utter indifference to the Church. To what sort of principles it is that
she inclines may be indicated by a single example. The Christian notion
of conscience imperatively demands a corresponding measure of personal
liberty. The feeling of duty and responsibility to God is the only
arbiter of a Christian's actions. With this no human authority can be
permitted to interfere. We are bound to extend to the utmost, and to
guard from every encroachment, the sphere in which we can act in
obedience to the sole voice of conscience, regardless of any other
consideration. The Church cannot tolerate any species of government in
which this right is not recognised. She is the irreconcilable enemy of
the despotism of the State, whatever its name or its forms may be, and
through whatever instruments it may be exercised. Where the State allows
the largest amount of this autonomy, the subject enjoys the largest
measure of freedom, and the Church the greatest legitimate influence.
The republics of antiquity were as incapable as the Oriental despotisms
of satisfying the Christian notion of freedom, or even of subsisting
with it. The Church has succeeded in producing the kind of liberty she
exacts for her children only in those States which she has herself
created or transformed. Real freedom has been known in no State that did
not pass through her mediaeval action. The history of the Middle Ages is
the history of the gradual emancipation of man from every species of
servitude, in proportion as the influence of religion became more
penetrating and more universal. The Church could never abandon that
principle of liberty by which she conquered pagan Rome. The history of
the last three centuries exhibits the gradual revival of declining
slavery, which appears under new forms of oppression as the authority of
religion has decreased. The efforts of deliverance have been violent and
reactionary, the progress of dependence sure and inevitable. The
political benefits of the mediaeval system have been enjoyed by no nation
which is destitute of Teutonic elements. The Slavonic races of the
north-east, the Celtic tribes of the north-west, were deprived of them.
In the centre of mediaeval civilisation, the republic of Venice, proud of
its unmixed descent from the Romans, was untouched by the new blood, and
that Christian people failed to obtain a Christian government. Where the
influence of the ideas which prevailed in those times has not been felt,
the consequence has been the utmost development of extreme principles,
such as have doomed Asia for so many ages to perpetual stagnation, and
America to endless heedless change. It is a plain fact, that that kind
of liberty which the Church everywhere and at all times requires has
been attained hitherto only in States of Teutonic origin. We need hardly
glance at the importance of this observation in considering the
missionary vocation of the English race in the distant regions it has
peopled and among the nations it has conquered; for, in spite of its
religious apostasy, no other country has preserved so pure that idea of
liberty which gave to religion of old its power in Europe, and is still
the foundation of the greatness of England. Other nations that have
preserved more faithfully their allegiance to the Church have more
decidedly broken with those political traditions, without which the
action of the Church is fettered.
It is equally clear that, in insisting upon one definite principle in
all government, the Church has at no time understood that it could be
obtained only by particular political forms. She attends to the
substance, not to the form, in politics. At various times she has
successively promoted monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; and at
various times she has been betrayed by each. The three fundamental forms
of all government are founded on the nature of things. Sovereignty must
reside with an individual, or with a minority, or with the majority. But
there are seasons and circumstances where one or the other is
impossible, where one or the other is necessary; and in a growing nation
they cannot always remain in the same relative proportions. Christianity
could neither produce nor abolish them. They are all compatible with
liberty and religion, and are all liable to diverge into tyranny by the
exclusive exaggeration of their principle. It is this exaggeration that
has ever been the great danger to religion and to liberty, and the
object of constant resistance, the source of constant suffering for the
Church.
Christianity introduced no new forms of government, but a new spirit,
which totally transformed the old ones. The difference between a
Christian and a pagan monarchy, or between a Christian and a rationalist
democracy, is as great, politically, as that between a monarchy and a
republic. The Government of Athens more nearly resembled that of Persia
than that of any Christian republic, however democratic. If political
theorists had attended more to the experience of the Christian Ages, the
Church and the State would have been spared many calamities.
Unfortunately, it has long been the common practice to recur to the
authority of the Greeks and the Jews. The example of both was equally
dangerous; for in the Jewish as in the Gentile world, political and
religious obligations were made to coincide; in both, therefore,--in the
theocracy of the Jews as in the [Greek: politeia] of the Greeks,--the
State was absolute. Now it is the great object of the Church, by keeping
the two spheres permanently distinct,--by rendering to Caesar the things
that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's--to make all
absolutism, of whatever kind, impossible.
As no form of government is in itself incompatible with tyranny, either
of a person or a principle, nor necessarily inconsistent with liberty,
there is no natural hostility or alliance between the Church and any one
of them. The same Church which, in the confusion and tumult of the great
migrations, restored authority by raising up and anointing kings, held
in later times with the aristocracy of the empire, and called into
existence the democracies of Italy. In the eighth century she looked to
Charlemagne for the reorganisation of society; in the eleventh she
relied on the people to carry out the reformation of the clergy. During
the first period of the Middle Ages, when social and political order had
to be reconstructed out of ruins, the Church everywhere addresses
herself to the kings, and seeks to strengthen and to sanctify their
power. The royal as well as the imperial dignity received from her their
authority and splendour. Whatever her disputes on religious grounds with
particular sovereigns, such as Lothar, she had in those ages as yet no
contests with the encroachments of monarchical power. Later on in the
Middle Ages, on the contrary, when the monarchy had prevailed almost
everywhere, and had strengthened itself beyond the limits of feudal
ideas by the help of the Roman law and of the notions of absolute power
derived from the ancients, it stood in continual conflict with the
Church. From the time of Gregory VII., all the most distinguished
pontiffs were engaged in quarrels with the royal and imperial power,
which resulted in the victory of the Church in Germany and her defeat in
France. In this resistance to the exaggeration of monarchy, they
naturally endeavoured to set barriers to it by promoting popular
institutions, as the Italian democracies and the aristocratic republics
of Switzerland, and the capitulations which in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries were imposed on almost every prince. Times had
greatly changed when a Pope declared his amazement at a nation which
bore in silence the tyranny of their king.[320] In modern times the
absolute monarchy in Catholic countries has been, next to the
Reformation, the greatest and most formidable enemy of the Church. For
here she again lost in great measure her natural influence. In France,
Spain, and Germany, by Gallicanism, Josephism, and the Inquisition, she
came to be reduced to a state of dependence, the more fatal and
deplorable that the clergy were often instrumental in maintaining it.
All these phenomena were simply an adaptation of Catholicism to a
political system incompatible with it in its integrity; an artifice to
accommodate the Church to the requirements of absolute government, and
to furnish absolute princes with a resource which was elsewhere supplied
by Protestantism. The consequence has been, that the Church is at this
day more free under Protestant than under Catholic governments--in
Prussia or England than in France or Piedmont, Naples or Bavaria.
As we have said that the Church commonly allied herself with the
political elements which happened to be insufficiently represented, and
to temper the predominant principle by encouraging the others, it might
seem hardly unfair to conclude that that kind of government in which
they are all supposed to be combined,--"aequatum et temperatum ex tribus
optimis rerum publicarum modis" (Cicero, _Rep._ i. 45),--must be
particularly suited to her. Practically--and we are not here pursuing a
theory--this is a mere fallacy. If we look at Catholic countries, we
find that in Spain and Piedmont the constitution has served only to
pillage, oppress, and insult the Church; whilst in Austria, since the
empire has been purified in the fiery ordeal of the revolution, she is
free, secure, and on the highroad of self-improvement. In constitutional
Bavaria she has but little protection against the Crown, or in Belgium
against the mob. The royal power is against her in one place, the
popular element in the other. Turning to Protestant countries, we find
that in Prussia the Church is comparatively free; whilst the more
popular Government of Baden has exhibited the most conspicuous instance
of oppression which has occurred in our time. The popular Government of
Sweden, again, has renewed the refusal of religious toleration at the
very time when despotic Russia begins to make a show, at least, of
conceding it. In the presence of these facts, it would surely be absurd
to assume that the Church must look with favour on the feeble and
transitory constitutions with which the revolution has covered half the
Continent. It does not actually appear that she has derived greater
benefits from them than she may be said to have done from the revolution
itself, which in France, for instance in 1848, gave to the Church, at
least for a season, that liberty and dignity for which she had struggled
in vain during the constitutional period which had preceded.
The political character of our own country bears hardly more resemblance
to the Liberal Governments of the Continent,--which have copied only
what is valueless in our institutions,--than to the superstitious
despotism of the East, or to the analogous tyranny which in the Far West
is mocked with the name of freedom. Here, as elsewhere, the progress of
the constitution, which it was the work of the Catholic Ages to build
up, on the principles common to all the nations of the Teutonic stock,
was interrupted by the attraction which the growth of absolutism abroad
excited, and by the Reformation's transferring the ecclesiastical power
to the Crown. The Stuarts justified their abuse of power by the same
precepts and the same examples by which the Puritans justified their
resistance to it. The liberty aimed at by the Levellers was as remote
from that which the Middle Ages had handed down, as the power of the
Stuarts from the mediaeval monarchy. The Revolution of 1688 destroyed one
without favouring the other. Unlike the rebellion against Charles I.,
that which overthrew his son did not fall into a contrary extreme. It
was a restoration in some sort of the principles of government, which
had been alternately assailed by absolute monarchy and by a fanatical
democracy. But, as it was directed against the abuse of kingly and
ecclesiastical authority, neither the Crown nor the established Church
recovered their ancient position; and a jealousy of both has ever since
subsisted. There can be no question but that the remnants of the old
system of polity--the utter disappearance of which keeps the rest of
Christendom in a state of continual futile revolution--exist more
copiously in this country than in any other. Instead of the revolutions
and the religious wars by which, in other Protestant countries,
Catholics have obtained toleration, they have obtained it in England by
the force of the very principles of the constitution. "I should think
myself inconsistent," says the chief expounder of our political system,
"in not applying my ideas of civil liberty to religious." And speaking
of the relaxation of the penal laws, he says: "To the great liberality
and enlarged sentiments of those who are the furthest in the world from
you in religious tenets, and the furthest from acting with the party
which, it is thought, the greater part of the Roman Catholics are
disposed to espouse, it is that you owe the whole, or very nearly the
whole, of what has been done both here and in Ireland."[321] The danger
which menaces the continuance of our constitution proceeds simply from
the oblivion of those Christian ideas by which it was originally
inspired. It should seem that it is the religious as well as the
political duty of Catholics to endeavour to avert this peril, and to
defend from the attacks of the Radicals and from the contempt of the
Tories the only constitution which bears some resemblance to those of
Catholic times, and the principles which are almost as completely
forgotten in England as they are misunderstood abroad. If three
centuries of Protestantism have not entirely obliterated the ancient
features of our government, if they have not been so thoroughly barren
of political improvement as some of its enemies would have us
believe,--there is surely nothing to marvel at, nothing at which we may
rejoice. Protestants may well have, in some respects, the same
terrestrial superiority over Catholics that the Gentiles had over the
people of God. As, at the fall of paganism, the treasures it had
produced and accumulated during two thousand years became the spoils of
the victor,--when the day of reckoning shall come for the great modern
apostasy, it will surrender all that it has gathered in its diligent
application to the things of this world; and those who have remained in
the faith will have into the bargain those products of the Protestant
civilisation on which its claims of superiority are founded.
When, therefore, in the political shipwreck of modern Europe, it is
asked which political form of party is favoured by the Church, the only
answer we can give is, that she is attached to none; but that though
indifferent to existing forms, she is attached to a spirit which is
nearly extinct. Those who, from a fear of exposing her to political
animosity, would deny this, forget that the truth is as strong against
political as against religious error, and shut their eyes to the only
means by which the political regeneration of the modern world is a
possibility. For the Catholic religion alone will not suffice to save
it, as it was insufficient to save the ancient world, unless the
Catholic idea equally manifests itself in the political order. The
Church alone, without influence on the State, is powerless as a security
for good government. It is absurd to pretend that at the present day
France, or Spain, or Naples, are better governed than England, Holland,
or Prussia. A country entirely Protestant may have more Catholic
elements in its government than one where the population is wholly
Catholic. The State which is Catholic _par excellence_ is a by-word for
misgovernment, because the orthodoxy and piety of its administrators are
deemed a substitute for a better system. The demand for a really
Catholic system of government falls with the greatest weight of reproach
on the Catholic States.
Yet it is important to remember that in the ages of faith the same unity
prevailed in political ideas, and that the civil as well as the
religious troubles of our time are in great measure due to the
Reformation. It is common to advise Catholics to make up their minds to
accept the political doctrines of the day; but it would be more to the
purpose to recall the ideas of Catholic times. It is not in the results
of the political development of the last three centuries that the Church
can place her trust; neither in absolute monarchy, nor in the
revolutionary liberalism, nor in the infallible constitutional scheme.
She must create anew or revive her former creations, and instil a new
life and spirit into those remains of the mediaeval system which will
bear the mark of the ages when heresy and unbelief, Roman law, and
heathen philosophy, had not obscured the idea of the Christian State.
These remains are to be found, in various stages of decay, in every
State,--with the exception, perhaps, of France,--that grew out of the
mediaeval civilisation. Above all they will be found in the country
which, in the midst of its apostasy, and in spite of so much guilt
towards religion, has preserved the Catholic forms in its Church
establishment more than any other Protestant nation, and the Catholic
spirit in her political institutions more than any Catholic nation. To
renew the memory of the times in which this spirit prevailed in Europe,
and to preserve the remains of it, to promote the knowledge of what is
lost, and the desire of what is most urgently needed,--is an important
service and an important duty which it behoves us to perform. We are
greatly mistaken if these are not reflections which force themselves on
every one who carefully observes the political history of the Church in
modern Europe.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 300: _The Rambler_, 1858.]
[Footnote 301: Tertullian, _Apologeticum_, 39; see also 30, 32. "We pray
also for the emperors, for the ministers of their Government, for the
State, for the peace of the world, for the delay of the last day."]
[Footnote 302: _De Civil. Dei_, xv. 5. "The fratricide was the first
founder of the secular State."]
[Footnote 303: "The Church reckons her subjects not as her servants but
as her children."]
[Footnote 304: "It is the maddest insolence, not only to dispute against
that which we see the universal Church believing, but also against what
we see her doing. For not only is the faith of the Church the rule of
our faith, but also her actions of ours, and her customs of that which
we ought to observe" (Morinus, _Comment. de Discipl. in administ.
Poenitentiae_, Preface).]
[Footnote 305: "Apud vos quodvis colere jus est Deum verum" (Tertullian,
_Apolog._ xxiv.).]
[Footnote 306: August. _de Civ. Dei_, xx. 19. 3.]
[Footnote 307: "Christianus nullius est hostis, nedum imperatoris, quem
... necesse est ut ... salvum velit cum toto Romano imperio quousque
saeculum stabit; tamdiu enim stabit" (Tert. _ad Scapulam_, 2). "Cum
caput illud orbis occiderit et [Greek: rhym] esse coeperit, quod
Sibyllae fore aiunt, quis dubitet venisse jam finem rebus humanis
orbique terrarum?" (Lactantius, _Inst. Div._ vii. 25). "Non prius veniet
Christus, quam regni Romani defectio fiat" (Ambrose _ad ep._ i. _ad
Thess._).]
[Footnote 308: "There is nothing so voluntary as religion."]
[Footnote 309: "God does not want unwilling worship, nor does he require
a forced repentance."]
[Footnote 310: Athanas. i. 363 B and 384 C [Greek: mhe hanagkhazein
halla peithein] "not compulsion, but persuasion" (Chrysost. ii. 540 A
and C).]
[Footnote 311: "If the State of which we are the secular children passes
away, that of which we are spiritual children passes not. Has God gone
to sleep and let the house be destroyed, or let in the enemy through
want of watchfulness? Why fearest thou when earthly kingdoms fall?
Heaven is promised thee, that thou mightest not fall with them. The
works of God Himself shall pass: how much sooner the works of Romulus!
Let us not quail, my brethren: all earthly kingdoms must come to an
end."]
[Footnote 312: "The cry of the whole world is 'Christ.' The mind is
horrified in reviewing the ruins of our age. The Roman world is falling,
and yet our stiff neck is not bent. The barbarians' strength is in our
sins; the defeat of the Roman armies in our vices. We will not cut off
the occasions of the malady, that the malady may be healed. The world is
falling, but in us there is no falling off from sin" (St. Jerome, _ep.
35, ad Heliodorum_; _ep. 98, ad Gaudentium_).]
[Footnote 313: "None are better witnesses of the words of heaven than
we, on whom the end of the world has come. We assist at the world's
setting, and diseases precede its dissolution" (_Expos. Ep. sec. Lucam_,
x.).]
[Footnote 314: "What is well-nigh all Christendom but a sink of
iniquity?" (_De Gub. Dei_, iii. 9).]
[Footnote 315: "In our age the devil has so defiled everything that
scarcely a thing is done without idolatry."]
[Footnote 316: "Do we wonder that God has granted all our lands to the
barbarians, when they now purify by their chastity the places which the
Romans had polluted with their debauchery?"]
[Footnote 317: Pope Anastasius writes to Clovis: "Sedes Petri in tanta
occasione non potest non laetari, cum plenitudinem gentium intuetur ad
eam veloci gradu concurrere" (Bouquet, iv. 50).]
[Footnote 318: "The noble people of the Franks, founded by God,
converted to the Catholic faith, and free from heresy."]
[Footnote 319: "Vetati sunt a Spiritu sancto loqui verbum Dei in Asia
... Tentabant ire in Bithyniam, et non permisit eos spiritus Jesu"
(_Acts_ xvi. 6, 7).]
[Footnote 320: Innocent IV. wrote in 1246 to the Sicilians: "In omnem
terram vestrae sonus tribulationis exivit ... multis pro miro vehementi
ducentibus, quod pressi tam dirae servitutis opprobrio, et personarum ac
rerum gravati multiplici detrimento, neglexeritis habere concilium, per
quod vobis, sicut gentibus caeteris, aliqua provenirent solatia
libertatis ... super hoc apud sedem apostolicam vos excusante
formidine.... Cogitate itaque corde vigili, ut a collo vestrae
servitutis catena decidat, et universitas vestra in libertatis et
quietis gaudio reflorescat; sitque ubertate conspicuum, ita divina
favente potentia secura sit libertate decorum" (Raynaldus, _Ann._ ad
ann. 1246).]
[Footnote 321: Burke's _Works_, i. 391, 404.]
VII
INTRODUCTION TO L.A. BURD'S EDITION OF IL PRINCIPE BY MACHIAVELLI
Mr. Burd has undertaken to redeem our long inferiority in Machiavellian
studies, and it will, I think, be found that he has given a more
completely satisfactory explanation of _The Prince_ than any country
possessed before. His annotated edition supplies all the solvents of a
famous problem in the history of Italy and the literature of politics.
In truth, the ancient problem is extinct, and no reader of this volume
will continue to wonder how so intelligent and reasonable a man came to
propose such flagitious counsels. When Machiavelli declared that
extraordinary objects cannot be accomplished under ordinary rules, he
recorded the experience of his own epoch, but also foretold the secret
of men since born. He illustrates not only the generation which taught
him, but the generations which he taught, and has no less in common with
the men who had his precepts before them than with the Viscontis,
Borgias, and Baglionis who were the masters he observed. He represents
more than the spirit of his country and his age. Knowledge,
civilisation, and morality have increased; but three centuries have
borne enduring witness to his political veracity. He has been as much
the exponent of men whom posterity esteems as of him whose historian
writes: "Cet homme que Dieu, apres l'avoir fait si grand, avait fait bon
aussi, n'avait rien de la vertu." The authentic interpreter of
Machiavelli, the _Commentarius Perpetuus_ of the _Discorsi_ and _The
Prince_, is the whole of later history.
Michelet has said: "Rapportons-nous-en sur ceci a quelqu'un qui fut bien
plus Machiaveliste que Machiavel, a la republique de Venise." Before his
day, and long after, down almost to the time when a price was set on the
heads of the Pretender and of Pontiac, Venice employed assassins. And
this was not the desperate resource of politicians at bay, but the
avowed practice of decorous and religious magistrates. In 1569 Soto
hazards an impersonal doubt whether the morality of the thing was sound:
"Non omnibus satis probatur Venetorum mos, qui cum complures a patria
exules habeant condemnatos, singulis facultatem faciunt, ut qui alium
eorum interfecerit, vita ac libertate donetur." But his sovereign
shortly after obtained assurance that murder by royal command was
unanimously approved by divines: "A los tales puede el Principe
mandarlos matar, aunque esten fuera de su distrito y reinos.--Sin ser
citado, secretamente se le puede quitar la vita.--Esta es doctrina comun
y cierta y recevida de todos los theologos." When the King of France, by
despatching the Guises, had restored his good name in Europe, a
Venetian, Francesco da Molino, hoped that the example would not be
thrown away on the Council of Ten: "Permeti sua divina bonta che questo
esempio habbi giovato a farlo proceder come spero con meno fretta e piu
sodamente a cose tali e d' importanza." Sarpi, their ablest writer,
their official theologian, has a string of maxims which seem to have
been borrowed straight from the Florentine predecessor: "Proponendo cosa
in apparenza non honesta, scusarla come necessaria, come praticata da
altri, come propria al tempo, che tende a buon fine, et conforme all'
opinione de' molti.--La vendetta non giova se non per fugir lo
sprezzo.--Ogn'huomo ha opinione che il mendacio sia buono in ragion di
medicina, et di far bene a far creder il vero et utile con premesse
false." One of his countrymen, having examined his writings, reports: "I
ricordi di questo grand' uomo furono piu da politico che da christiano."
To him was attributed the doctrine of secret punishment, and the use of
poison against public enemies: "In casi d' eccessi incorrigibili si
punissero secretamente, a fine che il sangue patrizio non resti
profanato.--Il veleno deve esser l' unico mezzo per levarli dal mondo,
quando alla giustizia non complisse farli passare sotto la manaia del
carnefice." Venice, otherwise unlike the rest of Europe, was, in this
particular, not an exception.