Sovereignty of the People._
1. "Those old fanatics of arbitrary power dogmatized as if hereditary
monarchy were the only lawful government in the world, just as our new
fanatics of popular arbitrary power maintain that a popular election
is the only lawful source of authority." (Burke, _Reflections on
French Revolution_.)
We here stand between two idols of the tribe of politicians. We may
call them Gog and Magog: Gog, the divine right of kings; Magog, the
inalienable sovereignty of the people.
2. The position known in history as "the divine right of kings" may be
best described as a _political popedom_. It is the belief of Catholics
that our Divine Redeemer, instituting His Church by His own personal
act as a perfect society and spiritual commonwealth, instituted in
like manner the polity under which He willed it to be governed,
namely, the Papal monarchy, begun in St. Peter and carried to
completion according to our Lord's design under the line of Popes,
Peter's successors. The monarchy thus established is essential to the
Catholic Church. We speak not here of the temporal power which the
Pope once enjoyed in the Roman States, but of his spiritual
sovereignty over all Christendom. The Pope cannot validly resign and
put out of his own and his successors' hands, nor can the Cardinals
take away from him, nor the Episcopate, one jot or tittle of this
spiritual prerogative. He cannot, for instance, condition his
infallibility on the consent of a General Council, or surrender the
canonization of saints to the votes of the faithful at large. Such are
the inalienable, Christ-given prerogatives of the Papacy. Henry VIII.
feloniously set himself up for Pope within the realm of England.
Blending together temporal and spiritual jurisdiction, he made out his
rights and prerogatives as a monarch, even in the civil order, to be
inalienable as in the spiritual. Spiritual and civil attributes
together formed a jewelled circlet, one and indivisible, immoveably
fixed on the brow of the King's Most Sacred Majesty. Grown and swollen
by their union with the spirituality, the civil attributes of the
Crown were exaggerated to the utmost, and likewise declared
inalienable. They were exaggerated till they came to embrace all the
powers of government. The privileges of Parliament, and the
limitations to the royal authority, set forth in the Petition of Right
in 1628, were regarded as mere concessions tenable at the King's
pleasure: from which point of view we understand the readiness of so
conscientious a monarch as Charles I. to act against such privileges
after he had allowed them. But to vest all the powers of government
inalienably in the King, so that whoever else may seem to partake in
them, shall partake only by royal sufferance, is tantamount to
declaring monarchy the sole valid and lawful polity. This declaration
the ministers, lay and clerical, of our Charleses and Jameses do not
seem to have made in express terms. It is, however, contained by
implication in their celebrated phrase of "the inalienable
prerogatives of the Crown," as interpreted by the stretches of
prerogative which they advised. They virtually asserted of one
particular polity, or distribution of civil power (c. viii., s. iii.,
n. 5, p. 312), that which is true only of civil power taken nakedly,
apart from the mode of its distribution--they said of _monarchy_ what
is true of _government_--that the sum of its power is a constant
quantity (c. viii., s. iv., n. 7, p. 322), and that it is of God
_antecedently_ to and irrespectively of any determination of popular
will. (c. viii., s. iv., n. 10, p. 325.)
3. Such a position is easily refuted, _negatively_, by its being
wholly unproven, unless the English Reformation, and the servile
spirit in Church and State that promoted and was promoted by the
Reformation, can pass for a proof; and again the position is
_positively_ refuted, when we come to consider how all that nature
requires and God commands, is government under some polity, not
government everywhere under monarchy; there being many workable
polities besides monarchy. (s. iv., nn. 1-4, p. 319.)
4. The same argument that demolishes Gog, also overturns Magog. The
two idols, opposed to one another, stand upon the same pedestal, the
identification of government in general with one particular polity, as
though _a_ polity were _the_ polity. The great assertor and worshipper
of the inalienable sovereignty of the people is Jean Jacques Rousseau.
He starts from postulates which we have already rejected--that all men
are equal (c. viii., s. i., n. 9, p. 305)--that man is born free
(_ib._, n. 10)--that none can be bound to obey another without his own
consent (_ib._, n. 11)--that civil society is formed by an arbitrary
convention (_ib._, n. 4)--which convention is the Social Contract.
(_ib._, n. 5.) From these unreasonable postulates Rousseau draws the
conclusion, logically enough, that the sovereign will in every State
is the will of the majority of the citizens: but the will of the
majority, he goes on, cannot be alienated from the majority: therefore
neither can the sovereignty be alienated, but must abide permanently
with the people ruling by a majority of votes. The argumentation is
excellent, but the premisses are all false. The conclusion is vastly
popular, few minds considering from what premisses it is drawn.
5. If sovereignty rests inalienably with the people, the one valid
polity is pure democracy. This proposition, however, Rousseau was not
forward to formulate. The Stuarts had shrunk from formulating a
similar proposition about monarchy, though they virtually held and
acted upon it. They were willing enough to allow of a parliament,
whose privileges and functions should be at His Majesty's gracious
pleasure. Thus Rousseau will allow you to have your senate, king,
emperor, if you will: only remember that he is _the prince_, not _the
sovereign_. (_Contrat Social_, l. iii., c. i.) The people collectively
are the sovereign, always sovereign. The _prince_, that is, he or they
to whom the administration is entrusted--since all the citizens cannot
administer jointly--is the mere official and bailiff of the Sovereign
People, bound to carry out their mandate in all things, and removable
at their pleasure. The people must meet periodically, not at the
discretion of the prince. "These meetings must open with two
questions, never to be omitted, and to be voted on separately. The
first is: Whether it pleases the Sovereign (People) to continue the
present form of government. The second is: Whether it pleases the
People to leave the administration to the persons at present actually
charged with it." (_Contrat Social_, ,l. iv., c. xviii.)
6. The claim of a pure democracy like this to supersede all other
polities cannot be established by abstract arguments. That we have
seen in examining the Social Contract. The alternative way of
establishing such an exclusive claim would be to prove that the
practical efficiency of pure democracy immeasurably transcends the
efficiency of every other possible polity. There is indeed yet a third
mode of proof resorted to. It is said that pure democracy everywhere
is coming and must come; and that what is thus on the line of human
progress must be right and best for the time that it obtains. A grand
invention this of Positivist genius, the theory, that whatever is is
right; and the practice, always to swim with the stream! But supposing
that pure democracy is coming, how long is it likely to last? The
answer may be gathered from a review of the working difficulties of
such a polity.
7. It is made only for a small State. Railway and telegraph have
indeed diminished the difficulty; and have removed the need of all the
voters meeting in one place, as was done at Athens. Newspapers echo
and spread with addition the eloquence of popular orators, beyond the
ears that actually listen to them. Still, think what it would be to
have a general election, upon every bill that passes through
Parliament: for that is what pure democracy comes to. The plan would
scarcely work with a total electorate of thirty thousand. You say the
people would entrust a committee with the passing of ordinary
measures, reserving to themselves the supervision. I am not arguing
the physical impossibility, but the moral difficulties of such an
arrangement. For either the people throw the reins of government on
the neck of this committee, or they keep a tight hold upon the
committee and guide it. In the former case the popular sovereignty
becomes like that of a monarch who leans much on favourites, a
sovereignty largely participated in by others than the nominal holder
of the control. On the other hand, if the people do frequently
interfere, and take a lively interest in the doings of the subordinate
assembly, the people themselves must be a small body. An active
governing body of three hundred thousand members would be as great a
wonder as an active man weighing three hundred pounds. Only in a small
State is that intense political life possible, which a pure democracy
must live. There only, as Rousseau requires, can the public service be
the principal affair of the citizens. "All things considered," he
says, "I do not see how it is any longer possible for the Sovereign
(People) to preserve amongst us the exercise of his rights, if the
city is not very small." (_Contrat Social_, l. iii., c. xv.) And the
difficulty of size in a democracy is aggravated, if, as Socialists
propose, the democratic State is to be sole capitalist within its own
limits. The perfect sovereignty of the people means the disruption of
empires, and the pushing to extremity of what is variously described
as _local government, home rule, autonomy_, and _decentralisation_,
till every commune becomes an independent State. But for defence in
war and for commerce in peace, these little States must federate; and
federation means centralisation, external control over the majority at
home, restricted foreign relations, in fact the corruption of pure
democracy.
8. Again, the perfect sovereignty of the people cannot subsist except
upon the supposition that one man is as much a born ruler as another,
which means a levelling down of the best talent of the community, for
that is the only way in which capacities can be equalised--a very
wasteful and ruinous expedient, and one that the born leaders of the
people will not long endure. Then there is the proverbial fickleness
of democracy, one day all aglow, and cooled down the next, never
pursuing any course steadily, in foreign policy least of all, though
there the dearest interests of the State are often at stake. As one
who lived under such a government once put it: "Sheer democracy is of
all institutions the most ill-balanced and ill put together, like a
wave at sea restlessly tossing before the fitful gusts of wind:
politicians come and go, and not one of them cares for the public
interest, or gives it a thought." (Quoted by Demosthenes, Speech on
the Embassy, p. 383 A.) What they do care for and think of sedulously,
is pleasing the people and clinging to office. In that respect they
are the counterparts of the favourites who cluster round the throne of
a despotic monarch, and suck up his power by flattering him. Peoples
have their favourites as well as kings. To these persons, the Cleon or
Gracchus of the hour, they blindly commit the management of their
concerns, as the _roi fainéant_ of old Frankish times left everything
to his Mayor of the Palace, till the Mayor came to reign in his
master's stead; and so has the popular favourite ere now developed
into the military despot. Strong-minded kings of course are not ruled
by favourites, nor are highly intelligent and capable peoples; but it
is as hard to find a people fit to wield the power of pure democracy
as to find an individual fit for an absolute monarch, especially where
the State is large.
9. From all this we conclude that the new-fashioned Magog of pure
democracy, or the perfect sovereignty of the people, is not to be
worshipped to the overthrow and repudiation of all other polities, any
more than the old-fashioned Gog of pure monarchy, idolised by Stuart
courtiers under the name of "the divine right of kings." Neither of
these is _the polity_: each is _a polity_, but not one to be commonly
recommended. The study of polities admirably illustrates the
Aristotelian doctrine of the Golden Mean (_Ethics_, c. v., s. iv., p.
77), teaching us ordinarily to affect limited monarchy or limited
democracy. But as the mean must ever be chosen in _relation to
ourselves_, a Constantine or an Athenian Demos may represent the
proper polity in place under extraordinary circumstances.
_Reading_.--_The Month_ for July, 1886, pp. 338, seqq.