POLITICAL DOCTRINES BEFORE THE APPEARANCE OF PROTESTANTISM.
In matters appertaining to representative government, modern political
science boasts of its great progress: we hear it continually asserting
that the school in which the deputies of the Constituent Assembly
imbibed their lessons was totally ignorant of political constitutions.
Now when we compare the doctrines of the predominating school of the
present day with those of the preceding school, what difference do we
discover between them? On what points do they differ? Where is this
boasted progress?
The school of the eighteenth century said: "The king is the natural
enemy of the people; his power must either be totally destroyed, or at
least so far restrained and limited, that he may only appear with his
hands tied on the summit of the social edifice, merely invested with
the faculty of approving the measures of the representatives of the
people." And what says the modern school, which boasts of its progress,
of the advantage it has derived from experience, and of having hit the
exact point marked out by reason and good sense? "Monarchy," says this
school, "is essential to the great European nations; the attempts at
republicanism made in America, whatever may be their results, require,
as yet, the test of time; besides, they were made under circumstances
very different from those in which we are placed, and consequently,
are not to be imitated by us. The king should not be regarded as the
enemy of the people, but as their father; instead of presenting him to
public view with his hands tied, he should be represented surrounded
with power, grandeur, and even with majesty and pomp; without which it
is impossible for the throne to fulfil the high functions with which
it is invested. The king should be inviolable--not nominally, but
really and effectually, so that his power cannot, under any pretext,
be attacked. He should be placed in a sphere beyond the whirlwind of
passion and party, like a tutelar divinity, a stranger to mean views
and base passions; he ought to be, as it were, the representative of
reason and justice." "Fools," exclaims this school to its adversaries,
"can you not see that it would be better to have no king at all than
such a one as you would have? Your king would always be an enemy to the
constitution, for he would find this constitution always attacking,
embarrassing, restricting, and humiliating him."
We will now compare this progress with the doctrines predominating in
Europe long before the appearance of Protestantism. This comparison
will enable us to show clearly that every thing reasonable, just, and
useful, contained in these doctrines, was already known and generally
propagated in Europe when society was under the exclusive influence of
the Catholic Church.
_A king is essential_, says the modern school; and, thanks to the
influence of the Catholic religion, all the great nations of Europe had
a king: _the king must not be regarded as the enemy, but as the father
of the people_; and he was already called the father of the people:
_the power of the king should be great_; that power was great: _the
king should be inviolable, his person sacred_; his person was sacred,
and his prerogative insured to him by the Church from the earliest
ages, in an august and solemn ceremony, that of his coronation. "The
people are supreme," said the school of the last century; "the law is
the expression of the general will, the representatives of the people
are alone, therefore, invested with legislative faculties; the monarch
cannot resist this will. The laws are submitted to his sanction through
mere formality; if the king refuses this sanction, the laws are to
undergo another examination; but if the will of the representatives of
the people still remains the same, it shall be raised to the dignity
of law; and the monarch who, by the refusal of his sanction, shall show
that he regards this general will as detrimental to the public good,
shall be compelled, at the expense of his dignity and independence, to
give effect to it."
In reply to this, the modern school says: "The supremacy of the
people is either unmeaning, or has a dangerous sense; the law should
not be the expression of will, but of reason; mere will does not
constitute a law; for this purpose, reason, justice, and public
expediency are required." These ideas were general long before the
sixteenth century, not only amongst educated men, but even among the
most simple and ignorant classes. A doctor of the thirteenth century
admirably expressed it in his habitual laconic language: "_It is a
rule dictated by reason, and having the common weal for its aim._"
"Would you," continued the modern school, "have royal power a truth,
you must assign it the first place among legislative powers; you must
entrust it with an absolute _veto_. In the ancient cortes, in the
ancient states-general and parliaments, the king did occupy this place
among the legislative powers; nothing was done without his consent; he
possessed _an absolute veto_."
"Away with classes!" exclaims the Constituent Assembly; "away with
distinctions! The king face to face with the people, directly
and immediately; the rest is an attempt against imprescriptible
rights." "You are rash," replies the modern school; "if there are
no distinctions, they must be created. If there are not in society
classes forming in themselves a second legislative body a mediator
between the king and the people, there must be artificial ones;
through the medium of the law must be created what does not exist in
society; if reality is wanting, recourse must be had to fiction." Now
these classes existed in ancient society, they took part in public
affairs, they were organized as active instruments, they formed the
first legislative bodies. I ask now, whether this parallel does not
show, as clear as the light of day, that what is now termed progress
in matters of government, is, in fact, a true return towards what was
every where taught and practised under the influence of the Catholic
religion before the appearance of Protestantism? In addressing
myself to men endowed with the least intelligence upon social and
political questions, I may assuredly dispense with the differences
which must necessarily result from the two epochs. I grant that the
course of events would of itself have caused important modifications;
political institutions were to be accommodated to the fresh wants
to be satisfied. But I maintain, at the same time, that, so far as
circumstances permitted, European civilization was advancing on the
right road to a better state, containing within itself the means
necessary for reforming without destroying. But for this purpose a
spontaneous development of events was necessary to bear in mind that
the mere action of man is of little avail, that sudden attempts are
dangerous; that the great productions of society are like those of
nature, both requiring an indispensable element, _time_.
There is one fact which appears to me to have been too little reflected
upon, although including the explanation of some strange phenomena
of the last three centuries. This fact is, that Protestantism has
prevented civilization from becoming homogeneous, in spite of a
strong tendency urging all the nations of Europe to homogeneity. The
civilization of the nations without doubt receives its nature and
its characteristics from the principles that have given it life and
movement; now these principles being the same, or very nearly so,
in all the nations of Europe, these nations must have borne a close
resemblance to each other. History and philosophy agree on this
point; therefore, so long as the European nations did not receive
the inculcation of any germ of division, their civil and political
institutions were developed with a very remarkable similarity. True,
certain differences were observable in them, which were the inevitable
consequences of a variety of circumstances; but we see that they
were becoming more and more alike and forming Europe into one vast
whole, of which we can scarcely form a correct idea, accustomed as we
are to ideas of disunion. This homogeneity would have arrived at its
perfection through the effect of the rapidity which the increase and
prosperity of commerce and the arts gave to intellectual and material
communications; the art of printing would have contributed to it more
than anything else, for the ebb and flow of ideas would have dispersed
the inequalities separating the nations one from another.
But unfortunately, Protestantism appeared and separated the European
people into two great families, which, since their division, have
professed a mortal hatred towards each other. This hatred has been the
cause of furious wars, in which torrents of blood have been shed. One
thing yet more fatal than these catastrophies was the germ of civil,
political, and literary schism, introduced into the bosom of Europe
by the absence of religious unity. Civil and political institutions,
and all the branches of learning, had appeared and prospered in Europe
under the influence of religion; the schism was religious; it affected
even the root, and extended to the branches. Thus arose among the
various nations those brazen walls which kept them separate; the spirit
of suspicion and mistrust was everywhere spread; things which before
would have been deemed innocent or without importance, from that time
were looked upon as eminently dangerous.
What uneasiness, disquietude, and agitation must have been the result
of these fatal complications! We may say that in this detestable germ
is contained the history of the calamities with which Europe was
afflicted during the last three centuries. To what may we attribute the
Anabaptist wars in Germany, those of the empire, and the Thirty-years
war; those of the Huguenots in France, and the bloody scenes of the
League; and that profound source of division, that uninterrupted series
of discord, which beginning with the Huguenots, was continued by the
Jansenists, and then by philosophers, terminating in the Convention?
Had England not contained in her bosom that nest of sects engendered
by Protestantism, would she have had to suffer the disasters of a
revolution which lasted so many years? Had Henry VIII. not seceded from
the Catholic Church, Great Britain would not have passed two-thirds of
the sixteenth century in the most atrocious religious persecutions,
and under the most brutal despotism; she would not have been drowned
during the greater part of the seventeenth in torrents of blood, shed
by sectarian fanaticism. Had it not been for Protestantism, would
England have been in the fatal position in which she is placed by the
Irish question, scarcely leaving her a choice between a dismemberment
of the empire and a terrible revolution? Would not nations of brethren
have found the means of coming to an amicable understanding, if, during
the last three centuries, religious discords had not separated them by
a lake of blood? Those offensive and defensive confederations between
nation and nation, which divided Europe into two parties, as inimical
to each other as the Christians to the Mussulmans, that traditional
hatred between the North and the South, that profound separation
between Protestant and Catholic Germany, between Spain and England,
between that country and France, were sure to have an extraordinary
effect in retarding communications between European nations; and what
would have been obtained much sooner by moral means, could only be
obtained by material ones. Steam tends to convert Europe into one vast
city; if men who were one day to live under the same roof hated one
another for three centuries, what was the cause of it? If people's
hearts had been united long before in mutual affection, would not the
happy moment in which they were to join hands have been hastened?