Someone cites St. Robert Bellarmine.
CHAPTER VI.
The Same Inference is Drawn from the Efficient Cause
The fourth argument is taken from the efficient cause. For it is certain that political power is of God, from Whom proceeds nothing that is not good and lawful. St. Augustine proves this.61 For the Wisdom of God proclaims, “By Me kings reign.”62 And below, “By Me princes rule.”63 And, “The God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, and strength, etc.”64 And, “Thy dwelling shall be with cattle and with wild beasts, and thou shalt eat grass as an ox, and shalt be wet with the dew of heaven; and seven times shall pass over thee, till thou know that the most High ruleth over the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will.”65
But in this place other matters should be noted. First, political power considered in general, not descending in particular to Monarchy, Aristocracy, or Democracy, comes directly from God alone; for this follows of necessity from the nature of man, since that nature comes from Him Who made it; besides, this power derives from the natural law, since it does not depend upon the consent of men; for, willing or unwilling, they must be ruled over by some one, unless they wish the human race to perish, which is against a primary instinct of nature. But natural law is Divine law, therefore, government was instituted by Divine law, and this seems to be the correct meaning of St. Paul when he says, “He that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.”66
Note, secondly, that this power resides, as in its subject, immediately in the whole state, for this power is by Divine law, but Divine law gives this power to no particular man, therefore Divine law gives this power to the collected body. Furthermore, in the absence of positive law, there is no good reason why, in a multitude of equals, one rather than another should dominate. Therefore, power belongs to the collected body. Finally, human society ought to be a perfect State, therefore, it should have the power to preserve itself, hence, to punish disturbers of the peace, etc.
Note, in the third place, that, by the same natural law, this power is delegated by the multitude to one or several, for the State cannot of itself exercise this power, therefore, it is held to delegate it to some individual, or to several, and this authority of rulers considered thus in general is both by natural law and by Divine law, nor could the entire human race assembled together decree the opposite, that is, that there should be neither rulers nor leaders.
Note, in the fourth place, that individual forms of government in specific instances derive from the law of nations, not from the natural law, for, as is evident, it depends on the consent of the people to decide whether kings, or consuls, or other magistrates are to be established in authority over them; and, if there be legitimate cause, the people can change a kingdom into an aristocracy, or an aristocracy into a democracy, and vice versa, as we read was done in Rome.
Note, in the fifth place, that it follows from what has been said that this power in specific instances comes indeed from God, but through the medium of human wisdom and choice, as do all other things which pertain to the law of nations. For the law of nations is a sort of conclusion drawn from the natural law by human reason;67 from which are inferred two differences between the political and the Ecclesiastical power, one in view of the subject, for political power resides in the people, and Ecclesiastical power in the individual, as it were immediately in the subject (on whom it devolves); the other difference is in view of the efficient cause, because political power considered in general is by Divine law, but considered in particular it is by the law of nations. Ecclesiastical power, however, considered from every point of view, is by Divine law, and immediately from God.
To which Mr. Larison responds:
I am well aware that some theologians have advanced a view contrary to that of Bonald. It should be noted that Bonald and Bellarmine are in agreement that the source of all political sovereignty is God. Sir Robert Filmer made it a point to specifically reject Cardinal Bellarmine’s arguments as part of his defense of monarchy in his Patriarcha. He was being polemical in his approach to Bellarmine, because he took Bellarmine’s position as a demonstration of the inherent hostility to monarchy in Catholicism. Bonald, a very serious Catholic, shows that such a view is false. Having taken care of those little details, let me see if I can answer Scholastic’s objections.
To turn to Bellarmine’s writings above, let me respond first to this: “Note, secondly, that this power resides, as in its subject, immediately in the whole state, for this power is by Divine law, but Divine law gives this power to no particular man, therefore Divine law gives this power to the collected body.” Why does Divine law give this power to no particular man? That may be true, but why is it necessarily so? Note that Bellarmine has to hurry to make the distinction between ecclesiastical and political orders, because he immediately sees the potentially subversive and presbyterian conclusions that might be drawn from his theory of consent, if it were applied to the Church. The question I have for Bellarmine and Scholastic is this: why does political sovereignty follow a different set of principles than when God bestows authority on particular churchmen?
What does Bellarmine mean when he refers to the “whole state”? A monarchist might understand the state and the monarch to be identical, which almost immediately dismisses his conclusion. If the state here means all of the governing institutions, then this still does not identify the state with the “collected body.” If the state means, as I assume it must, the entire polity, I see little reason why sovereignty would have to devolve and diffuse throughout the entire polity if it is not designated to any particular man.
Institutions and laws–which must have been made by some particular sovereign or sovereigns at some time in the past–are the persistence and continuing manifestation of past sovereignty. Sovereignty could continue to reside in these until a particular man or a group of men took up the task of governing. It need never devolve to the level of the subjects, and one would be hard-pressed to find an example when this has happened.
This all still leaves Bonald’s basic objection unanswered: how can subjects be sovereign, and if they are sovereign, who then obeys the laws the sovereign makes? In theory, the sovereign people are not bound to obey any law. At the very least, the claim that the people are sovereign introduces a serious confusion into the political order.
It might perhaps be theoretically possible that sovereignty would diffuse to the entire polity first, but when has it ever happened? That is not an idle question. If the theory of consent were true, then we should have real examples of when it has happened, since regimes have been changing for millennia. Yet sovereignty has never actually devolved down to the level of every person in a polity. Even mass voting of the kind we find in the world today is not really the diffusion of sovereignty of this type, except in the case of referenda, where direct democracy does actually occur. Otherwise, voting for a candidate is simply the selection of which person will wield a sovereignty that “the people” do not possess. Properly speaking, political participation itself is not really sovereignty, though it may be an act of consent to what the selected sovereign does. There was never a time in the past when a whole polity ceded its sovereignty to a theoretically representative ruler, and there has not been a time since when a whole polity has withdrawn that ancient consent.
To take the example of Rome, which Bellarmine invokes, a particular man founded it (according to the legends recorded by Livy), and set up a monarchy, which persisted until the leading senatorial families abolished the monarchy and assumed control themselves. This control persisted until such time as one among them became the supreme ruler after defeating his rivals. At no time were “the people” deciding anything. Their consent, or lack thereof, was relevant, but it was not decisive, and “the people” were not sovereign. The patrician families allowed plebeians to participate in government to a limited extent, but at no time did a change in government occur because of popular initiative, much less could anyone confuse plebeian powers with popular sovereignty. Even those leading political figures who may have acted in what they regarded to be the interests of the plebeians, such as a Marius or Caesar, were nonetheless aristocrats wielding authority themselves. Except for the office of tribune, the plebeians had essentially no say, much less the ultimate power, in the affairs of the state. The state and the people were not synonymous, and even today when this identity is theoretically accepted as the official doctrine it is still not true. This is not just a practical reality of government (i.e., that some elite must always govern), but a reality that disproves any and all theories of consent or power derived from the people.
Bellarmine also says: “Furthermore, in the absence of positive law, there is no good reason why, in a multitude of equals, one rather than another should dominate.” There is rarely an absence of positive law concerning this matter, but let’s leave that aside for the moment. I might ask where such a “multitude of equals” has ever existed. How are they equal? Not in political or martial talents–some will excel others in these. Their excellence in political arts would seem to provide a “good reason” for their dominance. All are not equal in wisdom or virtue or intelligence. There are plenty of “good reasons” why some should be rulers or leaders rather than others. Even if sovereignty did somehow devolve to the entire polity, how often has it happened that this polity (even allowing for the traditional exclusionary rules about who actually belongs to a polity) has actually chosen its leader? One might cite ancient German tribes in time of war–which is obviously an exceptional situation–or ancient Athens, but even this selection of leaders by the leading men of a community has been relatively unusual before the modern age. It is hard to understand how natural law could require something that has failed to obtain in virtually every polity in history, including more than a few Christian polities (which have the best chance of being in accord with natural law of any, I would think).
But I would also insist on remembering that Bonald here is discussing sovereignty primarily in terms of the actual power to rule and make laws–even in Athens, those tribes or any current democratic republic this sovereignty does not, and could not, reside in the people. This is clear in the quote. An extension of this is that “the people” do not form the government in some primordial time, nor is it necessary for them to choose their governors (though there is nothing in Bonald’s quote that necessarily rejects this–he addresses the problems of republics and democracies elsewhere).
When has popular sovereignty ever really existed? It sounds nice in a way, but so do many falsehoods. In an interregnum or in a transition from one regime to another, the leading men of the major families, or a senate or a council of nobles would be the ones to decide the future of the government. Changes in government, even our own, have never occurred because “the people” withdrew their consent from the existing authority and created their own. Changes occur because men already in or near positions of power alter their relationship with the existing authority, and then present subjects with a new authority to which they then submit themselves. Their consent, such as it is, is nothing other than their submission to a different set of governors. In America, some of “the people” actually chose the individuals who govern them, but this is just a practical convention. It does not demonstrate that sovereignty derives from the people.
In fact, the sovereignty of the rebel legislatures and Continental Congress, whence our own government originally comes, was simply seized by the men who made up these bodies. At best, according to the rebels, their right to seize this power stemmed from English constitutional law, which is to say that the sovereignty claimed by the rebels of 1776 derived from concessions extracted from the English sovereign by Parliament and/or the nobility. If we were to grant the legality of the rebellion, even then we would have to say that it was legal only because of a sovereign act of a past monarch, whose authority never really ascended from “the people.” In the case of Charles I (Petition of Right of 1628), he claimed his authority to be by the grace of God, and in the case of William III (Bill of Rights of 1689) the most that anyone could say about him is that he possessed his authority through inheritance and the authority of Parliament. The people simply don’t enter into it, even when parliamentarians may become very serious and claim to represent “the people.”
Submission to an authority is the sign of consent, even if it is only tacit and grudging, and consent includes, at the very least, this obedience to an authority. In this sense, one might speak of popular consent to a regime without implying that “the people” created or chose the regime. They may either accept it, or reject it, which is rebellion. There are conditions, I agree, where rebellion may be justified in a time of genuinely unjust rule, but this is not “the people” reclaiming their delegated sovereignty. It is the rebellion of subjects who are demanding redress of the injustices committed against them. Most historical rebellions prior to the democratic age invoked the king as their protector, because they did not suppose that they possessed any right to rule or govern, and in many monarchical states liberal revolutionaries did not actually topple their monarchs but beseeched them to grant subjects a constitution and representative government. It is even conceivable that a province or area might rebel against one ruler and then adhere itself to another ruler, or have its own ruler, but at no time is sovereignty really possessed by “the people.”
Looking at it another way, one might grant that republican or democratic regimes do rely on the principle of popular sovereignty, even if it is never realised in fact, and that these regimes are maladaptive and dysfunctional regimes precisely because they base themselves on a false foundation.
Someone else asks Mr. Larison to reconcile his quote from De Bonald with a passage from the Declaration of Independence. The first reply:
To answer your question more directly, Jon, I think the War for Independence could be defended as the legitimate rebellion of subjects against what they deemed to be tyrannical government, and that they were claiming only those rights due them as English subjects. Ignoring for the moment that I don’t believe their rights were really violated (certainly not to the point where it could be called tyranny), I would then say that the War for Independence was justified under the English constitution, provided that we recognise that popular sovereignty has nothing to do with it. I regard the theory that government is based on the consent of the governed to be an unfortunate deformation of the traditional right to rebel against tyranny. It serves as a valuable safeguard against abusive government, but I do not regard it as an entirely true statement about the origin or legitimacy of government.
I refer you to David Hume’s view of this theory: “And nothing is a clearer proof, that a theory of this kind is erroneous, than to find, that it leads to paradoxes, repugnant to the common sentiments of mankind, and to the practice and opinion of all nations and all ages. The doctrine, which founds all lawful government on an original contract, or consent of its people, is plainly of this kind…” Or here he argues again: “I maintain, that human affairs will never admit of this consent; seldom of the appearance of it. But that conquest or usurpation, that is, in plain terms, force, by dissolving the ancient governments, is the origin of almost all the new ones, which were ever established in the world. And that in the few cases, where consent may seem to have taken place, it was commonly so irregular, so confined, or so much intermixed either with fraud or violence, that it cannot have any great authority.”
and:
One final follow-up: the Declaration refers to the purpose of government as securing “natural rights,” which introduces another problem. It is true that government is established to secure the necessities of society and life, so there is some basic agreement with Jefferson about the things to be protected (I would have kept property in the document instead of ‘pursuit of happiness’). However, I don’t know that I would call any of those things “natural rights,” but that is a debate for another day.
Incidentally, if life, liberty and ‘pursuit of happiness’ are the things the government must protect, lest it lose the consent of the governed, then the rebellion really had no serious basis. No fundamental liberty was threatened, the government was not endangering the lives of the colonists through either oppression or negligence, and their lawful commerce and way of life was not noticeably impeded in any meaningful way. I grant that they perceived it very differently, but that does not change that they were really greatly overreacting.
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