THE POLITICAL PRINCIPLE OF THE SOCIAL RESTORATION OF FRANCE.

BY F. RAMIERE, S.J.

FROM LES ETUDES RELIGIEUSES.

The great danger of France at the present time is neither the decline of her military power, nor the diminution of her political influence, nor the deep wound inflicted on her finances by an enormous war contribution, nor the aggrandizement of Prussia, nor even the unchaining of the Revolution: it is the division among right-thinking men.

Supposing that all men in or out of the Assembly, united by the indissoluble bond of principle, sincerely desired the re-establishment of order, the revolutionary monster would soon be rendered harmless. The healthy influences now paralyzed would regain their action; with security, legitimate interests would recover their power of expansion; the vital strength of the country would develop rapidly; and, thanks to the vigorous elasticity which characterizes our race, we would soon resume the rank in Europe that belongs to us.

Let us recollect the wonderful promptitude with which France, reduced to extremity by the religious wars, reached the apogee of her prosperity under Louis XIII. We would rise again with equal facility, if the good dispositions, not wanting in France, could be bound together, and oppose a compact fasces to the revolutionary passions, alas! too well united for destruction.

Unfortunately, it is not so. Unity of thought and action, which is the supreme necessity of every government, is wanting to-day in those who are alone able to save us, and it has become the exclusive privilege of the party that is working for our ruin. M. Le Play, who, in a recent treatise, warns us of the danger of the situation, sees but one remedy: the abandonment for a time at least of political questions, and the concentration of the efforts of all true men for the study and solution of the social question. Says M. Le Play: “The enlightened men who compose the majority of our Assembly render themselves powerless by their division on what is called the political question—that is to say, on the form of sovereignty. They may be assured that each political party, when it advances its principle, raises against it a majority formed by the coalition of rival parties. When, on the contrary, this same party takes up the social question, that is to say, the immediate interest of the family, it gains the majority, sometimes even unanimity. It is sufficient to know the cause of the evil to find the remedy. The conservatives have the power to establish a strong majority. It is only necessary to avoid the subject that divides them, and to devote themselves to the one that draws them together.”

There is much truth in this observation, and we are far from wishing to combat it on the whole. The eminent publicist who, in this same work, accords so favorable an opinion to our studies on the rights of men, knows with what warm sympathy we follow his useful labors for social reform. We appreciate as fully as he the importance of the question to which he desires to draw the attention of all true friends of order. With him we believe that the social order is anterior to the political, and that, at a time when society is disorganized even in its original elements, it is there above all that the remedy must be applied. How can a good government be given to a nation that the anti-social propaganda has rendered ungovernable?

We must acknowledge, however, that, to the rule which M. Le Play has laid down, objections arise which at the first glance appear sufficiently grave. We have heard intelligent men doubt whether even the temporary withdrawal of the political questions would be opportune or possible, and that for several reasons.

In the first place, because these questions are irresistibly imposed upon us. They are discussed every day in the debates of the Assembly or by the press. If we give up treating them according to true principles, they will certainly be determined in the sense of the Revolution.

In effect, and it is a second reason, if men of order deny themselves entrance on this ground, it is indispensable that the revolutionary party should promise to abstain likewise. But how can we hope that it will make, much less that it will observe, this engagement? The first aim of this party is evidently to possess itself of political power, by means of which it will be easy to realize its anti-social theories. We must put forth our whole strength in this contest, if we do not wish to have it become impossible for us to defend the social interests.

Finally, here is a consideration which, to the eyes of the men whose sentiments we express, appears still more decisive. They say that in order to make it possible to abstract political questions, and give ourselves exclusively to the study of the social, there should be a line of demarcation drawn between these two domains so closely united. This is what they cannot accomplish. Social and political rights repose on the same basis, they have the same enemies, and are attacked with the same arms. Why is the family disorganized? Why, in labor, is the harmony so necessary between the employer and the employed replaced by an antagonism equally hurtful to both? Is it not, above all, because every rank of society suffers from the rebound of the attacks made politically on the principle of authority?

We do not dispute the fatal influence of the false principles pointed out by M. Le Play—the original perfection preached by Rousseau, the native equality of men maintained by Alexis de Tocqueville, have had their share, and their great share, in the disorders which have totally overthrown society. But the principal cause of these disorders, the revolutionary principle by excellence, is the negation of all authority superior to that of man!

How shall we answer these arguments? It will not be difficult. We can admit them without injury to the thesis of M. Le Play. We would misapprehend him if we placed the Christian principle of authority among the number of political questions which he counsels us to avoid. This principle, in reality, is not less social than political. It is the common foundation of these two orders, the fourth commandment of the decalogue, and, consequently, constitutes one of the essential articles of the social restoration, whose complete programme M. Le Play finds in the decalogue.

What are the political questions we should avoid, if we would see union and strength succeed to the divisions which now paralyze us? Those that spring from opinions.

Opinions divide parties, and create among them interminable struggles. S. Augustine has well said: In necessariis, unitas; in dubiis, libertas. Necessary principles are the domain of unity; doubtful opinions, by provoking liberty, engender division. It is in the very essence of opinion to arouse against it other opinions, to which their probability, more or less great, gives the right to struggle against every light but that of proof. Here is, then, what experience teaches us, and what the dangers of society command us: it is to lift ourselves above this obscure and troubled region where opinions clash, and to rise to the peaceful sphere that principles illumine with a steady light. Here there can be no subject of division among sincere minds. In the social as in the political order, principles convince by their proofs all intellects which have not made a compact with error; and their necessity, as incontestable as their truth, conquers the adhesion of all just men.

We can, then, without contradicting M. Le Play, establish the following proposition: to obtain this union among right-thinking men, without which there is no salvation to be hoped for France, political parties must be silent on the questions which divide them, and cling to the immutable principle whose negation is the chief cause of our misfortunes.

But what is this principle? This is the question we will endeavor to answer with a precision which will leave no doubt in sincere minds; no pretext for the division of parties.

Our aim is very clear, and we hope it will be understood by our readers. We do not intend to discuss the various political opinions, still less to ask their defenders to sacrifice them; we seek the indisputable, the first principle of the political order, around which can be immediately formed that union of honest and upright men which will place them in a position to struggle against the Revolution, and will prepare for the future a more complete harmony, and the permanent restoration of France.

I.

We must, above all, distinguish clearly “the saving principle” from the opinions with which it might be confounded. It will be easier to understand what it is when we will have said what it is not.

In the first place, this principle is not that of absolute monarchy.

In the happiest period of our history, the power of the monarch was modified by institutions of various kinds: by the states-general, which, having the right to confirm or reject new taxes, afforded an opportunity of laying at the foot of the throne the complaints and the wishes of the country; by the magistrates, who, almost sovereign in the judicial order, exercised an efficacious control over the legislature; by the church above all, that energetically defended the supremacy of divine law against the caprices of princes. Whatever may be thought of the causes which, after the invasion of Protestantism, led to the destruction of these guarantees, and to the concentration of power; whatever may be said to excuse or glorify absolute monarchy in the past, it evidently cannot now be presented as the immutable principle through which we could ask our salvation.

It is not necessary to add that the inferior institutions which surrounded the monarchy at divers epochs, merit still less the name of principles. Formerly these institutions had a reason for existing, but nothing proves that they should survive the circumstances which gave them birth. Neither the warlike feudalism of the middle ages nor the nobility disarmed, but still privileged, of later times, belongs to those elements essential to all society, to which we are bound to restore their energy as soon as possible, if we would not condemn ourselves to perish.

Nor can we give the name of principle to divine right as understood by the Gallican school. According to this school, Providence, at the commencement of society, chose a man or a family to exercise the supreme power. The course of events which decided the form of government of infant societies was, in its opinion, a manifestation of the divine will sufficient to invest with the right of commanding those who had the strength to enforce it. This right is then divine, since it is held immediately from God; and, in the language of theology, the power of divine right is that which comes from God without passing through any human intermediary. The Gallican school recognized two sovereignties of divine right: that of the temporal order, which was royalty; and the papal sovereignty, which was spiritual—if it was allowable to say in this system that the pope was sovereign, since, contrary to the policy which sustained absolute political power, they wished in the spiritual order that the pope should share his sovereignty with the episcopate.

To dissimulate nothing, let us say here that lately theologians and Catholic philosophers, strangers to the Gallican school, have defended the thesis of divine right. But their adhesion, in giving new weight to this doctrine, does not take it from the category of simple opinions. It has always against it the arguments and authority of our most illustrious doctors, according to whom the right of princes is divine only in its first origin and in its abstract essence; but in its immediate origin, its concrete form, and in the appointment of the subject to be invested with it, this right is human, since it would only receive the determinations indispensable to its exercise by the expressed or tacit consent of society. The providential events of which we have before spoken were more or less indicative of the divine will, but the majority of doctors refuse to see in them a sufficient motive for investing with the right of commanding a man previously supposed to be without it.

The doctrine of the absolute inamissibility of power generally maintained by the partisans of divine right should also be ranked among the disputed opinions. It is logic that he who has received power immediately from God can only be deprived of it by God. The defenders of the opposite opinion admit, on the contrary, that, in extreme cases, power can be withdrawn from him who abuses it by only using for the destruction of society what was given to him for its preservation. And as it is difficult to distinguish in such cases, as error on such occasions could only be disastrous, as anarchy could easily spring from the most legitimate resistance to tyranny, Catholic theologians do not wish that these doubtful cases of conscience should be left to the passions of parties or to the blind fury of the mob; but they find a guarantee qualified to defend every right and to reassure every interest in the authority, ever impartial and paternal, of the Vicar of Jesus Christ.

The first basis of social order which we are now seeking, can neither be found in the monarchical principle.

In reality, whatever may be to the minds of the greatest philosophers the prerogatives of a limited monarchy, they cannot maintain that it is the only legitimate form of government; and consequently, as the monarchical principle is neither universal, absolute, nor immutable, it has none of the marks of a true principle.

Besides, the firmest partisans of monarchy do not assume for it this universal necessity. In the states with which it is identified, by long and legitimate possession, with the principle of right, they justly claim for it all the prerogatives of that principle. Unreasonable as it would be to pretend that monarchy is the only legitimate government for all times and all peoples, equally absurd would it be to maintain that, when it is legitimately established, it can be legitimately combated and overthrown. There is no right against right. The monarchical principle thus defended has no adversaries but those fanatical adorers of the republican form whose absolutism is a hundred times more unreasonable than ever was that of the most servile worshippers of royal power.

These topsy-turvy legitimists condemn, from the height of their pride, the immense majority of the human race, arrogating to themselves in favor of their opinion the authority which they refuse to the church of God; and they take to themselves, in remaking it, the motto with which they have so often reproached us: No salvation outside of the republic! After twenty-five centuries, they renew the foolish enterprise of the Babylonian despot: they wish to compel all the nations under the sun to prostrate themselves before the statue of their republic, and acknowledge it as the only true divinity.

No more tyrannical intolerance can be imagined. Whence do these absolutists derive the right of imposing their opinions on their equals? From what have they taken the halo with which they surround the cap of liberty, after having trampled all crowns under their feet? Undoubtedly, government exists but for the people, but does it follow that it should necessarily be exercised by the people? To refute their exclusive theories, it would be sufficient to compel them to make an application of them in their own families. In fact, from the moment that the principle becomes absolute, it should be applied to all authority; and there is no reason why the family and the workshop should not share with the state the advantages of the republican form.

But it is waste of time to dwell on this fanaticism, of which, thank God, we do not find a trace among the partisans of monarchy. The necessity which they attribute to it is not absolute, but hypothetical. They affirm that monarchy is the only form of government suited to the characters, defects, customs, and traditions of certain peoples. They say that nations, like individuals, have different temperaments; and, consequently, it would be absurd to impose the same rule on all. Nations, like individuals, when the constitution is formed, when inveterate habits have become a second nature, cannot, without danger, suddenly adopt new customs. What would become of a people who should persist in making this dangerous experiment? Against their will, they would carry their old customs into the new system; they would preserve their monarchical manners in the midst of a nominal republic; and this bastard government would have all the inconveniences of the monarchy, without its stability and other advantages.

More even than individuals, nations live by traditions. By them, the past extends its influence over the present, illumines it with the reflection of its glory, and animates it with its spirit. Traditions bind together the successive periods in a nation’s existence, and preserve among its children the unity produced by a long community of dangers and struggles, of triumphs and reverses. A people that breaks with tradition is like an uprooted tree; its existence is similar to that of a man, who, having lost his memory, cannot connect the present with the past. Now, it is evident that a nation whose institutions and customs for centuries have reposed on monarchy cannot have this basis overthrown without breaking all traditions, and throwing society entirely out of its beaten tracks.

These observations are evidently the dictates of good sense and experience. It is impossible not to be vividly struck by them, when one has lived among a people faithful to its traditions; as the English, for example. Nothing is more striking than the contrast between the general security, the vitality, the friendly enjoyments, whose source is respect for tradition, with the instability and anxiety which the Revolution has produced in our French society, formerly so calm and joyous.

But however well grounded may be this induction, it cannot take the place of the absolute and indisputable principle by which we wish to bind together all true and earnest men.

Let us pursue our research, and congratulate ourselves on being dispensed in our present position from pausing at the thorny distinction between the power of right and the power of fact. For too long a period has this been a cause of incurable division between the most honest and religious men. Of all the problems which belong to the social order, it is perhaps the most difficult to resolve practically. On one side, it is certain that the violation of right cannot destroy it, and that the usurper who, to gratify his ambition, imperils the gravest interests of society, does not become legitimate, even though his attempt be crowned by success. On the other side, however, the maintenance of public order being the reason of the existence of the rights of power, obedience cannot be refused to him who alone has the strength and the means of attaining this indispensable end.

From this springs one of those conflicts of opinion which make the social question so difficult. The same public order which commands obedience to the usurper alone capable of defending it, forbids encouraging the ambition of future usurpers by the full acceptation of triumphant crime. The friends of order can then follow different paths, according to the preference they may have for either of these interests. The power of fact will attract men who, most affected by present necessity, will hope to find in their adhesion to the established order a safeguard against new convulsions. Others will see in this adhesion to the revolution consummated an anticipated sanction of future revolutions, and will think themselves obliged to provide for the permanent necessities of society by remaining faithful to the fallen power.

This is not the place to decide such a difficult question, where even the supreme authority of the church has thought it often wiser to abstain. We need only state as a fact, unfortunate as inevitable, the division which springs from this conflict of duty. It will last until the illegitimate power is overthrown, or until, by the lapse of time, all trace of its origin is lost. In the first case, the transitory right which the usurping government borrowed from fact having disappeared with the fact, the power of right recovers its preponderance. In the second case, fact is transformed into right by becoming alone capable of defending society; and legitimacy, of which social interest was the base, will disappear with the real possibility of saving this supreme interest.

It is what happened in England, where the tories, the former partisans of the Stuarts, have long since adhered to the reigning dynasty. But in France, neither of the two dynasties which succeeded to that of our ancient kings established its domination firmly enough, or sufficiently renounced its revolutionary principle, to render evident to all eyes this union of right and fact. For fifty years, we have seen conservatives, religious men, and even the clergy, divided into two or three political fractions; and this division has not been one of the least causes of our weakness, and of the growing strength of the Revolution.

The evil appeared irremediable, and each day it acquired fresh gravity; for the government of fact, instead of seeing in the adhesion of men of order a motive for returning openly to conservative principles, believed it to be their interest to conciliate the men of disorder by supporting the principle of the Revolution.

Providence has drawn us from this position, apparently inextricable, and, by the result even of our faults, has made the cause of our divisions disappear. The Revolution has destroyed the governments blind enough to lean upon her. The power which exists to-day, and whose strength lies in the Assembly, has more than once acknowledged its provisional character. France is, then, free to return to the true principles of order, and to reunite under one flag all those who are sincerely devoted to the holy cause. Nothing prevents her fulfilling a celebrated prediction, and to close, by the proclamation of the rights of God, the revolution which opened with the proclamation of the rights of man.

II.

Herein lies our salvation: to the revolutionary principle, which weakens all powers and all social rights, in making them depend on man’s caprice, we must oppose the Christian principle, which gives them an immovable solidity, in reposing them on the supreme authority of God.

No innovation is required: we must simply return to the eternal law’s of social order. If imprudent architects attempt to change the laws of equilibrium, what should be done to repair the ruins accumulated by their folly? Remember those laws, and enforce their observation. There is also an equilibrium in the moral order, and it was the unpardonable fault of our fathers that they overlooked its most essential condition. Let us hasten to restore all splendor to the truth whose darkening was the cause of our misfortunes. Foreseen and accepted without dispute by the pagans themselves, this generative dogma of society was, in the dawn of Christianity, promulgated by S. Paul as one of the principal articles of revealed religion; and it did not cease to rule the nations of Europe until the epoch when, with the law of Christ, order and peace were driven from their confines. Reason and religion are in perfect harmony when they proclaim the Christian principle. They tell us, with one voice, that God, who directs all with so much wisdom in the material world, wishes equally, and with much more reason, that order should reign in the moral. In commanding men to unite in society, so as to assure by their common efforts the happiness of all, he imposes on them an obligation to bridle the selfish passions which unceasingly conspire against the general interest. And as the only efficacious means of keeping them in order is the institution of a power armed with strength for the defence of the right, God wills that this power should be created, if it does not exist, and obeyed when it exists.

Thus, according to the teaching of Christianity, civil power is divine in its origin, and, although a human element must interpose in the principle to determine the form and choose the depositary, he that is once elected commands really in the name of God. “All power comes from God,” says S. Paul; it is by order of God that it exists, and consequently it cannot be resisted without resisting the order of God, and without drawing down the damnation justly reserved for those who revolt against God.

It is evident that between this principle which belongs to Catholic faith, and the Gallican opinion of divine right, the difference is not so great as would at first appear. Both parties agree as to the origin of power, its mission, its rights, and its duties. Only on one point do they differ: according to one, the man who, in the commencement, was invested with power, received it immediately from God; while the other holds that the investiture was made by the expressed or tacit consent of society. This divergence is clearly more speculative than practical, as, with this exception, they both believe the same doctrine.

It is therefore wrong to seek any analogy between the revolutionary theory and the opinion of Catholic doctors the most favorable to the primitive rights of society. It is only necessary to thoroughly understand their doctrine to see this resemblance, which is merely apparent, instantly vanish. According to them, it is true that power depends for its first organization on those whom it will soon command; but once constituted, it is independent of them in its exercise within the limits inherent in the form of government. Society, in reality, is not the source of the authority with which it invests its elect: it is only the channel. If it has the right to determine the form and to choose the subject, it is also obliged to make use of this right, and to arm the power instituted by it with the full prerogatives necessary for the maintenance of order.

Nothing is wanting to authority thus understood; it has a precise end and an indispensable reason for being—the defence of individual rights, and the maintenance of public order. It has an immutable base—the will of God, the guarantee of rights and the protector of order. It has a universal and inevitable sanction—the eternal punishment which the contemners of the law cannot escape, even though they succeed in avoiding temporal chastisement. In resting social order on the first principle of all things, this doctrine places it in perfect harmony with the general order of the universe; and it is as satisfactory in theory to the mind of the philosopher as it is efficacious in practice in maintaining the order of society. Equally favorable to all legitimate interests, it elevates at the same time the majesty of power and the dignity of obedience; for, if it is glorious for rulers to command in the name of God, it is not less so for the governed to obey only God.

What, on the contrary, is the effect of the revolutionary principle? Instead of establishing authority, it destroys it; and, under the pretext of elevating obedience, degrades it.

It destroys authority; for there is no true authority, except where a superior will is invested with the right to command, and an inferior one is obliged to obey. Now, these two conditions cannot be realized in the revolutionary theory. The principle of this theory, such as Rousseau laid it down in his Social Contract, is that the power placed over civil society draws all its rights from the free concession of those whom it is called to command. It is, then, their mandatary, and not their superior; consequently, it has no more the right to command them than they are bound to obey it. Rousseau says it in these very terms: in obeying it, they only obey themselves; and, consequently, they can, when they please, dispense themselves from obedience.

Thus, instead of creating authority, the revolutionary principle renders it impossible; and since authority is the essential condition of the stability, strength, well-being, and existence even of society, it cannot be denied that this principle is the overthrow of social order.

But at the same time that it annihilates the majesty of power, it debases the dignity of obedience. It is very well to say to the members of society that, in obeying their mandatary, they only obey themselves; it will not prevent them in a thousand circumstances from being directed to do the contrary of what they would like. What will then happen? If the discontented are numerous and strong enough to make their will prevail over that of power, they will revolt; but, if resistance is impossible, they will be compelled to obey. What will be this obedience? The act of a slave who yields to force, and not the act of a reasonable man and a Christian who conforms his will to that of God.

Instead of the alliance which Christian doctrine establishes between the majesty of power and the dignity of obedience, the revolutionary theory creates an irreconcilable antagonism between these two essential elements of society; it is only by degrading the subjects that the rulers can ensure the execution of their orders.

This radical and absolute opposition between the two doctrines necessarily extends to their consequences. Whilst the Christian principle gives an inviolable stability to power, and guarantees with equal efficacy the rights of the subjects, the revolutionary principle has for result inevitable anarchy and tyranny.

Anarchy first; for how can a power which is absolutely without a base sustain itself for any length of time? Consistently with itself, the theory of the Revolution intends that society, in establishing power as its mandatary, should not strip itself in any manner of sovereignty. As society created it freely, by an act of its own will it can reverse it when it seems desirable, without any one having the right to demand an account of its acts. As a consequence, the revolutionary theory involves daily appeals to new plébiscites and to new elections for the overthrow of the established power, and the substitution of another more in accord with the present will of the nation; and, as the triumph of the discontented of yesterday will infallibly create other dissatisfied ones, these will have the right to organize to-morrow a new agitation to overthrow everything.

The constitution cannot legitimately reprove or arrest these attempts; for, emanating like the government from the national will, it is also subordinate to the fluctuations of that capricious sovereign. The small number of the agitators can be no objection; and you cannot oppose to them the wishes and rights of the majority. If there is no authority superior to that of man, all human wills are equal, and all equally sovereign. The number of those who differ from me gives them a preponderating force, but it does not confer on them a superior right. If, then, I think my sentiment the best, nothing can hinder me from working to make it prevail. By making use of intrigue and violence, the smallest minority easily becomes the majority; and, with strength, it acquires the right to do all that the revolutionary principle attributes to majorities.

What can be opposed to this argument? Is it not perfectly logical? If the consequences appear intolerable, there is but one means of escape—the return to Christian principle, alone capable of preserving social order from the convulsions to which it is condemned by these attempts against power. Christian doctrine repels the attacks made upon public order with much more severity than the violations of individual rights; it brands them as crimes of treason against society. Except in the extreme cases of which we have already spoken, it declares power inviolable; not in virtue of the personal prerogative of him who is invested with it, but in virtue of the interest of which he is the necessary guarantee.

Thus we have heard S. Paul tell us that he who resists power resists the order of God, and draws damnation on his head. This sentence, we know, does not agree with the verdict of public opinion, as indulgent in regard to political crimes as it is severe against those which come under the head of crimes of common right.

On which side is the truth? If public power is the indispensable bulwark of individual rights, can the attempt be made to overthrow it, without, at the same time, attacking all those rights? If a man, who, during the night, forces his entrance into a house, and seeks to enrich himself to the prejudice of the legitimate possessor, is thrown into prison as a criminal unworthy of compassion, how can he merit less severe punishment who shakes the entire social edifice, to gratify his cupidity and ambition at the expense of the public peace? Nothing is clearer: in listening to the revolutionary theories in preference to the Christian doctrine, public opinion is in complete disagreement with reason.

Would to God that it was all limited to a theoretical opposition! Unfortunately, nothing is more practical than revolutionary error; as, for a century, the conclusions to which logic has led us have been but too well confirmed by experience. Nothing, then, is wanting to enable us to judge the two rival doctrines with full knowledge of the case. We have seen them at work—one for fourteen centuries, the other during the age nearest our own time; they have given their measure, and are known by their fruits. One, in semi-barbarous times, endowed France with the unity, glory, concentration of strength, and expansion which placed her in the first rank among the nations of the world; the other, in an age of advanced civilization and unheard-of material progress, heaped ruins upon ruins on our unfortunate country—religious ruin, moral ruin, social ruin, political ruin, financial ruin, military ruin—nothing remained standing when with the principle of authority the necessary foundation of society was overthrown.

And let it not be imagined that, in thus delivering the social body to the ravages of anarchy, the revolutionary principle guarantees it against the rigors of tyranny. No; it condemns it inevitably to suffer those rigors. At the same time that it disarms power with regard to the wicked passions, it arms it with an all-powerful force against the most sacred rights. Rousseau avowed it frankly; and, from the Convention to Prince Bismarck, all revolutionary governments have practised this lesson. Nothing escapes the sovereignty of the state from the moment that the state is emancipated from the authority of God. The soul of the citizen belongs to it with the same title as his body; the questions of doctrine are not more independent of its control than those of policy; the church and the school are under its jurisdiction as well as the public streets and the prison.

Since society recognizes no authority above it, and the state represents the social will, it is absolute master, it is all-powerful, it is God. It is the state that makes justice and truth, that creates rights, that is the supreme arbiter of conscience; and its omnipotence, as unlimited as fragile, leaves to the citizen but the choice between two expedients: either to bend with docility under its yoke by abdicating all moral dignity, or to overthrow it, with the certainty of seeing it replaced by an equal tyranny.

Thus the revolutionary theory, which is permanent anarchy, is at the same time organized despotism. At other periods, we have seen society, deprived of its equilibrium, oscillate between these two extremes, passing in turn from anarchy to tyranny, and from tyranny to anarchy. Thanks to revolutionary progress, we can enjoy simultaneously the advantages of these two states, and taste the vexations of despotism, without escaping the agitations of anarchy. Since the proclamation of the pretended liberal principles, we have seen disappear the liberties which, under the most absolute systems, were considered as inviolable. Provincial and communal franchises, the rights of the father over his children, of the proprietor over his possessions, of the testator over his estate—all have been grasped by the iron hand of the state. It has broken all counterbalancing influences, and those that it has not completely annihilated only subsist during its good pleasure.

How different is the theory of power, regarded by the light of Christian principle! Instituted for the protection of rights and the repression of injustice, it extends its jurisdiction only by the means necessary for attaining its end. As soon as it would leave that sphere, it becomes an usurper. Its power is limited in every sense by divine law and by the pre-existing rights of the subjects; for, instead of the revolutionary theory that the state creates the rights of private individuals, it is Christian doctrine that the rights of individuals incapable of defending themselves rendered necessary the creation of the state.

According to the first, society is everything, the individual nothing; according to the second, the individual alone has immortal destinies, and civil society is but a temporary means to facilitate the accomplishment of those destinies. The least of the subjects has, then, the right to oppose his conscience as a brazen wall against the unjust will of a despot; and, if this protestation is not heeded, another voice will soon be heard which will resound to the extremities of the universe—the voice of the incorruptible defender of justice, and the protector of oppressed weakness; of him whom God has placed on the earth to speak in his name, to promulgate his law, and to recall alike princes and people to the respect of justice.

It is not necessary to give further proof of the doctrine we have endeavored to explain. There is not one of our readers who will not instantly understand the principle whose restoration we have declared indispensable for putting an end to the fatal reign of the Revolution. We were not wrong in giving it the name of principle, as from it flow all the laws of political order, at the same time that itself is immediately derived from the very idea of that order. It is, then, necessary, universal, and absolute; it extends to all times, all forms of government, all degrees of civilization. At once political and religious, rational and revealed, it belongs to universal ethics, and is part of the traditional dogma. He who denies it will be condemned by the church as a heretic, and will be disowned by reason, as both a rebel against evidence, and guilty of an attack on the essential laws of social order.

III.

If we have succeeded in demonstrating this truth, it will not be difficult to decide upon the duties it imposes upon us, and the means we must employ to incline in the way of salvation the undecided balance of the destinies of France.

Since the proclamation of the revolutionary principle in the last century was the commencement of our ruin, we can only save ourselves by denying it with all possible solemnity, and in placing the contrary principle as the basis of the future constitution of our country. We must, in fine, leave the ways which have misled and lost all the powers that during fifty years have assumed in France the mission of restoring public order. Undoubtedly, none of them accepted the revolutionary theory to its full extent; they even by more than one act implied its negation. But these isolated efforts, extorted from them by the instinct of preservation, did not prevent them from habitually submitting to the influences of the Revolution, and even often rendering homage to its principles.

Sprung from its bosom, they dared not deny their origin, and they did not understand that, while shrinking from this disavowal, they condemned themselves to be overthrown by the blind force which had lifted them on its shield. One after the other they deceived themselves, and France with them, by taking “the great principles of ‘89” as the palladium of their thrones and their dynasties. It was asking a guarantee of duration from the most energetic dissolvent, and giving a solemn falsehood to France as a political creed. We have shown elsewhere that, under ambiguous formulas intended to deceive thoughtless good faith, the declaration of 1789 contains, in seventeen articles, the pure theory of the Revolution. We willingly admit that this hypocrisy of language might, at the first moment, put on the wrong scent a generation intoxicated with the desire of reform; but to be still seduced by it, after so many bloody revolutions have too clearly commented this ambiguous text, would be intolerable.

If we push blindness to this excess, will we deserve to be called the most intellectual people in the world? We have been duped by a comedy of fifteen years; will it be so with a comedy of a hundred? It is thus that posterity will name the century in which the principles of ‘89 were the theme of the most gigantic mystification found in history. All the civilized nations have been more or less cheated by this jugglery of the most precious liberties, in the name of liberalism; but France has played a separate part. It is she who, after being herself deceived, endeavored to make the entire universe share in her deception, and thus took upon herself both the shame of the fraud, and the responsibility of the imposture.

Let us be done with this odious falsehood, and return to reality. Let us seek true liberties in the proclamation of true principles, and ensure respect for the rights of man by the restoration of the authority of God.

This is the first duty that the vital interest of France imposes on all men called to take any part whatever in the re-establishment of power.

But henceforward we have another obligation to fulfil. Honest men of all parties must unite in the proclamation of the Christian principle, and renounce any alliance with the defenders of the Revolution. Former parties must disappear, and only leave in the field the great armies of order and disorder. This division alone has a reason for existing in the present state of society. Old parties, on the contrary, can only be divided by personal questions, to which it would be shameful to attach any importance in presence of the dangers that menace society. All parties, even those that seem to yield the most thorough allegiance to the Revolution, contain a greater or less number of friends of order whose equivocal connections do not prevent their disowning, in the bottom of their hearts, the revolutionary principle.

The moment has come to separate these contrary elements united by purely accidental affinities. We are approaching one of those fatal dates that betokens the end of one world, and the commencement of another; one of those partial judgments of Providence that prelude the general one by which divine justice will close the era of time, to open that of eternity. Now, as then, the terrible blows of the Almighty dissipate illusions, crush adverse interests, and bring to light the two contrary tendencies which have been hidden in the depths of hearts; the two opposite loves that, since the beginning of the world, have divided humanity into two hostile cities.

It is, then, indispensable to take a side; the time of tergiversation and compromise is past; we must be for truth or falsehood, for order or the Revolution, for Jesus Christ or the infernal chief of all rebels. And it does not suffice to carry the truth in the heart: it must be professed openly and courageously. The more evident is the necessity of adhering to the Christian principle, the more manifest is the double obligation that flows from it for honest men of all parties to form a compact league, whatever may have previously been their mutual estrangement, and to separate themselves from the revolutionists, with whom circumstances may have connected them.

We will go on no further, for we have resolved not to leave the region of principles; but the men to whom Providence has given the mission and power to save us cannot stop there. They must bring down the saving principle from the region of abstractions to that of facts, give it a concrete existence, a determined form, a durable organization, a strength sufficient to maintain itself, and to raise us up. It is not our province to guide them in the accomplishment of this task; may God give them, with the light which will show them the path of salvation, strength to follow it, and draw France after them! They are called to be nothing less than the saviours of their country and of Christendom; for it is not only the destinies of France which they hold in their hands, but those of Christian civilization, incapable, if France yields, of escaping from the invasion of the double revolution of Cæsarism and demagogism. May they feel the gravity of the situation, and understand that such great peril demands heroic resolutions!

To worthily fulfil this mission, the most important, perhaps, ever confided to a deliberative assembly, they must rise above all consideration of persons, all interests of parties, and they must choose, in the sincerity of their conscience, the man and the form of government that will most surely guarantee the restoration of the Christian principle, and the repudiation of the revolutionary, the destruction of anarchy and Cæsarism, the protection of every right, and the re-establishment of true liberty. This choice, which alone can save us, will not be difficult from the moment that they agree on the principle from which it must proceed, and the end which must be attained; and once the choice made under the eye of God, it will be still less difficult, with his help, to make it acceptable to France.

The Comte de Breda recently recalled to us, as appropriate to the time, the consoling and prophetic words written by Joseph de Maistre in 1797, at an epoch when the restoration of order appeared still more difficult than at the present time: “Can we believe that the political world moves by chance, and that it is not organized, directed, animated, by the same wisdom which shines in the physical? The great criminals who overthrow a state necessarily produce heart-rending wounds; but, when man works to re-establish order, he associates himself with the Author of order, he is favored by nature—that is to say, by the harmony of secondary causes, which are the ministers of divine power. His action has something in it of divine; it is at the same time gentle and imperious; he forces nothing, and nothing resists him.”