so favourable to tyranny that it always profits by such a
régime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know
it and do not much mind: this short life counts for too little in their
eyes.
I shall
be told that Christian troops are excellent. I deny it. Show me an instance.
For my part, I know of no Christian troops. I shall be told of the Crusades.
Without disputing the valour of the Crusaders, I answer that, so far
from being Christians, they were the priests' soldiery, citizens of
the Church. They fought for their spiritual country, which the Church
had, somehow or other, made temporal. Well understood, this goes back
to paganism: as the Gospel sets up no national religion, a holy war
is impossible among Christians.
Under the
pagan emperors, the Christian soldiers were brave; every Christian writer
affirms it, and I believe it: it was a case of honourable emulation
of the pagan troops. As soon as the emperors were Christian, this emulation
no longer existed, and, when the Cross had driven out the eagle, Roman
valour wholly disappeared.
But, setting
aside political considerations, let us come back to what is right, and
settle our principles on this important point. The right which the social
compact gives the Sovereign over the subjects does not, we have seen,
exceed the limits of public expediency.46 The subjects then owe the
Sovereign an account of their opinions only to such an extent as they
matter to the community. Now, it matters very much to the community
that each citizen should have a religion. That will make him love his
duty; but the dogmas of that religion concern the State and its members
only so far as they have reference to morality and to the duties which
he who professes them is bound to do to others. Each man may have, over
and above, what opinions he pleases, without it being the Sovereign's
business to take cognisance of them; for, as the Sovereign has no authority
in the other world, whatever the lot of its subjects may be in the life
to come, that is not its business, provided they are good citizens in
this life.
There is
therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign
should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social
sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful
subject.47 While it can compel no one to believe them, it can banish
from the State whoever does not believe them — it can banish him,
not for impiety, but as an anti-social being, incapable of truly loving
the laws and justice, and of sacrificing, at need, his life to his duty.
If any one, after publicly recognising these dogmas, behaves as if he
does not believe them, let him be punished by death: he has committed
the worst of all crimes, that of lying before the law.
The dogmas
of civil religion ought to be few, simple, and exactly worded, without
explanation or commentary. The existence of a mighty, intelligent and
beneficent Divinity, possessed of foresight and providence, the life
to come, the happiness of the just, the punishment of the wicked, the
sanctity of the social contract and the laws: these are its positive
dogmas. Its negative dogmas I confine to one, intolerance, which is
a part of the cults we have rejected.
Those who
distinguish civil from theological intolerance are, to my mind, mistaken.
The two forms are inseparable. It is impossible to live at peace with
those we regard as damned; to love them would be to hate God who punishes
them: we positively must either reclaim or torment them. Wherever theological
intolerance is admitted, it must inevitably have some civil effect;48
and as soon as it has such an effect, the Sovereign is no longer Sovereign
even in the temporal sphere: thenceforce priests are the real masters,
and kings only their ministers.
Now that
there is and can be no longer an exclusive national religion, tolerance
should be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their
dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of citizenship. But whoever
dares to say: Outside the Church is no salvation, ought to be driven
from the State, unless the State is the Church, and the prince the pontiff.
Such a dogma is good only in a theocratic government; in any other,
it is fatal. The reason for which Henry IV is said to have embraced
the Roman religion ought to make every honest man leave it, and still
more any prince who knows how to reason.
9. CONCLUSION
Now that I have laid down the true principles of political right, and
tried to give the State a basis of its own to rest on, I ought next
to strengthen it by its external relations, which would include the
law of nations, commerce, the right of war and conquest, public right,
leagues, negotiations, treaties, etc. But all this forms a new subject
that is far too vast for my narrow scope. I ought throughout to have
kept to a more limited sphere.
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34. This
should of course be understood as applying to a free State; for elsewhere
family, goods, lack of a refuge, necessity, or violence may detain a
man in a country against his will; and then his dwelling there no longer
by itself implies his consent to the contract or to its violation.
35. At
Genoa, the word Liberty may be read over the front of the prisons and
on the chains of the galley-slaves. This application of the device is
good and just. It is indeed only malefactors of all estates who prevent
the citizen from being free. In the country in which all such men were
in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed.
36. I say
"in the Campus Martius" because it was there that the comitia
assembled by centuries; in its two other forms the people assembled
in the forum or elsewhere; and then the capite censi had as much influence
and authority as the foremost citizens.
37. Custodes,
diribitores, rogatores suffragiorum.
38. The
nomination was made secretly by night, as if there were something shameful
in setting a man above the laws.
39. That
is what he could not be sure of, if he proposed a dictator; for he dared
not nominate himself, and could not be certain that his colleague would
nominate him.
40. I merely
call attention in this chapter to a subject with which I have dealt
at greater length in my Letter to M. d'Alembert.
41. They
were from another island, which the delicacy of our language forbids
me to name on this occasion.
42. Nonne
ea quœ possidet Chamos deus tuus, tibi jure debentur? (Judges,
11:24.) Such is the text in the Vulgate. Father de Carrières
translates: "Do you not regard yourselves as having a right to
what your god possesses?" I do not know the force of the Hebrew
text: but I perceive that, in the Vulgate, Jephthah positively recognises
the right of the god Chamos, and that the French translator weakened
this admission by inserting an "according to you," which is
not in the Latin.
43. It
is quite clear that the Phocian War, which was called "the Sacred
War," was not a war of religion. Its object was the punishment
of acts of sacrilege, and not the conquest of unbelievers.
44. It
should be noted that the clergy find their bond of union not so much
in formal assemblies, as in the communion of Churches. Communion and
excommunication are the social compact of the clergy, a compact which
will always make them masters of peoples and kings. All priests who
communicate together are fellow-citizens, even if they come from opposite
ends of the earth. This invention is a masterpiece of statesmanship:
there is nothing like it among pagan priests; who have therefore never
formed a clerical corporate body.
45. See,
for instance, in a letter from Grotius to his brother (April 11, 1643),
what that learned man found to praise and to blame in the De Cive. It
is true that, with a bent for indulgence, he seems to pardon the writer
the good for the sake of the bad; but all men are not so forgiving.
46. "In
the republic," says the Marquis d'Argenson, "each man is perfectly
free in what does not harm others." This is the invariable limitation,
which it is impossible to define more exactly. I have not been able
to deny myself the pleasure of occasionally quoting from this manuscript,
though it is unknown to the public, in order to do honour to the memory
of a good and illustrious man, who had kept even in the Ministry the
heart of a good citizen, and views on the government of his country
that were sane and right.
47. Cæsar,
pleading for Catiline, tried to establish the dogma that the soul is
mortal: Cato and Cicero, in refutation, did not waste time in philosophising.
They were content to show that Cæsar spoke like a bad citizen,
and brought forward a doctrine that would have a bad effect on the State.
This, in fact, and not a problem of theology, was what the Roman senate
had to judge.
48. Marriage,
for instance, being a civil contract, has civil effects without which
society cannot even subsist. Suppose a body of clergy should claim the
sole right of permitting this act, a right which every intolerant religion
must of necessity claim, is it not clear that in establishing the authority
of the Church in this respect, it will be destroying that of the prince,
who will have thenceforth only as many subjects as the clergy choose
to allow him? Being in a position to marry or not to marry people according
to their acceptance of such and such a doctrine, their admission or
rejection of such and such a formula, their greater or less piety, the
Church alone, by the exercise of prudence and firmness, will dispose
of all inheritances, offices and citizens, and even of the State itself,
which could not subsist if it were composed entirely of bastards? But,
I shall be told, there will be appeals on the ground of abuse, summonses
and decrees; the temporalities will be seized. How sad! The clergy,
however little, I will not say courage, but sense it has, will take
no notice and go its way: it will quietly allow appeals, summonses,
decrees and seizures, and, in the end, will remain the master. It is
not, I think, a great sacrifice to give up a part, when one is sure
of securing all.
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