A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The American Republic

b >> by O. A. Brownson >> The American Republic




But American statesmen have studied the constitutions of other
states more than that of their own, and have succeeded in
obscuring the American system in the minds of the people, and
giving them in its place pure and simple democracy, which is its
false development or corruption. Under the influence of this
false development, the people were fast losing sight of the
political truth that, though the people are sovereign, it is the
organic, not the inorganic people, the territorial people, not
the people as simple population, and were beginning to assert the
absolute God-given right of the majority to govern. All the
changes made in the bosom of the States themselves have consisted
in removing all obstacles to the irresponsible will of the
majority, leaving minorities and individuals at their mercy.
This tendency to a centralized democracy had more to do with
provoking secession and rebellion than the anti-slavery
sentiments of the Northern, Central, and Western States.

The failure of secession and the triumph of the National cause,
in spite of the short-sightedness and blundering of the
Administration, have proved the vitality and strength of the
national constitution, and the greatness of the American people.
They say nothing for or against the democratic theory of our
demagogues, but every thing in favor of the American system or
constitution of government, which has found a firmer support in
American instincts than in American statesmanship. In spite of
all that had been done by theorists, radicals, and revolutionists,
no-government men, non-resistants, humanitarians, and sickly
sentimentalists to corrupt the American people in mind, heart,
and body, the native vigor of their national constitution has
enabled them to come forth triumphant from the trial. Every
American patriot has reason to be proud of his country-men, and
every American lover of freedom to be satisfied with the
institutions of his country. But there is danger that the
politicians and demagogues will ascribe the merit, not to the
real and living national constitution, but to their miserable
theories of that constitution, and labor to aggravate the several
evils and corrupt tendencies which caused the rebellion it has
cost so much to suppress. What is now wanted is, that the people,
whose instincts are right, should understand the American
constitution as it is, and so understand it as to render it
impossible for political theorists, no matter of what school or
party, to deceive them again as to its real import, or induce
them to depart from it in their political action.

A work written with temper, without passion or sectional
prejudice, in a philosophical spirit, explaining to the American
people their own national constitution, and the mutual relations
of the General government and the State governments, cannot, at
this important crisis in our affairs, be inopportune, and, if
properly executed, can hardly fail to be of real service. Such a
work is now attempted--would it were by another and abler hand--
which, imperfect as it is, may at least offer some useful
suggestions, give a right direction to political thought,
although it should fail to satisfy the mind of the reader.

This much the author may say, in favor of his own work, that it
sets forth no theory of government in general, or of the United
States in particular. The author is not a monarchist, an
aristocrat, a democrat, a feudalist, nor an advocate of what are
called mixed governments like the English, at least for his own
country; but is simply an American, devoted to the real, living,
and energizing constitution of the American republic as it is,
not as some may fancy it might be, or are striving to make it.
It is, in his judgment, what it ought to be, and he has no other
ambition than to present it as it is to the understanding and
love of his countrymen.

Perhaps simple artistic unity and propriety would require the
author to commence his essay directly with the United States; but
while the constitution of the United States is original and
peculiar, the government of the United States has necessarily
something in common with all legitimate governments, and he has
thought it best to precede his discussion of the American
republic, its constitution, tendencies, and destiny, by some
considerations on government in general. He does this because he
believes, whether rightly or not, that while the American people
have received from Providence a most truly profound and admirable
system of government, they are more or less infected with the
false theories of government which have been broached during the
last two centuries. In attempting to realize these theories,
they have already provoked or rendered practicable a rebellion
which has seriously threatened the national existence, and come
very near putting an end to the American order of civilization
itself. These theories have received already a shock in the
minds of all serious and thinking men; but the men who think are
in every nation a small minority, and it is necessary to give
these theories a public refutation, and bring back those who do
not think, as well as those who do, from the world of dreams to
the world of reality. It is hoped, therefore, that any apparent
want of artistic unity or symmetry in the essay will be pardoned
for the sake of the end the author has had in view.






CHAPTER II.

GOVERNMENT.


Man is a dependent being, and neither does nor can suffice for
himself. He lives not in himself, but lives and moves and has
his being in God. He exists, develops, and fulfils his existence
only by communion with God, through which he participates of the
divine being and life. He communes with God through the divine
creative act and the Incarnation of the Word, through his kind,
and through the material world. Communion with God through
Creation and Incarnation is religion, distinctively taken, which
binds man to God as his first cause, and carries him onward to
God as his final cause; communion through the material world is
expressed by the word property; and communion with God through
humanity is society. Religion, society, property, are the three
terms that embrace the whole of man's life, and express the
essential means and conditions of his existence, his development,
and his perfection, or the fulfilment of his existence, the
attainment of the end for which he is created.

Though society, or the communion of man with his Maker through
his kind, is not all that man needs in order to live, to grow,
to actualize the possibilities of his nature, and to attain to
his beatitude, since humanity is neither God nor the material
universe, it is yet a necessary and essential condition of his
life, his progress, and the completion of his existence. He is
born and lives in society, and can be born and live nowhere else.
It is one of the necessities of his nature. "God saw that it was
not good for man to be alone." Hence, wherever man is found he
is found in society, living in more or less strict intercourse
with his kind.

But society never does and never can exist without government of
some sort. As society is a necessity of man's nature, so is
government a necessity of society. The simplest form of society
is the family--Adam and Eve. But though Adam and Eve are in many
respects equal, and have equally important though different parts
assigned them, one or the other must be head and governor, or
they cannot form the society called family. They would be simply
two individuals of different sexes, and the family would fail for
the want of unity.

Children cannot be reared, trained, or educated without some
degree of family government, of some authority to direct,
control, restrain, or prescribe. Hence the authority of the
husband and father is recognized by the common consent of
mankind. Still more apparent is the necessity of government the
moment the family develops and grows into the tribe, and the
tribe into the nation. Hence no nation exists without
government; and we never find a savage tribe, however low or
degraded, that does not assert somewhere in the father, in the
elders, or in the tribe itself, the rude outlines or the faint
reminiscences of some sort of government, with authority to
demand obedience and to punish the refractory. Hence, as man is
nowhere found out of society, so nowhere is society found without
government.

Government is necessary: but let it be remarked by the way, that
its necessity does not grow exclusively or chiefly out of the
fact that the human race by sin has fallen from its primitive
integrity, or original righteousness. The fall asserted by
Christian theology, though often misinterpreted, and its effects
underrated or exaggerated, is a fact too sadly confirmed by
individual experience and universal history; but it is not the
cause why government is necessary, though it may be an additional
reason for demanding it. Government would have been necessary if
man had not sinned, and it is needed for the good as well as for
the bad. The law was promulgated in the Garden, while man
retained his innocence and remained in the integrity of his
nature. It exists in heaven as well as on earth, and in heaven
in its perfection. Its office is not purely repressive, to
restrain violence, to redress wrongs, and to punish the
transgressor. It has something more to do than to restrict our
natural liberty, curb our passions, and maintain justice between
man and man. Its office is positive as well as negative. It is
needed to render effective the solidarity of the individuals of a
nation, and to render the nation an organism, not a mere
organization--to combine men in one living body, and to
strengthen all with the strength of each, and each with the
strength of all--to develop, strengthen, and sustain individual
liberty, and to utilize and direct it to the promotion of the
common weal--to be a social providence, imitating in its order
and degree the action of the divine providence itself, and, while
it provides for the common good of all, to protect each, the
lowest and meanest, with the whole force and majesty of society.
It is the minister of wrath to wrong-doers, indeed, but its nature
is beneficent, and its action defines and protects the right of
property, creates and maintains a medium in which religion can
exert her supernatural energy, promotes learning, fosters science
and art, advances civilization, and contributes as a powerful
means to the fulfilment by man of the Divine purpose in his
existence. Next after religion, it is man's greatest good; and
even religion without it can do only a small portion of her work.
They wrong it who call it a necessary evil; it is a great good,
and, instead of being distrusted, hated, or resisted, except in
its abuses, it should be loved, respected, obeyed, and if need
be, defended at the cost of all earthly goods, and even of life
itself.

The nature or essence of government is to govern. A government
that does not govern, is simply no government at all. If it has
not the ability to govern and governs not, it may be an agency,
an instrument in the bands of individuals for advancing their
private interests, but it is not government. To be government it
must govern both individuals and the community. If it is a mere
machine for making prevail the will of one man, of a certain
number of men, or even of the community, it may be very effective
sometimes for good, sometimes for evil, oftenest for evil, but
government in the proper sense of the word it is not. To govern
is to direct, control, restrain, as the pilot controls and
directs his ship. It necessarily implies two terms, governor and
governed, and a real distinction between them. The denial of all
real distinction between governor and governed is an error in
politics analogous to that in philosophy or theology of denying
all real distinction between creator and creature, God and the
universe, which all the world knows is either pantheism or pure
atheism--the supreme sophism. If we make governor and governed
one and the same, we efface both terms; for there is no governor
nor governed, if the will that governs is identically the will
that is governed. To make the controller and the controlled the
same is precisely to deny all control. There must, then, if
there is government at all, be a power, force, or will that
governs, distinct from that which is governed. In those
governments in which it is held that the people govern, the
people governing do and must act in a diverse relation from the
people governed, or there is no real government.

Government is not only that which governs, but that which has the
right or authority to govern. Power without right is not
government. Governments have the right to use force at need, but
might does not make right, and not every power wielding the
physical force of a nation is to be regarded as its rightful
government. Whatever resort to physical force it may be obliged
to make, either in defence of its authority or of the rights of
the nation, the government itself lies in the moral order, and
politics is simply a branch of ethics--that branch which treats
of the rights and duties of men in their public relations, as
distinguished from their rights and duties in their private
relations.

Government being not only that which governs, but that which has
the right to govern, obedience to it becomes a moral duty, not a
mere physical necessity. The right to govern and the duty to
obey are correlatives, and the one cannot exist or be conceived
without the other. Hence loyalty is not simply an amiable
sentiment but a duty, a moral virtue. Treason is not merely a
difference in political opinion with the governing authority, but
a crime against the sovereign, and a moral wrong, therefore a sin
against God, the Founder of the moral Law. Treason, if committed
in other Countries, unhappily, has been more frequently termed by
our countrymen Patriotism and loaded with honor than branded as a
crime, the greatest of crimes, as it is, that human governments
have authority to punish. The American people have been chary of
the word loyalty, perhaps because they regard it as the
correlative of royalty; but loyalty is rather the correlative of
law, and is, in its essence, love and devotion to the sovereign
authority, however constituted or wherever lodged. It is as
necessary, as much a duty, as much a virtue in republics as in
monarchies; and nobler examples of the most devoted loyalty are
not found in the world's history than were exhibited in the
ancient Greek and Roman republics, or than have been exhibited by
both men and women in the young republic of the United States.
Loyalty is the highest, noblest, and most generous of human
virtues, and is the human element of that sublime love or charity
which the inspired Apostle tells us is the fulfilment of the law.
It has in it the principle of devotion, of self-sacrifice, and
is, of all human virtues, that which renders man the most
Godlike. There is nothing great, generous, good, or heroic of
which a truly loyal people are not capable, and nothing mean,
base, cruel, brutal, criminal, detestable, not to be expected of
a really disloyal people. Such a people no generous sentiment
can move, no love can bind. It mocks at duty, scorns virtue,
tramples on all rights, and holds no person, no thing, human or
divine, sacred or inviolable. The assertion of government as
lying in the moral order, defines civil liberty, and reconciles
it with authority. Civil liberty is freedom to do whatever one
pleases that authority permits or does not forbid. Freedom to
follow in all things one's own will or inclination, without any
civil restraint, is license, not liberty. There is no lesion to
liberty in repressing license, nor in requiring obedience to the
commands of the authority that has the right to command. Tyranny
or oppression is not in being subjected to authority, but in
being subjected to usurped authority--to a power that has no
right to command, or that commands what exceeds its right or its
authority. To say that it is contrary to liberty to be forced to
forego our own will or inclination in any case whatever, is
simply denying the right of all government, and falling into
no-governmentism. Liberty is violated only when we are required
to forego our own will or inclination by a power that has no
right to make the requisition; for we are bound to obedience as
far as authority has right to govern, and we can never have the
right to disobey a rightful command. The requisition, if made by
rightful authority, then, violates no right that we have or can
have, and where there is no violation of our rights there is no
violation of our liberty. The moral right of authority, which
involves the moral duty of obedience, presents, then, the ground
on which liberty and authority may meet in peace and operate to
the same end.

This has no resemblance to the slavish doctrine of passive
obedience, and that the resistance to power can never be lawful.
The tyrant may be lawfully resisted, for the tyrant, by force of
the word itself, is a usurper, and without authority. Abuses of
power may be resisted even by force when they become too great to
be endured, when there is no legal or regular way of redressing
them, and when there is a reasonable prospect that resistance
will prove effectual and substitute something better in their
place. But it is never lawful to resist the rightful sovereign,
for it can never be right to resist right, and the rightful
sovereign in the constitutional exercise of his power can never
be said to abuse it. Abuse is the unconstitutional or wrongful
exercise of a power rightfully held, and when it is not so
exercised there is no abuse or abuses to redress. All turns,
then, on the right of power, or its legitimacy. Whence does
government derive its right to govern? What is the origin and
ground of sovereignty? This question is fundamental and without
a true answer to it politics cannot be a science, and there can
be no scientific statesmanship. Whence, then, comes the
sovereign right to govern?





26
CHAPTER III.

ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT


Government is both a fact and a right. Its origin as a fact, is
simply a question of history; its origin as a right or authority
to govern, is a question of ethics. Whether a certain territory
and its population are a sovereign state or nation, or
not--whether the actual ruler of a country is its rightful ruler,
or not--is to be determined by the historical facts in the case;
but whence the government derives its right to govern, is a
question that can be solved only by philosophy, or, philosophy
failing, only by revelation.

Political writers, not carefully distinguishing between the fact
and the right, have invented various theories as to the origin of
government, among which may be named--
I. Government originates in the right of the father to govern his
child.
II. It originates in convention, and is a social compact.
III. It originates in the people, who, collectively taken, are
sovereign.
IV. Government springs from the spontaneous development of nature.
V. It derives its right from the immediate and express
appointment of God;--
VI. From God through the Pope, or visible head of the spiritual
society;--
VII. From God through the people;--
VIII. From God through the natural law.

I. The first theory is sound, if the question is confined to the
origin of government as a fact. The patriarchal system is the
earliest known system of government, and unmistakable traces of
it are found in nearly all known governments--in the tribes of
Arabia and Northern Africa, the Irish septs and the Scottish
clans, the Tartar hordes, the Roman qentes, and the Russian and
Hindoo villages. The right of the father was held to be his
right to govern his family or household, which, with his children,
included his wife and servants. From the family to the tribe the
transition is natural and easy, as also from the tribe to the
nation. The father is chief of the family; the chief of the
eldest family is chief of the tribe; the chief of the eldest
tribe becomes chief of the nation, and, as such, king or monarch.
The heads of families collected in a senate form an aristocracy,
and the families themselves, represented by their delegates, or
publicly assembling for public affairs, constitute a democracy.
These three forms, with their several combinations, to wit,
monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, and mixed governments, are all
the forms known to Aristotle, and have generally been held to be
all that are possible.

Historically, all governments have, in some sense, been developed
from the patriarchal, as all society has been developed from the
family. Even those governments, like the ancient Roman and the
modern feudal, which seem to be founded on landed property, may
be traced back to a patriarchal origin. The patriarch is sole
proprietor, and the possessions of the family are vested in him,
and he governs as proprietor as well as father. In the tribe,
the chief is the proprietor, and in the nation, the king is the
landlord, and holds the domain. Hence, the feudal baron is
invested with his fief by the suzerain, holds it from him, and to
him it escheats when forfeited or vacant. All the great Asiatic
kings of ancient or modern times hold the domain and govern as
proprietors; they have the authority of the father and the owner;
and their subjects, though theoretically their children, are
really their slaves.

In Rome, however, the proprietary right undergoes an important
transformation. The father retains all the power of the
patriarch within his family, the patrician in his gens or house,
but, outside of it, is met and controlled by the city or state.
The heads of houses are united in the senate, and collectively
constitute and govern the state. Yet, not all the heads of
houses have seats in the senate, but only the tenants of the
sacred territory of the city, which has been surveyed and marked
by the god Terminus. Hence the great plebeian houses, often
richer and nobler than the patrician, were excluded from all
share in the government and the honors of the state, because they
were not tenants of any portion of the sacred territory. There
is here the introduction of an element which is not patriarchal,
and which transforms the patriarch or chief of a tribe into the
city or state, and founds the civil order, or what is now called
civilization. The city or state takes the place of the private
proprietor, and territorial rights take the place of purely
personal rights.

In the theory of the Roman law, the land owns the man, not the
man the land. When land was transferred to a new tenant, the
practice in early times was to bury him in it, in order to
indicate that it took possession of him, received, accepted, or
adopted him; and it was only such persons as were taken
possession of, accepted or adopted by the sacred territory or
domain that, though denizens of Rome, were citizens with full
political rights. This, in modern language, means that the state
is territorial, not personal, and that the citizen appertains to
the state, not the state to the citizen. Under the patriarchal,
the tribal, and the Asiatic monarchical systems, there is,
properly speaking, no state, no citizens, and the organization is
economical rather than political. Authority--even the nation
itself--is personal, not territorial. The patriarch, the chief
of the tribe, or the king, is the only proprietor. Under the
Graeco-Roman system all this is transformed. The nation is
territorial as well as personal, and the real proprietor is the
city or state. Under the Empire, no doubt, what lawyers call the
eminent domain was vested in the emperor, but only as the
representative and trustee of the city or state.

When or by what combination of events this transformation was
effected, history does not inform us. The first-born of Adam, we
are told, built a city, and called it after his son Enoch; but
there is no evidence that it was constituted a municipality. The
earliest traces of the civil order proper are found in the Greek
and Italian republics, and its fullest and grandest developments
are found in Rome, imperial as well as republican. It was no
doubt preceded by the patriarchal system, and was historically
developed from it, but by way of accretion rather than by simple
explication. It has in it an element that, if it exists in the
patriarchal constitution, exists there only in a different form,
and the transformation marks the passage from the economical
order to the political, from the barbaric to the civil
constitution of society, or from barbarism to civilization.

The word civilization stands opposed to barbarism, and is derived
from civitas--city or state. The Greeks and Romans call all
tribes and nations in which authority is vested in the chief, as
distinguished from the state, barbarians. The origin of the word
barbarian, barbarus, or ........, is unknown, and its primary
sense can be only conjectured. Webster regards its primary sense
as foreign, wild, fierce; but this could not have been its
original sense; for the Greeks and Romans never termed all
foreigners barbarians, and they applied the term to nations that
had no inconsiderable culture and refinement of manners, and that
had made respectable progress in art and sciences--the Indians,
Persians, Medians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. They applied the
term evidently in a political, not an ethical or an aesthetical
sense, and as it would seem to designate a social order in which
the state was not developed, and in which the nation was personal,
not territorial, and authority was held as a private right, not
as a public trust, or in which the domain vests in the chief or
tribe, and not in the state; for they never term any others
barbarians.

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