Authority in the Modern State Harold J. Laski

Authority in the Modern State

Harold J. Laski

Batoche BooksKitchener, 2000

Yale University Press, 1919

Batoche BooksKitchener, OntarioN2G 3L1Canadaemail: [email protected]

ISBN: 1-55273-011-5

To Mr. Justice Holmes and Felix Frankfurter: The TwoYoungest of my Friends

Contents

Chapter One: Authority in the Modern State ....................................................................................... 5I. The Origins of the Modern State ...................................................................................................... 5II. State and Government..................................................................................................................... 8III. The Nature of Obedience.............................................................................................................. 11IV. The Limitations of Power .............................................................................................................. 15V. The Attack on the Secular State .................................................................................................... 20VI. The Division of Power ................................................................................................................... 28VII. The Organisation of Power ......................................................................................................... 33VIII. The Significance of Freedom ..................................................................................................... 37IX. The Direction of Events ................................................................................................................ 47X. Conclusion....................................................................................................................................... 52

Chapter Two: Bonald ............................................................................................................................ 59I. The Implication of Theocracy .......................................................................................................... 59II. The Basis of Traditionalism .......................................................................................................... 61III. The Political Theory of Bonald ..................................................................................................... 63IV. The Attack on the Individual ........................................................................................................ 66V. Implications of the Attack .............................................................................................................. 69VI. The Religious Aspect of the State ................................................................................................ 75VII. Criticisms ..................................................................................................................................... 77VIII. The Revival of Traditionalism ................................................................................................... 80IX. The Traditionalism of M. Brunetière ........................................................................................... 82X. The Traditionalism of M. Bourget ................................................................................................. 85XI. The Significance of Variety ........................................................................................................... 90

Chapter Three: Lamennais .................................................................................................................. 94I. The Problem of Lamennais ............................................................................................................. 94II. The Church in the Napoleonic Age ............................................................................................... 94III. Early Ultramontanism ................................................................................................................. 98IV. The Glorification of Rome ........................................................................................................... 101V. The Attack on the Secular State .................................................................................................. 106VI. The Transition to Liberalism ..................................................................................................... 110VII. The Foundation of L’Avenir ....................................................................................................... 112VII. The Appeal to Rome................................................................................................................... 117IX. The Condemnation ...................................................................................................................... 119X. The Red Cap on the Cross ............................................................................................................ 123XI. Implications................................................................................................................................. 124XII. The Inheritance ......................................................................................................................... 128XIII. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 135

Chapter Four: The Political Theory of Royer-Collard ....................................................................... 141I. The Significance of the Restoration.............................................................................................. 141II. The Theory of the Charter ........................................................................................................... 144III. Necessary Freedoms ................................................................................................................... 147IV. Implications ................................................................................................................................. 151V. Ethics and Politics ........................................................................................................................ 155

Chapter Five: Administrative Syndicalism in France1 .................................................................... 162I. The Right of Association................................................................................................................ 162II. The Complaints of the Civil Service ........................................................................................... 165

III. The Claims of the Civil Service ................................................................................................. 169IV. Implications ................................................................................................................................. 172V. The Attack of the Jurists .............................................................................................................. 177VI. The Attack of the Politicians ...................................................................................................... 182VII. The Movement Towards Reform ............................................................................................... 188Appendix: Note on the Bibliography of Lamennais ........................................................................ 193

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Chapter One: Authority in theModern State

I. The Origins of the Modern StateMan is a community-building animal: it is byreverent contact with Aristotle’s fundamentalobservation that every political discussion mustnow begin. We start with the one compulsoryform of human association—the state—as thecentre of analysis. Yet there are few subjectsupon which enquiry is so greatly needed as uponthe mechanisms by which it lives. Outside ourstate-context we are, after all, largely unintelli-gible, must be, as Aristotle so scornfully pro-claimed, beasts or gods who defy interpretation.Even in birth we inherit the qualities of unnum-bered generations so that a bias is present be-fore ever it has obtained expression. This em-phasis upon state-life has become more vital asthe scale of existence has become progressivelygreater. To the unity of interdependence, at least,the world has been reduced, so that, today, thewhim of a New York millionaire may well affectthe lives of thousands in the cotton-mills ofBombay.1

Not that state-history can in any adequate sensebe made the biography of great men. We can evenless today accept the epic-theory of Carlyle thanthat so characteristically contributed byBolingbroke to Voltaire when he found in theinterplay of personal fantasy the true source ofevents. Not, of course, that history will ever bean exact science in the sense that exactness be-longs to mathematical enquiry. It is only mag-nificent sciolists like Machiavelli who dare tolook upon history as an endless cycle. For mostit will mainly be what Thucydides strove to makeof it—the great storehouse of political wisdom.For all history that is not merely annalistic mustlead to the formulation of conclusions. It has init the full materials for a state-philosophy sim-ply because the evidence we possess so largelyrelates to political life. From Aristotle down toour own time the one constant effort has beenthe determination of the conditions upon whichthat life should be lived. And, where the efforthas been most fruitful, it has been induction fromexperience. Systems have helped us little

enough. The vague ideal of a revolution, thechance phrase of an orator, the incisive induc-tion of some thinker more deeply-seeing thanthe rest—it is upon these that, for the most part,our creeds have been builded. The sources of ourprinciples are as varied as human experiencesimply because there has, from the outset, beenno large tract of human life with which the statehas not concerned itself.

Certainly the state has about it the majesty ofhistory; and it is old enough to make its presentsubstance seem permanent to the mass of men.It has become so integral a part of our lives thatthe fact of its evolution is no longer easy to re-member.2 It has almost passed beyond the re-gion where criticism may enter by reason of thevery greatness of its mission. Aristotle’s formulafor the expression of its purpose has lent it agreat, if specious aid. The realisation of indi-vidual virtue in the common good3 is a concep-tion fine enough, in all conscience, to suffuse witha glamour of which the treachery is too late dis-covered the processes by which it moves alongits way. The conception is yet inadequate becauseit fails to particularise those upon whom it isintended that benefit shall be conferred.Aristotle himself had certainly what the mod-ern age would regard as an impossibly narrowconception of citizenship;4 and Plato’s virtue isso confined to the special experiences to whichit is annexed as to limit to but few the full en-joyment of capacities.5 The nature of the state,moreover, has become so intimately involvedwith that of society that we tend, like Hegel, tospeak of it less in terms of logic than of rhap-sody.6 Yet the very fact that it has a historyshould surely make us cautious. The state is nounchanging organisation. It is hardly today ei-ther in purpose or in method hat it was to theGreek philosophers, or to the theologians of themedieval time. The medieval state is a church;and the differentiation of civil from religiousfunction is a matter of no slight difficulty.7 Inthe form in which it becomes immediatelyrecognisable to ourselves the modern state is,clearly enough, the offspring of the Reformation,and it bears upon its body the tragic scars ofthat mighty conflict. What it is, it has essentially

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become by Virtue of the experience it has en-countered. Upon its face is written large the ef-fort of great thinkers to account for the uniqueclaims it has made upon the loyalties of men.Nor is their thought less clearly present, even ifit be but by implication, in the policy of thosewho have directed political destinies.

The modern state, we urge, is the outcome ofthe religious struggle of the sixteenth century;or, at least, it is from that crisis that it derivesthe qualities today most especially its own. Thenotion of a single and universal authority com-mensurate with the bounds of social life wasutterly destroyed when Luther appealed to theprinces in the interests of religious reform. Ex-ternal unity was destroyed to be replaced by asystem of separate unities and the weapon ofdivine right was the instrument he forged to thatend.8 What, virtually, he did was to assume thesacredness of power, and thus, by implication,the eternal rightness of its purposes. He buildedbetter than he knew. The religious disruptionsynchronised with the full realisation of nationalconsciousness in Western Europe, and the mod-ern state is clearly visible as a territorial soci-ety divided into government and subjects. Thegreat preamble to the Statute of Appeals9—theone statutory example of English Byzantinism—is no more than official announcement that theEnglish state permits no question of Henry’scomplete sovereignty. Government, for the mostpart, was royal; for over the free towns of Ger-many, and the Italian cities, was cast the dubi-ous cloak of imperial suzerainty. Holland hadnot yet arisen to suggest the problems of a sov-ereign republic.

But state and society are not yet equated. Thatis the work of the thinkers of the Counter-Ref-ormation. The church might, as in England, as-sume a national form; but religious differencewent deep enough to limit state-absorptiveness.France learned a partial toleration from themisery of civil war; and almost a century of so-cial and economic confusion was necessary be-fore Germany took a similar road. Not that thisearly toleration is at all complete; it is born toopainfully for that. It is, at most, the sense of the

French politiques that the state must not per-ish for religion’s sake. It admits the impossibil-ity of making men sacrifice their consciencesupon a single altar. The task of conviction wasno easy one, and the lesson was only partiallylearned. Europe, in what at least the medievalthinkers deemed most fundamental, had becomeaccustomed to unity of outlook. Unity of outlookwas secured by reference of power to a singlecentre. The partition of Western civilisation intoa medley of religious systems developed prob-lems of the first importance. A man might oweallegiance to Rome in one set of opinions and toLondon in another. He might think as Pius Vbade him in matter of transubstantiation, andin those great political questions of 1588 takethe fleet into the English channel against thepapally-approved might of Spain. Your Catholicmight be a member of the English state, butthere was always, for him a power outside. Forsome, it might preside over all indirectly;10 forothers it might only in its own sphere be su-preme. But, where conflict came, men like Par-sons would show that to attack the state wasnot an onslaught on the fabric of society.11

Thus, from the outset of its modern history, theproblem is raised as to the authority to be pos-sessed by the state. Not Romanists alone doubtits absoluteness. Archbishop Whitgift set thekeynote to the temper that is turned into theory.He was by nature inapt to grasp the niceties ofpolitical metaphysics, and a Presbyterian theorywhich, like that of Cartwright, struck at the rootof state-omnipotence aroused him to fierce an-ger.12 From the threshold of the seventeenth cen-tury what the state demands is the whole ofman’s allegiance lest, in seeing less, it shouldobtain nothing. James I had at least a logician’smind. Aiming at supreme power for the state hedeemed himself to personify, he could not doubtthat Presbyterian structure was subversive ofhis whole position. If the ultimate seat of au-thority were not with himself, he seemed alreadyon the threshold of anarchy. The only differencebetween Parliament and the Stuarts was as tothe place in which that supreme power resided;and Parliament made the Civil War the proof ofits hypothesis. Hobbes only got his volume

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printed under the Commonwealth because itconveniently applied to any form of despotism.

The medieval worship of unity,13 in fact, is in-herited by the modern state; and what changesin the four centuries of its modern history is sim-ply the place in which the controlling factor ofunity is to be found. To the Papacy it seemedclear in medieval times that the power to bindand loose had given it an authority without limitor question. The modern state inherits the pa-pal prerogative. It must, then, govern all; and togovern all there must be no limit to the power ofthose instruments by which it acts. Catholic andNonconformist are alike excluded from citizen-ship simply because they denied, as it deemed,the fulness of state authority. They refuse ab-sorption by its instruments, and the penalty ofrefusal is exclusion.14 The representatives of thestate must be sovereign, and if the Stuarts abusetheir prerogative, the result is, not its limita-tion but its transference to Parliament. Alwaysthe stern logic of theory seems to imply that thedominating institution is absolute. Locke, in-deed, saw deeper, and argued to a state thatthought it had already won its freedom thatpower must be limited by its service to the pur-poses it is intended to accomplish.15 But the ac-cident of foreign rule gave that power a basis inwhat could, relatively at least to continental fact,be termed popular consent. Thenceforth the sov-ereignty of Parliament became the fundamen-tal dogma of English constitutionalism. With-out, there might be the half articulate control ofpubic opinion; but that, as Rousseau said,16 wasfree only at election time. Its control was essen-tially a reserve-power, driven to action only atmoments of decisive crisis. “A supreme, irresist-ible, uncontrollable authority, in which the jurasumma imperii or rights of sovereignty reside”17

is, as Blackstone says, the legal theory whichlies at the root of the English State. For practi-cal purposes, that is to say, the sovereignty ofthe English state means the sovereignty of theKing in Parliament.18

France travelled more slowly, but, always, it wasin the same direction she was travelling. Herearliest political speculation was, as Bodin bears

witness, already of a sovereign state; and it is,as he emphasises, a state which boasts a royalorgan to declare its sovereign purposes. Bossuetmakes it clear that the centralising efforts ofher three great ministers had not been vain; andit was not merely Voltaire’s acid humor thatmade him equate the sovereignty of France withthe will of Louis XIV. But, sooner or later, abuseinvolves disruption. The atmosphere of the eigh-teenth century was not favourable to the reten-tion of a belief in divinities. The profound specu-lation of Montesquieu, the unanswerable ques-tions of Rousseau, herald a transference of powersimilar to that of England. The people becomesmaster in its own house, and the dogma of na-tional sovereignty becomes the corner stone ofthe reconstructed edifice.19 But as in England,the sovereign people is too large for continuousaction. Its powers become delegated to the com-plex of institutions we call government. Thence-forth, for general purposes, it is through thischannel that the state-will is expressed. Parlia-ment is the nation, and its sovereignty is theregiven adequate fulfilment.20 Only on rare occa-sions, as in 1830 and in 1848, is there sign ofclear dissent from governmental purposes. Onlythen, that is to say, can we argue a revocation ofpowers.

Nor is American evolution at all different, thoughhere there are more checks upon the exercise ofthe governmental power.21 The people is ulti-mately sovereign in the sense that, sooner orlater, it may, through proper reforms, or, in thelast resort, through revolution, get itself obeyed.There is no immediately sovereign body, as inEngland or in France. Certain limitations uponstate and federal government are taken as fun-damental and continuous expressions of popu-lar desire; and the rights thus enshrined in theconstitution it is the business of the SupremeCourt to maintain. Yet, even here, it is, for mostpurposes, a governmental will that we at eachmoment encounter. The problem of authoritymay ultimately resolve itself into a question ofwhat a section of the American people, strongenough to get its will enforced, may desire.22 Butsuch continuous resolve as the business of statedaily requires one hundred million people can-

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not directly undertake. What here becomes es-sential is the device of representation. Sover-eignty, therefore, in America, as elsewhere, is theacts of government as the people and the Su-preme Court acquiesce in their enforcement. Themultiplicity of governmental powers demandedby the federal system makes no difference; it ismerely a question of administrative convenience.The fundamental fact is that when we speak ofacts done by America the actor is a governmentof which the subjects are more or less inert in-struments. In that sense American evolution,though superficially different in form is, in sub-stantial character, similar to the developmentof the European system.

II. State and GovernmentIt is, then, with a sovereign state that we aretoday confronted. For its fundamental agents,that is to say, there is claimed a power fromwhich no appeal is to be made. The attributes ofsovereignty have been admirably described byPaley. Its power, he says,23 “may be termed abso-lute, onmipotent, uncontrollable, arbitrary, des-potic, and is alike so in all countries.” Limita-tion of any kind it does not therefore admit; itacts as it deems adequate to its purposes. Butthe state, of course, may assume a variety offorms. It may, as in the France of the ancien rgime, be an absolute monarchy. It may, as in theEngland of the eighteenth century, be a narrowoligarchy, or, as in modern America, its form maybe democratic. The substance of the state, how-ever, does not so vary. It is always a territorialsociety in which there is a distinction betweengovernment and subjects. The question of formmust, of course, affect the question of substance;but its real reference is, in fact, to the prevail-ing type of government. That is, in part, a ques-tion of those who share in power; in part, also, aquestion of the basis upon which responsibilityis to rest.

Such a definition excludes the equation of statewith society. The exclusion is made because thereare obviously social relationships which can notbe expressed through the state. It may be truethat man’s nature is determined by the envi-ronment in which he lives, but that environment

is not merely a state-creation. No one wouldclaim in England, for example, that the RomanCatholic church is a part of the state; but it isyet obvious that it acts upon its members as asocial determinant. The family is an institutionof society, and no one will doubt that the statemay affect it; but it is not merely a part of thestate. The state is concerned only with thosesocial relations that express themselves bymeans of government.24 That is not to say thatthe province of the government may not be wide;and, indeed, as at Geneva under Calvin, theremay be almost no element in life with which itmay not attempt to concern itself. But immedi-ately it is perceived that there are relationshipsthat in fact escape its purview, it becomes obvi-ous that the state is only a species of a largergenus, and the nature of its especial problemsbegins to emerge. For churches, trade-unions,and a thousand other associations are all soci-eties. They refuse absorption by the state andthereby raise, sometimes in acute form, the defi-nition of their connexion with it. Churches, cer-tainly, have denied to the state any absolute sov-ereignty; by which they mean that the canons oftheir life are not subject to the control of its in-struments.25 Trade-unions have been hardly lessdefiant. The state, indeed, has rarely hesitatedto claim paramount authority, even if, on theoccasions of conflict, it has not been overwhelm-ingly successful.26 The claim is naturally impor-tant; but, manifestly, if it has not, in the event,been able to prove itself, it demands more rigidenquiry.

It makes clear, however, the point upon whichinsistence must be laid. Whatever power thestate may assume, we have always its divisioninto a small number who exert active power, anda larger number who, for the most part, acqui-esce in the decisions that are made.27 Obviously,of course, the fact of acquiescence is vital; forHume long ago made it a commonplace that ul-timate power is always on the side of the gov-erned.28 The fact of power may be most variouslyjustified. Divine right, utility, or social contractare all methods that have on occasion been usedto demonstrate legitimacy. What, in general, weassume is an identity of interest between gov-

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ernment and subjects. We lend to governmentthe authority of the state upon the basis of aconviction that its will is a will effecting thepurpose for which the state was founded. Thestate, we broadly say, exists to promote the goodlife, however variously defined; and we give gov-ernment the power to act for the promotion ofthat life. Its acts, then, in our view, are colouredby the motives that lie behind it. It wins ourloyalty by the contribution it can make to theachievement of the state-purpose.

We can, then, distinguish between state andgovernment. Rousseau quite clearly grasped thisdifference. The state, for him, was the collectivemoral person formed by the whole body of citi-zens; the government was merely an executiveorgan by which the state-will could be carriedinto effect.29 He realised the clear possibility ofdisparity of effort. A government that sought tousurp power for selfish ends has not been un-known; and Rousseau therefore reserved sover-eignty—for him the ultimate right to do any-thing—for the state alone.30 Power was author-ity that had not yet been dignified by moral at-tributes; and that alone the government pos-sessed until judgment of its motives had beenmade.31 Where he went wrong was in his effortto ascribe a necessarily beneficent will to thestate itself—a view that, largely dependent asit was upon his identification of state and soci-ety—was in reality no more than an a prioriassumption.32 There is no will that is good merelyby self-definition; it is actual substantiation interms of the event that alone can be accepted asvalid. To introduce, as he did, a distinction be-tween the “general” will and the “will of all,” is,in reality, simply to take refuge in mysticism. Awill that fulfils the purpose of the state is, ofcourse, good where the end of the state is, bydefinition, good also; but that is a question offact upon which opinions may differ. WhatHerbert Spencer thought for the good of the stateProfessor Huxley dismissed as administrativenihilism. Numbers, certainly, even to the pointof unanimity, make no difference. They may jus-tify political action; but they will provide no guar-anty of its rightness. Since Rousseau wrote,moreover, a new complication has been intro-

duced in the problem of size. In the Greek city-state, in Geneva, in the republic of Andorra, itwas comparatively easy to discover an effectivepopular opinion; today, as John Chipman Grayso admirably said, the real rulers of a societyare undiscoverable. The new Chancellor of theExchequer may be dependent upon a permanentofficial whose very name is unknown to the vastmajority whose destinies he may so largelyshape; and, indeed, the position of the Englishcivil servant has been defined as that of a manwho has, exchanged dignity for power. Publicopinion may be the ultimate controlling factor;but not the least complex of our problems is, asMr. Lowell has said,33 to discover when it is pub-lic and when it is opinion.

Accepted theory tells us that the state is sover-eign. It is, that is to say, the supreme embodi-ment of power. What its will has determined ithas the right to enforce. Yet in the only sense inwhich this is an acceptable theory, it in realitytells us nothing. The state exists as the mostadequate means we have yet invented for thepromotion of an end we deem good. If by theemphasis of its sovereignty we mean that it mustbe obeyed, the thesis is self-evident when its actis in accordance with that end; but no one, surely,would urge that the state must be obeyed if themethods it followed were those of Machiavelli’sprince. How are we, save by individual judgment,to tell if the state-act is in truth the adequateexpression of right purpose? Rousseau resolvedthe difficulty by making his state call frequentmeetings of its citizens and assuming rightnesswhere moral unanimity was secured.34 Yet thereare few who have lived through this age of bloodand iron who will be willing to attribute infalli-bility even to an unanimous people. Nor doesRousseau meet the difficulty that, in sober fact,the modern state cannot function save by select-ing certain of its members for the fulfilment ofits task; and that selection means that our obe-dience, in reality, goes to a government of whichwe accept, for the most part, the decisions. Butfew who accept on ground of high purpose thesovereignty of the state will urge that govern-ment is similarly sovereign. The difference offundamental moral emphasis may well be vital.

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To postulate the sovereignty of the state, there-fore, is hardly helpful unless we know two things.We need, in the first place, to enquire by whatcriteria the consent of the state to some courseof governmental action is to be inferred. We needalso to have formation as to the coincidence ofthe action with what is termed right conduct.But it is surely obvious that these criteria andthis information are, in fact, established by eachone of us. No matter what the influence whichconstrains us to refusal or acceptance it is, atbottom, an individual act of will. The real basisof law, therefore, is somehow in the individualmind. Our attitude to it may be most variouslydetermined. An Irish peasant of the seventiesmay have gone moonlighting less from an opin-ion that violence alone would teach the Britishgovernment its lesson than from a fear of localdisapproval. But, politically, we can be concernednot with the hidden motives but with the overtacts of men. In that sense the basis of the stateis clearly a reservoir of individualism becauseeach will is something that ultimately is self-determined. What determines it to act is a dif-ferent and far more complex question; but thereis never in the state an a priori certainty that agovernment act will be obeyed. The possibilityof anarchy is theoretically at every momentpresent. Why it is rarely operative demandsmore detailed investigation.

A realistic analysis of the modern state thussuggests that what we term state-action is, inactual fact, action by government. It is a policyoffered to the people for its acceptance. It be-comes state-action when that acceptance is pre-dominantly operative. The passive resistance ofthe Nonconformists to Mr. Balfour’s EducationAct, for example, was not sufficient to make theAct void. It was able to be put into operationand was therefore accepted by the English state.There have, of course, been periods when thistwofold stage of political action was only par-tially necessary. The Greek city-state acted notby means of representative government but, atleast in certain periods of its history, by the voiceof its whole citizen-body. It thus fulfilledRousseau’s ideal of a continuous exercise of sov-ereign power. But that can no longer be the case.

The modern state, for good or ill, has outgrownthe possibility of government by public meet-ing, and it is upon some system of representa-tion that reliance must be placed.35 The repre-sentative organ is, directly or indirectly, govern-ment. State action, in such analysis, is simplyan act of government which commands generalacceptance. This M. Esmein has clearly per-ceived. “Although”, he says,36 “the legislativepower is the true regulator of sovereignty, it isabove all by the executive power, that its actionis felt by the citizen body.” Such a theory has atleast the merit of fitting the actual facts. Itmakes no moral presumptions. It takes accountof the fact that the state as a whole may repudi-ate, as in 1688, the acts of its representativesfor reasons that it deems good. It admits, whatthe situation itself compels us to admit, that theexercise of authority, whether we call it poweror sovereignty or what we will, is, in the vastmajority of cases, in the hands of government.

In such an aspect, several results are immedi-ately obvious. An adequate theory of the statemust examine not so much the claims of author-ity but their actual validation in terms of prac-tice. Its assumptions are naturally important;but it is rather as an a priori index to achieve-ment than as a definitive measure of it that theymust be regarded. It is, that is to say, helpful tobe told that the object of the state is to securethe good life. But however important may be theknowledge of purpose, much more important isthe knowledge of function. The state, for in-stance, to its members is essentially a greatpublic service corporation; and it is, to put itbluntly, upon dividends that the mind of thepublic is concentrated. The question we must askis not what the state set out to do, but what, inhistoric fact, has been done in its name. In termsof prediction, we do not ask the moralprogramme of a state: the more fruitful methodis by the patient analysis of its practices, to dis-cover their probable result. The problem of au-thority then becomes clear. We want to know whymen obey government. We want the causes thatexplain the surely striking fact of a voluntaryservitude of a large mass of men to a small por-tion of their number. We want to know also the

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way in which authority should be organised ifthe results of the state-purpose are best to beattained. Do we need, for instance, one author-ity, or many? Is it, as Rousseau conceived, dan-gerous to divide our power? Must the force atthe command of authority be, as the timidHobbes assumed, without limit of any kind? Isthe individual, in other words, absorbed in thestate? Does his freedom mean, as Hegel makesit mean, to live the life that authority ordains?Or does freedom mean the recognition that thereare certain reserves within the individual mindabout which ultimate resistances must beorganised? Has man, that is to say, rights againstthe state? If he belongs to a church, where musthis obedience go if there is conflict of authority?Is he interstitial no less than social, and mustwe protect his denial of complete submergencein his fellowships? To none of these questionscan we yet obtain in any sense an adequate re-sponse. Yet it is these questions we must an-swer if we are one day to have a working phi-losophy of the state.

III. The Nature of ObedienceAny political speculation thus involves an en-quiry into the nature of obedience to government.It is an enquiry which no political philosophermay yet dare to answer. One day, we may hope,the social psychologist will give us insightenough into the factors of human association toenable us to emphasise the main elements in-volved; and we as yet can say little more thanHume when he insisted that obedience is neces-sary to the existence of society. Some things, in-deed, we can already vaguely see imitation mustcount for much.37 The tendency in men—whichMr. Graham Wallas has even dignified into aninstinct—to accept leadership is vital.38 We canhardly approve the account of Sir Henry Mainewhich makes of it a habit bred into the tissue ofthe race by countless ages of subservience to thestate; though it is no doubt true that to an ex-tent which greatly needs analysis the state isbuilt upon the inertia of men.39 Macaulay, in aninteresting passage,40 has told us how naturallythe Duke of Wellington took for granted the cou-rageous discipline of the soldiers on the ill-fatedBirkenhead; and, in a less degree, this sense of

discipline that results from training must playa large part in ordering life. But it is not thewhole answer to the problem.41

Political thinkers are, for the most part, dividedin their answer (at best provisional) into twoschools. The most fundamental, because it is thatwhich has most subtly influenced the results ofjuridical enquiry, is perhaps the school of Hobbes.In that view, obedience is founded upon fear.Government is able to exert the authority it pos-sesses because it has behind it the ultimate sanc-tion of force. Men obey its dictates because thepain of disobedience makes them cowards. Lawis thus the command of government, and we obeythe law because the penalties of disobedienceare, for most of us, too serious to be endured.The theory does not, perhaps, take the highestview of human nature; but the fear-psychologists,from Thrasymachus to Hobbes, are rarely gen-erous in their outlook. That the theory has anelement of truth is, of course, indubitable. Butthat it is obviously only a partial explanationimmediately the history of coercion is studied issurely not less clear. No one can watch the slowrise of toleration into acceptance, can see howdubiously it was proposed, and how suspiciouslyit was put into operation, without reading thatif, ultimately, acceptance came, it can only havebeen because the attempt to use fear as a methodof compulsion proved, in the event, to be worth-less. If fear was the real ground of obedience,the early Christians could hardly have survived;and certainly the failure of the Penal Lawsagainst Catholicism in England becomes inex-plicable. The fact is that a unity produced byterror is at best but artificial; and where thedeepest convictions of men are attacked terrormust prove ultimately worthless.42

The school of which the name of Rousseau isdeservedly the most famous adopted an entirelydifferent attitude. For it, the basis of obedienceis consent. Men obey government because thereturn for their obedience is the “real” freedomit is the object of the state-life to secure. Unlessthat obedience be general, anarchy is inevitable;acceptance of the government’s command istherefore essential that its purposes may be

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made secure. For Rousseau himself, perhaps, itis the will of the citizen-body alone that must bebinding; but it is difficult to see how that willcan be directly known in the modern state. Andfor political purposes it is probable that this isthe most fruitful avenue of approach. It needs,indeed, a singularly careful statement. The ideaof a social contract itself we have to reject asfiction; and it is perhaps safer not to make useof the term contractual in the determination ofstate relations. For contract, after all, is a defi-nite legal term to which precise meaning is at-tached; and to apply it to the vague expectationsraised by the acts of government is to shroudourselves in illusion.43 But the emphasis of con-sent is unconnected with such difficulties. Itemphasises, what needs continual iteration, thatthe end of the state is fundamental. It throwsinto relief the string fact that while the govern-ment of the state must endure, if its own exist-ence is to be possible, its purpose is at each stagesubject to examination. Members of the state weall may be, but it must exist not less for ourwelfare than its own. It is here, perhaps, thatwe have been led astray by the dangerous analo-gies of the nineteenth century. When we acceptthe idea of the state as an organism, what isemphasised is subjection of its parts to the wel-fare of the whole. But, in sober fact, the welfareof the state means nothing if it does not meanthe concrete happiness of its living members. Inthat aspect, the concept of an organism is, as Dr.McTaggart has brilliantly insisted,44 inappli-cable. For the individual regards himself as anend not less than he so regards the state; andwe are here again confounded by the importantfact of a refusal of absorption into the whole thatis greater than ourselves. If we are fundamen-tally Catholics, for instance, we do not the moretruly realise ourselves by obeying the ClarendonCode; what we do is to make ourselves differ-ent, to destroy ourselves for the state by mak-ing for it meaningless the personality that is ourcontribution to its well-being. And that can onlymean that acts which touch us nearly must bedependent for their validity upon the consentthey can secure. Legally valid they may well bein the sense that they emanate from the author-ity that is empowered to enact them. But no stu-

dent of politics can stop there. A political judg-ment is not a pronunciation of legal right alone.The law of the British constitution may not giveto Englishmen the right of free speech; but thatdoes not mean that an English Prime Ministerwill not encounter difficulties if he fails to re-gard that right as real.45 We must, indeed, dis-cuss the grounds upon which consent may begiven or withheld; but that does not disturb thefact that the element of consent is essential toany adequate analysis.

In the theory of obedience, then, the element ofconsent to policy, however indirect, is of the firstimportance. We are, in some degree sufficient toprevent rebellion, satisfied with the provisionmade by government to fulfil the purposes ofthe state. But the fact of broadening demand ishere sufficiently remarkable to merit attention.The state, we have said, exists to promote thegood life of its members; government is themechanism by which that purpose has beentranslated into the event. But the question ofactual transition is always a question of fact.The motive of statesmen, the objective merit oftheir acts, demand continuous enquiry. No onecan survey the history of the English state with-out being impressed with the way in which thebasis of its government in consent has been pro-gressively extended. Government, under Will-iam the Norman, is the king; the purpose it hasin view in his reign is to achieve the thing hewills. The good life of its members, in any ab-stract ethical sense, the full realisation, for ex-ample, of the personality of the conquered Saxonchurl, is here in all conscience meaninglessenough. Magna Charta limits royal despotismby the controlling factor of baronial interest; yet,here again, to introduce a concept of generalwelfare is a dangerous anachronism. When thecountry gentlemen begin to rule, the state is abigger and finer thing than when its law was avariation upon the selfish aims of William Rufus;but no one, to take a single instance, can readthe record of its game laws and enclosure acts,and mistake its devotion to the interests of thesquire. With the Industrial Revolution, powerpasses to the middle classes; but the long recordof Combination Acts and of antagonism to such

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measures as would have given an unpropertiedlabourer an interest in the state, have a mean-ing which no honest observer can misunder-stand. When Hannah More can tell the womenof Shipham in 1801 that the charity dispensedto them is to show them their dependence uponthe rich, and comes “of favour and not of right”46

it is clear that the attitude she represents doesnot visualise a state in which the concept of thegood life has or obtains any general application.The acutest of political observers in nineteenthcentury England, Walter Bagehot, regarded a“permanent combination” of the working classesas an “evil of the first magnitude,” and he didnot hesitate to say that the way in which “theelectors only selected one or two wealthy mento carry out the schemes of one or two wealthyassociations” was “the only way in which our ownsystem could be maintained.”47 No one, indeed,can read Mr. Bagehot’s gloomy prophecies of theprobable effects of the Reform Act of 1867 with-out feeling that for him Government is some-thing that carries out the will of the “higherclasses.” When a distinguished connection of theEnglish royal family can explain the advent ofcompulsory military service as “necessary at thistime when the people were getting out of hand”48

it becomes clear that scrutiny must be made ofthe way in which the purpose of the state getstranslated into acts of government.

In such a scrutiny certain obvious facts clearlyemerge. No one claims that in the modern statethe good life, in any reasonable definition, isrealised by any but a small minority of its mem-bers. Liberty in the sense of the positive andequal opportunity of self-realisation we havehardly in any genuine sense established. Thatis not a cause for repining but a simple fact; andit is to be set in the perspective of the remem-brance that far larger numbers share in what ofgood the modern state can secure than at anyprevious period of history.49 But whether we con-sider the patent inequalities in the distributionof wealth, the results of the competitive strugglein industry, the hopeless inadequacies of oureducational systems, the one thing by which wemust be impressed is the absence of proportionbetween political purpose and its achievement.

We no longer believe that a simple individual-ism is the panacea for our ills. “The mere con-flict of private interests,” said Ingram thirtyyears ago,50 “will never produce a well-orderedcommonwealth of labour”; and on the other handit is not less clear that the simple formulae of arigid collectivism offer no real prospect of relief.51

The truth is that in the processes of politics what,broadly speaking, gets registered is not a willthat is at each moment in accord with the state-purpose, but the will of those who in fact oper-ate the machine of government. They are, it istrue, selected for that purpose by the electoralbody of the state; and it is increasingly obviousthat universal adult suffrage, or some close ap-proximation to it, will be the electoral system ofevery country that shares in the ideals of West-ern civilisation.

Theoretically, doubtless, the conference of uni-versal suffrage places political power in thehands of that part of the state which has notenjoyed, or at least only partially enjoyed, thebenefit of its purposes. Nor is the reason for thishidden from us. It is more than three centuriessince Harrington enunciated the law that powergoes with the ownership of land;52 and if we ex-tend that concept, in the light of the IndustrialRevolution, to capital in its broadest sense, it isnow a commonplace that political power is thehandmaid of economic power. In that aspect, itis not difficult to understand why the easy opti-mism of the reformers of the first half of thenineteenth century has been so largely disap-pointed.53 They were not, in fact, attacking thereal root of the problem. No political democracycan be real that is not as well the reflection ofan economic democracy; for the business of gov-ernment is so largely industrial in nature asinevitably to be profoundly affected by the viewsand purposes of those who hold the keys of eco-nomic power. That does not necessary mean thatgovernment is consciously perverted to the endsof any class within the state. So to argue is toproject into history a malignant teleology fromwhich it is, in no small degree, free. But whenpower is actually exerted by any section of thecommunity, it is only natural that it should lookupon its characteristic views as the equivalent

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of social good. It is, for example, difficult to be-lieve that John Bright opposed the Factory Actswith a view to his own pocket. It is not less im-possible to assert that Dr. Arnold opposes theemancipation of the Jews out of a selfish desireto benefit his own church. But it was then natu-ral even for a humane factory-owner to believethat good conduct consists in maintaining theprosperity of the manufacturing classes, and thatwhatever, in his judgment, is fatal to that pros-perity is mischievous. Dr. Arnold believed theEnglish nation to be by definition Christian; andto admit the Jews to Parliament would thus, inhis views, have been a contradiction in terms.54

It has been necessary for Mr Justice Holmes toremind the Supreme Court of the United Statesthat the Fourteenth Amendment does not enactMr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics.55 The fel-low-servant doctrine could never have won ac-ceptance in an industrial democracy.56 TheOsborne decision is naturally to be expected froma group of men whose circumstances and train-ing would have obviously tended to make sus-pect the methods and purposes of trade-union-ism.57

This is a truth perhaps somewhat difficult toperceive in our own day because it tends to beobscured by the mechanisms of the democraticpowers. But the examination of past historymakes it more than clear. No one can analysethe social and political conditions of the ancienr gime in France without perceiving that thewhole effort of its structure was towards themaintenance of aristocratic interests. Whetherwe regard the form of the States General, thecomposition of the Parliaments, the privilegesof the nobility, it is, as Acton said, “class govern-ment” that they imply, “the negation of the veryidea of state and nation.”58 The episcopal oppo-sition to Catholic Emancipation is a similar phe-nomenon; it is grounded upon the conviction thatit was detrimental to the interests of the Estab-lished Church.59 The same problem confrontedthe authors of the American Constitution. “Themost common and durable source of Factions,”said Madison,60 “has been the various and un-equal distribution of property. Those who holdand those who are without property have ever

formed distinct interests in society... The regu-lation of these various and interfering interestsforms the principal task of modern legislationand involves the spirit of party and faction inthe necessary and ordinary operations of gov-ernment.” It does not, generally speaking, seeminaccurate to say that the processes of politicsare a struggle between the possessors of a cer-tain power, and those who desire to share in itsexercise. The grounds of exclusion have beenvery various. Often we meet with suspicion ofthose unpossessed of property. Sometimes mem-bership of a religious creed is held as a disquali-fication. The general fact is that, whatever thegrounds of exclusion, those who have possessionof power are not lightly persuaded to part withit, or to co-operate in its exercise. Admission torights is the gate most difficult of entrance inthe political citadel.

It is yet obvious that if the democratic synthe-sis be permanent—and it is upon that assump-tion alone that this analysis is valid—in thematter of rights there can be no differentiation.Government exercises power not in the inter-ests of any party or class within the state but inthe interest of the state as a whole. But that isundisguised idealism. In sober fact, governmentis exerted in the interests of those who controlits exercise. That is, indeed, progressively lesstrue. A modern parliament would not dare todebate a Factory Act in the style of 1802. Fewmodern statesmen would venture to analyse aReform Bill in the caustic fashion of Bagehot orRobert Lowe. No responsible statesman wouldnow speak of atheists in the style of EdmundBurke.61 But once the fact is clear that the re-sult of government is in practice different fromwhat theory makes it, the necessary inferenceis a suspicion of power. What use is the sover-eignty of the state if it means the aristocraticprivileges of the ancien régime? What use is thesovereignty of the state if it permits the main-tenance of the slums of the modern city? Theconclusion, surely, is forced upon us that the statepermits a sinister manipulation of its power. Itis the habit of government to translate thethoughts and feelings and passions with whichit is charged into terms of the event and deem

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them the achievement of the state-purpose. Butso specialised a welfare as that which is achievedis obviously different from the ideal end so vig-orously emphasised by philosophy.

Not, indeed, that the record of government is anunrelieved catalogue of perversions. Few wouldbe so malicious or so stupid as not to believethat there are numerous instances of statesmenwho have pursued a general good wider thantheir private desire because they believed thetimes demanded it. That, surely, was the case ofSir Robert Peel in 1846. He destroyed, almostconsciously, his party in order to achieve an endhe thought more splendid than its own fortune;and he did not falter even when his policy in-volved his political downfall. It would have beensimple, to take a different problem, for John Husat Constance, or for Luther at Worms, to haverecanted. In either case the desertion would havebeen easy—as easy, for example, as Luther’sdesertion of the peasants some five years later.But the individual action does not destroy, evenif it may mitigate, the general tendency. Therehas been yet no state in history in which theconsistent effort has been towards the uniquerealisation of the common good.

If the state is sovereign, what, in such an as-pect, does its sovereignty imply? It is, we aretold, an absolute thing; and the most generousof modern German theorists has allowed it onlythe limitation of its personal grace. But thistheory of auto-limitation is in reality meaning-less;62 for to be bound only by one’s will is not, inany real sense, to be bound at all. Now sover-eignty, we are told,63 “is that power which is nei-ther temporary, nor delegated nor subject toparticular rules which it cannot alter, nor an-swerable to any other power on earth.” Whatthis really means is less formidable than theappearance seems to warrant. It implies onlythat for the courts the will of a sovereign body,the king in Parliament for example, is beyonddiscussion. Every judge must accept unquestion-ingly what fulfils the requirements of the formsof law. But, for the purposes of political philoso-phy, it is not so abstract and a priori a definitionwe require. What we desire to know is not what

has the legal right to prevail, but what does inactual fact prevail and the reasons that explainits dominance. Here, it is clear enough, the legaltheory of sovereignty is worthless. Once we arein the realm of actual life it is upon the limita-tions of sovereignty that attention must be con-centrated. What then impresses us is the widedivergence between legal right and moral right.Legally, an autocratic Czar may shoot down hissubjects before the winter palace at Petrograd;but, morally, it is condemnation that we utter.Legally, Parliament could tomorrow re-enact theClarendon Code; but what stirs us now is theinjustice of its policy. There is, that is to say, avast difference between what Dean Pound hasadmirably called “Law in books” and “Law inaction.”64 It is with the latter alone that a real-istic theory of the state can be concerned.

IV. The Limitations of PowerIn actual life, then, the sovereignty of the stateis subject to limitation. The power it can exert,either directly, or through its instruments, isnever at any moment absolute. Attention mustbe ceaselessly paid to the thousand varied in-fluences that play upon the declaration of its will.Power, that is to say, is held upon conditions. Themembers of the state look to it for certain con-duct as alone capable of justification. They think,in brief, that there are certain principles bywhich its life must be regulated. Few would urgethat those principles can at any moment be re-garded as unchanging. It is a matter of the sim-plest demonstration that moral ideals cannotescape the categories of evolution. Conduct thatwould distress one generation is regarded withequanimity by its predecessor. But that does notalter the vital fact that for authority a way oflife is prescribed. It is not, indeed, laid down ina written code, though it only lies the more pro-foundly in our nature because it is inarticulate.For every statesman knows well enough thatthere are certain things he dare not do becausethe sense of the public will be against him. Thatsystem of conventions is important. Itemphasises the conditionality of power. It means,in other words, that so deep is the expectationof what, broadly speaking, may be termed the

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right conduct of authority that its antithesisensures the provocation of penalties.

This can, perhaps, be more usefully expressedin another way. Whatever the requirements oflegal theory, in actual fact no man surrendershis whole being to the state. He has a sense ofright and wrong. If the state, or its instruments,goes too consistently against that sense, he ispricked into antagonism. The state, that is tosay, is for him sovereign only where his con-science is not stirred against its performance.Nor is this all. He expects from the state thefulfilment of its purposes. He expects it to makepossible for him the attainment of certain goods.Again, the degree of expectation is subject toserious change; an Anglo-Saxon churl will havehopes different from those of an English work-man of the twentieth century; Mrs Proudie willexert a different power in the Barchester of oneage than will the wife of her husband’s succes-sor. When the realisation of these hopes is keenlyenough felt to be essential to the realisation ofthe purpose of the state we have a political right.It is a right natural in the sense that the givenconditions of society at the particular time re-quire its recognition. It is not justified on groundsof history. It is not justified on grounds of anyabstract or absolute ethic. It is simply insistedthat if, in a given condition of society, power isso exerted as to refuse the recognition of thatright, resistance is bound to be encountered. Byright, that is to say, we mean a demand that hasbehind it the burden of the general experienceof the state. It is, as T. H. Green said, “a power ofwhich the exercise by the individual or by some-body of men is recognised by a society either asitself directly essential to the common good, oras conferred by an authority of which the main-tenance is recognised as so essential.”65

But this, it may be argued, is a claim hardly lesstheoretic than sovereignty itself. It may not beable to get itself recognised The government may,through malice, or in honesty, doubt its wisdomand oppose it. But a right admits of enforcement.There are, in the first place, the ordinary chan-nels of representative government; in a demo-cratic state, for instance, periodic reference is

made to the people for the refreshment of power.At an English general election, for example,ministers are returned to or rejected from officeeither to perform certain things, or because it isbelieved that the opposing party will better rep-resent the purpose of the state. The Labour partyin England today is demanding for “every mem-ber of the community, in good or bad times alike(and not only to the strong and able, the well-born and the fortunate),” the securing “of all therequisites of healthy life and worthy citizen-ship.”66 A large portion of the British state isthus striving to achieve certain things as rightsbecause without them life is not deemed worththe living. By rights it means the recognitionthat every member of the state must withoutdistinction possess certain goods, and that thesituation implied in that possession is too fun-damental to be subject to the whims of author-ity. These rights are to be written into the fabricof the state. They limit what authority can doby making them a minimum below which nomember of the state must fall. They are, nor-mally, written into the fabric of the state by theconstitutional processes provided by law; and itis perhaps well, as Green has suggested,67 toemphasise the desirability of achievement bythis means. But the reserve power of revolutionalways exists. The American War of Indepen-dence is the vindication of a claim to a certainright of self-government; and in that case terri-torial conditions made possible the foundationof a new state separate from the old. The FrenchRevolution is the assertion of a lack of confidencein the holders of power, and the change in theform of the state that the claim to certain rightsmight be fulfilled.

In the case both of the American and the FrenchRevolution we have the programme upon whichthe new order was founded: in neither case canit be said that it was in any full sense achieved.But this does not lessen the significance of themoral that is to be drawn from the study of theproblem of rights. Whenever in a state a groupof persons large enough to make its presencefelt demands the recognition of certain claims,it will not recognise a law which attempts defi-ance of them; nor will it accept the authority by

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which that law is enforced. Recent events havethrown this attitude into striking relief. The at-titude of Ulster before 1914 was a refusal to ac-cept the sovereignty of an Act of Parliamentwhich granted self-government to Ireland. Therefusal was made in the name of conscience; andwhatever be thought of the penumbra of pas-sions and personalities by which it was sur-rounded the fundamental fact has to be recordedthat Parliament and the ministry found them-selves jointly powerless in the face of an ille-gally organised opposition. The women suffrag-ists were able, over a period of eight years, toset at defiance the ordinary rules of law; andfew people today seriously doubt that the rea-son why that defiance was so successfully main-tained was the fact of its moral content. Thosewho refused obedience to the Military ServiceAct of 1916 were able to prove the powerless-ness of the state to force them into subjection.Convinced of the iniquity of war, they claimedthe right to be absolved from direct contact withit; and it is highly significant that in Americathe Quakers should have received express ex-emption from that contact. That is the tacit ad-mission that where the means taken by the stateto achieve its purposes conflicts with the idealsof another group there are occasions when thestate will find it wise to forego the claim of para-mountcy. And, here again, the real fact involvedis that of consent. No state can act in the face ofthe active opposition of any considerable por-tion of itself. No state will venture in practice toclaim control over certain areas within the com-petence of other groups. Acts of authority arethus limited by the consciences that purposesdifferent from that of the state can command.

That is to affirm that government dare not rangeover the whole area of human life. No govern-ment, for instance, dare prescribe the life of theRoman Catholic Church. Bismarck made theattempt, and it is doubtful if it will be repeated.68

Where alone the state can attempt interferencewith groups other than itself is where the ac-tion of the group touches territory over whichthe state claims jurisdiction. There is no cer-tainty that the state will be successful. There iseven no certainty that it merits success. It may,

indeed, crush an opponent by brute force. Thatdoes not, however, establish right; it is merelythe emphasis of physical superiority. The onlyground for state-success is where the purposeof the state is morally superior to that of its op-ponent. The only ground upon which the indi-vidual can give or be asked his support for thestate is from the conviction that what it is aim-ing at is, in each particular action, good. We denythat is to say, that the general end of the idealstate colours the policy of a given act of a spe-cial state. And that denial involves from eachmember of the state continuous scrutiny of itspurpose and its method.

It deserves his allegiance, it should receive it,only where it commands his conscience. Bis-marck failed in the Kulturkampf precisely be-cause he could not convince the German Catho-lics of the moral superiority of his position tothat of Rome. It was right that he should haveso failed; for the basis of his position was virtu-ally the assertion that the duty of the individualconscience is a blind and impulsive obedienceto government. He did not understand that toput a minister in office does not permit the citi-zen body to cease all interest in affairs of state.On the contrary, because it is in the name of thatcitizen-body that power is exerted, it is essen-tial that they should have convictions about thegoodness or badness of the particular end thatpower is intended to serve. We can make no dis-tinction, except in possible aspiration, betweengovernment and subjects, so long as there is ac-quiescence by the one in the policy of the other.69

An act of government becomes a state-act when-ever the members of the state do not attempt atleast its repudiation.70 For power is held not forevil but for good, and deflection from the path ofright purpose ought to involve the withdrawalof authority for its exercise.

This, clearly enough, must make an importantdifference to the emphasis we place upon rights.Once we insist upon consent as the most fruit-ful source of the claim to obedience, there is castupon the individual member of the state the dutyof scrutinising its policy; for if he ought ulti-mately at least to protest, and perhaps to dis-

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obey, where his conscience is involved, an activeinterest in politics is the most indispensablecondition of citizenship. Nor is that active inter-est an easy matter. It is scarcely difficult for theson of a political family, brought up, like theyounger Pitt, to regard politics as the one ad-equate pursuit of the mind, to catch the visionof its devious bye-ways. But, for the averagevoter, there is scarcely the same infallible sourceof understanding in questions of state, and theopportunity of training is essential. Few wouldnow interpret training to mean the weekly dis-cussions of Harrington’s Oceana; but it is unde-niable that some satisfactory substitute has stillto be found. An illiterate man has no real meansof performing the functions of citizenship. A manwho is exhausted by excessive physical labouris similarly debarred from the opportunity ofadequate understanding. If the nervous andmental energies of men are exhausted in thesheer effort of existence, as they so largely areexhausted, it is plain that the most efficaciouswell-spring of political improvement is poisonedat its source. One of the main evils of the his-tory of government, indeed, has been the tragicfact that over a great period politics has beenthe concern of a leisured class simply becauseno other portion of the community has had thetime or the strength to devote itself in any fullmeasure to these questions. That is not in anysense to suggest misgovernment; but it is to sug-gest the impossible narrowness of the sourcefrom which the dominating ideas of governmenthave been drawn. It is to suggest that if the stateis to be in any real sense representative of thewills and desires of its members, their wills anddesires must have some minimum physical ba-sis of material and intellectual adequacy uponwhich to function.71 That in turn implies thatmeans must be taken to safeguard the expres-sion of their hopes. Rights are no more than theexpression of this minimum and its safeguardsin broad terms. The right of free expression, forexample, is obviously essential if desires are tobe made known. If governments can suppresswhatever they may dislike, as in the lean periodof English radicalism,72 the result is obviouslyto put a premium upon the maintenance of thestatus quo. The right to freedom of association

is simply the recognition that community ofpurpose involves community of action. The rightto education is simply the registration of a claimto understand in civilised terms the ways andmeans of social life. A power that fails to achievethese things, much more, a power that aims atthwarting them, has abused the trust that hasbeen placed in its hands. Power has thus to belimited by rights because otherwise there is nomeans, save continual revolution, of achievingthe purpose of the state.

And it is important to recognise in full measurethe curious limitations of power. Even if wegrant, for the purpose of argument, its generaldisposition to good will, there are two greatmeans by which it may suffer perversion. It may,in the first place, be deliberately misused forselfish ends. There have been periods, for in-stance, in the history of American states whenit is matter of common knowledge that the ma-chine of government was disgracefully exploited.The histories of Tammany Hall, of Mr. Kearneyin California, of the Philadelphia gas ring, areall of them infamous enough to need no com-ment.73 “Home states,” Lord Bryce has written,74

“... have so bad a name that people are surprisedwhen a good act passes.” No observer of Ameri-can politics, indeed, can fail to emphasise as afundamental fact in the life of the common-wealth the general suspicion of all who are in-terested by profession in the business of gov-ernment. A justice of the Supreme Court of theUnited States has written a vehement denun-ciation of the influence of high finance uponAmerican political life.75 Nor is such perversionconfined to America alone. The connection ofgreat financial concerns with foreign policy is aproblem old enough to have its importancerecognised by every fair-minded observer. If aGerman firm can use the force of its governmentin order to coerce a foreign power into grantingit a share, dishonestly gained, in spoils of doubt-ful moral validity,76 obviously the considerationswhich affect the foreign policy of a state demandan exact scrutiny. If the Russo-Japanese war caneven partially arise from the private ambitionsof interested courtiers,77 measures have obvi-ously to be taken to limit the scope of abuse to

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which the power of government is subject. Phe-nomena like Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who deliberatelyset aside the consideration of nice moral issues,78

raise problems of the first importance.

But deliberate perversion of power brings withit, in the long run, its own downfall. What is moredifficult of enquiry is the devotion of governmen-tal authority to narrow purposes which aredeemed good by an irresponsible controllingminority. The Combination Acts are a notableinstance of this kind. They reflect, of course, thegeneral tendency of the French Revolution toregard all associations as evil;79 but they repre-sent also, in more sinister fashion, an entire fail-ure on the part of government to understandthe problems of the working-class. The House ofCommons refused, both in 1824 and in 1826, toallow the abuse of man-traps and spring-gunsto be remedied; and it was only after a longstruggle that, in 1836, a prisoner on trial forfelony was at last allowed to have the benefit ofcounsel. “The existence of unjust and foolishlaws,” says Professor Dicey,80 “is less remark-able than the grounds upon which these lawswere defended. Better, it was argued, that hon-est men, who had never fired a gun, should beexposed to death by spring-guns or man-trapsthan that a country gentleman should fail inpreserving his game. A prisoner, it was sug-gested, though he might occasionally, throughinability to employ counsel, be convicted of amurder or a theft which he had never commit-ted, had no reason to complain, for the very ab-sence of an advocate turned the judge into acounsel for the prisoner. The plea was notori-ously untrue; but had it been founded on fact, itwould have implied that injustice to a prisonercould be remedied by neglect of duty on the partof a judge.”

The process of administration has been besetby similar difficulties. Everyone knows of theCircumlocution Office immortalised in “LittleDorrit;” and the remarkable experiences of Mr.Edmund Yates in the Post Office are not with-out their suggestiveness.81 Sir Henry Taylor ex-plained the evils of the irresponsibility that ex-isted in his day. “By evading decisions wherever

they can be evaded,” he wrote,82 “by shiftingthem on other departments and authoritieswhenever they can be shifted; by giving deci-sions on superficial examination,.. by deferringquestions till, as Lord Bacon said, they resolveof themselves; by undertaking nothing for thepublic good which the public voice does not callfor; by conciliating loud and energetic individu-als at the expense of such public interest as aredumb and do not attract attention; by sacrific-ing everywhere what is feeble and obscure towhat is influential and cognizable... the singlefunctionary may... reduce his business within hispowers, and perhaps obtain for himself the mostvaluable of all reputations in this line of life,that of a safe man.” The complaint of CharlesBuller is similar,83 and the final consequence ofthe bureaucratic process was given its perma-nent expression by Carlyle.84 “The mode of mak-ing the service efficient,” said a distinguishedcivil servant of the fifties,85 “seems never to haveentered their minds.” The routine of habit, infact, is impermeable to the normal channels ofchange; and so important a critic as Sir CharlesTrevelyan actually thought that it was the spiritof 1848 which induced England to put its housein order.86 There has, of course, been vast im-provement since that time; but the tendency towhich administration is liable is a constant fac-tor in the exercise of authority.

In all this, the argument of deliberate malevo-lence is as inaccurate as it is obvious and cer-tain that the result is the perversion of the endthe state should serve. It is perhaps dangerous,as Burke suggested, to go back too often to thefoundations of the state; but it is at least no ab-stract question upon which we are engaged. Ifwe find that, in the event, authority has certainhabits, and that they result in evil, we have toseek means of their effective change, or at leastsome safeguard against the evil. And it is inevents alone that we must search for our truths.It is useless, as Burke rightly saw,87 to discuss“the abstract right of a man to food or medicine.The question is upon the method of procuringand administering them.” If we find that, how-ever good the intention of those who hold thereins of power, that intention is somehow, if not

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frustrated, at least inadequately realised in theevent, we have to examine the elements involvedin such translation into practice. All kinds offactors may complicate the problem. If the mem-ber of Parliament, for instance, be Sir PittCrawley, it is hardly useful to force upon his at-tention the rights of man. If the member of theHouse of Lords be a promoted ArchdeaconGrantley assuredly he will not grasp the socialproblem in an adequate perspective.88 The facthere is that to many of those who are engagedin the task of government, the problem of au-thority is either unknown, or is unconsciouslyset in terms of the status quo. That Duke ofNewcastle who desired to do what he would withhis own, was probably completely unaware thatthere was a theory of the state involved in hisattitude. Queen Victoria’s refusal, in 1859, tomake Mr. Bright a Privy Councillor on theground that “it would be impossible to allege anyservice Mr. Bright has rendered, and if thehonour were looked upon as a reward for hissystematic attacks upon the institutions of thecountry, a very erroneous impression might beproduced as to the feeling which the Queen orher government entertain towards those insti-tutions”89 is, in reality, an expression of the con-viction that the middle class had better knowits place, and not meddle with the business ofits superiors. The implication surely is thatBright’s long attack on institutions only partiallydemocratised was, in the royal opinion, no con-tribution to social improvement.

In every phase of the general social question thereal assumption is the belief for which Burke sostrenuously argued. “Property,” he said,90 “...never can be safe from the invasions of abilityunless it be, out of all proportion, predominantin the representation.” It is, as he said, a simpletruth that “the same quantity of property whichis, by the natural course of things, divided amongmany, has not the same operation.” But that is,in reality, to argue that power goes with the dis-tribution of property, and it supposes power tobe rightly used only where it is exerted in theinterest of property. In a period of revolution itwas perhaps natural for him seriously to over-estimate the dangers to which property is sub-

ject. Mr. Gladstone, at least, was less fearful.“There is a saying of Burke’s,” he told LordMorley91 “from which I must utterly dissent.‘Property is sluggish and inert.’ Quite the con-trary. Property is vigilant, active, sleepless; andif it ever seems to slumber, be sure that one eyeis open.” That surely is the lesson of history; forevery class which possesses property will claimthat it has an abstract right to power. Yet Burke,more than any man of his time, would havethought little enough of so abstract a claim; andhe would have insisted that the real test of prop-erty, as, therefore, of the power which it controls,is the way in which it functions.

V. The Attack on the Secular StateIn our own time it is in general felt that the re-sult of the democratic process is unsatisfactory.The authority that is exerted in the name of thestate fails to result in accomplishing that forwhich the state exists. It is into the cause of thisdiscrepancy that we are examining. Virtually, theanswer that we make is an insistence upon thehumanity of men. “A nation or a state,” Profes-sor Dicey has written,92 “means, conceal it howyou will, a lot of individual selves with unequaltalents and in reality unequal conditions, andeach of these selves does—or rather must—thinknot exclusively but primarily of his own self. Theold doctrine of original sin may be totally dis-connected from the tale of Eve and her apple, orany other religious tradition or theologicaldogma, but it represents an undeniable factwhich neither a statesman nor a preacher canventure to ignore.” Certainly even if we makeno assumptions as to the psychological factorsinvolved, it is true enough thus to urge that thesystem, social, economic, political, under whichwe live, emphasises drastically the principle ofself-interest. In such perspective, the object atwhich the state aims must be made superior tothe private ideals of its constituent parts, ex-cept insofar as they coincide with that largerobject. And if authority is thus subject to exploi-tation, it must be subject to limitation also. Itcan act without restraint only where its end isin fact coincident with its ideal object. Its policy,that is to say, is only sovereign where it is serv-ing the sovereign purpose.

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That raises an immediate difficulty. Upon therightness of its policy it is clear that doubt mayexist. On the theory of taxation, for example,there is a clear line of distinction in Englandbetween the Liberal and Conservative parties.Broadly speaking, Liberalism stands for direct,Conservatism for indirect taxation.93 In such adifference there is no ground for repudiation ofgovernment action in terms of revolution. Thespecial tax involved might, indeed, well havesuch consequence; resistance to a head-tax onRoman Catholics, for example, is an argumentnot difficult to justify. The point at which resis-tance becomes an expedient factor is not a mat-ter for definition or prophecy; it will vary withthe circumstances of each age. All we can say isthat at times in the history of a state there maywell come a point where the maintenance of or-der seems to some group of men worthless as anend compared to achieving, by other than con-stitutional means, some good deemed greaterthan peace. That is the reservoir of anarchy ofwhich resistance to oppression is the most fer-tile source of supply. It is not in any sense a de-nial that the large purpose of the state is su-preme. It rather insists on its supremacy anddenies that character to governmental acts onthe ground that they do not achieve that end inany adequate fashion. Nor is it necessarily anarid persistence on behalf of some abstract theo-rem remotely capable of realisation. It is not forsuch things that revolutions have been made.Most men who have taken part in practical poli-tics will admit that a theoretic preference for anabstract system does not involve their immedi-ate effort after the destruction of an existinggovernment which, on all reasonable showing,suits the conditions of its age.94

It is this perhaps that best sets the backgroundfor the constructive answer to our questions.What, in actual fact, are the social forces overwhich the power of the state ought not to be ex-tended? What are the limits to its authority? Inwhat way ought its power to be organised? Thereare two obvious kinds of limitation to be dis-cussed. Both are connected with the fundamen-tal problem of liberty. Its definition is perhapsthe subtlest question the political philosopher

has to confront. The truth, of course, is that themeaning of liberty will vary with every age. Eachgeneration will have certain things it prizes assupremely good and will demand that these,above all, should be free. The permanent ele-ments of liberty we shall hardly know until someinspired investigator gives us that history ofwhich Acton dreamed. To our own generation itseems almost certain that the insistence uponabsence of restraint is in no sense adequate. Aliberty to enslave one’s self becomes immediatelyself-contradictory; and Mr. Justice Holmes hasfinely insisted, in one of the most significant ofhis opinions, upon the intimate connection of lib-erty with equality.95 Nor does Mill really aid usmuch in his distinction between self-regardingand other-regarding qualities; for the fact is thatwe can have no formation as to the social rel-evance of any act until we consider its conse-quences.96 “When we speak of freedom as some-thing to be highly prized,” said T. H. Green,97

“we mean a positive power of doing or enjoyingsomething worth doing or enjoying, and that, too,something that we do or enjoy in common withothers.” That is more valuable than the nega-tive conception because it insists on what, in thisage, we feel to be fundamental in liberty—thepower of adding something to the quality of thecommon life. But it does not, of course—thoughGreen had elsewhere answered that question98—tell us what it is worth while to do or to enjoy.and here again, acute difference of opinion ispossible. It was as a historian that Acton ap-proached the problem, and his answer had aconnotation not to be misunderstood. “By liberty”he said,99 “I mean the assurance that every manshall be protected in doing what he believes hisduty against the influence of authority and ma-jority, custom and opinion.” To a practical states-man that will seem perhaps a counsel of perfec-tion; and, certainly, it is a counsel that, at everystage, will encounter acute difficulties of practi-cal operation.

It yet sets, in the background of Green’s concep-tion, the idea we need of the internal limitationupon the action of the state. It insists upon thegreatest truth to which history bears witnessthat the only real security for social well-being

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is the free exercise of men’s minds. Otherwise,assuredly, we have contracted ourselves to sla-very. The only permanent safeguard of demo-cratic government is that the unchanging andultimate sanction of intellectual decision shouldbe the conscience. We have here, that is to say, arealm within which the state can have no rightsand where it is well that it should have none.No state, in truth, is ever firmly grounded thathas not in such fashion won the consent of itsmembers to action. The greatest contributionthat a citizen can make to the state is certainlythis, that he should allow his mind freely to ex-ercise itself upon its problems. Where the con-science of the individual is concerned the statemust abate its demands; for no mind is in truthfree once a penalty is attached to thought. Norwill consent so won be real consent. It is patentto the world that the inexhaustible well-springof democratic resource, as against any other formof government, is that no other system can becertain of itself. The methods by which an au-tocracy must secure consent are today, or shouldbe, tolerably well-known; and while they mayseem at times to have the efficacy of poison, theyresult always in death or violent remedy.

Freedom of thought, then, the modern state mustregard as absolute; and that means freedom ofthought whether on the part of the individualor of a social group. Nothing is more stupid thanfor the state to regard the individual and itselfas the only entities of which account must betaken, or to suggest that other groups live by itsgood pleasure. That is to make the easy mistakeof thinking that the activities of man in his re-lation to government exhaust his nature. It is afatal error. The societies of men are spontane-ous. They may well conflict with the state; butthey will only ultimately suffer suppression ifthe need they supply is, in some equally ad-equate form, answered by the state itself. And itis tolerably clear that there are many such in-terests the state cannot serve. The growth ofreligious difference, for example, makes thestate-adoption of any religious system a matterof doubtful expediency; and that means, as hasbeen before insisted, that the internal relationsof churches will in fact deny state-interference.

A society like the Presbyterian Church, whichrecognises only the headship of Christ, wil1 re-sist to the uttermost any external attempt atthe definition of its life; and experience seemsto suggest that the state will lose far more thanit can gain by the effort. Where the fellowship iseconomic in nature the problem is, indeed, farmore complex; for the modern state is at everyturn an economic organisation. But, even here,the impossibility of absorption is shown by thetragic history of such things as the Combina-tion Acts. The state may well exact responsibil-ity for the thought such fellowship may havewhere it seeks translation into action; but it willestablish its exaction only where the individual,himself judging between conflicting claims, isdriven to feel that the effort of the state is morevalid than the other.

That is to say that for the state there are foundsubjects of social rights and duties. They are notthe creation of the state; the state is simply anorganisation existing for the realisation of anend. The subjects of those rights are sometimesindividual human beings; sometimes they takethe form of fellowships of men. Those fellowshipspossess a personality into the nature of which itis not here necessary to examine.100 The funda-mental fact for the state is that they present anactivity that is unified and must be treated asinvolving the possession of rights. But the indi-vidual stands above and outside them. The onlyway the state can truly prosper is by sweepinginto itself the active assistance of his mind andconscience; and it will succeed in that effort onlyinsofar as it respects them. Whatever, therefore,concerns the conscience of man, whatever bringsits activity into operation, must, for the state,be sacred ground. That this involves difficultiesin practice is unquestionable. But if the actionof the vital agency of government arouses suchconscientious opposition as to be incapable ofapplication, it seems, to say the least, possiblethat it needs re-examination in terms of itsmoral character. If a measure has so wroughtupon the natural political inertia of men as toprick them into insurgency, it has probably in-terpreted with maleficent purpose the end of thestate. Even where the opposition is small, it is

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probable that more is gained by the possessionof that energy of character which is willing tooffer challenge than by destroying it.101 A statewhich oppresses those who are antagonised bythe way in which government interprets its pur-poses is bound to drift slowly into despotism.

It is asserted that such an attitude is impracti-cal. A man may think as he pleases; but opposi-tion to government is the coronation of anarchy.It is, to say the least, uncertain whether the as-sertion is so formidable as it appears. Disordermay be better than injustice. It was assuredlybetter for England that the Civil War assertedthe impossibility of the Stuart claims than thathumble obedience should be offered to them.Every government is a de facto government ex-cept insofar as the rightness of its effort makesit de jure. A man has, above all, to be true tohimself; for, once the fatal step is taken of hum-bling himself, against his inner promptings, be-fore the demands of authority the way to acqui-escence is easy. Nor must we be misled by theeffort at confusion that is implied in the divi-sion of the state into minority and majority. Thelever of public opinion is a weapon too easilybrought into use. We rarely analyse it into itsconstituent parts. We rarely estimate how far amajority-opinion is in fact active consent, andhow far it is in reality no more than the inertacquiescence that prefers slumber to challenge.In a problem like religious education, for ex-ample, the amount of conscientious and in-structed opinion on either side is small; and thereal truth is that a bill like Mr. Balfour’s mea-sure of 1903 wins acceptance rather because themass of men is uninterested in the technicalproblems involved than because the particularsolution of the church of England makes to themsome transcendent appeal. When Sir FrederickSmith can stigmatise the WelshDisestablishment Act as “a bill which hasshocked the conscience of every Christian com-munity in Europe,”102 he must be aware that thephrase is no more than vulgar rhetoric, and thatin fact any estimate of the Act’s popularity it isimpossible in that fashion to make. In the pro-cess of government the importance of this inertfactor can hardly be too greatly emphasised. It

needs some vivid action to stimulate to resis-tance a body of men large enough to make itspresence felt in the state. We probably tend se-riously to underrate the effort that is needed toembark upon such resistance. Certainly the re-mark may be hazarded that it is never arousedwithout deep causes to which attention must bepaid.

The assumption here made is that every indi-vidual is above all a moral being and that thegreatest contribution he can make to the stateis the effort of his moral faculties. That is in re-ality an assistance to society. A state in whichthe consciences of men are alert and energeticwill hardly embark upon the path that may lead,for example, to the invasion of Belgium. A gov-ernment which knows the existence of those con-sciences will hardly allow its mind to wander inthe direction of such wrong. It is when there hasbeen systematic training in effortless acquies-cence, that there is the easiest opportunity forinjustice. It is in such case that the state, per-haps even civilisation, may feel the nemesis ofthat docility. In that sense, by preventing thesenses of men from being so sodden as to mis-take legality for moral right, we have the surestsafeguard against disaster. The active conscienceof the members of a state acts as a self-operat-ing check against perversion from its purposes.

But conscience is not a thing which reacts in-stinctively to any set of circumstances. It needsinstruction. It has to be trained into the fineperception of the complex issues by which it willbe confronted. The mind with which it interactsneeds nourishment to be energetic. Here, indeed,is the significance for the state of Socrates’ greatplea that virtue is knowledge. An untutoredpeople can never be great in any save the rud-est arts of civilisation. Here, again, we have theelements upon which to base a limitation ofstate-power. No state can through its instru-ments deny education to its members. It mustprovide them, that is to say, with means at leastadequate to a full perception of life; for, other-wise, the purpose of the state is at one strokenegatived for them. Even Adam Smith put edu-cation among those activities it was well for the

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state to undertake;103 and Mr. Graham Wallashas wisely insisted that the growing interest ofthe workers in the fruits of learning is one ofthe surest tests we have of progress.104 That doesnot condemn the state to any particular system.It does not even suggest that there is a radicalwrong in giving one man the advantage of a clas-sical training while his brother is sent to a tech-nical institute. It merely suggests that the pro-vision of some agreed minimum of what is ad-equate to the purpose of citizenship is essentialand that no state is satisfactorily organisedwhere this condition does not obtain. It is themore urgent because political problems are sovast that no state, least of all a democracy, canhope to deal with them unless each member issufficiently articulate to transfer the judgmentof his experience to the increase of the commonstore. “An autocratic sultan,” it has been hap-pily remarked,105 “may govern without scienceif his whim is law. A plutocratic party may chooseto ignore science if it is heedless whether itspretended solutions of social problems... ulti-mately succeed or fail. But a democratic societymust base its solutions upon the widest possibleinduction open to its members.” That is not lessAmerican experience,106 Indeed, it may beclaimed that the recent experience of the wholeworld has very strikingly demonstrated the needof associating the active assistance of men withthe policy of the state; and it has been foundthat such assistance is more active the morehighly it is trained. That is, in fact, to emphasisethat by neglect of its resources the state haswasted the opportunity of their richest increase;and that, surely, must involve the erection ofsafeguards against the continuance of such ne-glect.

We are indicating avenues of possible approachrather than detailing the exact use to which theyshall be put; and it is perhaps better to analysethe general bearing of this attitude than to cata-logue its constituent factors.107 It is an whichprimarily suggests that the study of social lifeany scientific perspective, suggest some mini-mum rule of conduct.108 Immediately the inter-dependence of men is realised there is ethicallyinvolved the notion of a minimum equality. That

is not to say that all men are born equal. It issimply to say that the unity involved in the mereconcept of social purpose must prevent the un-necessary degradation of any individual. Nor isit for one moment to suggest that this rule ofconduct is an unchangeable thing. The needs ofeach age, no less than its potentialities, are, ofnecessity, different; and with every age our ruleof conduct will therefore vary.

Nor are we, like Adam Smith, suggesting theexistence of “natural laws of justice independentof all positive institution;”109 for that, in truth,is to put ourselves outside the realm of scien-tific speculation. The body of principles whichcan admit of an immutable and inflexible appli-cation to politics would be so generalised in char-acter as to be of little practical worth.110 The lifeof politics, as of the law, lies in its functioning.Theft may be bad and punishable by law; butwe cannot apply the criminal code until we hearthe penumbra which surrounds the case. Andthat penumbra may well make the principle in-applicable. What we do is to deposit hypothesesthat have come to us from the facts of life; wedeclare that their application will enrich thecontent of the social life. These hypotheses arenot the mere whims of chance opinion. We can-not, at least in politics, where decision is neces-sary, take refuge in a scepticism which, logicallyfollowed, makes conduct impossible. We urgethat the argument for one principle can in factbe better than another. It is today, for example,broadly believed that the case for factory acts isstronger than the case for industrial laissez-faire. The governmental regulation of factory-conditions has by now become a part of our ruleof political conduct. That has not been univer-sally the case. But our experience has grown withtime and we today think in other terms thanthe early nineteenth century. When the hypoth-esis that sums up such a general experiencebecomes generally enough accepted it gets writ-ten into the code of principles that we in gen-eral regard as beyond the realm of ordinary dis-cussion. The problem here is not very differentfrom the growth in the law of torts of liabilitywithout fault. We have penal statutes which di-rectly conflict with the older concept of that cat-

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egory. The statutes aim, for social reasons, atsecuring the mass of men against certain dan-gers. Workmen’s Compensation, for example,throws the burden on the employer in the beliefthat it is more socially advantageous for theburden so to fall. What is here done is to with-draw an area of social action from the ordinaryconcepts of law by making it statutory. It placesa statutory clause—the provision, in certaincases, for accident—as one of the conditions amaster must observe if he wishes to engage inbusiness.111 Workmen’s compensation is thussimply a regulation of experience. It is a prin-ciple withdrawn for the general good from theoperation of industrial competition. The generalrule of conduct is in nowise different save thatits substance is perhaps more fundamental.

That is the sense, for example, in which a realvalue may be attached to the Bill of Rights in anAmerican constitution. Misinterpreted as it of-ten may be,112 perverted as it certainly has been,it yet testifies to the vital character of a solidbody of social rules. To write into the body of aconstitution not immediately accessible toamendment principles which are the result ofsocial experience is to put them beyond the reachof ordinary mischance. Nobody who has at allexamined the character of American political lifecan doubt that this vague well-spring of ideal-ism has not only had, but still potentially pos-sesses, a profound influence. The constitutionalprovisions against an established church, forinstance, are of course derived from a bitter ex-perience of Anglican persecution. They haveundoubtedly prevented the growth of the socialstatus connected in England with the officialreligion, which still leaves a deep mark uponEnglish life.113 The way in which every state con-stitutionally insists upon the subordination ofthe military to the civil power is the safeguardagainst the aggression involved breeding intothe mind of a people the thought that the armyis a thing apart, not subject to the rules of jus-tice. No one can doubt that Magna Charta meansto an Englishman something that is not easilyto be over-emphasised; sufficient, indeed, tomake it possible for a distinguished judge toinsist that only the specific declaration of Par-

liament can secure its annullment.114 The psy-chologic background of provisions such as theseis an immense preventive against the abuse ofauthority. They give to doctrines the arms whichmake possible resistance to oppression. Theysanction the effort of legislative idealism. Theyrepresent, however vaguely, the moral despera-tion of a people. “A poetical adage” may not, asBentham sneeringly said,115 “be a reason;” butit is likely, if it have root in experience to pro-vide one; and he himself goes on to explain towhat vast results a simple phrase like “mother-country” may give rise.

Obviously, of course, such an attitude as this isin the closest relation to the modern revival ofnatural law.116 We are well enough able now tosee the main source of the discredit into whichit fell during the nineteenth century. It hadtended, in the previous age, to regard the prob-lems of law as far too simple and their solutionsas accordingly at hand. It shared the discreditwhich the dissatisfaction with the French Revo-lution inflicted upon an optimistic outlook. It wastoo highly abstract and too little careful of theforms of law. It over-emphasised the degree towhich reason is finally operative in the deter-mination of an adequate ideal. In the result, asDean Pound has shown,117 the pessimism of thehistorical school triumphed over what seemedno more than a metaphysical miasma. But, infact, the effort made by the theorists of naturallaw enshrined a truth of which too great neglectis possible.

That truth consists in the realisation that oneof the great mainsprings of human effort is therealisation of a good greater than that which isactually existent. The eighteenth-century theo-rists made the error of regarding that good asunchangeable. The facts, of course, proved toostrong for so rigid an outlook. But this insistenceupon idealism in law is not open to the samedifficulty if, with Stammler, we regard the idealof natural law as continually changing in con-tent.118 We have, as he has pointed out,119 a two-fold problem. We must know the relation of lawand morals. That is, of course, the ordinary prob-lem investigated by the legal philosophers. It is

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not, however, the crux of the question. We needto understand how a legal rule is to be madejust in the special conditions it is to confront.That is a purely functional problem. It is clear,for instance, that into the idea of justice arbi-trary control cannot enter;120 but it is not lessclear that opinion may differ as to what is arbi-trary control. Professor Dicey, for example, hasattacked the French system of administrativelaw as fatal in practice to the triumph of objec-tive principles;121 and Maxime Leroy has ex-pressed his discontent with the English rule oflaw.122 What surely, we can alone admit as dog-matic is the fact that justice is somehow to beattained yet, granted the fact of institutionalevolution it is clear that the content of justice isbound to vary. The balance of forces in a com-munity is subject to sufficient variation to makethe conflict of ideals inevitable. A process ofinternecine selection secures the triumph ofsome attitude. This theory of internal limitationupon the action of authority is essentially a prag-matic one. It admits that any system which failedin practice to secure what is largely termed theend of social life would be inadequate. It is suf-ficiently alive to the importance of stability toseek to place the fundamental notions of eachage beyond the temptation of malicious enter-prise. It is such notions that we have termedrights. It is such notions we have denied thepower, at least in theory, of government totraverse. For we say that their realisation is es-sential to the end of the state; and governmentis itself only a means to that end. The state, infact, must limit its instruments by the law of itsown being. Sovereignty, in such an aspect, cannever belong to the government if we term itthe supreme power to do what is thought neces-sary. Government, it is clear, will have a powerto will. But that will may come into conflict withother wills; and the test of the allegiance itshould win is the degree in which it is thoughtto be more in harmony than its antagonists withthe end of social life.

And this, it is clear also, envisages a pluralisticconception of society. It denies the oneness ofsociety and the state. It insists that nothing isknown of the state-purpose until it is declared;

and it refuses, for obvious reasons, to make apriori observations about its content. It sees manas a being who wishes to realise himself as amember of society. It refers back each actionupon which judgment is to be passed to the con-science of the individual. It insists that the su-preme arbiter of the event is the totality of suchconsciences. It does not deny that the individualis influenced by the thousand associations withwhich he is in contact; but it is unable to per-ceive that he is absorbed by them. It sees soci-ety as one only in purpose; but it urges that thispurpose has in fact been differently interpretedand is capable of realisation by more than asingle method. In such an analysis the state isonly one among many forms of human associa-tion. It is not necessary any more in harmonywith the end of society than a church or a trade-union, or a freemasons’ lodge. They have, it istrue, relations which the state controls; but thatdoes not make them inferior to the state. Theassumption of inferiority, indeed, is a fallacy thatcomes from comparing different immediate pur-poses. Moral inferiority in purpose as betweena church and state there can hardly be; legalinferiority is either an illegitimate postulationof Austinian sovereignty, or else the result of afalse identification of state and society. The con-fusion becomes apparent when we emphasisethe content of the state. When we insist that thestate is a society of governors and governed, itis obvious that its superiority can have logicalreference only to the sphere that it has markedout for its own and then only to the extent towhich that sphere is not successfully chal-lenged.123

Here, indeed, is the source of a serious confu-sion in the recent developments of the neo-Hegelian theory of the state.124 “Will not force,”said Green,125 “is the basis of the state.” That, ina sense, is true enough; but it obscures the realproblem of discovering upon what will, in ac-tual fact, the policy of the state is based. Thesearch is perhaps an endless one. Certainly wemust, in its course, bear in mind Green’s owncaution that “the idea of a common good whichthe state fulfils has never been the sole influ-ence actuating those who have been agents” in

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its life.126 They can never realise it, as he thinks,except in some imperfect form. Here, surely, is afundamental point. For even if it be true thatwe are watching in the state the slow process ofa growing good which, despite error and wrong,will somehow be realised, the growing good can-not, by sheer assumption, necessary be said tobe situate in one set of men rather than another.That, surely, is a matter for examination. Fewwould now be found to urge that the adminis-tration which ruled England after the peace of1815 had a conception of good denied, for in-stance, to Francis Place and the radicals.

The state is based upon will; but the wills fromwhich its will is eventually formed struggleamongst each other for survival. The idea of a“general” will that is necessary good emergingfrom that struggle seems, on the whole, to con-tribute but little to our understanding of theevent. A will is “good” if it is a good will; but it isdifficult to see why any character should be af-fixed to it until we have had time to watch it inactual operation. That was the merit of Green’sattitude. He did not for one moment deny thatin the transition from theoretic purpose to prac-tical realisation a significant transformationmay occur. The lofty splendour of Mr. Bradley’s“My Station and its Duties” may well suffertranslation into the station of the Anglican cat-echism. It is, indeed, the inherent defect of ide-alism that it never enables us to come to gripswith facts. It incurably tends to blur them over.It thinks so largely in terms of a beneficent tele-ology as to soften the distinction between politi-cal opposites. It beatifies the status quo by re-garding each element as an integral part of aprocess which it insists on viewing as a totality.But, in the heat and stress of social life, we can-not afford such long-period value. We may wellenough regard the lean years after 1815 as thenecessary prelude to the great reforms of thethirties. But that does not make them the lesslean. We may urge that society is in fact one andindivisible; but the dweller in a city-slum can-not, in the nature of things, transgress the un-seen barrier which, for him, is far more real thanthe philosophic bonds perceived by the abstractobserver. He is surely to be pardoned if, for ex-

ample, he regards class distinctions as real whenhe sees the tenacity with which privileges hedoes not share are defended. He may well insistthat if they are relatively necessary to the con-struction of the whole, it is against that wholethat he is then in open revolt.

The method of realism has at least the merit ofa greater simplicity. It would not regard theSouth African war as necessarily good becausethe Union of South Africa Act has been a superbtriumph. It is interested in judgments upon thelinks of a chain not less than in the chain itself.Theoretically, it can perceive how every act maymove in unity down the endless stream of time.Practically, it insists that the fact of discontinu-ity is vital. It perceives at least two such basiccentres of discontinuous action. There is the in-dividual mind. There is the mind, that is to say,of man considered in reference to personal self-realisation without involving in that process theself-realisation of others. There is the group-mind also. There is the mind, that is to say, of anumber of men who, actuated by some commonpurpose, are capable of a unified activity. Fromboth of these, in their myriad forms there ofcourse proceed acts of will. If a “general will”meant anything, it would only mean the total-ity of those wills insofar as they realised thegeneral social purpose. But no one knows im-mediately where that purpose is, by some indi-vidual act, about to be realised. The assumptionthat it is so realised must be a generalisationnot from purposes but from results. An Act ofParliament may differently affect different men.Because it means well to them all, because itachieves good as a majority of legislators con-ceive it, does not mean that in fact it is there-fore good. The realist interpretation of politiesdoes not, for one moment, insist upon a diver-gent interest between the desires that have se-cured historic fulfilment and the desires thatwould have secured the social good. But it doesdeny the idealist contention that there is anynecessary relevance between them.

From that twilight world it is surely better toemerge. Let us judge an institution not by itspurposes but by its achievement in the terms of

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those purposes. Let us judge, for example, theRoman Catholic Church not as the earthly em-bodiment of the body of Christ but by what itmade of that body in the history of its earthlyform. If we remember St Francis we must notforget the Inquisition; if we insist upon the wrongof Hus’ condemnation, we must not neglect thesplendid ideals of the Cardinal of Cusa. We haveto remember, in brief, that the realisation of theKingdom of God involves the holding of prop-erty, the making of contracts, the appointmentof officers, the determination of dogma. The factthat the Pope is the vicar of Christ does not ex-clude scrutiny into the details of election. Andour judgment upon the state must be in similarterms. The step is easy from talk of state to talkof community, but it is an illegitimate step. Thestate may have the noblest purpose. The objec-tive at which its power aims may be unques-tionable. But it, too, at every moment, is actingby agents who are also mortal men. The basis ofscrutiny becomes at once pragmatic. The test ofallegiance to established institutions becomesimmediately the achievement for which they areresponsible. The foundation of our judgmentmust incessantly be sought in the interpreta-tion of historic experience. We know, at least ingeneral terms, the aim of the state. We can mea-sure, again at least in general terms, the degreeof its divergence from the ideal end. That is whyno method is at all adequate which seeks theequation of the ideal and the real. That is whythe first lesson of our experience of power is theneed of its Station by the instructed judgmentof free minds.

VI. The Division of PowerBut, after all, this is an internal limitation. Itseeks its root less in any formal constitution thanin the effort to secure in the state the expres-sion of a certain spirit. It is in no sense a fullsafeguard against the dangers by which the stateis consistently confronted. We have also to erecta more positive and external limitation uponauthority. Not, indeed, that such machineryalone would be in any sense an adequate thing.No system of government has been yet devisednot capable of perversion by maleficent men. Itcannot be too emphatically insisted that impor-

tant as may be the policy of any government,the character of those who operate it is hardlyless fundamental. A single instance will perhapssuffice in demonstration. No one denies that themassive ability of Bismarck puts him in the firstrank of statesmen during the nineteenth cen-tury. But it is not less obvious that he consciouslyacted upon a system of political principles inwhich the ordinary canons of ethics played nopart. When he embarked upon his campaignagainst socialism the method of which he availedhimself was the deliberate application of prin-ciples in which he did not believe and to whichhe had formerly announced his opposition; andit is clear that those principles became differentby reason of the spirit he infused into their ap-plication. Half the difficulty of democratic gov-ernment consists in the choice of leaders; and ina quasi-democracy where, as in Germany, lead-ership is imposed from above, ideas that may inone context be admirable, will, in their new at-mosphere, serve only as a dangerous soporific.Few things have been more easy than for an ableand energetic government, which was willing topay the price, to bribe a whole people into sla-very. Here is a matter where rules of any kindare simply inapplicable. There are a thousandelements in the problem; and no student of po-litical psychology can avoid the admission thatwe have hardly approached even the beginningsof a satisfactory solution.127

When the choice of governors has been made,the question yet remains of confining them tothe business for which they have been chosen.We have so to arrange the machinery of the stateas to secure not merely the most efficient safe-guard against its perversion from theoretic pur-pose, but also to obtain the fullest promotion ofthat end. Here is the real hinterland of politicalenquiry; for the one obvious method by whichthe past sought refuge from the dangers of au-thority has proved in fact delusive. That methodwas the separation of powers. It was from thetime of Aristotle conceived that the elements ofpublic business admit of a natural classificationinto legislative, executive, and judicial.128 Thedanger of combining the two latter was forciblyinsisted upon by Bodin;129 and Locke seems to

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have been the first to point out the value of theiractive and general separation.130 But it wasMontesquieu who, basing his attitude upon amistaken interpretation of the English consti-tution, first urged that the separation of powersis the secret of liberty.131 Supported by his im-mense authority, the idea was everywhere propa-gated with eagerness; and in France andAmerica especially its truth was accepted withenthusiasm. The constitutions of the Revolution-ary assemblies wrote the principle into the fab-ric of the French state.132 In America the consti-tutions both of the federation and its constitu-ent parts unhesitatingly adopted it. Madisoninsisted that the “accumulation of all powers....in the same hands.... may justly be pronouncedthe very definition of tyranny,”133 and the Su-preme Court of the United States asserted suchseparation to be “one of the chief merits of theAmerican system.”134

It is in fact a paper merit for the simple reasonthat in practice it is largely unworkable.Cromwell discovered that to his cost;135 and therehas been no state in which methods have notbeen used to break down the theoretic barriers.In France the judiciary has largely been re-garded as a delegate of the sovereign govern-mental power. In America the development ofthe standing-committee in Congress provided asimple system of communication between thecabinet and the legislature. In Massachusetts,even before the war of independence, the power-ful “Junto” of Boston practically made itself anexecutive committee.136 The truth is that thebusiness of government does not admit any ex-act division into categories. It has been foundincreasingly necessary to bestow judicial pow-ers upon English government departments.137

The system of provisional orders may dependupon a genial fiction of generous delegation; butif the work of the Local Government Board isnot, in this particular, legislation, there is noth-ing that is worthy of that name. “The work of ataxing department today,” the chairman of theBoard of Customs told a recent Royal Commis-sion,138 “is an absolutely different thing fromwhat it was twenty or even ten years ago. Inthose days Parliament, when it fixed a tax,

settled every detail, leaving to the departmentonly the administration of the tax on the lineslaid down by Parliament. The tendency of Par-liament nowadays... is to lay down only prin-ciples, leaving matters of difficulty to the dis-cretion of the department. I think it fair to saythat a department like mine nowadays exercisespowers which are often judicial and which some-times get very near being legislative.” Nor mustProfessor Dicey’s insistence on the value of ju-dicial legislation be forgotten.139

No one, moreover, who has watched at all care-fully the development of the English cabinet inrecent years can mistake the evident tendencyof the executive—a tendency of course strength-ened by the fact of war—to escape from Parlia-mentary control.140 It is not less significant thatboth Insurance and Development Acts havegiven quasi-legislative and fully judicial pow-ers to commissions who are expressly exceptedfrom the ordinary rules of law.141 This evolution,whether or no it be well-advised, surely bearstestimony to the breakdown of traditional theory.The business of government cannot in fact behampered by the search after the exact branchinto which any particular act should fall. And itmay even be urged that recent American his-tory bears testimony to the further conclusionthat the breakdown of the doctrine has nowhereproved unpopular. Certainly an external ob-server sees no sign of lament over the Presiden-tial control of Congress;142 and there has been,in recent years, a clear tendency in England tolook for the active sovereignty of the state out-side of Parliament. We have in fact come to be-lieve that the loss in formal independence maywell be compensated by a gain in the efficiencyof government.

The theory yet contains an important truth ofwhich perhaps too little notice has been takenin our time. We have become so accustomed torepresentative government as to realise onlywith difficulty the real basis of its successfuloperation. It presupposes an educated and alertelectorate which is continually anxious for theresults of that system. It ought not to involve,as it has within recent years so largely involved,

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a divorce between the business of governmentand the knowledge of its processes. Aristotle’sdefinition of citizenship as the “sharing in theadministration of justice and offices”143 impliesthe understanding of some sense now lost—thatactive participation in affairs of state will alonecause adequate performance even of the hum-blest civic function. Power, that is to say, whichis largely concentrated at a single political cen-tre will produce a race of men who do not dis-play interest in its consequences. In some sortthat is a fact that lies at the root of our prob-lems. And it is important simply because the lib-erty of a state depends so largely upon the situ-ation of power. We realise this, for example, inour awareness of the danger of star-chambermethods; we look with suspicion upon executivejustice.144 We insist that the independence of thejudiciary is fundamental to liberty. It is onlywithin recent years that the French courts havebeen able to free themselves from a narrow wor-ship of governmental power. The supposed de-viation of its activities from a theoretic sover-eignty made government intolerably careless ofits ways and means.145 The simple rule that noman shall be judge in his own cause stands asone of the few really fundamental truths of po-litical science. And the emphasis upon divisionof powers leads to the perception of what is be-coming more and more obvious as the facts ofsocial life become more widely known. We arebeginning to see that authority should go whereit can be most wisely exercised for social pur-poses. That is to say that there is no naturalcontrol inherent in the state. It is to suggest, forexample, that it may be wise to put certain av-enues of social effort outside the control of thestate legislature. It is to argue that, conceivably,industrial enterprise is better settled by thosewho are engaged in it, than by the representa-tives of certain geographical areas with no nec-essarily expert knowledge of the problems in-volved.

It is thus no rigid classification of power uponwhich insistence is laid. Power is regarded sim-ply as the right to will acts of general reference,and the suggestion is made that it should beconferred where it is probable that it can be most

usefully exerted. In this aspect it becomes notunlikely that we have in the past, over-emphasised the necessity for its concentrationat a single point in the social structure. We havebeen so concerned, particularly as lawyers, indemonstrating the paramountcy of the state,that we have taken too little regard of the lifelived outside its categories. We ought rather toseek a different perspective. What is alone es-sential is the fullest achievement of the generalsocial purpose. What is at once then evident isthe necessity of organising authority with a viewsolely to that end.

Such an organisation implies a conception ofsociety as basically federal in nature. In thatsense the paramount character of the state isipso facto denied. For if it is once clear that thereare regions into which the state cannot usefullyenter, it is obvious that there are realms overwhich its authority ought not to be exerted. Thatis to foreshadow a division, not of powers, but ofpower upon the basis of functions. It is to pic-ture a society in which authority is not hierar-chical but coordinate. Nor is the basis of its defi-nition in any sense matter of a priori definition.It must change as social necessity may demand.It must have in constant view the possibility ofinnovation not less vast, for example, than thatproduced by the Industrial Revolution, or thatwhich seems involved in the more recent expe-rience of war.

To insist upon the federal nature of society isless paradoxical than may at first sight appear.Thirty years ago, indeed, Seeley pointed out thatthe difference between federal and unitarystates was valuable only “as marking conve-niently a great difference which may exist.... inrespect of the importance of local government;”146

and, indeed, the difference here between En-gland and the United States is hardly greaterthan the difference between England andFrance. What is true here of the state is, of course,even more accurate of society as a whole; andonce we regard the state merely as one of itsconstituent parts, however fundamental, whatbecomes obvious is the fact that its dominionmust be strictly relevant to the problem of what

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purposes it can best fulfil. Indeed, much of theproblem has been greatly obscured by thinkingof federalism not in terms of a division of func-tions upon some rough basis of useful perfor-mance but in terms of territorial contiguity. Sucha reference is, of course, intelligible enough. Ev-eryone understands why so vast an area as theUnited States involves some system ofdecentralisation. The attempt to govern territo-ries so diverse as Arizona and New York by uni-form methods would be fraught with disaster.The facts geographically refuse such reductionto unity. The problems of government are in eachcase so diverse that their local study and solu-tion alone proves efficacious.

The same necessity has been increasingly ap-parent in the relations between Great Britainand her daughter-nations. It has become obvi-ous that the complex of interests we call Canadaand Australia can be better governed from Ot-tawa or from Melbourne than where, as in thefirst part of the nineteenth century, commandsradiated outwards from a single centre atWhitehall. “Government from Downing Street”came to have a sinister import simply becausethe interests involved were not less real and self-sufficing than the interests of the empire towhich they belonged. The conference of self-gov-ernment was bound to follow immediately thetruth became apparent that the possession ofkindred interests by a group of men will sooneror later involve the self-management of thoseinterests. The reasons are manifold enough.Downing Street was, in the first sixty years ofthe nineteenth century, literally unable to copewith the complex problems that confronted it;and the attempt to construct, as notably in thecolonial administration of Lord Grey,147 an uni-form and equal policy for things that were nei-ther equal nor uniform was bound to result onlyin constant and dangerous irritation. Nor wasit for long conceivable that community like Aus-tralia would be content to leave the centre of itsultimate political power, in any sense save thatof legal dignity, outside the chief residence of itseconomic interests.

It is, indeed, argued that within these territo-ries unity is bound in some sort to develop.148 Inthe United States, at least, this has in no sensebeen the case. What, in truth, may be urged isthat the original distribution of power has notfitted the development of nearly a hundred andfifty years. But it is surely true in America thatwhat is developing is less complete unity, as inFrance, as the emergence of new administrativeareas. It is probable that the historic system ofstate-government has, in many cases, brokendown; but that has not involved the disappear-ance of the fundamental idea. It would be clearlyimpossible to force such conflicting interests asthose of agriculture and industry into a kind ofHegelian harmony by the over-simple device oflegislating from Washington.149 Nor is this lesstrue of Canada. No observer of its conditions canfail to note the way in which, commercially, thewheat-producing territory of the West is devel-oping a system antithetic to that of the indus-trial East; and it is at least not improbable thatthe West is destined to swing over the balanceof political power exactly as in the UnitedStates.150 But in both countries the real need isnot for less local government, but for more. Inboth countries one of the real sources of dangerhas been to develop a kind of local stagnationby regarding Ottawa and Washington as reservepowers which could be brought to bear upon arecalcitrant community. What is at least as evi-dent is the failure of recent centralisation tosolve the administrative problems involved. Itis continually found that they are in fact notsimple and general, but specialised and local;and the spectacle of a harassed official at Wash-ington trying to adjust the thousand varyingstrands the size of America involves, is not moreexhilarating than to see how the Congress per-mits of dangerous manipulation in the interestsof locality.151

There is, in fact, a fundamental principle in-volved in such an attitude upon which too muchinsistence can hardly be laid. It is the truth thatin administration there is a point at which, forevery increased attribute, an obvious diminu-tion of efficiency results. Where a governmentdepartment is overloaded with work what it will

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tend to do is to pay attention not to the particu-lar circumstances of the special problem in-volved, but to its general ruling in broad casesof the kind. There is bound to be delay and theprice of delay in such matters it is difficult tooverestimate. Groups, in fact, must be treatedas independent units living, however minutely,a corporate life that gives birth to special con-siderations. The official at London can hardlyenter so closely into the unique penumbra of aManchester enquiry as fully to satisfy it. Whathe will do is to look up the records of his depart-ment and apply some rule laid down for similarconditions at Liverpool. This has been strikinglyfrustrated in our own day by the reports of theBritish Commissions on industrial unrest. Theattempt, as the commissioners for the NorthWest discovered,152 “to regulate every petty de-tail of the industrial machinery of the area fromoffices at Whitehall imposes upon the men whoare asked to work it an impossible task. Thetrenches of industrial warfare are inLancashire.... it is not a business proposition totry and command the great industrial army ofthese areas with a staff 200 miles from thebase.... there is overcentralisation and.... this isa cause of unrest..... It should be consideredwhether it would be possible not only to leaveemployers and workmen to settle more mattersthemselves, but to arrange that high officials....should live in the area and be within closetouch.... at the earliest possible moment.” Hardlyless suggestive was the conclusion of the Ameri-can Commission which had the same problemin view. Here, indeed, the industrial control wasprivate and not public in nature; but it was againinsisted that “distant ownership.... creates bar-riers against the opportunity of understandingthe labour aspects, the human problem of theindustry, and solidarity of interest among thevarious owners checks the views of any one lib-eral owner from prevailing against the auto-cratic policy of the majority”153 In a still largerindustry the same difficulty is noted. “The ele-ment of distance, creating managerial aloofness,thus played a very important part. For the em-ployees, the labour policy of ‘the company’ waswhat local officials in towns distant from theexecutive offices made it, and not what the gen-

eral officers in San Francisco might have wishedit to be; distance insulated the general officesfrom intimate knowledge of industrial relationsof the Company. The bonds of confidence and co-operation between company and employees weretherefore tenuous. Moreover, the fact that thecompany, despite its bigness, was part of a na-tional system, qualified all solutions of labourdifficulties by consideration, on the part of thecompany, of the bearing of such solution how-ever intrinsically irrevelant, upon other partsof the country.”154

This, is, in fact, the inherent vice of centralisedauthority. It is so baffled by the very vastness ofits business as necessarily to be narrow anddespotic and over-formal in character. It tendsto substitute for a real effort to grapple withspecial problems an attempt to apply widegeneralisations that are in fact irrelevant. Itinvolves the decay of local energy by taking realpower from its hands. It puts real responsibilityin a situation where, from its very flavour ofgenerality, an unreal responsibility is postulated.It prevents the saving grace of experiment. Itinvites the congestion of business. And all thisis the more inevitable where, as in the moderndemocratic state, the responsibility for admin-istration lies not in the hands of the civil ser-vice but in the statesmen who hold office. Whatis thereby engendered is an attempt not so muchto provide solutions as to evade them. In a greatstrike, for example, government arbitration willnot mean so much a genuine effort after justiceas the purchase of a solution on any terms. Thatis in the nature of things inevitable. Where ba-sic industries are concerned the governmentknows full well the unpopularity that will at-tend it if there is any interference with the nor-mal process of consumption. In industry as awhole, the government is, from the nature ofthings, interested in the maintenance of orderand it knows well enough that the maintenanceof order is in inverse ratio to the duration of thestrike. What it is driven thus to do is to seek themanipulation of disharmony that its credit maybe thereby least injured. And, at the worst, itmay suffer itself to be used for the purpose ofone of the contending parties. Where picketing,

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for instance, is concerned, the knowledge thatgovernment stands for a certain theory of order,necessarily operates to minimise the strengthof the men.155

It is noteworthy in this connection that the mosthighly centralised of modern states should haverealised the inadequacy of its system. The moststriking development of France in recent yearsis towards an increase of administrativedecentralisation. The causes of this change areprofound. Very largely, it is due to the increas-ing dissatisfaction of the civil service with Par-liamentary control;156 and that has heralded thecommencement of an effort at the conference ofresponsibility outside the traditional categories.The decentralisation of higher education is par-ticularly interesting in view of its success.157 Theerection of certain public services into autono-mous establishments with separate budgets hasnot excluded governmental control; but it has,by the association in their operation of non-gov-ernmental interests, involved a real change inthe atmosphere of their functioning.153 Nor is itat all doubtful that the revivification of local lifeafter the war is one of the first problems by whichthe new France will seek the renewal of itsformer richness.158a

Such decentralisation is fundamental enough;for it can hardly be too earnestly insisted thatto place the real centre of political responsibil-ity outside the sphere in which its consequencesare to operate is to breed not only inefficiencybut indifference. The only way to make munici-pal life, for example, an adequate thing is to setcity striving against city in a consistent conflictof progressive improvement. A man’s pride inbeing a citizen of London or New York can onlybe made real by giving to London and New Yorkthe full responsibility of self-government. Theonly way in which a new and needed interest inthe problems of such areas can be achieved isby giving to those who handle them the fullpower of effective achievement. What, in despiteof trammels, an able man can in this particularaccomplish Mr. Chamberlain demonstrated inthe case of Birmingham. And it is surely evi-dent that by such a process we do much to re-

lieve the congestion of public business whichtoday sties the public departments. Nor need wefear parochialism. That, in truth, is the offspringof a time when distance had not been annihi-lated by the improvement of transportation. Itis possible today to go from Manchester toLiverpool in less than the time in which Londonitself can be traversed. When neighbouring ex-ample is thus contiguous a narrowly local senseis but a figment of pessimistic imagination. Andwith such a change what we open up is one ofthe fundamental sources of training in the busi-ness of government. When the last word has beensaid about “vestry-narrowness,” or the pettinessof local affairs, it is surely evident that, in truth,the real guarantee of adequacy in national af-fairs is the proper performance of public func-tions in a smaller sphere. That has been one ofthe great advantages of the federal system inthe United States. Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Hughesin New York, Mr. Wilson in New Jersey, provedtheir fitness for high national office by serviceof a kind that demonstrated their ability tohandle public issues. And it is at least not im-possible that one day a similar qualification willbe demanded as the basis of membership in theHouse of Commons. It seems, to say the least,not unlikely that the trained servant of a mu-nicipality will prove a fitter member of thatChamber than a young and freshly innocent peerwhose triumphs have before been confined tothe debating societies of Oxford and Cambridge.

VII. The Organisation of PowerThis at least indicates, even while it does nottouch, the real heart of the problem. Its crux isthe position of the state relative to that of othergroups within society. What we have thus fardenied is the claim of the state to represent inany dominant and exclusive fashion the will ofsociety as a whole. It is true that it does in factabsorb the vital part of social power; but it isyet in no way obvious that it ought to do so. It isin no way obvious immediately it is admittedthat each individual himself is in fact a centreof diverse and possibly conflicting loyalties, andthat in any sane political ethic, the real direc-tion of his allegiance ought to point to where, ashe thinks the social end is most likely to be

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achieved. Clearly there are many forms of asso-ciation competing for his allegiance. Clearly, also,the vast part of them express the effort of mento achieve the broad aim of social existence.Labour associations aim at the control of pro-duction because they believe that with its pas-sage into their hands the life of the masses willbe richer and more full. Religious associationsare the expression of a conviction that to acceptcertain dogmas is to secure induction into theKingdom of Heaven. The state, as we have seen,is in reality the reflexion of what a dominantgroup or class in a community believes to bepolitical good. And, in the main, it is reasonablyclear that political good is today for the mostpart defined in economic terms. It mirrors withinitself, that is to say, the economic structure ofsociety. It is relatively unimportant in what fash-ion we organise the institutions of the state.Practically they will reflect the prevailing eco-nomic system; practically also, they will protectit. The opinion of the state, at least in its legisla-tive expression, will largely reproduce the opin-ion of those who hold the keys of economic power.There is, indeed, no part of the community ofwhich economic power is unable to influence theopinions. Not that it will be an absolute controlthat is exerted by it. The English statute-bookbears striking testimony to the results of theconflict between the holders of economic powerand those who desire its possession; and, oftenenough, there has been generous co-operationbehind the effected change. But the fundamen-tal truth remains that the simple weapons ofpolitics are alone powerless to effect any basicredistribution of economic strength.

That is to say that the political organisation ofa state may well disguise its true character. Theliberal and conservative parties in England, therepublican and democratic parties in the UnitedStates, do not the less represent a capitalist con-trol of politics because they are national parties.Mr. Osborne’s dislike of a labour party with apolitical programme did not prove a generaltruth that the historic lines of party division inEngland represent a satisfactory alignment ofeconomic power to the working-man. It did notprove that there was in fact a possible harmony

of interest between trade-unions of which thedominant purpose was the control of industryin the interests of democratization and employ-ers who deny the utility of such control. It istrue that the labour party has entered politics;and it has been argued with some plausibility159

that it ought by the slow conversion of the elec-torate to its creed to arrive by a slow evolutionat the control of the processes of the state. Butthat analysis is, in fact, entirely unreal. It mis-takes the important truth that the interests towhich the House of Commons attends is, in re-ality, the interests of consumers as those arecapable of being harmonised with the demandsof the prevalent economic system. The interestof the constituencies of the House of Commonsis predominantly in the regular functioning ofeconomic processes. They want a proper postalservice, or railway system, exactly as the citi-zens of a municipality will look to the town coun-cil for gas and tramways and electricity. Withthe internal organisation of industrial affairsthey will not concern themselves save as dis-harmony will force them to the recognition oftheir importance. Sometimes, indeed, a suddenfit of humanitarianism, as in the Trade-BoardsAct, will result in legislative control. But, pri-marily, it is in regularity of industrial servicethat the House of Commons and government areabove all interested. And, as a careful observerhas pointed out, this is predominantly true oflocal government.160 When, therefore, the func-tions of the state undergo close scrutiny, it isfound that the aspect upon which they concen-trate their work is the use by the community ofindustrial resources. It is not interested in theprocesses of production as such; it concerns it-self in securing due provision from industry forthe needs of society. It deals with men in thecapacity that is common to them all. It regardsthem as the users of certain goods. It is uninter-ested in men as engaged in any function savethat of consumption except, of course, insofar asthe performance of their duties hinders theachievement of its own basic effort. Clearly, forinstance, the state, through its government,would be vitally interested in a railway strike;for it is vitally interested in securing to the mem-bers of the state the uninterrupted use of rail-

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way facilities. But an analysis of the part playedby the government in settlements of industrialdisputes can hardly fail to suggest that the pri-mary concern of the state is not in the cause ofthe dislocation, but in the dislocation itself.160a

Causes are important only insofar as they seemto imply a renewal of disturbance. In that as-pect the relation of the state to a member of therailway unions is very different from its rela-tion to the ordinary member of the public. Forits main concern with the trade unionist is toget him back to work; whereas that at which heaims is some redistribution of economic powerwithin a group only the results of whosefunctionings concern the state as a whole.

That is why it is impossible to regard the stateas capable, in any general view, of absorbing thewhole loyalty of an individual. It can only se-cure his loyalty insofar as he does not think that,in the given situation, the railway union has infact a superior claim. It is just as possible, forinstance, for a man to make the decision that,balanced against the industrial dislocation, theend of a railway strike is worth the cost, as it isto conclude that the sacrifices of a great war areworth the great price they involve if the resultsafeguards the liberty of nations. At a stroke, inbrief, the hierarchical structure of society is de-molished. We have, instead, a series of co-ordi-nate groups the purposes of which may well beantithetic. What has happened in the history ofthe state is, on the contrary, the assertion thatit enjoys a unique position for its power. It claimsthe right to judge between conflicting associa-tions and to interpose its will between them. Itclaims that the rights of societies other than it-self are, in fact, within its gift; and their exist-ence is conditioned by its graciousness. The fearof group-persons in English-history is at leastas old as Richard of Devizes;161 and Blackstoneonly put into legal form the contempt thatHobbes had poured upon them.162 “With us inEngland,” he said,163 “the king’s consent is abso-lutely necessary to the creation of any corpora-tion”; and the Combination Acts are the proudvindication of the state’s claim to exclusiveness.But here, as elsewhere, life in fact overflows thenarrow categories in which the dogmas of state-

sovereignty would enshrine it. The truth is moreand more apparent that these groups live a lifeof their own, and exist to support purposes thatthe state itself fails to fulfil. From this it wasthat Maitland drew the obvious conclusion.“Home would warn us,” he wrote in a famoussentence,164 “that in the future, the less we sayabout a supralegal, suprajural plenitude ofpower concentrated in a single point atWestminster—concentrated in one single organof an increasingly complex commonwealth—thebetter for that vision may be the days that arecoming.” It is no more than that vision we areseeking to translate into the event.

If, then, we view the state as primarily a body ofconsumers whose will, over the course of his-tory, has been largely controlled by groups withinitself, it clearly follows that the producer whodoes not share in the ownership of means of pro-duction must safeguard his special interest inhis personal function in such fashion as will pre-vent its subordination to the purposes of gov-ernment. So, too, and in another sphere, a Ro-man Catholic must arm himself lest his inter-est in his church be unjustly attacked by a statethat has made with some alien religious bodyan alliance for reciprocal assistance.165 The mainvalue of his church, indeed, must for him con-sist in the fact that because it is a church it giveshim a guarantee he could not otherwise possessagainst the invasion of a religious interest. Forthe individual is lost in a big world unless thereare fellowships to guard him; and even thoseassociations may well prove powerless unlessthey deny that their rights are state-derived.Excommunication, for example, would not seemto him a sentence open to the revision of a state-court.166 This is in no sense a denial of member-ship of the state. It is merely an insistence thatthe aspect in which he is related to his church isan aspect different from his relation to the state.The spheres of each are, in his own mind, dis-tinct; the powers of each are then divided in thelight of that separation. In the PresbyterianChurch, again, no denial is made of the su-premacy of the state in civil matters; but, saidChalmers, “in things ecclesiastical we decideall.”167 Here, again, the emphasis is upon co-or-

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dinate function. What is essentially denied is thederivation of church rights from the grace of thestate.

The position of trade-unionism is in the closestrelation to this attitude. It is held that the pur-pose of that movement emphasises an aspect ofthe worker’s life which is different from the as-pect emphasised by the state. The trade-unionis concerned with the business of production; thestate is, above all, concerned with the generalregularity of the supply for consumption. What,then, the trade-union is compelled to deny is thesubordination of the function he fulfils as a pro-ducer to his interest in the supply of his needs.It is, in any case, painfully clear that the statedoes not in any full sense secure that supply. Itensures production; but the distribution of theproduct is weighted in the interest of those whowield economic power. That is the main reasonwhy the worker sees in the productive process alever that will react upon the state itself. Truepolitical democracy is, as he realises, the off-spring of true industrial democracy. If he wereto admit the paramount character of the con-sumptive process no strike would ever occur. But,obviously, the judgment is constantly made, andthat in industries of basic importance, that theattainment of a new equilibrium in industrialrelations is worth the heavy price invariably paidfor it. The worker, that is to say, is no more in-clined than the Roman Catholic to admit thesupremacy of the context in which the state isplaced. He refuses to regard it as in any perma-nently valid sense the sovereign representativeof the community. He bases his refusal upon thebelief that the results of its functioning bearwitness to a grave maladjustment. It is used tosupport a status quo with which he is dissatis-fied. He might even urge that the new equilib-rium at which he is aiming is worth more to thecommunity than the fulfilment of what the stateat present regards as its duties in the consump-tive process.

Here, immediately, a division of power is implied.The business of consumption, it is suggested, isproper material for the authority of the state. Itis immediately a matter where the interests of

men in their capacity of consumers may be takenas substantially equal; at least in the sense thatthere are certain goods a minimum supply ofwhich is, for each individual, essential to socialexistence. But somewhere between productionand consumption a line must be drawn. The in-terests of men in production are rarely equalbecause the share of its results suffers widelyvarying distribution. There is a broad distinc-tion, for example, between the interest of theowner of capital and the interest of theunpropertied worker. There is at present, also, adistinction, which the sectionalism of trade-unions makes unfortunately manifest, betweenskilled and unskilled labour.168 There is a clashof interest, at least in certain trades, betweenthe male and female labour employed.169 It isprobable, indeed, that sectional antagonismwithin the labour movement is capable of re-moval by wise activity, and certainly the greatEnglish amalgamations of recent years, mostnotably that of the transport workers, point in-creasingly in this direction.

But between the interest of capital and that oflabour it is difficult to see any permanent basisof reconciliation. They want antithetic things.When the utmost that a capitalism can concedeis measured, it still falls short of what labourdemands; for the ultimate object of labour ac-tivity is democratic self-government in indus-try, the determination, that is to say, of the meth-ods to be employed at each stage of the produc-tive process, the settlement of tasks and hoursand wages by the men themselves. It involves,therefore, the disappearance of a super-imposedhierarchical control. It takes the trade union asthe single cell from which an entirely new in-dustrial order is to be evolved. In such an as-pect, the suspicion of labour towards a state thatis predominantly capitalist in character is in-evitable. For whether the state, through its in-struments, seeks, by maintaining order, to pre-vent the possibility of redistribution; whether itattempts to discover some possible basis of tem-porary reconciliation; what always emerges fromeither synthesis is the determination of labourto use the equilibrium so created as the founda-tion of a new effort towards its ultimate objec-

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tive. The method of which use is made may varybut the purpose is unchanging.

Labour, therefore, could admit the complete sov-ereignty of the state only if it could be assumedthat the state were on its side. The only thing ofwhich it can in this context be certain is thatthe power of the state will be predominantlyexerted against its interest. For the social orderof the modern state is not a labour order but acapitalist, and upon the broad truth ofHarrington’s hypothesis it must follow that themain power is capitalist also. That will imply arefusal on labour’s part to accept the authorityof the state as final save where it is satisfiedwith its purposes. It means that it will endeavorso to organise the process of production as tohand over the chief authority therein to thetrade-unions which express its interests. Itmeans, in short, the conquest of productive con-trol by labour; and when that control has beenconquered it is not likely that it will be easilysurrendered.170

What, on the contrary, is possible is that someadjustment will be slowly made between thegroups which represent the interests of produc-ers and the state, in all its constituent local parts,as representing the consumer. We do not admit,that is to say, the attitude of the anarchist whodenies, like William Godwin, the need for au-thority at all,171 or the attitude of the syndical-ist who emphasises only the producer’s inter-est. The case against syndicalism Mr. GrahamWallas has felicitously expressed in a single sen-tence. “It proved to be more important”, he haswritten,172 “that under syndicalism men lovedeach other less as citizens than that they lovedeach other more as gild-brothers.” We cannot, infact risk the possibility of disorganisation uponthe basis of narrow selfishness. however the pro-ductive process is in the future arranged withinitself provision must be made for some centralauthority not less representative of productionas a whole than the state would represent con-sumption. There is postulated therein two bod-ies similar in character to a national legislature.Over-great pressure of consumer on producer isavoided by giving to the producers as a whole a

legislature where the laws of production wouldbe considered. The legislature of the consumerswould decide upon the problems of supply. Jointquestions, in such a synthesis, are obviouslymatter for joint adjustment. Nor is the centralauthority within either division to be envisagedas uniquely sovereign. Certain functional delimi-tations, the cotton-trade, the mining-industrythe railways, shipping, immediately suggestthemselves. From the consumer’s standpoint,municipalities, counties, even whole areas likethe North of England, may have group-demandsto be settled by group-action. A balance of inter-nal powers would functionally be sought. Ar-rangements would require a system of collec-tive contracts upon the basis of collective bar-gaining. Law, as now, would be matter for thecourts. The judiciary could settle a dispute be-tween a bootmakers’ gild and the authorities ofan orphan asylum in Manchester as well in onesystem as another. Probably, indeed, a specialsystem of industrial courts would be developed.Probably, also, just as in the United States acourt of special and pre-eminent dignity decidescontroversies between the separate states, dis-putes between a producers’ authority and a con-sumers’ would need a special tribunal. That iswhy, as M. Duguit has pointed out,173 jurispru-dence will occupy an important place in the fed-eralist society towards which we are moving.174

VIII. The Significance of FreedomSo complex a division of powers as this seemsat first sight confusing to one accustomed to theordinary theory of state-sovereignty. It is notdifficult to urge that coordination implies thepossibility of conflict and to insist that only byan hierarchical structure of authority can thedanger of disturbance be minimised. Yet it is, tosay the least, tolerably clear that disturbance isnot avoided by the conference of supreme poweron the state. The rejection of that claim to sover-eignty, moreover, involves an attitude to politicswhich has at least some merit. There is a sensein which the vastest problem by which we arefaced is the very scale of the life we are attempt-ing to live. Its bigness tends to obscure the mer-its of real freedom. And, indeed, there is indus-trially abroad a certain suspicion of liberty

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against which safeguards must be erected. Theindividual suffers absorption by the immensityof the forces with which he is in contact. That istrue not less of the House of Commons, of Con-gress, of the French chamber, than it is of anindustry which has largely suffereddepersonalisation. There are few signs of thatenergy of the soul which Aristotle thought thesecret of happiness. There is little work that of-fers the opportunity of conscious and system-atic thought. Responsibility tends to coagulateat a few centres of social life; so that the work ofmost is the simple commission of orders it israrely their business to reflect upon. We areclearly tending to be overawed by our institu-tions; and we can perceive, in a way differentfrom the perspective set by Lecky and Sir HenryMaine, a genuine danger lest we lose hold of thatchiefest source of happiness. Clerks and teach-ers and tenders of machines, for each of whomthere is prescribed a routine that fills the mosteager hours of life, dare not be asked for the ef-fort upon which new thought is founded. An ex-pert in the science of factory management haseven assumed that for the purpose of productiv-ity a man “who more nearly resembles in hismental make-up the ox than any other type”175

is desirable. Happiness in work, which can alonebe fruitful of advance in thought, is, as Mr. Wallashas noted,176 a phrase for most practically with-out meaning. The problem today, as the problemat the time of the French Revolution, is the res-toration of man to his place at the centre of so-cial life.

That is, indeed, the real significance of freedom.It alone enables the individuality of men to be-come manifest. But individuality is bound tosuffer eclipse if power is unduly centred at somesingle point within the body politic. To divide itupon the basis of the functions it is to performis the only guaranty for the preservation of free-dom. We too little remember that the appear-ances of politics have obscured the emergencein our time of new and sinister forces of compul-sion. The pursuit of an ideal of efficiency, forwhich, in part at least the New World is respon-sible, has led men to make a fetish ofcentralisation. They have not seen that the es-

sence of free government is the democratizationof responsibility. They have not realised that noman can make his life a thing worthy of himselfwithout the possession of responsibility. It isuseless to respond that men are uninterested inpolitics. They are interested in anything whichnearly touches their lives, provided only thatthey have a share in its application.

They can develop that control only by prevent-ing the concentration of power. In a society sogreat as ours, some system of representation isinevitable; and it is only by dividing functionsthat we can prevent those representatives fromabsorbing the life-blood of the body-politic; ex-actly as in France decentralisation alone cancure the dangerous over-prominence of Paris. Todivide industrial power from political control isto prevent the use of the latter influence againstthe forces of change. It removes the main leverby which the worker is prevented from the at-tainment of self-expression. It makes the chiefwell-spring of progress not the chance humani-tarianism the spectacle of an under-paid employ-ment may create, but the earnest and continu-ous effort of the worker. It thereby gives to hima training in the business of government whichotherwise is painfully lacking. For, after all, theone sphere in which the worker is genuinelyarticulate is the sphere of production. To admitthe trade-union to an effective place in govern-ment, to insist that it is fundamental in the di-rection of production, is to make the workercount in the world. He may be then also a ten-der of machines; but where his trade-union ismaking decisions in which his own will is a parthe is something more than a tender of machines.His very experience on this side of governmentwill make him more valuable in his quality ascitizen. He will see the consumptive processmore realistically because its details have beenilluminated for him in trade-union activity. Thevery divisions of society will hinge upon the dif-ferent aspects of his own life. It is upon him thatthe basis of the state must then be founded.

It has been urged that no society could endurein such a synthesis. Unless, so we are told, thereis within it some unique centre of power, a con-

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flict of authorities may well prove its destruc-tion. A state cannot live unless it possess theabsolute and undivided allegiance of its mem-bers. To depict, therefore, a community in whichallegiance is co-operative seems, in such perspec-tive, to destroy its efficient life. But we have al-ready in fact discussed this question. We havealready shown that no man’s allegiance is, infact, unique. He is a point towards which a thou-sand associations converge; what, then, we askis that where conflict comes, we have assurancethat he follow the path of his instructed con-science. Once grant the individual rights againstthe state, and it follows that the state must winhis loyalty by the splendor of its effort. What,mainly, is needed is some source of guaranteeagainst perversion of the state-power. Partly, thatis needed in the relation of churches to the state;partly, also, and today, primarily, it is needed ifthe certainty of industrial progress is to be se-cured. For we have seen that the state-will tendsinevitably to become confused with that of gov-ernment. Government is in the hands, for themost part, of those who wield economic power.The dangers of authority become intensified ifthe supreme power be collected and concentratedin an institution which cannot be relied uponuniquely to fulfil its theoretic purposes. That iswhy the main safeguard against economic op-pression is to prevent the state from throwingthe balance of its weight into the side of estab-lished order. It is to prevent it from crying peacewhere in fact the true issue is war. For, impor-tant as may be the process of consumption, it isin nowise clear that the state treats equally thosewho are benefited by the process. It is by nomeans certain that the standard of life of theworker is not better safeguarded by his trade-union than by the state.

Yet of one thing we must beware. It is not diffi-cult to project a wanton idealism into our viewof the trade-unions. It is not difficult, when theyare contrasted with the policy, for example, ofthe National Manufacturers’ Association of theUnited States, to regard them as little short ofperfect. We have ceaselessly to remember thatthe retention of economic antiquarianism by thetrade-unions is at least as possible as its reten-

tions by the manufacturer. The attitude of theLancashire cotton-operatives to child labour, theattitude of the Pearl button makers to appren-ticeship,177 are instances of this kind. It is at leastpossible that we shall have more and more toevolve bills of rights in which the fundamentalnations of social justice are put beyond the reachof peradventure. The Lancashire cotton-opera-tives, indeed, might be voted down in a gild-par-liament on a question of child-labour; but it isimportant that they should be a priori preventedfrom getting into the frame of mind where theinterest of the citizen in education can be sacri-ficed to a demand for cheap labour.

From one difficulty, indeed, we may at the out-set free our minds. “A state,” writes Mr.Zimmern,178 “in which the majority of the citi-zens, or even a substantial minority, doubted towhich external authority their supreme alle-giance was due would soon cease to be a state atall.” This, surely, evades the point at issue. Astate in which a “substantial minority” of thecitizens did not feel, in a crisis, the call of alle-giance would probably be embarking upon apolicy at least open to the gravest doubt. It can-not be too emphatically insisted that the realmerit of democratic government as opposed toany other form is exactly this dependence uponconsent. The very difficulty which caused thebreakdown of the policy of international social-ism in 1914 was its failure to give to itsrecognised representatives in the belligerentcountries the authority needed to make the Ger-man state halt before its policy of aggression. Itwas precisely because the authority of the Ger-man state is paramount that those who manipu-late its destinies can without serious questionpervert it from the path of right conduct. Thesafeguard of the English state is the knowledgethat there is without its instruments a criticalopinion capable of organised expression. Nor isthere reason to fear that a state where dissentmay organise itself is less capable of unifieddefence than an autocratically-controlled r gime.For a democratic community has its heart in thebusiness that it undertakes. It fights, not withmechanical obstinacy, but the intensity of a con-viction derived from the process of free thought.

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Its victory may be delayed; but unless the oddsare overwhelmingly against it, the spirit it caninfuse into its purpose is bound, in the end, togive it victory.179

There are at least two directions in which thedanger of over-concentrating the power of thestate has received a striking emphasis in thelast few years. The necessities of war have im-mensely increased the area of state-control. So-cial needs broke down the quasi-anarchy of acompetitive industrial system, and its place hasbeen taken by two separate forms of manage-ment. On the one hand we have the continuedmanagement of industry by private enterprise,with, however, a rigid supervision exerted by thestate. The danger here is obviously immense. Theneed of the state in war-time has been increas-ing productivity and the whole orientation ofcontrol has been towards that end. So, even ifrules have been laid down, profits taxed, prior-ity of supply enforced, still the situation has inreality involved a state-guarantee of the continu-ance of the present industrial r gime. That hasmeant an immense increase of centralisation.It has changed at a stroke the whole and elabo-rate system of safeguards by which labour hadsought protection against the dehumanisingforces of capitalism.180 It does not seem doubtfulthat this change has been in a high degree ben-eficial. But it has had two grave results. On theone hand there is the problem of giving to thetrade-unions safeguards that shall, in the newsynthesis, be equal to the power of the old. Onthe other there has taken place an immense con-centration of capital not merely in industry it-self, but in finance also. Nothing will be easierin the years that lie ahead either for the ownersof capital to demand the continuance of govern-ment control, or to insist that naturalisationupon the basis of adequate compensation is alonea fair return for its services. In either case wehave a guarantee of interest made a fundamen-tal charge upon the resources of the state. Thatburden, without a time-limit, may well prove afundamental obstacle to the democratisation ofcontrol.

Nor is the alternative of complete state-man-agement more inviting. Indeed, it may withoutexaggeration be suggested that the evils such ar gime would imply are hardly less great thanthose of the present system. For to surrender togovernment officials not merely political but alsoindustrial administration is to create a bureau-cracy more powerful than the world has everseen. It is to apotheosise the potent vices of agovernment department. It is to make certain akind of paternalism which, perhaps above allother systems, would prevent the advent of thekind of individual freedom we desire. After all,we have had no light experience of the state.Municipally it certainly is no less efficient thanprivate industry; but, humanly speaking, thereis little or no evidence that its administration ismore democratic. The attitude of the LondonCounty Council to its carmen is hardly encour-aging.181 The Holt Report on the postal servicemust give pause to every observer who occupieshimself with the consideration of these prob-lems.182 The long story of grievances in theFrench civil service is a record that no believerin state-absorptiveness can contemplate withequanimity.183 The permanent official is no moreblessed with an mediate appreciation of thathunger to determine the rule of his own lifewhich is the source of democratic aspiration thanthe private employer. Nor can anyone examinehis record in the present war and feel confidentthat he has any real contribution to offer. Onthe contrary, the one complaint of which we onall hands hear is lack of confidence in him fromthose whose confidence is essential to the rightconduct of industry.184 The centralisation state-management would imply would mean thetransference of all power to a class of guardianswithin the state whose main object, even morethan today would, at all costs, be the mainte-nance of regularity of supply. There would, in-evitably, be an effort to play off group againstgroup, to purchase office by favour, to lack in-ventiveness, by which in every age a bureaucracyis distinguished. Then, as now, the trade-unionswould be compelled to fight against an estab-lished order for the opportunity of industrial self-expression; and the fight against a state is noto-riously more difficult than the fight against pri-

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vate capital. Inevitably, moreover, the publiccharacter of the state as employer lends it a fac-titious popular support against which it is diffi-cult to make headway. And, indeed, government,even less than private enterprise, is hardly pre-pared to tolerate democratisation of control.

Nor is it prepared to tolerate a democratic judg-ment. We here touch a vital element in moderngovernment. Our state is a sovereign state, andabout the acts of its agents the cloak of its su-premacy is cast. In nothing, indeed, has the fal-sity of such an outlook been more strikinglymanifest than in the doctrine of its irresponsi-bility. We place governmental acts in a differentcategory from private acts. If A harms B thecourts always lie open for remedy; but if A begovernment, it is with problems of a differentkind that we become immediately concerned.

The explanation is probably simple. To sue theking in his own courts has about it an air ofunreason; for, at least in theory, he is presentthere, and to sue him is to ask him to be judgein his own cause. When the doctrine of his legalinfallibility becomes added thereto we have allthe materials for an evasion of justice. For, tothe courts, there is no such thing as the Englishstate. There is a king, and the state can shrinkbehind the personality he will lend for its pro-tection. It does not matter that since the eigh-teenth century he has been no more than theshadow of a great name. The old form is pre-served, and it lends its content to the govern-ment by which he has been replaced. An actionfor breach of contract, indeed, can, by the dis-agreeable formality of a Petition of Right be in-stituted; but into the category of tort the con-cept of liability has not yet entered. MissBainbridge may be run over by the mail-van ofthe Postmaster-General; but the irresponsibil-ity of the state prevents an action against any-one but the humble driver of the van.185 TheLords of Admiralty may infringe a patent butthey remain inaccessible to justice.186 Sir ClaudeMacdonald may dismiss an official whom he has,as Her Majesty’s Commissioner for the NigerProtectorate engaged for a definite period ofyears before its expiration; but the ample cloak

of state authority is cast about him.187 “Themaxim that ‘the king can do no wrong’,” said astrong court,188 “applies to personal as well aspolitical wrongs, and not only to wrongs donepersonally by the sovereign (if such a thing couldbe supposed possible), but to injuries done byone subject to another by authority of the sover-eign. For from the maxim that the king can dono wrong it follows, as a necessary consequence,that the king cannot allow wrong to be done; forto authorize a wrong to be done is to do a wrong;and as the wrongful act done becomes in lawthe act of those who authorize it to be done, itfollows that the petition of right which complainsof a tortious or wrongful act done by the Crownor by servants of the Crown discloses no right toredress, for as in law no such wrong can be doneno such right can arise....” So when the Sultanof Johore puts off his sultanship and makes anoffer of marriage to Miss Mighell in the guise ofan Albert Baker, his sovereignty prevents recov-ery of damages for breach of promise.189 Thewhole thing is a positive stumbling block in thepath of administrative moralisation.

Nor is this irresponsibility confined to England.Many of the local jurisdictions of the UnitedStates expressly limit themselves from beingsued in their own courts even though, as theSupreme Court has said,190 “it is difficult to seeon what solid foundation of principle the exemp-tion from liability to suit rests.” In France it isonly painfully, and after long hesitation, that acategory of state-responsibility is beingevolved.191 We have not taken to heart the greatwords of Maitland that “it is a wholesome sightto see the ‘Crown’ sued and answering for itstorts.”192 It is true that an increasing tendencyis apparent to provide statutory remedy forwrongful acts.193 Where government dissolvesinto a dock company the cloak of sovereignty maywell suffer withdrawal.194 But the essential the-sis that a state act—which in practice means agovernmental act—gives rise to no liability re-mains untouched. It is the price we pay for re-fusing to look facts in the face. The state in thiscontext is a group of officials who may act notless harmfully than a private individual. It isdifficult to see why their acts should be excused

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where harm is caused. And that the more in anage that has witnessed the immense growth ofadministrative law.195

Upon its dangers, indeed, too much insistencecan hardly be laid. The most striking change inthe political organisation of the last half-cen-tury is the rapidity with which, by the sheerpressure of events, the state has been driven toassume a positive character. We talk less andless in the restrained terms of Benthamite indi-vidualism. The absence of governmental inter-ference has ceased to seem an ultimate ideal.There is everywhere almost anxiety for the ex-tension of governmental functions. It is probablyinevitable that such an evolution should involvea change in the judicial process. The adminis-trative departments, in the conduct of publicbusiness, find it essential to assume duties of ajudicial character. Where, for example, greatproblems like those involved in government in-surance are concerned, there is undoubtedly agreat convenience in leaving their interpreta-tion to the officials who are to administer theact. They have gained in its application an ex-pert character to which no purely judicial bodycan pretend; and their opinion has a weightwhich no community can afford to neglect. Thebusiness of the state, in fact, is so much like pri-vate business that, as Professor Dicey hasemphasised,196 its officials need “that freedomof action necessary possessed by every privateperson in the management of his own personalconcerns.” So much is at least tolerably clear.But history suggests that the relation of suchexecutive justice to the slow infiltration of abureaucratic r gime is perilously close; and thedevelopment of such administrative law needsat each step to be closely scrutinised in the in-terests of public liberty.197

The famous Arlidge case in England198 is a strik-ing example of what the seventeenth centurywould have termed Star-chamber methods. Itwas there decided by the highest English tribu-nal that when a government department as-sumes quasi-judicial functions the absence ofexpress enactment in the enabling statutemeans that the department is free to embark

upon what procedural practice may seem bestto it; nor will the courts enquire if such practiceresults, or can by its nature result, in justice. Insuch an attitude it is clear that what ProfessorDicey has taught us to understand as the ruleof law199 becomes largely obsolete. If, as in theZadig case,200 the Secretary of State for HomeAffairs may make regulations of any kind with-out any judicial tests of fairness or reasonable-ness being involved, it is clear that a fundamen-tal safeguard upon English liberties has disap-peared. Immediately administrative action canescape the review of the Courts it is clear thatthe position of a public official has become privi-leged in a sense from which the administrativelaw of France and Germany is only beginning toescape.

Nor is it likely that these issues have becomesignificant merely in relation to abnormal con-ditions. American administrative law, in thesense of a law different in content from a merelaw of public offices, goes back to the Ju Toycase,201 where a majority of the Supreme Court,perhaps somewhat doubtfully, held the courtspowerless, in view of the Chinese Exclusion Actof 1894, to review a decision of the Secretary ofCommerce and Labour. But no one would objectto action by a government department so longas assurance could be had of absolute fairnessin the methods by which a decision was reached;it was exactly the absence of that fairness whichconstituted the source of grievance and disquietin the Arlidge case. A recent decision of the Su-preme Court,202 very strongly comparable withthe issue in the English case, suggests that theSupreme Court will be careful of those safe-guards as, indeed, the due process clause obvi-ously demands it must be careful. The PublicService Commission of New York ordered a gascompany, after a hearing in which witnesseswere cross-examined, testimony introduced andthe case argued, to provide gas service for a cer-tain district. The company believed that, rela-tive to the expenditure required, a sufficientreturn would not be had. It therefore appealedon the ground that the order of the commission“was illegal and void in that it deprived the GasCompany of its property without due process of

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law and denied to it the equal protection of thelaws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendmentto the Constitution of the United States....” and,after the requisite intermediate stages, the is-sue came before the Supreme Court on thissingle ground of error. Mr. Justice Clarke up-held the action of the Public Service Commis-sion. He admitted, for the Court, that the find-ing of an expert commission is final and will notbe discussed again by the courts. Such, of course,has been the general practice of the SupremeCourt;203 and, so far, the decision in no sense dif-fers from the bearing of the opinion rendered inthe Arlidge case by the House of Lords.

But there is, at this point, a significant depar-ture. “This court,” says Clarke J.204 “will never-theless enter upon such an examination of therecord as may be necessary to determinewhether the federal constitutional right claimedhas been denied, as, in this case, whether therewas such a want of hearing, or such arbitrary orcapricious action on the part of the Commissionas to violate the due process clause of the con-stitution.” No one, it may be suggested, who stud-ies the history of the due-process clause can denythat on occasion, it has been sadly pervertedfrom its original purposes. But here at least, andin the perspective here outlined, its value mustbe obvious even to those who are suspicious ofthe rigidity of a written constitution. The Su-preme Court, as the learned judge points out,does not purpose to go into issues probably bet-ter settled by the administrative tribunal; butit does, and rightly, purpose to examine into thefundamental question of whether the meanstaken by that tribunal to attain its end were suchas were, on the plain face of things, adequate tothe securing of justice.

That, of a certainty, is a safeguard to which thecourts will more and more be driven with theexpansion of administrative law. Under the De-fence of the Realm Consideration Act, for in-stance, the Home Secretary may issue a regula-tion which prohibits publication of any book orpamphlet relating to the conduct of the war onthe terms of peace without its previous submis-sion to the censor who may prohibit such publi-

cation without the assignment of cause.205 Thatis to say that the merest and irresponsible ca-price of a junior clerk of determined naturemight be actually the occasion of suppressing avital contribution to the understanding of thewar. So ridiculous a proceeding is at least pre-vented by the system of the Supreme Court. Inthe first place, and above all, a due publicity issecured. It would have to be shown to the Su-preme Court that the methods taken to securethe decision were such as to warrant it; and inso vital a thing as freedom of speech one mayfeel tolerably certain that the methods wouldbe subject to closest scrutiny. It has been thehabit of past years to sneer rather elaboratelyat Bills of Rights.206 It may yet be suggested thatwith the great increase of state activity that isclearly foreshadowed there was never a timewhen they were so greatly needed. Here, as else-where, the human needs the satisfaction ofwhich history has demonstrated to be essentialmust be put beyond the control of any organ ofthe state; that, and no more than that, is whatwe mean today by natural rights.207 Governmen-tal power is a thing which needs at every stagethe most careful regard; and it is only by judi-cial control in terms of those rights that the pathof administration will become also the path ofjustice. The problem of responsibility can beapproached with profit from another angle. Thepurpose and the character of government as atrust leads us to regard it as in reality an insti-tution for translating purposes into the eventwithout regard to the fact that the men whooperate those purposes give to them a personal-ity of their own. The belief in the reality of cor-porate persons, indeed, only slowly makes itsway into the general body of Anglo-American law.Its progress is at every stage impeded by thegeneral refusal of the courts to recognize thecorporate character of the trust. It is nearly thir-teen years since Maitland demonstrated withall his profound scholarship, and even more thanhis wonted charm, that the trust has, above allthings, served historically as a screen to promotethe growth of institutions which, for a variety ofreasons, have found inadvisable the path of cor-porate adventure.208 Especially true of the state,this may perhaps receive its simplest illustra-

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tion in the case of charitable trusts. “A trust,”said Bacon three centuries ago,209 “is the bind-ing of the conscience of one to the purpose ofanother”—a fit enough description of the pro-cess of government. But we have failed to seehow that purpose must take account of the cat-egories of time and space. In its legal perspec-tive, the doctrine is most largely a supposed def-erence to the rights of propriety; and it has paidbut little attention to the admirable remark ofJohn Stuart Mill210 that no man ought to exer-cise the rights of property long after his death.

This tendency to regard as adequate and all-excusing the purpose enshrined in the trustwithout at the same time emphasising the lifethat trust engenders has received an interest-ing illustration in a recent American decision.211

A fireman who was engaged in extinguishing ahospital fire was injured through the defectivecondition of the hospital fire escape. He sued thehospital for damages, and relief was denied onthe ground that the doctrine of respondent su-perior does not apply to charitable institutions.The basis of the decision seems to be the opin-ion212 that the funds of a charity are not pro-vided to liquidate the damages caused in itsdefective administration; and the funds aretherefore not applicable to the redemption of thetorts committed by the agents or servants of thecharity.213 This doctrine, indeed, is not workedout with entire consistency in other parts of thelaw, since a charitable institution, like the state,is liable in an action for breach of contract. Noris it an universal doctrine, since it is not appliedby the English courts.214 It in reality involves awhole series of assumptions. It starts out fromthe belief that a charitable institution is in adifferent position from other institutions in thefact that its purpose is not one of profit. But thisis entirely to ignore the administrative aspectof the problem. To fulfil the purpose of a charityinvolves all the usual features of an ordinarycorporate enterprise. It acts by agents and ser-vants. It harms and benefits third parties ex-actly as they are harmed or benefited by otherinstitutions. Where fault is involved it is diffi-cult to see why the exception should be main-tained. It is small comfort to an injured fireman

to know that even if he has to compensate him-self for his injuries, he is maintaining the strictpurpose of the founder of the charity. To him thecase appears simply one of injury and he suf-fers not less, but, in the present state of the law,actually more, from the sheerly fortuitous factthat his accident has occurred not at a factorybut at a hospital. The thing of which the lawought to take account is surely the balance ofinterests involved; and the hospital is far morelikely to look to the condition of its ladders if itpays the penalty of its negligence than if it savesa certain percentage of its income.

It would, in fact, be an intolerable situation ifthe only protection afforded the public againstthe torts of charities were that of the pockets ofagents and servants.215 Those who founded thecharity intended it to be operated; and they, ortheir representatives must, logically enough, paythe cost of its operation from the funds providedfor that purpose. There are, indeed, some signsthat the courts are beginning to appreciate this.Relief has been granted to a claimant againstthe Salvation Army which negligently allowedone of its vans to run wild.216 The inadequateprotection of dangerous machinery has sufferedits due and necessary penalty.217 The injurywhich resulted from the employment of anunskilful nurse has not gone unrequited.218

Not, indeed, that any of these decisions reallytouch the central issue that is raised. We have,in fact, a twofold problem. We have, in the firstplace, to inquire whether the creation of a chari-table trust does not involve the creation of a cor-porate person exactly in the manner of a busi-ness enterprise; in the second place the ques-tion is raised as to whether there is any groundfor the exclusion of a charity from the ordinaryrules of vicarious liability. The answer to the firstquestion is clearly an affirmative one. The Sal-vation Army, an orphan asylum, a great hospi-tal, are just as much persons to those who havedealings with them as a private individual or arailway company. Differentiation, if it is to bemade, cannot be made on the ground of charac-ter. If it is, the courts will go as fatally wrong inthe results of litigation as did the House of Lords

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in the great Free Church of Scotland case.219 Itwas the insistence of the Lords upon the natureof the church as a pendant to a set of doctrineswhich made them fail to see that more impor-tant was the life those doctrines called into be-ing.220 The life of the Salvation Army is, in pre-cisely similar fashion, more important than thedoctrines that it teaches; and we must legallyjudge its life by what in fact it is, and not by thetheories it proclaims.

Herein is found the answer to our second in-quiry. The only reason why a charity should notbe liable for fault is its public character. But that,surely, is no adequate reason at all. It is prob-ably a simple analogy from the irresponsibilityof that greatest of modern charities the state. Itis the merest justice that if the public seeks ben-efit, if men seek to benefit the public, due careshould be taken not to harm those interests, notdirectly public, which are met in the process. Acharity’s personality will suffer no less detrimentif it is allowed to be irresponsible than a privateenterprise. A hospital, for instance, ought to beforced to take as much care in the selection ofits nurses as a banker in the choice of his cash-iers. We have found that the enforcement of li-ability is the only adequate means to this latterend, and it is difficult to see why the same is nottrue of every other sphere. French law has nothesitated to hold a county asylum liable for thearson of an escaped lunatic; and we may thencebe sure that the prefect of the department con-cerned is not a second time guilty of negli-gence.221 The whole problem is another frustra-tion of the vital need of insisting as much on theprocesses of institutions as on their purposes. Anegligently administered charity may aim atinducting us all into the kingdom of heaven, butit is socially essential to make it adequately care-ful of the means employed.222

The argument, surely, is applicable to the state;for upon a vaster theatre it is yet similar func-tions that its agents perform. For what, afterall, is here contended is the not unreasonablethesis that service in governmental functionsdoes not make men cease to be human. Publicenterprise is not less liable to error than pri-

vate; and its responsibility should on that ac-count be not the less strictly enforced. Nor dowe perhaps sufficiently realise the possible rami-fications of an exclusion of the state from dueresponsibility. It begins as a legal exclusion; but,sooner or later, that legal category will pass overinto the moral sphere. The fact of achievementwill become more important than the methodby which attainment is reached. Once an end isset up as in itself great enough to set its expo-nents beyond the reach of law the real safe-guards of liberty are overthrown. Irresponsibil-ity becomes equated with the dangerous expla-nation of public policy; and that, as is histori-cally clear, is the first step towards an accep-tance of raison d’état. The forms of protectionthe law has slowly evolved may be inadequateas the realisation of ideal morality; but they arenone the less forms of protection. They repre-sent rules of conduct which have behind themthe sanction of social experience; and in thatsense it is in a high degree dangerous to excludeany category of men from subjection to them.For the release of the state from the trammelsof law means in practice the release of its offi-cials from the obligations to which other menare usefully subject. Sooner or later that releaseoperates as an excuse for despotism. It breedsthe worst evils of bureaucracy. It makes thoseso released impatient of criticism and resentfulof inquiry. It is fatal to the real essence of demo-cratic government which involves the conversionof the mass of men to the realisation that somespecial programme is coincident with right. Itneglects, as Dr. Figgis has so well said,223 “thatcare for the gradual education of character,which is more important than any given mea-sures, is always so easy to ignore or thrust asidein the enthusiasm of a great cause, and is yet atthe basis of all true liberty, whether religious orcivil.”

For the assumption of an unique concern in gov-ernment for ideal good is as easy as it is cer-tainly fatal. Nothing is more simple in the heatand stress of political life than to assume theequation of one’s desire with what ought to bethe ultimate object of state-endeavour; yet noth-ing is at the same time more certain than that

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the equation is a false one. We need not acceptLord Acton’s dictum that great statesmen havebeen almost always bad men to admit that theconference of unlimited authority is at everypoint attended with danger. The real guaranteeof freedom is publicity; and publicity, to be ad-equate, involves subjection to the control of gen-eral rules of right and wrong. That is why theaction of the state cannot be put upon a differ-ent footing from individual action. The control-ling factors of good conduct are thereby loosed.Men who in the ordinary processes of everydaylife are gentle and tender and kindly, become intheir corporate aspect different beings. But theinference therefrom is not that we should judgethat aspect differently; rather does it involve theinference that it is our business the more sternlyto apply what standards time has painfullyevolved.

Herein, also, we may discover another reasonfor the division of power. The only way in whichmen can become accustomed to the meaning andcontent of political processes is by acquaintancewith them. Mr. Graham Wallas has noted224 thedisappearance with the advent of machinery ofthe “essentially political trades,” like tailoringand shoemaking, where production went on un-der conditions that made possible theorganisation of thought. The modern factory hasdestroyed—for good or ill—that possibility andthat distinction clearly must transfer the cen-tre of social importance outside the factory ineach man’s daily life. But that, in turn involvesmaking the groups to which he belongs politi-cally real in the only sense of the word that to-day has meaning. His groups, that is to say, mustbecome responsible groups; yet responsibilitycan only come where some social function is defi-nitely entrusted to the group for fulfilment. It isin the performance of such tasks that the per-sonality of men obtains its realisation. It is insuch tasks that their leisure can be made in afull sense rich and creative. That is not the casetoday. Everyone who has engaged in public workis sooner or later driven to admit that the greatbarrier to which he finds himself opposed is in-difference. To the comfortable classes he is li-able to seem an “agitator”; to the mass of toiling

men he commits the last sin of interference.Here, perhaps, there is a sense in whichRousseau’s paradox becomes pregnant with newmeaning and it may in the end be true that menmust be forced to be free. Certain at least it isthat the temptations to leave alone the real prob-lems by which we are confronted is almost insu-perable. We make every provision to maintainthe status quo. Nothing is more simple in thegreat society than to be lost amongst one’sneighbours; nothing is more dangerous to theattainment of the social end. For if the good lifeis one day to be achieved by the majority of menand women it is only by the preservation of in-dividuality that it can be done; and individual-ity, in any generous perspective, does not meanthe rich and intense life of a few able men.

That is why, at every stage in the social process,we are concerned to throw the business of judg-ment upon the individual mind. That does not,it ought to be insisted, mean inefficient govern-ment. It does not mean that we shall not trustthe expert; but it does mean the clear convictionthat a judgment upon the expert is to be a demo-cratic judgment. We have had too much experi-ence of the gospel of efficiency to place any reli-ance that is final upon what promise it may con-tain. The great danger to which it is ceaselesslyexposed is the eager desire of achievement anda resultant carelessness about the methods ofits programme. It sacrifices independence to themachine much in the way that party disciplineaiming, above all, at victory at the polls, sacri-fices conviction, with its possibility of discover-ies, to uniformity of outlook. It becomes at onceimpatient of the exceptional man who cannotbe reduced within its categories; but, sooner orlater, it becomes impatient also of the averageman. For it cannot respect, over any length oftime, the slowness with which his mind moves,the curiously intricate avenues along which hetravels. It may be true that in any group of menoligarchical government is bound, in the end, andin some degree, to develop;225 or, at least, we neednot deny the patent virtues of a man who canguide his fellows. But that is not to say that theleaders are shepherds whom the flock is un-thinkingly to follow. It means that safeguards

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must be erected lest the mass of men becomemere units in a sheepfold. It means the insis-tence that liberty consists above all in the fullopportunity for active citizenship wherever thereare men with the will to think upon politicalproblems. It means that a democratic societymust reject the sovereign state as by definitioninconsistent with democracy.

IX. The Direction of EventsSuch, at least, seems the direction in which themodern state is moving. We stand on the thresh-old of one of those critical periods in the historyof mankind when the most fundamental notionspresent themselves for analysis. In England, inFrance, and in America, it is already possiblevaguely to discern the character of that dissat-isfaction from which a new synthesis is ulti-mately born. The period when a sovereign statewas a necessary article of faith seems, on thewhole, to be passing away. Society is freed fromthe control of any special religious organisation;and the birth of scientific theology in the nine-teenth century seems destined to complete thatprocess of disintegration which began with theadvent of Luther. It is in social and not in reli-gious theory, that is to say, that we shall searchfor the sources of new insight. The moral dog-mas we shall adopt seem likely to remain un-connected with any special church or school ofreligious doctrine. It was primarily to preventsuch danger that the sovereign state came intobeing. With the general acceptance of Darwin-ism the success of its mission seems achieved.For the state itself, not less than the church issubject to the laws of evolution. It survives inany given form only so long as that form withadequacy summarises a general social experi-ence. It has here been urged that it is no longeradequate. The form of organisation it involvesis neither politically useful nor morally suffi-cient. The time has come for new discoveries.

No one who has observed the course of Englishpolitics since the triumph of socialised liberal-ism in 1906 can have any doubts upon this head.It was an epoch which began with immensepromise; and, at its close, it seemed likely to endin something but little short of disaster. It be-

gan with a gigantic effort to make the catego-ries of state-life more socially inclusive than atany previous period. It ended in a drift towardsbureaucratic control from which thinkers of themost diverse schools drew back in distressedscepticism. The state had already begun to over-load its instruments with business. The exigen-cies of government had so strengthened party-control as virtually to destroy the independenceof the private member; or, at least, to leave hima pitiful Friday afternoon in which to spread hiscurtailed wings. No one could doubt that thestate would long retain its positive characterwithout some system of decentralisation beingdevised. For the pressure on Whitehall had in-volved the growth of a new bureaucracy whichgave rise to a doubt whether the r gime it in-volved was compatible with individual free-dom.226 Parliamentary democracy had brokendown; sovereignty had patently suffered trans-ference from the House of Commons. With bothwomen and trade unionists alike sources of newloyalty other than the state could be detected;and in Ulster there was a striking determina-tion to deny the finality of a government deci-sion. Moral and economic dissatisfactions wereon all hands evident. It was to the foundationsof the state that men were going back. Theylooked upon their handiwork and did not pro-nounce it good. The great demand of the timewas for religious and social innovation; and thebenevolent feudalism of the Insurance Actproved, in the event, in no sense due response tothe new desires that sought expression. Labourwas declaring that the state was essentially amiddle-class institution—a difference indeedfrom the optimistic days when Macaulay couldclaim that the middle classes were “the naturalrepresentatives of the human race.” The state-regulation of Germany seemed less and lessapplicable to the sturdy individualism of theEnglish mind. The one great object of enquirywas from what sources new discoveries in gov-ernment were to be had. We had evolved thegreat society, as Mr. Wallas has pointed out,227

without planning institutions at all adequate toits scale of life.

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That some real progress lay concealed beneaththe appearance of this chaos it would be diffi-cult to deny. Yet what emerges, in a perspectivethat the events of the last four years seem nowto have made final, is essentially a bankruptcyin liberal ideas. Nor is it possible to make a claimof greater profit for Conservatism. It was doubt-less overburdened by the weight it had to carryin the support of an obsolete second chamber;but on every essential political problem it hadnothing acceptable to contribute. Lord HughCecil, indeed, had realised that laissez-faire wasnot without its merits; but its scope was limitedby him to fields too narrow and specialised incharacter to be attractive to the mass of men.The state, in fact, had come to the parting of theways; but to none of its fundamental difficultiescould it offer any comprehensive solution. Ire-land, the second chamber, education, poverty,agriculture, the position of women—about all ofthese there was a plethora of debate; but aboutall of them the policy of statesmen was to pre-vent a half-response in the hope that, despitethem, a new equilibrium would emerge. And,behind all and beyond all, there loomed the gi-gantic problem of a labouring class growing evermore self-conscious and ever more determinedto control its own destinies. It repudiated thesolution of social welfare implied in such a mea-sure as the Insurance Act. Its strikes revealed amore fierce hostility to the forces of capital thanhad been manifest since the early years of theHoly Alliance. In the famous Dublin TransportWorkers’ strike it showed a solidarity unique inlabour history. The Labour Party seemed to ithardly more instinct with hope than the tradi-tional political forces of the country. It was inworkshop and factory that the new ideas werebeing forged. They showed a striking renaissanceof that attitude which, as in Owen and Thomp-son and Hodgskin,228 believed that the diversionof labour power into political rather than intoeconomic fields was mistaken. Its influence wassecuring the reconstruction of social history.229

It was listing upon the need of new and widereducational ideals. It was demanding a completerevision of the distribution of wealth. It wasthinking out new categories in the productiveprocess. It rejected state-arbitration of its diffi-

culties with capital. It looked with grave suspi-cion on the use of the army in the maintenanceof social order. It emphatically underlined suchdifferentiation of treatment as that meted outto Sir Edward Carson, on the one hand, and tothat significant portent Mr. Larkin, on the other.It was, of course, like all renaissances, the workof a minority. But it was a minority that hadcaught the vision of a life that might be mademore splendid and more spiritual than the old.It had realised that the basis of its ideal mustbe the conquest of economic power. It was uponthat mission it had embarked.

Professor Dicey, whose interpretation is the morevaluable from his hostility to these ideas, hassuggested that the two outstanding character-istics of the time are irreverence for law and anew belief in natural rights. The reason of thissurely lies in the general truth that parliamen-tary government had reached the zenith of itsachievement. The complexity of social problemshad made them too vast for discussion by de-bate in the House of Commons to be a sufficienttest of legislation. No single legislative assem-bly in the world had stood the test of the nine-teenth century well enough to make men hope-ful. Everywhere the tendency had been more andmore towards the development of an invisiblebureaucracy, until the state itself had seemed,in the last analysis, no more than what theFrench, in an intranslatable phrase, call asyndicat des fonctionnaires—a syndicat, more-over, which, as John Stuart Mill saw,230 is largelycontrolled by men without understanding ofworking class ideals. And in this context it is ofthe first importance to realise that the move-ment for social reform was less perhaps a genu-ine effort towards the reconstruction that hadbecome essential than towards a discovery of theminimum conditions of change necessary to themaintenance of the present society.

But the fact has been that the theoretic purposeof the state did not find adequate fulfilment ei-ther in governments or legislatures. We weresimply forced to the realisation that majorityrule could not be the last word on our problems.So long as political power was divorced from

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economic power the jury of the nation was inreality packed. Wherein representative govern-ment had been supremely successful was in thesecuring of general political rights in which richand poor alike have been interested. But oncethe transference has been made from politicalrights to economic interests the basic sectional-ism of society has been apparent to anyone withthe patience to observe the facts. Wherever eco-nomic freedom is to be secured, certainly legis-lative experience does not give us the right toexpect it from that quarter. Men and womenresented a state of which the law neither ex-pressed nor fully attempted to express the needfor translating their desires into effective politi-cal terms. They resented and resisted it; that isthe real root of lawlessness. The Osborne deci-sion of the House of Lords,231 for example, de-stroyed at a stroke the confidence of labour inthat judicial tribunal. Everyone knew that thepolitical activity of the trade-unions was an in-tegral part of their functions; everyone knew alsothat manufacturers’ associations did virtuallythe same thing in virtually the same way. Yetthe House of Lords tried politically to stranglethe unions within the four corners of an outworndoctrine. The understanding of obvious trade-union implications was at every point absentfrom its enquiry. But if the highest tribunal ofthe state can so misinterpret the challenge ofits age, lawlessness and the revival of naturalrights are not difficult to understand. They are,historically, the perennial symptoms of discon-tent. They make their appearance at every tran-sitional epoch. They are the invariable heraldsof a new time.

England shows her temper only in vague hintsand chaotic practical demands; the more logicalstructure of the French mind makes possible asharper contrast between opposing attitudes.The one certain thing in the France that cameinto being with the close of the Dreyfus contro-versy was a revolt against the centralisedstate.232 That revolt was evident in at least threegeneral aspects. The contempt for politics wasin France more widely spread than in any otherEuropean country. Distrust of the chamber, sus-picion of statesmen, a doubt if the struggle was

more than the exchange of one faction for an-other, are everywhere presented to us. There isno more creative literature in the last genera-tion than that in which men like Duguit, Leroyand Paul-Boncour have depicted for us the fallof the sovereign state through parliamentaryincompetence. Nor does the trade-union move-ment emphasise any dissimilar lesson. It lacksthe sober and practical caution of English labour.It is frankly idealist and, on the whole, as franklyrevolutionary. Those who have most clearly out-lined its aims, men like Pelloutier andGriffuelhes, those who have analysed its rulesand customs like Leroy,233 point always to thecapture of economic power by the proletariat andthe emergence of a new society created in feder-alist terms. Even more striking is the revolt ofthe civil service. Here the state is attacked atthe very root of its sovereignty; and where thebureaucracy joins hands with the worker thepath lies open for a new synthesis. Proudhonhas displaced Marx as the guiding genius ofFrench labour; and it is above all his federalismthat is the source of the new inspiration.234

Even those who reject this attitude are largelysceptical of the future of the older ideals. Somehave frankly taken refuge in a royalist and aris-tocratic solution;235 some like M. Brunetière,have urged that only a religious revival can re-store France to a satisfactory condition. The coa-lition of the Left dissolved when the separationof church and state had been effected; and itcannot be said that M. Jaurés’ presence in theChamber concealed his frank sympathy with aproletarian revolution. M. Esmein stood out asthe solitary political thinker of distinction inFrance who had not renounced the ancient ways.The strikes before which the state was largelypowerless; the endless proposals fordecentralisation and proportional representa-tion; the growing tendency of the Council of Stateto deny in practice the theory of national sover-eignty promulgated by the Revolution; the at-tempt of sociologists like Durkheim to penetratethrough the artificial classification of rights bythe state to rights derived from a solidaritybased on group-needs and group-services;236 allthese, surely, herald, as in England, the transi-

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tion to a new equilibrium. France, like England,has had her period of lawlessness and a revivalof natural rights. But she has wisely rejectedthe over-simple formulae of Rousseau as an at-tempted analysis of social relationships. Rather,as in 1789, she is setting Europe the example ofa new perspective in political organisation. Thediscipline of technical co-ordination, with theliberty it implies, is replacing the authoritarianhierarchy of the Napoleonic state.237 Nor is thisthe idle hypothesis of theorists. On the contraryit represents the sober analysis of everyday lifedrawn from men preoccupied with the practiceof law and industry. That is the real basis of itspromise and importance.

Generalisations about America are notoriouslydangerous; for it is tempting to deny that, in theEuropean sense, there is yet any such thing inAmerica as the state. Rather is the observer con-fronted by a series of systems of economic inter-ests so varied in character and, at times, so baf-fling, as to make inquiry almost impossible.238

It is only within the last generation that Americahas emerged from the uncritical individualismof a pioneer civilisation. It is little more than adecade since she began directly to influence thecourse of world-politics. Yet even in a civilisationso new and rich in promise it is difficult not tofeel that a critical era is approaching. The oldparty-divisions have become largely meaning-less. The attempt to project a new political syn-thesis athwart the old formulae failed to com-mand support enough to be successful. Yet, evenin America, that point of economic organisationhas been reached where the emergence of a pro-letariat presents the basic social problems. Apolitical democracy confronts the most power-ful economic autocracy the world has ever seen.The separation of powers has broken down. Therelation between executive and legislature criesto heaven for readjustment. The decline of Con-gress has become a commonplace. The Constitu-ent states of the republic have largely lost theirancient meaning. New administrative areas arebeing evolved. A patent unrest everywhere de-mands enquiry. Labour is becoming organisedand demanding recognition. The men who, likeMark Hanna and Mr. Root, could stand on a plat-

form of simple conservatism are already obso-lete. The political literature of America in thelast fifteen years is almost entirely a literatureof protest. Political experimentation, particularlyin the West, is almost feverishly pursued. Dis-content with old ideas was never more bitter.The economic background of the decisions of theSupreme Court was never more critically exam-ined; and, indeed, anyone who analyses thechange from the narrow individualism of Brewerand Peckham to the liberalising scepticism ofMr. Justice Holmes and the passionate rejectionof the present order which underlies the atti-tude of Mr. Justice Brandeis, can hardly doubtthe advent of a new time.

What, in a sense, is being born is a realisation ofthe state; but it is a realisation that is funda-mentally different from anything that Europehas thus far known. For it starts out from anunqualified acceptance of political democracyand the basic European struggle of the last hun-dred years is thus omitted. So that it is bound tomake a difference to the United States that itscritical epoch should have arrived when Europealso confronts a new development. Americaneconomic history will doubtless repeat on avaster scale the labour tragedies of the old worldand think out new expedients for their intensi-fication. But there are certain elements in theAmerican problem which at once complicate andsimplify the issue. Granted its corrupt politics,the withdrawal of much of its ability from gov-ernmental life, its exuberant optimism, and atraditional faith in the efficacy of its orthodoxpolitical mechanisms that may well prove disas-trous, there are yet two aspects in which thebasis of its life provides opportunities instinctwith profound and hopeful significance. It cannever be forgotten that America was born inrevolution. In the midst of its gravest material-ism that origin has preserved an idealist faith.It has made the thought of equality of opportu-nity and the belief in natural rights conceptionsthat in all their vagueness are yet living enti-ties no man may dare to neglect. When the dis-satisfaction with economic organisation be-comes, as it is rapidly becoming, acute enoughto take political form, it is upon these elements

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that it will fasten. Americans, in the last analy-sis, believe in democratic government with afierce intensity that cannot be denied. They mayoften deceive themselves about its forms. Theymay often, and very obviously, suffer an almostludicrous perversion of its expression. The ef-fort of their workers may be baffled by the count-less nationalities which have yet to complete theprocess of Americanisation. Their trade-unionsmay be as yet for the most part in a commercialstage. Yet, from the confused chaos of it all, oneclear thread may be seized.

It is towards a new orientation of ideals thatAmerica is moving. Exactly as in England andFrance challenge has been issued to theories oforganisation that have outlived their usefulness.That was the real meaning of the ProgressiveMovement. It symbolised a dissatisfaction withthe attitude that interpreted happiness in termsof the volume of trade. The things upon whichinterest become concentrated are the fundamen-tal elements. It is the perversion of politicalpower to economic ends that above all receivesanalysis. The economists demand a re-valuationof motives.239 “Why should the masses,” asks anable recent inquirer,240 “seemingly endowed withthe power to determine the future, have permit-ted the development of a system which hasstripped them of ownership, initiative andpower?” and his answer is virtually a sober in-dictment of capitalism. “The fundamental divi-sion of powers in the United States,” says Presi-dent Hadley,241 “is between voters on the onehand and the owners of property on the other.The forces of democracy on the one side.... areset over against the forces of property on theother side.... Democracy was complete as far asit went, but constitutionally it was bound to stopshort at social democracy.” It is against this con-dition that the liberal forces of American life areslowly aligning themselves. A law that is sub-servient to the interests of the status quo is over-whelmingly unpopular; the use the injunctionin labour disputes, for example, has been a presi-dential issue.242 The Clayton Act, defects, is yeta wedge that organised labour can one to goodpurpose.243 Things like Mr. Justice Holmes’ inCoppage v. Kansas244 deposit a solid sentiment

of determination that will not easily pass away.The lawlessness that is complained of in Ameri-can labour is essentially the insistance that thelife of the workers has outgrown the categoriesin which traditional authority would have con-fined it. The basis of a new claim of rights is inAmerica autocthonous. Nor is it possible to doubtthat only concessions large enough to amountto the admission of its substance can prevent itfrom being made. In either case, we have thematerials for a vast change in the historic out-lines of American federalism.

It is thus upon the fact that ours is an age ofvital transition that the evidence seems clearlyto concentrate. The two characteristic notes ofchange are present in the dissatisfaction withthe working of law, on the one hand, and thereassertion of natural rights upon the other. Thevalidity of the acts of the legal sovereign every-where suffers denial unless its judgement se-cures a widespread approval; or, as with theSouth Wales Mines in England and the RailroadBrotherhoods in the United States, an organisedattempt may successfully be made to coerce theaction of government in a particular direction.Violence, as with the militant suffragists in En-gland may well come to be regarded as a nor-mal weapon of political controversy; nor havethose who suffered imprisonment for their actsregarded the penalty as other than a privilege.In such an aspect, the sovereignty of the state,in the only sense in which that sovereignty canbe regarded as a working hypothesis, no longercommands anything more than a partial andspasmodic acceptance. For it is clearly under-stood that it in practice means governmentalsovereignty; and the need for the limitation ofgovernmental powers is perceived by men ofevery shade of opinion. Nor is the reassertion ofrights less significant. It involves in its very con-ception a limitation upon the sovereignty of thestate. It insists that there are certain things thestate must secure and maintain for all its mem-bers, and a state that can not secure such rightsas are deemed needful by a minority as impor-tant, for example, as organised labour, willsooner or later suffer a change in form and sub-stance. The basis of law in opinion is more clear

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than at any previous time; and the way in whichthat opinion is fostered outside the categoriesof the normal political life until its weight isgreat enough to make heedless resistance im-possible is a fact of which every observer musttake account.

X. ConclusionIt is difficult to see how such potentialities atany point harmonise with the traditional theoryof the state. The lawyer may still manipulatethat theory for the purposes of judicial enquiry;but, beyond that narrow usefulness, its dayseems to have departed. We have been taughtthat the state is sovereign; yet it is in practiceobvious that its will is operated only by a por-tion of its members and that to this portion thepossession of sovereignty is denied. It is urgedthat the state aims at the good life; and, againin practice, it is clear that the realisation of itspurpose is so inadequate as to render at bestdubious the value of such hypotheses. It is in-sisted that the state can be bound only by itsown consent; yet, in practice also, and unless wewish merely to play upon words, it is clear thatthroughout its recent history groups other thanitself have compelled its adoption of a policy towhich it was opposed. The books tell us that it isirresponsible; yet, in practice also, what mainlyconfronts us, especially in France, is the growthof a state-responsibility which, however reluc-tantly conceded, is still responsibility. We are toldthat sovereignty is indivisible; yet, unless againwe wish merely to play upon words, the fact ofits broad partition is on every hand obvious. Noris the notion of the state as fundamentally rep-resentative of society in any sort more accept-able. It is true where it fufills the broad objectsof a social life that is now conceived in ethicalterms; but, more and more, men are coming todoubt whether the result of the state process is,invariably or even normally, the achievement ofwhat such an ethical perspective must demand.It is rather towards another attitude that menare turning. It is rather of other categories theyare beginning to make use. For the orthodoxtheory of the state has proved largely withoutbasis in the event. It may be true as a dream;and it is doubtless undeniable that dreams are

often enough capable of realisation. But it is forthose who cherish the dream to give proof of itsrelation to the facts.

The basis upon which we proceed is the simpletruth that men and institutions are possessedof power. It is clearly perceived that, in itself,power is neither good nor bad; its use alone af-fords material for judgment upon its ethical con-tent. It is held that its concentration at any spe-cial point within society increases the possibil-ity of its perversion to dubious purpose. Thathas involved the increasing insistence that ourgeneral notions of right and wrong be put be-yond the reach of danger. The state, in a word, isto be subject to law; and that is no more impos-sible in a political democracy than when, forstate, Bracton could use the name of King. Theinterdependence of political and economic struc-ture is, moreover, not less potent than in the past;and it is thus sheer anachronism to regard asadequate an industrial order in which power isnot in democratic fashion distributed.

The individual, that is to say, is to become in-creasingly the centre of social importance. Oth-erwise, in so vast a world, his claims may wellsuffer neglect. After all it was for his happinessthat the state, at least in philosophic interpre-tation, existed from its origins; for if the goodlife does not bring happiness to humble men andwomen it is without meaning. So that it is uponthe happiness he is able to attain that our judg-ment of its processes must be founded. It is inthis context obvious that such judgment couldnot in our time be an optimistic one. The merelymaterial conditions of happiness are todayachieved for too few of us to give any right tosatisfaction. Freedom, in the sense that it hasbeen here maintained, is alone real, is a goodattained only by a small part of society. Nor havewe evidence that such limitation is inherent inthe nature of things. On the contrary, the evi-dence we possess points so emphatically in theopposite direction as to justify the assumptionof its inadequacy. Yet, without that general free-dom, the state is a meaningless thing. The prob-lem of authority becomes, above all, the duty soto organise its character and its processes as to

53


make it, in the widest aspect, the servant of rightand of freedom. But to make it the servant offreedom is already to limit its powers.

The emphasis upon freedom is made because itis believed that only in such fashion can the ethi-cal significance of personality obtain its due rec-ognition. For the harmony we need between rul-ers and subjects it is not upon outward law butinward spirit that reliance must be placed. Thesocial order of the present time tends more andmore to destroy the personal will of each mem-ber of the state by asking from him a passiveacquiescence in its policy on the ground of gen-erous purpose. It is here argued that such uni-formity is the negation of freedom. It is neitheractive nor vital. It in reality denies perhaps theability and certainly the justice of the mind thattries to fathom the motives of government. It isthus the death of spontaneity; and to destroyspontaneity is to prevent the advent of liberal-ism. We have thus to deny that right and wrongare state-created dogmas which shift with theinterest of those who control the state. We donot, like Lord Acton, postulate an unchangingcontent of goodness; for the very essence of thistheory is the acceptance of the fact of evolution.But it is denied that right is what is subjectivelyso deemed by government. A certain objectivity,to be established by argument and experience,is made inherent in it. The one thing in whichwe can have confidence as a means of progressis the logic of reason. We thus insist, on the con-trary, that the mind of each man, in all the as-pects conferred upon him by his character as asocial and a solitary being, pass judgment uponthe state; and we ask for his condemnation ofits policy where he feels it in conflict with theright.

That, surely, is the only environment in whichthe plant of liberty can flourish. It implies, fromthe very nature of thing, insistence that the al-legiance of man to the state is secondary to hisallegiance to what he may conceive his duty tosociety as a whole. It is, as a secondary allegiance,competing in the sense that the need for safe-guards demands the erection of alternative loy-alties which may, in any given synthesis, oppose

their wills to that of the state. In the ordinaryacceptance of the term, such an attitude deniesthe validity of any sovereign power save that ofright; and it urges that the discovery of right is,on all fundamental questions, a search, uponwhich the separate members of the state mustindividually engage. We ask, in fact, from eachthe best thought he can offer to the interpreta-tion of life. For we have proceeded far enough inits understanding to realise its complexity. Weknow that no solution can be permanent or ad-equate that is not in each detail based upon thewidest possible experience. But we know alsothat such experience must be free and capableof influence if it is to receive its due respect. Theslavery of inertia is a weed that grows every-where in wanton luxuriance; and we are, aboveall, concerned to make provision against its in-trusion.

In the external relationships of the state it isclear that the Machiavellian epoch is drawingto a close. The application of ethical standardsto the foreign policy of nations is a demand thathas secured the acceptance of all who are con-cerned for the future of civilisation. Yet it is as-suredly not less clear that the internal life ofthe state requires a similar moralisation. Werealise now the danger of a state that makespower the supreme good and is careless of thepurpose for which it is exerted. We have sacri-ficed the youth of half the world to maintain ourliberty against its encroachments. Surely thefreedom we win must remain unmeaning un-less it is made consistently effective in everysphere of social life. This generation, at least,can never forget the ghostly legions by which itis encompassed. It ought also ceaselessly to re-member that it is by those legions its effort willbe judged. They will measure our achievementin terms of their supreme devotion. They willaccept no recompense save the conquest of theirdreams.

Notes1. G. Wallas, The Great Society, p. 3 f.2. A book that would do on the grand scale what Mr.

Edward Jenks so brilliantly attempted in his “ShortHistory of Politics” is badly needed; but it would

54

Harold Laski

need the learning of Lord Acton combined with thelarge vision of Mr. Graham Wallas to write it.

3. Cf. T. H. Green, “Collected Works,” Vol. II, pp. 550–1.

4. “Politics,” 11, 5. 1264 b.5. Cf. the admirable remarks of Mr. Barker in his “Po-

litical Thought of Plato and Aristotle,” p. 113. Ithink his argument is even more strongly rein-forced when the attempt of the Meno to specialisearete into a purely functional quality is remem-bered.

6. Cf. “Philosophy of Right” (trans. Dyde), p. 278. Thevery brilliant paper of Mr. Bosanquet printed inthe International Crisis, p. 132 f., hardly speaks adifferent language. Cf. also the amazing citationfrom Sir Henry Jones in J. A. Hobson, “Democracyafter the War,” p. 118.

7. As Dr. Figgis has very brilliantly shown, “Churchesin the Modern State,” Appendix B.

8. Or perhaps rediscovered. The political theory ofthe early fathers never, of course, rented from thesacredness of secular power. It is only in the ex-citement of the investure controversy that its in-direct derivation began to be seriously urged.

9. 25 H. VIII, c. 19.10. As the Jesuits argued. Cf. Figgis, “From Gerson to

Grotius” (2d ed.), p. 203 f.11. Cf. Prof. McIlwain’s brilliant introduction to his

edition of the “Political Works of James I” (HarvardUniversity Press, 1918).

12. Strype, “Life of Whitgift,” II, 22 ff.13. Cf. my “Problem of Sovereignty,” p. 2.14. This is what Mr. Seaton, in his admirable book,

calls the second stage of religious persecution. “Tol-eration under the Later Stuarts,” p. 6 f.

15. Second treatise, Ch. XI, Sec. 14 f.16. “Contrat Social,” Bk. III, Ch. XV.17. Comm. I, 48.18. I think this would express, somewhat differently,

the point made by Professor Dicey in the famousfirst chapter of his “Law of the Constitution.”

19. Cf. the suggestive brochure of Hauriou, “DuSouverainet Nationale.”

20. The reader can get a clear idea of this article bycomparing the speeches of M. Barthou, March 19,1909; of M. Ribot, May 14, 1907. of M. Deschonel,May 2d, 1907; and of M. Clémenceau, March 13,1908—all in the Chamber of Deputies. I have dis-cussed them below in the chapter on administra-tive syndicalism.

21. Cf. the interesting remarks of Boutmy, “Studiesin Constitutional Law” (trans. Dicey), p. 159 f.

22. As in the Civil War.23. “Moral and Political Philosophy,” Bk. VI, Ch. VI.

24. Mr. Cole, indeed, actually defines the state in termsof government only (“Self-Government in Indus-try,” p. 70 f.), but though this is a result largelytrue it seems to me, for reasons explained below,the second and not the first state of the process.

25. Cf. Hansard, 4th Series, Vol. 115, Sep. 2d, 1902, p.1014. Mr. Perks, “The question whether a Noncon-formist will be justified or not in resisting the rateis a matter for each individual conscience, andhaving settled that question for himself, we willnot be likely to be influenced in the slightest de-gree by the fact that he may lose his right as acitizen.”

26. Cf. my “Problem of Sovereignty,” Chs. II–V forsome instances.

27. Cf. Duguit, “L’Etat: Le Droit Objectif,” pp. 242-54.28. “Essays: of the First Principles of Government”

(World’s Classics ed., p. 29).29. “Contrat Social,” Bk. III, Ch. 1.30. Ibid., Bk. III, Ch. X.31. Cf. Ibid., Bk. III, Chs. XVI and XVIII.32. Cf. the admirable appendix in Professor MacIver’s

recent volume, “Community,” p. 413 f.33. “Public Opinion and Popular Government,” Part

One.34. “Contrat Social,” Bk. III, Ch. XVIII.35. On the comparative value of large and small states

of the remarks of Freeman. “Hist. of Federal Gov-ernment in Greeee and Italy” (ed. of 1893), p. 39ff.

36. “El ments du Droit Constitutionnel” (ed. of 1906),p. 22, and cf. Jellinek, “System der Oeffentlichensubjektiven Rechte,” p. 28.

37. But see an important warning as to its influeneein G. Wallas, “The Great Society,” Ch. VIII.

38. Cf. the admirable chapter of Dr. MacDougall, “So-cial Psychology, “ Ch. VII, esp. p. 194 f.

39. H. Maine, “Popular Government,” p. 63.40. “Life,” by Sir G. Trevelyan (Nelson’s ed.), II. 293.41. Cf. Mr. Wallas’ remarks, “The Great Society,” Ch.

V.42. Cf. Sir F. Pollock’s interesting essay on the Theory

of Persecution, “Essays in Jurisprudence and Eth-ics,” esp. p. 175.

43. This, I think, would equally apply to the school ofM. Leon Bourgeois which explains the state asfounded upon quasi-contract. Every lawyer knowswhat quasi-contract is, but in the realm of politiesit only serves to give a specious exactness to inex-act notions.

44. See his fine essay on the Conception of Society asan Organism in his “Studies in Hegelian Cosmol-ogy.”

45. For a refusal to obey the Defence of the RealmAct on this ground see an interesting note upon

55


the action of the executive council of the Quakersin the London Nation for December 8, 1917, andsee the report of the trial in New York Evening Post,June 24, 1918.

46. Hammond, “The Town Labourer,” p. 229. I knowno more vivid illustration of the way in which thestate-purpose changes than this brilliant book.

47. “Collected Works,” Vol. V, p. 120. The quotation isfrom his “English Constitution.”

48. Quoted in J. A. Hobson, “Democracy after the War,”p. 67.

49. Even in a gloomy period of English history FrancisPlace could in his “Improvement of the WorkingPeople” record the great change for good that hehad observed in his own lifetime.

50. “History of Political Eeonomy,” p. 298.51. I mean in the simple sense that would transfer

all industrial activities to government.52. “Works” (ed. cf. 1747), p.39, cf. Bonar’s remarks,

“Philosophy of Political Economy,” p. 90.53. Cf. Mr. Graham Wallas’ superb analysis, “Human

Nature in Polities,” passim.54. Cf. my “Problem of Sovereignty,” p. 89.55. Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45, 75–6. The whole

opinion throws a flood of light upon this question.56. Cf. A. Birrell, “Law of Employers’ Liability,” p. 20.57. Cf. Webb, “History of Trade Unionism,” Introd. to

the 1911 edition, esp. p. XXV.58. “Lectures on the French Revolution,” p. 41.59. Cf. my “Problem of Sovereignty,” p. 123 f.60. The Federalist, No. 10.61. Cf. for instance, the second “Letter upon a Regi-

cide Peace.” “Works” (World’s Classics ed.), Vol. VI,esp. p. 192 f.

62. The best defense of this theory is in Jellinek,“Recht des mod. Staates,” p. 421 f.

63. Pollock, “History of the Science of Politics,” p. 52.I ought to add that Sir F. Pollock is here stating aview in which he does not himself share.

64. 44 American Law Review, p. 12.65. T. H. Green, “Collected Works,” II, 419.66. “Labour and the New Social Order, Report on

Reconstruction by the Subcommittee of the Brit-ish Labour Party” (Reprinted in The New Repub-lic, Vol. XIV, No. 172, Part II, p. 4).

67. “Works,” II, 417f, cf. Barker, “Political Thought fromSpencer,” p. 60.

68. Cf. my “Problem of Sovereignty,” Ch. V.69. This amends somewhat the argument of my first

book (Ch. I, p. 11). I there argued that we have noright to identity the citizen with the state; but Inow think it is better to emphasise the possibilityof distinction and to argue for the identity of moralresponsibility where there is passive acquiescence.

Liebknecht, in such a view, does not share in theresponsibility of the German state for the destruc-tion of Belgium.

70. I say “attempt”; for it is conceivable that the mem-bers of a state might desire and aim at, repudia-tion, but fail because the government was too pow-erful to be immediately resisted with success.

71. Cf. Webb, “Industrial Democracy” (ed. of 1911),pp. 766-84 and the Report of the Subcommittee ofthe British Labour Party cited above.

72. Cf. Veitch, “The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform,”Chs. IX–XIV an invaluable book.

73. Cf. Bryce, “Am. Commonwealth,” II, 406–448.74. Ibid. II, 163.75. L. D. Brandeis, “Other People’s Money.” Mr. Jus-

tice Brandeis was not, of course, a member of theSupreme Court when this was written.

76. Brailsford,” The War of Steel and Gold,” p. 38.77. Ibid., p. 52.78. As in the Glen-Grey Act for example, Cf. Hobson,

“Imperialism” (ed. of 1905), p. 236.79. Cf. chapter V. below.80. “Law and Public Opinion” (2d edition), p. 88.81. See his amusing “Recollections,” Vol. 1, pp. 96 f,

106.82. “The Statesman,” p. 155.83. Cf. his character of Mr. Mothercountry in his “Re-

sponsible Government in the Colonies.”84. “Latter Day Pamphlets” (ed. of 1885), p. 47.85. “Civil Service Papers,” 1854–5, p. 272. He is speak-

ing of the House of Commons.86. “Second Report of Commission on Civil Service.”

Parl. Papers, 1875, Vol. XXIII, p. 100.87. “Reflections on the French Revolution.” “Works”

(World’s Classics, ed.), Vol. IV, p. 66.88. Cf. Mr. Wallas’ comment, “The Great Society,” p.

332.89. Trevelyan, “Life of Bright,” p. 283.90. “Reflection on the French Revolution.” “Works”

(World’s Classics ed.). Vol. IV., p. 55.91. Morley, “Life of Gladstone,” III, 352.92. “Law and Public Opinion” (2d ed.), p. LXXX.93. Cf. J ze, etc., “Problemes de Politique et Fiances

de Guerre,” p. 27.94. Cf. Gwynne and Tuckwell, “Life of Sir C. Dilke,” I,

177.95. See his dissent in Coppage v Kansas, 236 U. S., I,

26–7. The best defence I know of the idea of libertyas absence of restraint is in Seeley’s “Introductionto Political Science,” 101 f.

96. Cf. Prof. Dicey’s comment. “Law and Public Opin-ion,” p. XXVIII.

97. “Works,” III, 371.98. In the “Prolegomena to Ethics.”

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Harold Laski

99. “History of Freedom,” p. 3.100. The bibliography of the subject is enormous. Its

most fruitful treatment seems to me the two vol-umes of Léon Michoud, “Theorie de la PersonnalitéMorale,” with which I am largely in agreement. Ihave tried to indicate the nature of the problem inan article in the Harvard Law Review for Febru-ary, 1916.

101. I should like to refer to Prof. G. Murray’s reallynoble introduction to Mrs. Hobhouse’s “I appeal toCaesar,” with which I am in glad agreement.

102. Cf. Mr Chesterton’s “Poems” (1914) for the com-ment on this remark.

103. “Wealth of Nations” (Everyman’s ed.), II, 269.104. “The Great Society,” p. 302.105. “Report of the Sub-Committee of the British

Labour party,” last paragraph.106. Cf. “The Report of the President’s Mediation

Committee to the President of the United States”(1918), p. 21.

107. This will be attempted in a later work on theprinciples of politics

108. Cf. Duguit, “L’Etat Le Droit Objectif,” Ch. II.109. “Theory of Moral Sentiments” (ed. of 1759), p.

549. A theory of natural law independent of changeis defended by one of the most brilliant of theyounger school of philosophical jurists, ProfessorM. R. Cohen, in an article, “Jus NaturaleRedivivum,” in the Philosophical Review Vol. XXV,p. 761.

110. Cf. Mr. Justice Holmes in Lochner v. New York,198 U. S. 45, 76.

111. Cf. my paper on the “Basis of Vicarious Liabil-ity” in 26 Yale Law Journal 105 and Cf. Pound, 25International Journal of Ethics, p. 1.

112. For the way in which the Fourteenth Amend-ment has been misinterpreted, for example Cf.Collins, “The Fourteenth Amendment and theStates.”

113. For the remains of its influence in Oxford cf.Dicey, “Law and Public Opinion,” 479–83.

114. Rex v. Halliday (1917). A. C. 261, 294. Cf. my com-ment in 31 Harvard Law Review, 296.

115. “Theory of Legislation” (translated by C. M.Atkinson), Vol. I, p. 92.

116. On this cf. the great essay of Saleilles, “Ecolehistorique et droit naturel” in Revue Trimestriellede droit civil 1902, I, 80–112. Charmont “La Re-naissance du Droit Naturel.”

117. “The End of Law,” 30 Harvard Law Review, p.221. I owe my whole understanding of the back-ground of this problem to the really noble edificeDean Pound has erected in these papers.

118. See above all his “Lehre von dem richtigen

Rechte” and his “Wirthschafts und Recht” (2nd ed.).119. “Lehre von dem richtigen Rechte.” pp. 13ff.120. Ibid pp. 208–9.121. “Law of the Constitution,” Chap. XII.122. Libres Entretiens 4me series, p. 368. I have tried

to deal with this question in some detail below.123. For an interesting suggestion that the state has

the right to insist upon fair dealing in the internallife of other societies cf. Professor Sabine’s reviewof my book in the Philosophical Review for Janu-ary, 1918.

124. Particularly in Prof. Bosanquet’s very brilliantvolume on the “Philosophical Theory of the State.”I may perhaps be allowed to say that criticism doesnot preclude the recognition that this book is, withthe single exception of Green’s “Principles of Po-litical Obligation,” the greatest contribution madeby an Englishman to political philosophy since Mill.

125. “Works” II, 426 f.126. Ibid. 434.127. I have, of course, to deal with this problem in a

later volume on the theory of politics.128. “Politics,” IV, 14, 1297b.129. “De la Republique,” I. X.130. “Second treatise,” Secs. 143–6.131. “Esprit des Lois,” Bk XI, Chap. 6.132. Cf. Duguit, “La Séparation des Pouvoirs” and

Esmein’s classic discussion. “Eléments du DroitConstitutionnel” (3rd ed.). pp. 358 f. The most gen-eral treatment is that of Saint-Girans, “Essai surla séparation des pouvoirs” (1884).

133. The Federalist, No. 46.134. Kilbourne v. Thompson, 103 U. S., 188.135. Cf. Esmein’s analysis, Revue de Droit Public,

1899, p. 8 f.136. Harlow. “Legislative Methods in the Period be-

fore 1825,” p. 25 f.137. Cf. Prof. Dicey’s “Comment,” 31 Law Quarterly

Review, p. 150.138. “Fourth Report of the Royal Commission on the

Civil Service,” 1914, Cd, 7338, p. 28.139. “Law and Public Opinion” (2d ed.), pp. 483 f.140. See the very interesting debate in Hansard, Fifth

Series, Vol. 92, p. 1363 f.141. Cf. Dicey, “Law and Public Opinion” (2d ed.), pp.

XXXIX–XLIV, 142 Cf. my note in The New Repub-lic on the “Future of the Presidency” in the issueof September 29, 1917.

143. “Politics,” III, 1, 1275 a.144. Cf. Pound, “Address to the New Hampshire Bar

Association,” June 30, 1917.145. Cf. Duguit, “Les Transformation du Droit Pub-

lic,” Ch. VII. In this respect at least ProfessorDicey’s strictures upon administrative law seem

57


to me unanswerable.146. “Introduction to Political Science,” p. 95. The

whole lecture is most instructive.147. Cf. his two curious volumes, the “Colonial Policy

of Lord John Russell’s administration” (London,1853).

148. As Prof. Dicey argues, “Law of the Constitution”(8th ed.), p. LXXVI.

149. Cf. my “Problem of Sovereignty,” Appendix B.150. Cf. F. J. Turner, American Historical Review, Vol.

XVI, p. 217.151. Cf. Beard, “American Government and Politics,”

p. 269 f. 152 Report (“Bulletin 237 of the U. S. Bu-reau of Labour”), p. 49. Cf. p. 77, 110, 118, 185, 214.

153. Report of the President’s Commission, p. 4.154. Ibid., p. 10.155. Cf. the remarks of Mr. Cole, “World of Labour,”

Ch. IX.156. Cf. Chapter V below.157. Hauriou, “Principes de Droit Public” (1916), pp.

745 f.158. Cf. Hauriou, “Pr cis de Droit Administratif,” p.

342 f (ed. Cf. 1914), and Michoud, “Théorie de laPersonnalite Morale,” Vol. II, Ch. VII, esp. Secs.247–54.

158a. Cf. the interesting essay of Lachapelle,“L’Oeuvre de Demain” (1917).

159. By Mr. A. E. Zimmern in The New Republic, Sep-tember 15, 1917. Cf. Mr. Croly’s article in the sameissue, and the editorial comment on Mr. Zimmern’sletter. Mr. Zimmern’s rejoinder is to be found in anarticle on “Freedom and Unity” in the Round Tablefor December, 1917.

160. Cole, “Self-Government in Industry,” p. 77. Withmuch of Mr. Cole’s chapter on the state I shouldfind myself in admiring agreement, though withcertain changes of fundamental emphasis.

160a. This is avowedly the motive underlying theCanadian Industrial Disputes investigation Act.

161. Richard of Devizes’ “Chronicle 416.” Cf. Stubbs’“Const. Hist.” (6th ed.), I, 455.

162. On the early history of the English corporationcf. my paper in the Harvard Law Review, Vol. XXX,p. 561.

163. Com. I, 472.164. Introduction to his translation of Gierke’s Po-

litical Theories of the Middle Age, p. XLIII. On someof the difficulties that the “Concession” theory mustencounter cf. my paper on the “Personality of As-sociations,” in the Harvard Law Review, Vol. XXX,p. 404.

165. Or, as in France, the non-Catholics my have toaim to prevent the state from becoming a branchof the Roman Catholic Church.

166. Cf. the very interesting opinions in St. Vincent’sParish v. Murphy, 83 Nebraska 630, and Parish ofthe Immaculato Conception v. Murphy, 89 Ne-braska, 524.

167. Cf. my “Problem of Sovereignty,” p. 39.168. Cf. Cole, “World of Labour,” Chs. VII and VIII.

What is said here of over-lapping is even more trueof the United States than of England.

169. On the general problem cf. Webb, “The Restora-tion of Trade Union Conditions” (1917).

170. I am not here, of course, concerned to point outthe steps by which this control is to be achieved;but I have indicated in the next section some ofthe more obvious directions along which it is mov-ing.

171. A reprint of his “Political Justice” is an urgentneed.

172. “The Great Society,” p. 328. See the whole pas-sage from p. 324 onwards.

173. “Le Droit Social, le Droit Individuel,” p. 157.174. On the whole of this Cf. Cole, “Self-Government

in Industry,” Ch. III, and Paul-Boncour, “LeFédéralisme Economique,” pp. 372-423.

175. Taylor, “Principles of Scientific Management,” p.59. Mr. Hoxie has noted this authoritarian tendencythroughout the “efficiency” school. “Scientific Man-agement and Labour” passim.

176. “The Great Society,” pp. 345, 363 ff. A very thor-ough collection of data upon this subject would beinvaluable.

177. Cf. Webb, “Industrial Democracy,” Ch. X.178. Letter to The New Republic, September 15, 1917.179. As is forcibly pointed out by my critic in the Lon-

don Times of May 17, 1917.180. Cf. Webb, “The Restoration of Trade Union Con-

ditions,” passim.181. Cf. Cole, “Labour in Wartime,” p. 160 ff.182. So far as France is concerned cf. Beaubois, “La

Crise Postale et les Monopoles L’Etat,” and the notoon the American post-office in The New Republic,Vol. XIII, p. 167.

183. Cf. Chap. V below.184. Cf. the Reports of Mr. Lloyd-George’s “Commis-

sions on Industrial Unrest” (American Bureau ofLabour edition), pp. 77-8, 88–9,110–12, 25, 119, 162,217.

185. Bainbridge v. Postmaster-General (1906), I, K.B. 178.

186. Feather v. Regina, 6 B & S, 257.187. Dunn v. the Queen (1896), I, Q. B. C. A., 116.188. Feather v. Regina, 6, B. & S., 257.189. Mighell v. Sultan of Johore (1894), I, Q. B., 149.190. U. S. v. Lee, 106 U. S., 196, 206.191. Cf. Duguit, “Transformations du Droit Public,”

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Harold Laski

Ch. VII.192. “Collected Papers,” III, 263.193. Cf. Mr. Maguire’s very able paper in Harvard

Law Review, Vol. 30, pp. 20 ff., and see especiallyCanadian Revised Statutes (1906), C. 140, Sec. 20,for an interesting example of legal remedy for in-jury by negligence on public works.

194. Mersey Docks v. Gibbs, 11, H. C. L. C., 686.195. Cf. E. Barker in the Political Quarterly for May,

1914, esp. pp. 125 f.196. Law Quarterly Review, Vol. 31, p. 150.197. Cf. Pound, “Address to the New Hampshire Bar

Association,” June 30, 1917.198. (1915) A. C. 120, and see Dean Pound’s comment

in the address cited above.199. “The Law of the Constitution” (8th ed.), p. 179 f.200. R. v. Halliday (1917). A. C. 226. Cf. especially the

dissenting opinion of Lord Shaw and the commentin 31 Harvard Law Review, 296.

201. U. S. v. Ju Toy, 198 U. S. 253.202. New York v. McCall et al, 38 Sup. Ct. Rep. 122.203. Baltimore & Ohio R.R. Co. v. Pitcairn Coal Co.,

215 U. S. 481; Interstate Commerce Commission v.Union Pacific R.R. Co., 222 U. S. 541.

204. New York v. McCall et al, 38 Sup. Ct. Rep. 122,124.

205. Regulation 51. Cf. London Nation, December 8,1917.

206. A habit unfortunately intensified by ProfessorRitchie’s “Natural Rights,” which, dismissing themhistorically, was held to dismiss them politicallyalso.

207. W. Wallace, “Lectures & Essays,” 213 ff.208. “Collected Papers,” III, 321 f.209. “Reading on the Statuto of Uses,” p. 9.210. Essay on “Corporations and Church Property”

in Vol. I of his “Dissertations and Discussions.”211. Loeffler v. Trustees of Sheppard and Enoch Pratt

Hospital (1917) 100 Abl. 301.212. The result of the case could be justified on the

ground that there is no liability for an injury sus-tained by a licensee when the injury is broughtabout by a condition of the premises.

213. Overholser v. National Home for Disabled Sol-diers, 68 Ohio St. 236; McDonald v. Mass. GeneralHospital, 120 Mass. 432; Jensen v. Maine Eye andEar Infirmary, 107 Me. 408; Downes v. Harper Hos-pital, 101 Mich. 555.

214. Duncan v. Findlater (1839) 6 Cl. & Fin. 894 wasdecided in American fashion, but since MerseyDocks Trustees v. Gibbs, (1866) I H. L. 93 the rulehas happily been the other way.

215. Cf. Yale Law Journal Vol. 26, p. 124 ff.216. Hordern v. Salvation Army, 199 N. Y. 233.

217. McMerney v. St. Luke’s Hospital, 122 Minn. 10.218. St. Paul’s Sanitarium v. Williamson, 164 S. W. 36.219. See the report of Mr. (now Lord) Haldane’s speech

in the special report by Orr and the comment ofDr. Figgis, “Churches in the Modern State,” 19 ff.

220. Cf. Canadian Law Times, Vol. 36, p. 140 ff.221. Sirey, 1908, III, 98 with a note by M. Hauriou.222. This and the preceding paragraphs are practi-

cally reproductions of some notes of mine in theHarvard Law Review for January and February,1918, and I am indebted to its editors for leave tomake use of them.

223. “From Gerson to Grotius,” p. 95.224. “The Great Society,” p. 299.225. This is the thesis of Professor Michel’s well-

known book on political parties; but I feel that hehas only discussed half the problem.

226. Cf. Prof. Ramsay Muir’s “Peers and Bureaucrats,”and the interesting but grossly exaggerated vol-ume of E. S. P. Haynes: “The Decline of Liberty inEngland.”

227. “The Great Society,” Chap. I. In a paper pub-lished in the Smith College studies on the “Prob-lem of Administrative Areas,” I have tried to notethe significance of this.

228. Cf. Prof. Foxwell’s classic introduction to Menger’s“Right to the Whole Produce of Labour.”

229. As in Mr. Tawney’s “Agarian Revolution in theSixteenth Century” and Mr. and Mrs. Hammond’sstudies of town and village labour.

230. “Representative Government,” Ch. III(Everyman’s edition), p.209–10

231. (1910) A. C. 87.232. This is worked out in detail in Chapter V below.233. His “La Coutume Ouvri re” is one of the funda-

mental books of our time.234. For the revival of interest in Proudhon Cf. Pirou

in the “Revue d’Histoire des Doctrines Sociales etEconomiques,” 1912, p. 161, and the books therecited.

235. Cf. Chapter II below.236. See especially the second edition of his “Divi-

sion du travail Social.” It badly needs translationinto English.

237. Cf. Leroy, “Les Transformation de la PuissancePublique,” p. 286.

238. Mr. Herbert Croly’s, ‘Progressive Democracy,’ isby far the best recent analysis.

239. This is the work that has been performed by Mr.Veblen with something like genius in his “Theoryof the Leisure Class;” the “Instinct of Workman-ship;” the “Theory of Business Enterprise;” and thegreat book On “Imperial Germany and the Indus-trial Revolution.”

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240. W. H. Hamilton, The Price-System and SocialPolicy. Journal of Political Economy, Vol. XXVI, p.31.

241. Quoted in Hamilton, op. cit. p. 37.242. Cf. Groat, “The Attitude of American Courts in

Labour Cases,” passim.243. Its defect is that it still leaves American trade

unions at the mercy of the common law doctrine,Cf. conspiracy. The act is, U. S. Statutes, 1913–4, C.321.

244. 236 U. S. 1, 26.

Chapter Two: Bonald1

I. The Implication of TheocracyThe theocratic system seems to have found aneuthanasia the more tragic in that it proceedsunobserved. It shares therein the fate of half ahundred political systems which have failed tobase themselves upon the fact of evolution. Forno theory can now hope for survival which isnot based upon the changing necessities of so-cial life. The obvious generalisation that the cre-ation of dogma carries with it, in grim Hegelianfashion, its own negation, confronts the observerat every stage of the historic process. And of the-ocracy this has been the case in a peculiar de-gree. The claims of its representatives havegrown as their acceptance has become the moreimpossible. It was at the very nadir of his for-tunes that Hildebrand made claim to the lord-ship of the world. It was when Garibaldi andhis redshirts were thundering at the gate thatPius IX registered his infallibility. The garmenthas been the more royally displayed that theshrunken body may be the better concealed.

Yet two great truths theocracy has enshrined;and, of a certainty, no estimate of its characterwould be just which did not take account of theirvalue. More, perhaps, than any similar systemof ideas theocracy has understood the worth ofdogma. It has seen that the secret of existenceis the preservation of identity. It has realisedthe chaos of instability. Nor is this all. Its be-lievers have grasped, perhaps more fully thanany thinkers save the doctrinaire liberals of thenineteenth century, the difference between theessence of a political system and the accidentalprinciples which arise from the method of itsapplication. They have ceaselessly insisted onthe importance of securing beyond peradventurethe fundamental notions of their age. They did,indeed, go mistakenly further. They did take thefatal step of arguing that an ideal to be true mustbe unchanging. Of the relativity of ideas theyhad no notion; or, if they dimly seized its impor-tance, they denied its philosophic rightness. Forthey deemed it the business of speculation tosearch for absolutes. They had no patience withanything save the eternal. If, in the result, a

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changing civilisation has been compelled todesert their standards, that does not mean thetotal error of the ideals for which they fought.On the contrary, that of which the historian musttake constant account is not merely the sharp-ness of their vision, but the accuracy of theirprophecy. Again and again they cast a vivid lightupon the conditions of their time. The fact of theirfailure is not proof of their ineptitude. On thecontrary, they brought powerful support to atheory of politics for which, on other grounds,strong and insistent justification can still bemade. What in brief they suggested was theapotheosis of authority. Liberty to them was er-ror. They tried to find its falsity in the divinityof its antithesis. It is rather in the emphasis oftheir application than its source that moderncriticism tends to begin its attack. And at leastone powerful school of political enquiry has re-jected its premises rather than its conclusions.In that sense it is still a living influence at thepresent time.

The source of its curious revivification in thenineteenth century is in no sense difficult to dis-cover. They who returned from exile in 1814 be-lieved that their experience was the final con-demnation of liberal principles. They had seenthe triumph of anarchy in the name of freedom.They had been the victims of an egalitarianismfor which history afforded no precedent even ifit offered an ample justification. The institutionsthey had inherited had been ruthlessly over-thrown. The ideals they had cherished were castaside in an unpitying contempt. Tradition hadbeen butchered that Reason might have its Parisholiday; and to tradition they were united byevery tie of kinship and of interest. Their exilehad been the breeder of hate rather than of un-derstanding; and it was in a spirit of revengethat they returned. The age which the twenty-five full years of revolution had turned into an-tiquity became for them the Saturnia regna ofan earlier time. That for which their kin hadpaid with blood became hallowed because it hadbeen the cause of suffering. They came not toamend but to restore. As they had forgiven noth-ing, so they had failed to learn the lesson of theirbanishment. They deified the past; and in that

vision of enchantment they discovered a littleeasily the principles of a theocracy.

This was in a particular degree true of the Ro-man Church.2 No institution had had a moresingular history in the period of revolutionarymisfortune. The States-General, at the outset ofits deliberations had been in no sense an anti-clerical assembly. The mass of the people waspassionately catholic; and their confidence in theclergy is proved by the fact that the cahiers ofthe Third Estate had been largely entrusted totheir hands. They had ample opportunity to winfor themselves the urgent confidence of those inwhose hands would lie the destinies of the com-ing revolution. The idea of a separation betweenChurch and State was, in 1789, present in themind of no single practical statesman. TheChurch was responsible for its own misfortunes.To the popular dislike of Ultramontanism it gaveground for action. Its support of the extremereactionists earned for it the distrust and angerof moderate men; while the hatred which theupper clergy earned no less than they receivedwas thereby extended to the mass of its mem-bers. From the outset the clergy seemed tothreaten the Revolution; and when the Revolu-tion created a Republic their Roman allegiancethreatened its unity. The onset of war and itsearly disasters gave an opportunity to the en-emies of the Church of which they did not fail tomake good use. Suspicion turned to intolerance,and from intolerance was born an implacablepersecution. Yet the ills of the Church under theConvention and the Assembly would have givenno grounds for the ultramontane passions of theRestoration. What secured their onset was thecalculated policy of Napoleon. True to the prin-ciples which have made the name of Erastus themistaken symbol of oppression, he saw in thechurch no more than an admirable politicalweapon. He declared himself a Gallican; and hisabsorptive temper made of Gallicanism a doc-trine to which no self-respecting member of thechurch could give adherence. It is, indeed, pos-sible that before the Napoleonic era the decla-ration of 1682 probably represented the normalclerical attitude. But when the principles of 1682resulted in a papal captivity and the Organic

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Articles the temper of the church was bound tochange.

It became evident to most that a trust in Romewas not incompatible with a faith in France; andthe transition from compatibility to dependencewas almost fatally easy. There is something ofpoetic justice in the fact that a nominal applica-tion of its own principles should thus havetaught the French clergy their inherent error.When Louis XVIII came back to Versailles thechurch which accompanied him had new prin-ciples to maintain and new standards to enforce.The tenets of a royalist faith they had alwaysupheld; and of his support they were from theoutset assured. But they had learned from abetter experience that only (so they deemed) anexclusive and ultramontane church was certainof security. They did not perceive that Napoleonhad only attempted the enforcement of the veryprinciples they were themselves to preach. Theydid not know that they, like him, were encom-passing the imprisonment of the mind, and thatthey, like him, were to fail because their taskwas from the outset impossible. The mind of manmay demand the ease of dogma, but it so de-mands only that it may destroy. The church madethe fatal error of their persecutor and assumedthat in unity alone can strength be discovered.They came back to enshrine in law the unique-ness of their sovereignty and they only fashionedthereby the instrument of a second Revolution.

They had learned nothing in their exile save tobrood upon their misfortune. It was patent tothem that what had occurred was the fruit ofhuman wickedness. That of which they had needwas a political organisation whereby the errorsfrom which they had suffered might become buta hideous memory. They needed a political theorywhich ensured the permanent satisfaction oftheir demands. Their life was based upon theirtraditions. It was from their traditions that theydrew their claims. So it was that they erectedtheir history into a philosophy that they mightdestroy the category of time.

II. The Basis of TraditionalismTaine has refused the title of philosophers to theTraditionalists of the Restoration; and in thesense that it was their business rather to refutethan to make enquiry there can be no doubt thathe was right. Their fate, indeed, has been in ev-ery way somewhat curious. The literary effec-tiveness of De Maistre, the skill with which hepresents his pessimism, the acuteness of hisreflections—all these have combined to give hiswork the permanence that is undoubtedly itshistoric due.3 The tragic interest of Lamennais’life would of itself be sufficient to arouse increas-ing speculation; but he becomes of even greaterimportance from the fact that the most vitalaspect of nineteenth century Catholicism is in aspecial sense his creation. The conciliatory spiritof Ballanche gives to all his speculation a sin-gular charm that is absent from the work of hiscompeers.

Bonald has been less fortunate; and, in truth, itis but within recent times that the value of hisuncritical and uninspired dogmatism has beenfully understood.4 The rebirth of a sceptical sus-picion of the worth of the Republic tended, in-evitably, to send men back to him whom DeMaistre signalled as his master,5 and fromwhom, in the early days of his fame, Lamennaiswas proud to receive high commendation.6

Bonald, indeed, lacks all the stigmata of popu-larity. His life was the ordinary career of anemigrant noble. Not even the fear of the guillo-tine came to give it a touch of momentary ex-citement. He wrote badly, even harshly, with allthe ruthless, pettifogging logic of the medievalscholastics.7 He lacked even the supreme meritof brevity. He was totally out of accord with thespirit of his time. All for which it came to standhe branded as the utmost sin; all for which hecared was lost at the barricades of 1830. Themonarchy for which he cherished so passionatean affection destroyed itself by acting on hisprinciples. He urged nothing that history, if itdid not falsify, at any rate failed to respect. Hedid not, like De Maistre, die before the course ofevents had proved the impossibility of his ide-als. He did not, like Lamennais, find in the events

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of his age the basis of a better philosophy. Hebelonged always to the eighteenth century, not,indeed, in the essentials of its intellectual atti-tude, but in its dogmatic and inflexible spirit.8

Once he had arrived at his principles, he did nomore than devote himself to their elaboration.He never examined his time. He was satisfiedto search the past and to misread it that thejustice of his claims might be made manifest. Asingle event—and it is impossible to understandhis attitude save on the assumption that to himthe Revolution was no more than a point intime—served as the basis of everything hethought and felt and dared so greatly to hope.He is the prophet of an outworn gospel, so thathis very watchwords have been almost forgot-ten. That which he so solemnly preached is, forthe most part, that against which a democraticsociety has been most solemnly warned. Yet heis hardly to blame for his conclusions. He did nomore than sum up with remorseless logic theresult of the reaction of authoritarian temperwith egalitarian revolution.

He represents the amazement of the aristocracyat the challenge of a people whose existence ithad forgotten. He put its case vigorously, bluntly,sincerely. He failed completely to understandthat the principles of the Ancien Régime couldnever return. He could regard the Revolutiononly as a hateful episode, and he tried to explainwhy it was essentially a warning and an ex-ample. It is perhaps a little difficult to explainhis influence. He said only what the émigrés de-sired to hear. But he wrote the epitaph of Bour-bon Kingship and it was assumed that betweenhis philosophy and the creed of Rousseau therewas no alternative. For thirty-five years he reit-erated his principles under half a hundred forms.The principles of philology, the marital relation,the theory of knowledge—from the analysis ofall these he constructed his tremendous sociol-ogy. When the last criticism has been made, thereremains something almost of splendour in thecourage and the determination with which heapplied himself to his task. If, in the light ofmodern change, all that he has written readslike a bitter defence of special creation by onewho has sadly encountered the Darwinian hy-

pothesis, much may be pardoned to one wholoved his ideals so greatly. And, as with DeMaistre, it may even be suggested that he thebetter served human freedom when he threwthe implications of his attitude into a relief sostriking and so logical.

Nor is this all. The basis of his philosophy mustbe interpreted from the angle of its chronologi-cal significance. He began to write, as Sainte-Beuve9 has pointed out, on the morrow of theTerror. He had been a witness of its tragedies;and because so many of its victims were of hisorder, it was inevitable that it should have bit-ten deeply into his soul. It was then natural forhim to translate that bitterness into politicalterms. He could see in the Revolution no morethan the coronation of anarchy. It had shatteredthe temple of political science and he must layhis hand to its restoration. And it was no lessnatural that he should start from a disbelief inman and in reason. It was for their reintegra-tion that the Revolution had been effected. Theindividualism of the eighteenth century hadbeen traitorous to every rational principle ofsocial order. It had dared to proclaim the rightsof man, and it had embodied its principles in aDeclaration. It had declared the sovereignty ofreason and the Directory was to prescribe a con-fidence in faith. So he came to hold that the veryfoundations of such an attitude were conceivedin sin. The Rights of Man meant the executionof the King; the Sovereignty of Reason meantthe persecution of the Catholic Church. Equal-ity wrote its formula in letters of blood, and theblood was the blood of his friends. An attitude tohis age other than that of hate was thus impos-sible. That he should have undertaken a polemicagainst the eighteenth century was logically theresult of his humanity. To the rights of man hewould oppose the rights of God.10 To the sover-eignty of reason he would oppose the sovereigntyof faith. Since the eighteenth century had cre-ated a new philosophy, he would go back to itsprecursors that he might uproot its errors. Ev-erything for which the Revolution stood he wouldceaselessly denounce, so that he does not evenspare the generous intelligence of Madame deStael.11 He sought a universal formula against

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Revolution and he outlined a theodicy that hemight apply it. He never, like De Maistre, ad-mitted the relativity of history. He never, likeDe Maistre, allowed an influence to the God-di-rected exertions of great men on the one hand,or to the cumulative effect of minute causes onthe other.12 The diminution of universalityseemed to him the admission of weakness. Theeighteenth century must not be spared but slain.Every dogma for which it had argued he de-nounced with remorseless hate. He erected, infact, the negation of its principles into analchemically mingled compound of antagonismshe chose to call a philosophy.

He deserted the eighteenth century; and thathe might the better refute its canons of truth hewent back to that which is most alien to its spirit.The seventeenth century in France is the veryembodiment of his temper. A centralisationwhich culminated in the unquestioning promul-gation of divinely ordained monarchy was thevery synthesis for which he was contending. Thetheories of Bossuet were but those of a De Bonaldwho had not yet encountered the Revolution.They enabled him to take firm hold of the theoryof Divine Right—a theory which, though Suarezand Bellarmin, took him back to the great daysof scholastic authority. It is, indeed, vital to judgehim in this context. For De Bonald was the lastrepresentative of that great tradition. His verymethod was the dialectic parrying of text withcounter-text. He wrote, as he said,13 not as anorator but as a logician. The Revolution gave himhis premises, and from the seventeenth centuryhe drew his conclusions. The neat geometricalarrangement of his material and his pride in asort of mathematical logic14 send him back tothe days when men slew truth with a syllogism.The writers whom he loved were to him a con-stant and enduring influence, so that he seemssometimes almost to have expected that thename of Bossuet would spring from cold printto the eager confirmation of the living tongue.He felt those dead who had thought as hethought as part of a living society, and it wasthus that when he went to their ideas for confir-mation that he felt the justification of contem-porary history. And since the thought of the re-

formers and the ideologues was absent fromtheir pages, he could not but feel for his oppo-nents the impulsive hatred of strangeness.15 TheRevolution was due to the rejection of the natu-ral laws he had discovered in his teachers.16 Andit was simply for the restoration of their activ-ity that he was concerned. He did not see thatthus to deal with man in no more than his me-dieval context was to shut himself off from a vi-tal human experience and to demean man intoan abstraction. “Man,” he said,17 “is the sameeverywhere,” and it was upon the basis of thatmistaken generalisation that he began his work.The “incontestable authority” he granted to his-tory in political judgment became the authorityof medieval history, just as his religious text oftruth became the axioms of the medievalchurch.18 But no theory could hope for acceptanceof which the inductions were based on so facti-tious and arbitrary a disdain of men.

III. The Political Theory of BonaldIt would be possible to reconstruct the politicaltheory of Bonald by asserting the antithesis ofevery doctrine for which the eighteenth centurystood sponsor. As it asserted the individuality ofman, and emphasised the importance of hisunique separatism, so Bonald urged that onlyin his social context is man at all significant. Asit had deserted the ways of God, so he proclaimedthat only by treading in his path could salva-tion be attained. As it was fascinated by thetheory of a social contract, so did he find in thattheory the head and centre of political disaster.The eighteenth century is essentially an age ofthe sceptics; and Bonald, as a consequence, con-structed a philosophy that begins and ends withGod. There is nothing of perverseness in all this.It is the natural reaction of a stern temper fromthe experiences of an alien ideal. He assertedthe primacy of God because he did, in fact, be-lieve that all science must begin in this fash-ion.19 God, for him, was essentially the directingforce of the world and he has not ceased to gov-ern his creation.20 Indeed Bonald almost over-whelms us with the varied arguments which areintended to demonstrate the necessity of a be-lief in Divinity. Powerful arguments they are not;and of them it is perhaps best to say that they

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above all demonstrate his inability to pursuemetaphysical enquiry. They are frequently con-fused and, more rarely, contradictory. But to thishe would have doubtless replied that in any casehe made entire abstraction of philosophy.

He made abstraction of philosophy because itwas basically individualist.21 It spoke not in thename of God, but of reason; and reason, as theRevolution had taught him, had done nothingsave provoke a vain and fruitless debate. Rea-son meant the Convention and the Directory;Reason had executed the fine flower of theFrench nation. It was clearly the destruction ofstability; and he significantly comments that inthe stable theocracy of the Jews as in the un-changing Spartan kingdom the philosopher hadfound no place. For them tradition had beenenough, and yet on the basis of that ancestralismhis age condemned they had enjoyed a prosper-ous history. Nor was this all. There was no unityin philosophy. Pythagoras, and Thales, Zeno andEpicurus, Bacon and Descartes are all in funda-mental disagreement. What message does phi-losophy bring that philosophy does not also con-tradict? So that therein there is no authorita-tive utterance. But he who speaks in the nameof God speaks a language that is common to all.22

He is thus without interest in individualthought. The only important thought is that ofsociety, and the thought of society is the reflexionof the mind of God.23 So that when he is con-cerned to examine man as a social being he is,in fact, occupied with the relation of man to hiscreator. If he can discover the laws by which Godhas created the world, and by which he contin-ues to govern it, his problem is solved. All hehas then to do is to deduce the consequences ofthose laws. His method of enquiry is what mighthave been expected from one in whom the au-thoritarian temper had been schooled into ri-gidity by the subtle hardness of the Oratorians.Like a good medievalist, he uses his texts ascannon to provide a continuous fire against theenemy. The unreality of his atmosphere at theoutset clings throughout to his conclusions. Hedoes, indeed, make use of history; and an ad-miring critic has therein sought to discover an

exponent of political realism.24 But the historyis no more than a philosophy teaching by arbi-trarily selected examples. He sought only for thatwhich would prove the danger of variety; andthe only history for which he cared was thatwhich illustrated its misfortunes. He wanted nomore than a stick wherewith to beat the phi-losophers of the Revolution. His fundamentalstarting-point makes clear his whole direction.The dependence of the world upon God makesthe desertion of his laws the zenith of social trea-son. The Revolution committed that sin; and hehad thus no other task than to enounce the ruleswhich will give ground for his accusing hate.

He has, of course, to justify the ways of God toman.25 He achieves this end in his own grim fash-ion by preventing the escape of the world fromthe influence of natural law.26 His God has de-sired man’s happiness, and the laws he has laiddown are the expression of his will to that end.But the will of God is unchangeable, so that theuniverse is governed by an iron law. Here, ofcourse, Bonald departs in striking fashion fromthe attitude of the eighteenth century. He hasnone of the flexibility of Montesquieu.27 God maycreate and he may destroy; but all that he ac-complishes he must achieve on the basis of hispreliminary definitions. So that the nature ofman, for instance, is independent of God. Hecould not create a soulless humanity. The logicof contradiction is an universal principle, in or-der that the authority of Bonald’s deductionsmay be maintained. Miracles, as a consequence,are outside the realm of possibility; and thoughBonald allowed them later in his thought agrudging entrance into life, he seems always tohave resented their occurrence.28 It is true thattoo-zealous Christians have based a scheme ofexistence upon them. But the true philosopher“is freed by thought from the restriction of spaceand time;”29 and while Bonald admits thatmiracles are not metaphysically inconceivable,he yet denies that God will so constantly inter-vene in the affairs of men as to attempt the ab-rogation of his own ideas. It is sufficient that hehas organised the universe. The business of menis to discover the method of its organisation that

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they may apply its principles to their gover-nance.30

Bonald has, perhaps wisely, nowhere given usany consistent account of these natural laws.They result, of course, in optimism, since, as thework of God, they must be perfect. History thenbecomes a progress towards their realisation,and the problem of the statesman is mainlyshifted to their application. Bonald, indeed, hasthe simplest of formulae for that solution. Themeans of enquiry are reason and tradition. Thestudy of nature will give each man the opportu-nity of their acquaintance. He will at once ob-serve, for example, that the rights of a fatherover his children, of a master over his servants,partake of the order of nature. They are neces-sary to life, and what is necessary is divine. So,too, in politics, the prince’s search for necessarygovernmental relations will result in their im-mediate discovery. And it is important toemphasise that what he means by discovery isessentially a declaration. Man does not makelaws; he only declares them. The obvious test ofthe rightness of his policy is whether the stateover which he presides is in revolution or atpeace. If it is in revolution the prince has clearlyembarked upon a policy that is contrary to natu-ral law. The meeting of the States-General in1789 is an example of such error. It resulted inrevolution. Its members endeavoured to makelaw, instead of remaining content with its pro-mulgation. They broke, that is to say, with tra-dition; and Bonald would doubtless have urgedthat the execution of Louis was the penalty ofattempted innovation.

But God has gone further.31 He has been evenmore generous to men in his gift of the means ofperception. Language is a method whereby theunderstanding of divine law may be made ap-parent. It was given to the first men that theymight communicate the truths they discovered.And the further gift of writing committed to apermanence more objective than memory thesecrets of each age. It made possible, for instance,in the Bible the positive enshrinement of moraland political truth. Nor are these divine lawsfew in number. The truths of logic and of math-

ematics are of this order. And those of politicsare so important as to require especial meansfor their enforcement. They clearly involve, forinstance, an absolute and hereditary monarchy;yet many people, as history shows and as Bonaldin his exile at Heidleberg can not forget, havelived in a republic. Such nations, indeed, havepaid the penalty for their defiance. It is the habitof nature to exact her compensations. Inevita-bly, since without such application society can-not exist in its normal form. A return to what isgood has thus the continuous assurance of vic-tory. Thus even in the midst of these gloomydogmas, De Bonald can find ground for hope.Revolution is God’s medicine to bring men backto his ways. That is, at any rate, one method ofinterpreting the significance of the Restoration.

The source of this philosophy is obvious.32 Nonest potestas niso a deo might well serve as itswatchword; and it is under the shadow ofBossuet that it has been conceived. He hardly,indeed, admits the latter’s influence. But fromthe standpoint of one who hated the eighteenthcentury a return to the ideals of Bossuet wasinevitable. Nor is it difficult to understand howa profound Catholic, impregnated with an he-reditary loyalty to an unfortunate house, shouldhave let his fancy roam to the zenith of its for-tunes. Odd sentences of the New Testamentmight well serve to set the Divine seal on thatretrospective adventure, and the pain of exilewould do the rest. If it was objected that in thisannexation of God he was grounding his systemin intolerance, he might well reply that the al-ternative to intolerance is intellectual anarchy.33

The forces of social cohesion cannot have fairplay if men think as they will. Given his God asthe creator of necessary law, it was inevitablethat he should cease to regard the world as self-determining. Nor was it less inevitable that theexperience of Bonald should colour his interpre-tation of that law. All political philosophies arethe reaction of temperament upon its chrono-logical perspective. If God has made the worldpower must come from him, and power in anylegitimate form Bonald could hardly concede tomen for whom he had so profound a hate. Sothat he could admit legitimacy only to the house

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with which he had associated his fortunes, andhe was then willing to identify the legitimatewith the divine. Per me reges regnant et legumconditores justa decerunt received a new beautywhen applied to the House of Bourbon. But tohave admitted its application to Napoleon wouldhave been a self-condemnation to perpetual ex-ile.

IV. The Attack on the IndividualHis God is clearly one who will restore an orderthat he loves. Bonald has been terrified at theresults of individualism; and authority is thechart by which he is to find the haven of relieffrom its burdens. It is perhaps for this reasonthat the God he depicts is so much more sternand far off than that of his masters. With bothBossuet and Aquinas God is one who continu-ally influences the course of life; but they hadnot, like Bonald, lived in a time of revolution.34

Change to him has become the synonym of eviland he binds his God to act but seldom that therightness of a static organisation may be mani-fest. And since it is individualism that he is con-cerned to combat he must elevate the value ofsociety. It is necessary to the existence of man.It is true that a certain individualism resultsfrom the relation of God with him whom he cre-ated in his own image; yet that very relationleads man to contact with his fellows that theymay in common fulfil the principles of their ori-gin.

And, indeed, man cannot live alone. All that heis he owes to society and only as a member of itis he intelligible. His theory of language is usedto confirm this attitude.35 For an individual whostood without society could not inherit the meansof grasping the laws governing the universe bywhich he is confronted. The only real being isthe social being.36 The only man who has theopportunity to develop his powers is a memberof a group. Bonald is thus able, and with muchforce, to make short shrift with Rousseau’s stateof nature. To picture a world withoutorganisation is, for him, to misinterpret thewhole meaning of creation. It is to picture a worldwithout law, and the one thing that can be pos-ited is the existence of law. He points out acutely

that when Rousseau urged men to live accord-ing to nature, he did, in fact, make tacit accep-tance of principles inherent in its order. But it isdifficult to understand how principles of thiskind can be discovered and maintained in theungenial terrors of savage existence.37 For theattainment of the life Rousseau desired a socialexistence is essential; and its attainment wouldbe undesirable unless the primary fact of soci-ety were at the outset admitted.

For Bonald, indeed,—and here he differed radi-cally from Aquinas—society is prior to the indi-vidual. The latter derives his meaning simplyfrom his social context, where to Aquinas thefunction of society is not to create but to perfectthe life of man. But for Bonald this is too nar-row a conception. His society is in a real sense aperson.38 It is not a mere algebraic bracket, link-ing men together into an artificial unity. It isone, and indivisible.39 It is organic, and, like anorganism, it has a will whereby to make mani-fest its desires.40 Society is thus rendered inde-pendent of individuals. It exists of and in itselfand they do no more than contribute to the rich-ness of a life from which they in turn draw nour-ishment.41 The general will of this society, more-over, is the divine will conscious of those neces-sary laws upon which he lays such striking em-phasis. But will must be directed that it maybecome manifest in action; and it is to the mon-arch that he confines its direction that it maytake form in legislation. The social will so ex-pressed, moreover, is superior in its claim to allother. It is further freed from the embarrass-ment of superiority, since than society there canbe no higher being. Nor will it act unwisely. “Thegeneral will of society,” he wrote, “is necessaryconservative in character.”42 That is to say it isconservative when it is freed from the danger-ous influence of individual or national willswhich in their search for substantive form takeshape in revolutions. If it is somewhat mystical,it is none the less an intelligible attitude. Thatit derives from Rousseau it is certainly difficultto doubt; but whereas Rousseau drew from itthe principle of national sovereignty the wholepoint of Bonald’s conception is to urge causeagainst that principle. For national sovereignty

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is, in its essence, an individualist doctrine; andit is from the organic character of society thatBonald is anxious to deduce the a priori impos-sibility of that attitude.

He has made the individual but a link in a chain.Society as a whole is thus the real founder ofcivilisation. Great men are no longer entitled tocredit for their discovery since it is by reason oftheir social gifts that they have attained to great-ness. They could not have worked without theinstrument of language that their thought mightreceive expression; and the object of languagewas social enrichment. So that for him a greatman is no more than the reflexion of his time, aservant of its needs. It is therefrom that heshould draw his inspiration. Insofar as he fol-lows the path of his own fortune he deserts bothhis genius and his function.

It is impossible not to feel that he has in mindthose daring spirits of the Revolution whoseability might so easily have been deflected intochannels less tragic in their consequence. Butthey followed the call of their ambition and heis accordingly tempted even further in the di-rection of their control. He does not merely limitindividuality. He insists upon its socially dan-gerous character. Wherever he sees the exerciseof personality he urges that it is the root of crime.For, at the outset, he has the material for its con-demnation. He has insisted upon the supremacyof society. He has reduced men to no more thanunimportant functions of its power. Thereby hehas the right to attack all which might in somesort detract from its omnipotence.

He equates individualism with anarchy, and hemakes some misuse of history to demonstratethe truth of his attitude. The Reformation to himis no more than the idle pride of a monk en-gaged in the defence of his order.44 Luther calledto his aid all the evil passions and avid inter-ests alike of men and princes. He cast a torchinto a sea of oil and the result was the ghastlyconflagration of the sixteenth century. Here wasthe influence of individual talent refusing to takeits stand on the firm basis of tradition. Luthersought out novelty; and society paid the penalty

for the passion of his misinterpreted conclusions.So with Calvin45 and with Henry VIII.46 In eachcase we have a man determined to give the fre-est play to his self-will; and in each case a reignof terror is the consequence. For they put theirtrust in an opinion to which age had failed togive the sanction of traditional affection. Theyurged a cause based on no more than reason. Itwas inevitable that men should arise to contra-dict their conclusions and to sacrifice the bloodof others in the pursuit of proof. They made afatal error. They did not attempt the preserva-tion of what had been proved by time. They at-tempted to examine and of this the social conse-quence is dispersion. But of dispersion the el-dest child is anarchy.

This, too, is the cause of that ceaseless multipli-cation of Protestant opinion he deemed so vastan evil.47 For what in truth Luther achieved wasto make each man the sole judge alike of beliefand practice. But that is to preach a mentalequality which can only result in the degrada-tion of principle. Little by little each will pareaway from the body of accepted tradition thatwhich he cannot accept until atheism is the re-sult.48 Between catholicism and atheism he seesno halfway house.49 To reject the one is to em-brace the other. To reject the one is to replacedivine invention by the fiendish ingenuity ofmen.50 For those who once question the funda-mental dogmas fail entirely to perceive that theprinciples of social religion have been estab-lished for all time. Critically to estimate theirvalidity by the degree of their personalinacceptability is to strike a fatal blow at theroot of morality. For no blow can be struck at thefoundations of religious order which does notreact on the political structure.51 Political andreligious strife always develop along parallellines. So, for example, the real source of theFrench Revolution is to be found in the teachingof Calvin. To urge the priesthood of believers inthe sixteenth century is to send Louis XVI tothe scaffold in the eighteenth. So closely is reli-gion embedded in the framework of society thathe who develops religious change is bound toseek political change also that the structure maybe altered to meet his religious needs. So the

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supposed constitution which limited Louis’power was no more, in sober truth, than an at-tempt at the provision of opportunity for Cal-vinist growth. It thus is the destruction of thatunity which alone makes possible the continu-ance of social order.

Nor is this all. The grandchild of reform is phi-losophy and from its impassioned curiosity hasbeen born the most deadly error. Philosophy—so Bonald urges—has no function save that ofdestruction.52 Its guides are self-interest andpassion. It dethrones God to replace him by na-ture, and each of her devotees interprets differ-ently her meaning. Religion becomes unneces-sary. The people dethrone power to crown law.The old love of one’s neighbour is removed togive place to some philanthropy he can hardlybring himself to describe.53 The philosopher dis-penses with the Atonement; and man thus be-ing by definition good society is reduced fromthe necessary condition of existence to no morethan a business association. It is asked to jus-tify itself by the terms of its contractual institu-tion. Yet the very sceptics who thus remorse-lessly examine are refused by their own logic. Acontract supposes power for otherwise its en-forcement is impossible.54 But a contract cannotconstitute that which would be its own nega-tion. A contract involves the ideal of equalitybetween the contracting parties; but that veryequality is born of power.55 Those who wouldmake the possession of power dependent uponits useful exercise forget its origin. Power comesfrom God, and he alone can set conditions to itsuse. If men could so limit it, it would no longerbe itself. Its identity would be destroyed. It wouldbe sheerly arbitrary in character—the creatureof popular whim and fantasy. But the powerwhich is instituted by God is in essence differ-ent. It assures man freedom for it has been in-stituted upon the basis of the fundamental prin-ciples of the universe.

And a further consequence must be drawn. Ifthe true sovereign of the universe is God theneveryone, no less the sovereign than his subjects,have duties towards him.56 He has set therhythm of Life and they must make possible the

fulfilment of its motif. Their right thus becomesno more than the right to fulfil their duty, theright to act in accordance with the will of God.In such an aspect the folly of those who woulddraw up a Declaration of the Rights of Man isself-evident. For while they affirm the equalityof men’s rights they affirm no less the right toproperty. But what becomes of property wheresome men, equal in the theoretic possession ofrights, are yet without the means of subsistence?Clearly the denial of the rhythm Bonald haspostulated creates a deadly rhythm of its own.The acceptance of individualism crushes intoatoms the very basis of society. By making thesocial question something to be resolved by rea-son, instead of admitting that it is from the out-set dependent on God, and is thus justified with-out the need of social response, it leaves open apath for every method of anarchic destruction.57

No one, he urges, dare accept the claim of sci-ence to make men better by making them intel-lectually enlightened. On the contrary, the re-sult of increasing knowledge is the desire ofdomination. The individual seeks rather formeans to satisfy his faculty of self-absorptionthan to accomplish social good. To proclaim theexistence of rights is to make of each man a po-tential tyrant. The philosopher who proclaimsthe advent of liberty only ensures the r gime ofanarchy. For to question is to destroy. To ques-tion is to satisfy one’s whim and though suchcaprice has not made the world, it may yet de-stroy it. And when caprice has been identifiedwith individuality the transition to traditional-ism has been made. For each man then contrib-utes his own restlessness to the disturbance ofthe social fabric. The logical result of the eigh-teenth century is thus obviously the horrors ofthe Revolution.

It is, of course, obvious that the source of thiscriticism is the famous polemic by Bossuetagainst the Reformation.58 “Those who createrevolt in the name of freedom become themselvestyrants.” So it was Bossuet wrote, and his wordsmight be the text of Bonald’s examination. Urg-ing as he does the unity of society, he denies thevalidity of all enquiry, political no less than reli-gious, on the ground that it destroys that unity.

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He searches out each pretext of the eighteenthcentury for the denial of the dogmas of the an-cien r gime, and erects their negations into newdogmas. Fundamentally he attacks that indi-vidualism which Comte, in a fit of temper,59 oncedismissed abruptly as the disease of the West-ern world. Without unity of opinion and beliefthere cannot be hope of social survival. The veryfact of the Revolution is the evidence of thistruth. To insist on the value of the individual, toerect into a system, as Rousseau did, his rightto self-development is to misinterpret the or-ganic nature of society. An organism presupposesnervous co-ordination, and of that co-ordinationfreedom of belief is the main antagonist. So theremust be but one religion in France; for the veryexistence of other confessions secretes the germof social disaster. And this is for him the moretrue in the case of Protestant dogma, since itsbasis is the primacy of the individual. It thusbecomes the business of the statesman to wardoff the danger of anarchy. He must insist on thenecessity of uniformity. “Unless” he wrote in atremendous sentence, “unless we have a reli-gious and political unity, man cannot discovertruth, nor can society hope for salvation.”60

V. Implications of the AttackA curious trinitarianism pervades the wholespeculation of Bonald, and it is upon its basisthat he erected his social philosophy.61 For thenumber three he seems to have cherished a pe-culiar weakness, so that, like the devotees of thebeast in Revelations, he is everywhere able todiscover the operation of a threefold cause. Forsome abstract reason the source of which re-mains strangely obscure, he believed that froma belief that the cause is to the means, as themeans is to the effect, the mind can solve allpolitical questions. The business of society,whether domestic or political or religious, be-comes then the realisation of that relationship.Perfection is simplified into its permanent at-tainment.62

He had no difficulty in deciphering its details.62a

Domestic society is clearly composed of threeelements. The father is the cause, the motherthe means, the child is the effect. Since the fa-

ther is the cause, he must clearly have power,for, otherwise, the division of it would destroyits efficacy. Nor can that power be abrogated. Inthe eyes of its parents, for example, a child isalways a minor. That is why primitive societygave to the head of the family the power of lifeand death. That is why the woman taken in adul-tery may be slain without mercy by her husband.The wife, indeed, does no more than receive fromher husband the power of reproduction. Her oneduty is to obey him. As she is midway betweenchild and man, so she partakes of the nature ofboth. To the one she issues commands, to theother she offers submission. The child itself hasno function save to obey. Were it otherwise theunity of family power would clearly be destroyed.Nor is this unfair to the child who, in receivingfrom his parents the gift of language owes tothem his most precious possession. For withoutthem thought would thus have been impossible,and his obedience is the price he pays for sounique a privilege.63

The function of domestic society he regards assimply reproductive. Man may be mortal, butthe society to which he belongs is imperishable.He thus owes to it the duty of reproduction andit is for that purpose the family has been estab-lished. Bonald has thus the greater reason fordenying the importance of the individual. It isonly as a member of the family-group that he isentitled to consideration. It is essentially thatgroup which is the real unit of society. Only fromit does social function spring. Man himself is onlyan incident in a succession of births so vast asto make him infinitesimal in comparison.

If the family is thus the social unit one canclearly discern therein two types. The ordinaryfamily does no more than guard its daily inter-ests. The care of its needs exhausts its time andits capacities. It has no more to do than to main-tain itself in existence, without being a burdenupon its fellow-men. It is important only fromthe point of view of population. It is the broadbase upon which a finer and more complex struc-ture may be made to rest. The noble family isdifferent. The credentials of birth demonstratethat it has passed the stage of the worker’s in-

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evitable inertia. It is occupied with the defenceof society, the student of its problems, the re-solver of its doubts. It may thus rightly demandthe privileges that come from this self-sacrifice.It has leaped beyond the toilsome and narrow-ing cares of daily existence. It alone is really fit-ted to deal with the great problems of men. Thereis nothing sordid or meagre in the subject of itscontemplation. It thinks on a higher plane of life.It is accustomed to that objectivity of attitudewhich alone makes possible a social existence.64

The argument is as old as Aristotle, and no bet-ter than when he made it. What in truth he wasattempting was the discovery of a basis for thefamily organisation of the ancien régime. His“famille ordinaire” is no more than the peasant-family of eighteenth century France and becauseit was then powerless he strives to demonstratethat it is in fact actually unfitted for politicalfaculties. It was with a similar purpose that the“famille noble” should have the typical attributesof a family such as his own. The army and themagistracy were recruited from its ranks; whatmore natural than to assume that they are sorecruited because their capacity fits them forthat type of labour? He insists on the value ofan hereditary nobility merely to ensure the per-manence of that order and where he argues forits indispensability he means no more than thathe could not wish it otherwise. So, too, is to beunderstood his contempt for property and age.He rejects the latter as a classification of ser-vice “because it is necessary to choose usefulmen,”65 and utility depends on class and not onmaturity; moreover an indiscriminate choicewould result in disorder.66 He rejects propertybecause it will open the path to indiscriminateambition. He is, in fact, looking back on the Revo-lution and fearing the advent of the middle class.So, too, may be explained his insistence on thesuperiority of the agricultural family.67 Indus-try is the enemy of order. It is the captains ofindustry who continuously insist on the valueof independence. It is commerce which has beenthe parent of wars and of the mad doctrine ofliberty. From it has sprung that yearning forluxury which is the mother of decay. It gives riseto a superabundance of population. It results in

the dispersion of family unity. With agricultureall is different. The soil nourishes those to whomit gives birth. Almost in the manner of thePhysiocrats, but without their glowing discrimi-nation, he paints a picture of the serene joys ofagricultural existence.68 He insists on its soli-darity. It unifies by the nature of the occupationit affords. It makes no distinction between mas-ter and servant. It permits of ancestralism andof a common toil. It achieves a kinship with na-ture and the production of all that men trulyrequire for their satisfaction.69 He shows nosmall contempt for the industrialism of AdamSmith,70 and, at least by implication, theidealising reforms of Saint-Simon. The divisionof labour is the coronation of individualism andhe will have none of it. He loves too deeply thesolid conservatism of the French peasantry tobe willing to depart from their ways. For, afterall, it was they who supported the king and thechurch. It was from the cities that sprang dis-turbing thoughts. It was business men who hadquarrelled with the old economic order anderected their impatience into a vicious philoso-phy. He could compare Paris with Brittany andhe could hardly doubt the reason for their dis-tinction. Paris was industrial and in Paris hadbeen born the widest theories of socialorganisation. But in Brittany men inherited theideas of their fathers and to question had be-come not less than to sin.

The union of families is the State; and it washere, perhaps most vividly, that Bonald showedin his narrow traditionalism the influence of theRevolution. “When God wished to punishFrance,” he once wrote in an amazing sentence,71

“he withdrew the Bourbons from its governance.”His whole effort, in fact, is simply the attemptto discover a political structure which shouldobviate the possibility of their expulsion. Hedesires the construction of a static society onthe principles of the ancien r gime. He thusmakes the object of the state essentially conser-vation. Just as the family provides society withits members, so does the state aim at the pres-ervation of peace between them. But to that endit has need of an instrument. It has to preventthe conflict of individual wills from resulting in

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the destruction of the body politic. It has to seeto it that a continuous progress is made towardsthe realisation of those necessary relations thatare the declaration of the will of God. It is noteasy to mistake their nature; for all Bonald hasreally attempted in their statement is to idealisethat which the Revolution came to deny. If hehas succeeded in concealing his particularismin a fine cloud of apparent abstractions, that doesnot hide the fact that it is a particular problemhe has in mind. The “constituted” society uponwhich he lays so much emphasis may be one inwhich “necessary relationships” are observed;but what Bonald means by “necessary relation-ship” is simply an obedience to his prejudices. A“nonconstituted society” is but one that hasstriven to work out its own political salvation,and in the process has discovered that there aretruths of which even the great Bossuet did notdream.

He is at any rate right in the assertion that so-ciety is given and that since it is given it mustbe organised. For whatever society is, an incho-ate and discrete mass it is not. The fundamen-tal question of politics is thus a problem in themethod of organisation. What is the nature ofsovereignty? Why should one man rule over an-other? Bonald sees clearly enough that the prob-lem of sovereignty is not merely a question ofpower but also that, in some sort, it is a ques-tion where only the arguments of reason canapply. For him all theories of sovereignty reducethemselves, in the main, to two types. Men ruleeither by virtue of divine right or from the au-thority of a social contract. Bonald, of course,has no choice in such an alternative. Society isthe creation of God. Omnis potestas est a deo;and we may cease the vanity of argument. Poweris a social institution and the divinity of socialinstitutions is simply obvious. He has no pa-tience with the theory of a social contract.72 It isobvious to him that the idea not merely mostrepugnant but in truth most inconceivable tomen is that of their subjection to equals. It iscontrary to human psychology. Only where someare in the position of inferiors is there a willing-ness to accept so hard but so necessary a fact.Nor does he believe that a social contract can

arise before there is power; for a contract im-plies the idea of organisation and to organisationpower is already essential. That a social contractis impossible once the existence of power hasbeen admitted is of course obvious; for once it ispresent there is no longer that equality of sta-tus which permits of its institution on validterms.73

He urges the necessity of power because he isconvinced of its naturalness. It arises in societyjust as in a crowd it is always the custom forsome one man to take charge. He has no confi-dence in the disposition of a mass of men. It lacksdirection and wisdom. It cries out for a leader. Itcan only be transformed into a society whensomeone has given it functions to perform, or-ders to obey.74 Until then it will be found alwaysto be unhappy and in confusion. He urges thatthe primary desire of a people is for safety andthat it is their habit to seek for the leader whois most likely to secure it. The crowd without aleader is like a child without its parent. It lacksthe raison d’être of its existence.75 It has none ofthe elements of self-preservation. Power is thusthe offspring of necessity. There must be somemaster of men in order that men may be saved.

It cannot be denied that there is much of truthin such an attitude. But Bonald could not, ofcourse, fail to realise that he has done no morethan push his enquiry back rather than solve it.If all that society required was leadership, theusurpation of Napoleon would be justified. Theproblem clearly has been that of the organisationof power. The need is to discover the seat of anauthority which must be postulated as essen-tial to existence.

Bonald’s answer to this question has in it butlittle originality. His theory of politicalorganisation is little more than a restatementof Bossuet’s, but of a Bossuet whom the Revolu-tion has made a little plaintive and almost tragi-cally unreal. He starts out from two fundamen-tal principles. Princes are the ministers of God.76

They are the ministers of God, no doubt, thattheir position may be unassailable by a bour-geoisie which has listened to the blasphemies of

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Rousseau. And it is because they are the minis-ters of God that their interests are at one withthose of the people. For the welfare of the stateis essentially an unity, which transcends thewelfare of particular members. Here, clearly, hehas the opportunity to slay the obvious facts ofsocial life with the amazing abstractness of hispassion for the trinity. Since the cause is to themeans as the means is to the effect that rela-tionship must be discovered in political society,and, desiring its presence, he has no difficultyin finding it. King, minister, subject—these arethe obvious triad which gives supreme power tothe prince.77 It gives supreme power; and, for itsmaintenance, there is clearly required heredi-tary kingship on the one hand, and hereditarynobility on the other. They are required becausethey are naturally good. They are naturally goodbecause they have been tested by the experienceof time. They are good because without themthere would be anarchy. The absolutism of thecrown is essential, in fact, to the unity of thestate.78 Society, like an organism, is one, and,being one, it can have only a single head. Oneman must therefore dominate lest all menshould be destroyed.

He can therefore reject that division of powerswhich Montesquieu had postulated as the safe-guard of liberty.79 He can reject it for the goodreason that he does not believe in liberty. Hewill, indeed, accept Montesquieu’s dictum thatpower is the general will of the state; but he ar-gues that the will of the state must necessarilybe single, and that it can aim at no more thanself-preservation. So to limit it is to obviate thedanger that the fascinating questions discussedby Montesquieu should fall within the purviewof his thought. He realised clearly enough thatMontesquieu was entirely out of sympathy withthe ancien r gime and that his speculationstended to its dissolution. He believed that theseparation of powers was the dogma most hos-tile to the unification of sovereignty. He saw thatonce men were prepared to parcel it out the re-sult must inevitably be an implicitly federalisedstate. But such a political organisation tendedto the republicanism which his experience of theRevolution led him to identity with impiety. To

separate powers was to confound them. To sepa-rate powers was to give a handle to every dissi-dent element in the state. When Louis XVI sum-moned the States-General he committed exactlythis error; and he paid the penalty with his life.What Montesquieu thus attempted was, in hiseyes, the provision of a permanent basis for royalexecution and he was compelled to reject hisphilosophy.

The fundamental tenet in his creed is thus thenature he ascribes to sovereign power. He was aworshipper of its unity because the experienceof its opposite had been fatal to the ideas he mostdeeply cherished. It can never be too greatlyemphasised that the thought of Bonald was vir-tually completed in 1796. There is nothing inhis last work which is not, at least impliedly, inhis first. Neither the history of the Napoleonicadventure—after all, the practical expression ofhis attitude—nor the tragic misapprehensionsof Charles X in any wise altered his outlook. Hecared for nothing save stability. He naturallyadmired the environment of his time, and hesought the conditions of its permanence. He con-ceived that an unified absolutism would achievethat end because under Louis XIV his ideals hadfound a full expression. He believed that thereis no remedy for disorder save uniformity ofthought. Men had to be kept in subjection be-cause the price of their freedom was too im-mense. It is, of course, a common enough atti-tude. We have ourselves, for the most part, doneno more than transfer from king to state his erst-while divinity. The king’s need has become raisond’état and we have simply multiplied the basisof sovereignty80 Bonald would have urged theinherent error of such a policy on the groundthat it was unworkable. He saw in the free ex-pression of opinion the conditions of misfortune.Where men begin to question he could not doubtthat they begin also to destroy. For they ques-tion essentially that they may reconstruct, andthe method implies a period of disturbance. Tol-eration is thus the negation of order.81 Sover-eignty cannot be dispersed simply because itcannot then be exercised. To disperse it is tomake it fable; and the possibility of error is theexcuse for anarchy.

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This, indeed, is his generalisation from the ex-perience of the eighteenth century. When it ques-tioned traditional institutions it overthrewthem.82 Little by little it exacted from the crownthe instruments of power. The admission to po-litical privilege of the Hugenots in 1788 was thedestruction of religious uniformity. The sum-mons of the States-General two years later gaveto the unrealised welter of accumulated griev-ance the power which translated it into action.For the States-General was a human institution;and where its advice was neglected, its pridestirred it to compulsion. Where before order hadbeen possible, the doubt Louis had cast on hisright to the full exercise of his sovereign powermeant that jealous men would usurp it. To him,in fact, every event in the Revolution is the logi-cal result of that single error. Once loosen thestrict bonds of power and there is no check tothe passions of men. Here, clearly, he feels likeDe Maistre, that the executioner is the corner-stone of society. And he emphasises the virtuesof tradition exactly for this purpose. Men can-not venerate what is new, because where theyunderstand they are sceptical. But venerationis the corollary of obedience. The unity of powerhas behind it all the over-mastering sense ofantiquity. It is the one dogma of governmentwhich has survived. It is the one dogma whichhas received the continuous respect of men.Moreover, it alone is the basis of solidarity. Thevery fact that there is only one elevation to whichnone save the sovereign can pretend creates acommon bond of interest between men. It setsoutside the range of ambitious exertion the hopeswhich may inspire social discontent. It keepssociety ordered neatly in ranks and stations byurging men to fulfil the duties to which theirclass and birth traditionally call them. It sug-gests that necessary interdependence of func-tion which keeps the minds of men from stray-ing into dangerous paths. Its very neatness sug-gests to the majority a disharmony in novelty ofoutlook. It is thus a guarantee of social peace.The king wills; and his command is binding uponevery element in the body politic. There is thusgenerated a perception of equality which has allthe advantages and none of the inherent dan-gers which a pluralistic sovereignty possesses.

To say that the king is absolute sovereign is not,of course, to postulate an arbitrary tyrant. Here,again, the origin of his thought is the specula-tion of Bossuet. Just as the latter was endeav-ouring to find a justification for theabsorptiveness of Louis XIV, so was Bonald at-tempting to show that absolutism is not an ex-cuse for the accusation of arbitrary power. Arbi-trary power was, for him, a power exercised in-dependently of the necessary laws of socialorganisation. It was the power of one who, likeNapoleon, sought his own good and failed tomake it coincident with the good of France. Ab-solute power is exercised for the benefit of thepeople. It is the instrument by which laws inconformity with the will of God are promulgated.Here, obviously, is a defence against their de-generation into tyranny. For if the object of ab-solute power is no more than the translation intolegislative terms of the will of God, the functionof the king is not creative but declaratory. He isthus in no sense omnipotent. He is limited bythe laws of his being. And he finds the laws it ishis duty to declare not by any inherent revela-tion, but by the research of reason on the onehand, and by a selection among existing insti-tutions on the other.83 The king will continuallyexercise his mind on the problem of politicalorganisation. He will search out among theachievements of men those which have the bet-ter contributed to social improvement. Here is asource of the wisdom by which such a politicalorder may find its justification. For since this isan order of reason the people may themselvesdiscover the wisdom of its enactments. Nor doesBonald, on the whole, have any fear that abso-lutism may degenerate. A wise ruler, he urges,will immediately preceive the harmony of inter-est between himself and his subjects, and hispolicy will of necessity adjust itself to the en-richment of their common purpose. He insists,moreover, on the importance of realising that theuniverse is teleological. There is behind it themighty and beneficent purpose of its maker. Tothat all institutions and all men are, in the end,subordinate. So that ultimately good may beexpected even from bad institutions. Social de-fect is self-curative by the inspiration it affordsto a reaction from its errors. Nor does the king

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stand alone. It must never be forgotten that thereexists the ministerial body through which theking acts. He has the benefit of their advice andof their criticism. They can warn him of impend-ing dangers. They can urge him against unwisecourses. Society has thus given itself an admi-rable and self-regulating check against kinglyerror.84

Not that, in any case, kingly error would justifydeposition.85 The good Bonald glows with pas-sionate indignation at the mere thought of itspossibility. If our king is a bad king we mustendure him. An attitude of hopeful resignationis alone possible to Christians. For to admit therectitude of deposition is to admit the justice ofsocial scepticism. It is to admit a virtue to thatwhich destroys. It is to give to jealous men thehope of a share in power by enabling them tomisrepresent motive and achievement for theirown base purposes. The institution of kingshipis divine, and to allow men to question it is toallow them to doubt the work of God. It is thiswhich makes him insist also on the necessity ofhereditary monarchy. Where the succession tothe throne is at the outset guaranteed, we havean assurance of stability. We have that fore-knowledge of events which is a safeguard againstinterested schemers. Not only is primogeniturenatural—how otherwise could it be of so mar-vellous an antiquity—but it is a vital assuranceof continuity in national life. To deny it is to ad-mit the roots of division within the state. Hereasonably points to Poland as an instance ofthe paralysis which results from an elective sys-tem.86 There, power has been in fact divided andthe fate of Poland is the measure of its error.There is no surety for existence without inte-gration. To establish beforehand the natural or-der of events is clearly to minimise the dangersof transition.

The whole purpose of these elaborate safeguardsis obvious enough. Bonald has been impressedby the diverse aims the will of man can encom-pass, and he searches the means to minimisethe disharmony of their interplay. That whichhe most greatly fears is the influence of unor-thodox opinion.87 He regarded democracy as per

se an effort after political defiance which seeksto transfer power to itself. But the weapon ofdemocracy is discussion and from discussion isborn intellectual perversity. “Avec des mots,” hewrote,88 “on pervertira la raison des peuples;”and propaganda he thus did not hesitate tobrand as sin. He denied,89 indeed, that the in-fluence of the press can secure the passage ofgreat measures. For not only do they consistentlymisinterpret a public opinion that they do notunderstand, but they serve only to darken coun-sel and so to hinder action. A censorship of thepress is thus a necessity that power may haveadequate protection.90 Only in this way can menof evil disposition be prevented from attackingevery necessary institution of society. “Ces jeunesanonymes,” he wrote scornfully,91 “.... exploitentà leur profit, et comme une industrie ou unepropriet patrimoniale la religion, legouvernement, les lois, l’administration.” Theyerect their private opinion into the will of thestate and are thus the very harbingers of revo-lution. Control of opinion is then no more thanthe paternal regard of the Crown for the wel-fare of its subjects. It has had brilliant resultsand antagonism to it he ascribes to the insen-sate pride of malicious spirits. Nor does hedoubt92 that all liberty is in fact simply the con-cession of instituted Power which may set theterms of reason to its benevolence. To him93 thewhole demand for the right of discussion underthe Restoration was simply the inevitable con-sequence of that representative government in-stituted by the Charter of 1814. For, as he urges,94

the result of that measure is to inaugurate arivalry between royalty and the populace forpower. It is an endeavour of the other to usurpwhat it has no right to retain. It has a tragicoutcome. It results in the creation of two pow-ers and hence of two societies. They cannot livein tranquillity within the same state, and thedisturbance from which France suffers is theeffect of their collision. He looks back regret-fully95 to the times of the Grand Monarch whenunity of political outlook was the first law of life.He mentions96 with the tenderness of affection-ate agreement the custom of the Roman Senatewhich was wont to banish those philosopherswhose theories threatened the harmony of the

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state. They realised the fundamental truth heis here concerned to inculcate97 that society per-ishes not by the absence of truth—that is at thebasis of social existence—but by the presence oferror. The nourishment of man is his ideas, andto allow him free access to a food that has notbeen examined is to run the risk of social poi-soning.98 “Un crit dangereux,” he declared withpassion,99 “est une declaration de guerre à toutel’Europe;” and it was no more than an obviousduty to suppress it.

Freedom is thus a dangerous chimera and rem-edies against its pursuit must be found. It is fora return to the ancient ways that he is mostdeeply concerned. The misfortunes of Francehave come because her king abandoned the natu-ral path of royalty.100 They bowed before the erec-tion of a system and the consequence is theirsubmission to its continuous examination. Suchan endeavor to reduce to written form the ele-ments of social life seems to him profoundly er-roneous. Popularisation he always held as agrave danger for it prevented the unification ofopinion. To write out the basis of government isto defeat the end for which it was made. Troubleis the eldest child of knowledge. He puts his trustrather in a decent mystery which alone makespossible an adequate veneration. To write theconstitution is to tempt the passions of men. Itis to suggest that there are limits to the royalpower. It is to tell the people that certain rightsare theirs by nature and they will have no senseof proportion in their demands. For royalty hedemands an invisibility and an omnipresence.101

In business and pleasure alike the ways of kingsmust be mysterious and hidden. Bonald evenblames lightly the action of Louis XIV in appear-ing publicly at the fêtes of Versailles; while he iscertain that the raillery of Marie-Antoinettemade the pleasures of the Court insupportableto the mass of men. The king must try102 ad-equately to mirror the divinity of which he is animage. He must be simple, severe, dignified. Hisnobility must cease103 that vain pursuit of titleswhich incites jealousy without invoking respect.It must instead set itself to the creation of a rev-erence for the solemn fact of power.104 Unlessthat is done, the destroying angel of envy will

cast its baneful influence over France. But tothis end one means alone is at all adequate andeffective.

VI. The Religious Aspect of the StateReligious passion was the supreme influence ofBonald’s life. Only in its acceptance could he seethat elevation of heart and loftiness of spiritwhich are the basic conditions of progress.105 Thepeople that respects religion is a happy people,for it is certain to respect authority. Religion hebelieved to be essential to the intellectual satis-faction of man, for otherwise its universality wasinexplicable.106 Only by reason of the assump-tions it makes can the world be understood. EvenRousseau admitted it to be essential;107 andBonald seeks no further justification. When thedevil admits the worth of right, good men haveno more duty than its translation into action.

Religion for him was the basis of political sta-bility. It helps the statesman by its insistenceon moral ideas. It gives birth to a standard ofconduct. It gives a definite context to the vagueideas of right and wrong which results in a testof action. It creates justice by its emphasis onthe necessity of applying its standard to the factsof life. This a priori test, indeed, he deems themost valuable preservative of the social order.For when one deals in a mystic absolute the timefor discussion has passed. We cannot waste ourtime in argument against the decrees of God;and it is their support that Bonald brings to hisideal of the state. He brings it because his orderis divinely ordained and he desires the sanctionof God for his canons of political wisdom. He doesnot, of course, lack texts to prove his point; buthis scholasticism is more profound than the su-perficial casuistry of quotation. He is satisfiedthat no good man can be without religion. Helooks upon religion as the sole sanction of moralactivity. Clearly, therefore, he must make reli-gion interchangeable with politics. What in so-ciety man above all needs is that which will en-able him to bear the burden of life. His troublesare so vast and so manifold, that consolation isessential if he is to find them supportable. Onlyreligion can assuage his cares. It softens the dis-harmonies of social existence by directing the

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interests of men rather to the life that is to comethan to the life that is. It gives to politics thebasis of a necessary mythopoiesis. It acts, in fact,as a social chloroform to dull the hearts of menagainst the pain of truth. It is the justificationof the present by its reference to a divine past.So is it a preventive against discontent.

Religion, of course, means the Roman Catholicreligion. Protestantism, by its very definition, isfatal to these mighty purposes. It is out of ac-cord with the realities of sovereignty. Lutheranideals beget oligarchy, and Calvinism the gov-ernment of Geneva. Each, in fact, destroys theunity which is the essence of a monarchic sys-tem. Such forms of faith are for him comparableonly to that pleasant feeling of internal satis-faction which Rousseau mistook for religion. Itstrue basis is the fundamental fact of sacrifice.108

Its true basis is the tacit acceptance of your en-vironment even though that acceptance givepain. Religion is thus pre-eminently social, forthe necessity of sacrifice is born from the fact ofsociety.

The object of religion is clearly to repress theevil and individualist passions of men, to makethem capable thereby of social existence. Onlythe Catholic faith can do this at all adequatelybecause only the Catholic faith is truly one. Itinsists on the repression of the individual will.It has only a single sovereign, since that whichthe pope commands is at once universal law.Obedience to his command is the basis of mem-bership of his church. So that Catholicism doesnot follow the fatal path of Luther and of Calvin.It forbids man to think for himself. It prescribesthe belief he may alone accept. It thus secureswithin itself the constant exercise of that gen-eral will of which the operation is the conditionof social permanence. Religion, for Bonald, isthus a training in social conduct. It is the greatdefender of society. By teaching men resignation,by preventing them from following the will o’the wisp of their private intellectual whim, itsafeguards the maintenance of principle. It thusinteracts with the state. There is very clearly ajoint relation between two institutions so obvi-ously complementary in character. Civilised so-

ciety, indeed, is simply religion in its politicalaspect. It is religion considered in its humanemphasis.

If that is true, then Bonald cannot doubt thatreligion must be the guiding factor in the state.109

Religion has given to the state the assistancewhich makes its life possible. Religion must thenbe restored to its erstwhile sovereignty over men.The chief cause of political decay is the contemptwhich evil men have poured upon it for theirown base purposes. The obvious policy of enlight-ened government is to restore it to the fullnessof its power.110 Such a restoration would posit asaxiomatic the principles of his faith. Educationwould minister to its needs. It would preach thegospel of duty and therein find the sanction oftradition. It is Catholicism alone, in fact, whichhas the sure proof of excellence which comesfrom antiquity. It alone has preached an un-changing social doctrine. To ensure its domi-nance is to give to France the religion most inaccord with her history. Tradition associatesFrench glory with Catholic success and its re-habilitation would give to the throne the proudweight of its incomparable power.

He would go even further. He would not permitthe existence of more than one religion in a coun-try. So to do is to destroy the fundamental unitywhich Catholicism predicates. Without identityof belief the gate is open for civil war; but wheremen think alike the tragedy of dissident actionis impossible. Intolerance is thus essential to hisoutlook, and, like Lamennais in the earlier phaseof his thought, he saw no distinction betweentoleration and indifference. To allow the preach-ing of other faiths was for him only to proclaimthat you are uncertain of the truth about yourown. Men tolerate only where they do not love.Those who have firm hold of Catholic truth knowthat its alternative is unthinkable. For once Prot-estantism is given a foothold, it treads the prim-rose path to anarchy. Men cease then to believein the necessity of sacrifice, and the vauntingpride of jealous ambition strikes a fatal blow atthe solidarity of the political fabric. Only intol-erance, in fact, makes possible the “philosophiede nous” with which he proposed to replace the

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egocentric creed of Voltaire and of Rousseau.111

In this aspect, of course, nothing was less wisethan the Edict of Nantes, nothing more politicthan its reversal. For the edict split the Frenchstate into two irreconcilable halves and de-stroyed the unity of power. Richelieu’s attentionwas diverted from the necessities of foreign warsimply because he could not depend on the sup-port of the people. The seed of opposition hadbeen planted and La Rochelle was its harvest-ing.

He has thus a simple and mechanical view ofthe interaction between religion and politics.“Quand il (le pouvoir) manque d’un côté” hewrote,112 “il en faut d’avantage d’un autre.” Re-lax the bonds of religious discipline and he didnot doubt that the result would be written inthe records of crime. And religion is the real basisof all because it gives the sentiment to men uponwhich their fortitude is founded. It bids them dotheir duty, where, otherwise, they would not hesi-tate to act from motives of self-interest. It thusdraws men’s minds to the great end. It insistson their social context. It points to unity as theplain object of their endeavour. It is favourableto monarchy by that very reason. But unity isalways in danger of attack from malicious am-bition. That is why liberty of thought, no less inpolitics than in religion, must be restrained.113

The really intelligent man is he who knows thatwhat he preaches is so supremely important thathe will permit no divergence from his opinion.Enlightenment for him is only the subjectiveaspect of intolerance, and Bonald did not doubtthat he was enlightened. And because he thoughtgovernment as necessary as food,114 he welcomedreligion as a means of stimulation where theappetite might otherwise be lacking. The Catho-lic religion became in this aspect the more vitalsince it alone insisted that the source of nour-ishment must be single. So convinced was he ofthe virtue of the unity it so rigidly prescribedthat he found the sovereign safeguard ofcivilisation in the return of Protestants to theCatholic fold.115 Otherwise, it was clear, thepower of the world would continue to be divided.But power was to be compared to a seamlesstunic which cannot be torn asunder.116

Very clearly, what he was eager to discover wasthe sovereign remedy against thought. He wel-comed the Catholic religion simply because itrendered all speculation a superfluity. It askedmen only to believe and it named faith the proud-est of the virtues. He genuinely feared the dec-laration of principles founded upon intelligentenquiry. To give privileges was to admit rightsand to admit rights was to extend them. So thatonce reason was set to work there was an end tothe stability of the state. The religion that madeof reason an unnecessary luxury was thus natu-rally in accord with his temper. “Le seul allié,”he wrote,117 “dont la France ait le désir et lebesoin (est) le pouvoir.” But, for Bonald, to putone’s trust in God was to accept the existingworld as necessary perfect because it was thedivine handiwork. To preach Catholicism wasthus to steel men’s hearts against thought and,as a consequence, to turn them away from revo-lution. Wisdom and religion became thus politi-cally interchangeable terms. The only charternecessary to a well-constructed state was thecharter of religious enthusiasm. It makes apeople prosperous and happy, above all, it makesthem contented and peaceful. The one object ofthe state must then be its promotion. The gov-ernment which has not learned this lesson isalready doomed, and has become the accomplicein its own destruction.118 But a state that is wed-ded to religion has discovered the secret of per-manence. It has destroyed all doubt of itself. Ithas attached to its existence the emotion of ne-cessity. It has woven itself into the stuff of othermen’s lives.

VII. CriticismsTo such an attitude the Revolution of 1830 sup-plied the only possible answer. But it suppliedan answer which, apart from its possibility, wasat the same time decisive. For it showed clearlyenough that whatever the Revolution of 1789had failed to achieve, it had at any rate mademen out of temper with despotism. The monar-chy of the Restoration had not concealed its sym-pathy with Bonald’s ideas. The spasmodic at-tempts it had made after the pale ghost of anattenuated liberalism did not in any way destroyits essential continuity with the ancien r gime.

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It even butchered the Charter to make a theo-cratic holiday and the men of Paris turned oncemore lightly to their barricades. For it is uselessto answer unreason with reason. A spiritualprejudice can only be eradicated by the spectacleof passionate events. That which it attacks isthe very basis of all that cannot be harmonisedwith its dogma and to the protests of the spiritthe spirit alone can fling its ringing reply.

The detailed criticism of Bonald’s ideas, in fact,would be an useless task. What he represents isnot a system but an attitude. What he repre-sents is the intellectualism of vivid emotionsrealised in a fashion peculiarly intimate andkeen. He could never change his principles, and,indeed, he made proud boast that the world ofpolitics is a changeless world which knows nei-ther spring nor autumn.119 His temperament wastoo unyielding to permit him the understand-ing of political philosophy. His mind was tragi-cally inflexible. One who could see the Revolu-tion and the Restoration unmoved was assur-edly not created for the tasks of statesmanship.Sainte-Beuve, in an illuminating passage,120 hascompared him to a Roman of the ancient time,and the analogy explains much. For what fun-damentally interested Bonald was character andby character he meant the strength to accept agiven environment. His life was an unceasingprotest against any effort after change. Themeaning of intellectual or moral aspiration wasunknown to him. All he could do was to postu-late his principles and he attained them by thehypostatisation of his public passions. The manwho could honestly believe that the exile of theBourbon was God’s punishment121 on France forits national sin was assuredly unfitted to copewith the practical questions of so sensitive atime. He did not realise that the Revolution hadmarked an epoch in the history of man. Becausehe was able to blot it out of his thought and goback to the golden days of Louis XIV he imag-ined that others, too would forget. That theywould choose to remember seems never to haveentered his mind. That Rousseau might in facthave been more than a poetic will o’ the wispwho spent fine phrases on inadequate thoughthe would not for one moment contemplate. The

Revolution attacked the fundamental prejudicesof his heart—religion and kingship—and allwith which it was connected he came to regardas tainted at its source. He had, in any case, anarrow and unyielding mind. His letters revealthe courteous pedant who goes through life likea footman at a court function. For it must beadmitted that there is something of the servitorin Bonald’s nature. Honest, incorruptible, ear-nest—all these he may have been. No one candoubt that he felt deeply and had pondered muchon the fundamental questions. But he was tooeasily content with the life he found to have thecourage to examine its rectitude. He mistook hiscountry estate for the Garden of Eden and theRevolution seemed to him little less than theexpulsion from Paradise. He had been schooledseverely by church and state. The pupil of theOratorians and the royal guard never forgot thetraining he had received. Everything he wrotewas conceived in full dress and wears the air ofhaving been written in the ante-room of a royallevée. He has none of the light touch of deMaistre so that his words, if they are sharp, arenot yet winged.122 There are few instances in thehistory of political ideas of so able a man beingso completely deceived as to the character of hisage. He differs from de Maistre in that the lat-ter, as his pessimism revealed, was essentiallyhurling a protest at a thing for which he couldfeel nothing save hate. But Bonald is optimistic,and if he does not spare the Revolution he hasno doubt whatever of the curative effect of hisremedies.

His simplicity, in fact, is the sole cause of hischarm. That he was proposing the bitterness ofdespotism to a people which had enjoyed thefruit of liberty he seems in nowise to haverealised. It did not in the least move him thatthe men he attacked should have written bookswhich commanded the profound respect of ablemen. He had so childlike a faith in the nobilityof his cause that he did not hesitate to ascribedisagreement to malicious egoism. He did notsee that his king and his God could no longerexert the old fascination. He did not see that adynasty which had mounted the scaffold lostthereon the secret of its superiority, that a Pope

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who had suffered imprisonment thereby pro-claimed his desertion by the God of whom hewas the appointed vicar. The old watchwords hadlost their magic. They had been dulled into ar-gument and they could not justify themselvesby debate. Whatever it had failed to achieve, theRevolution had taught men the splendour ofspeculation. It had become an impossible taskto preach that thought was disease.

It is true that Bonald had the past on his side. Itis true that the experiment against which he sopassionately inveighed had all the danger ofnovelty. But because he clung so tenaciously tohis traditions he shut himself off from the fu-ture. What in hard fact he was demanding wassimply that the system which satisfied his emo-tions should be the accepted method of govern-ment. What he entirely failed to perceive wasthe still more indubitable fact that the majorityof thinking men in France were dissatisfied withthat system. It seems never to have entered hismind that there might have been cause for theRevolution. If Taine condemned it no less whole-heartedly, he had at any rate adventured somesort of examination.123 It is not necessary toetherealise the Revolution like Michelet to per-ceive how inevitably it is the consequence of thesystem for which Bonald stood sponsor. He sawthat system given a second trial; and he did notin the least understand how tragically it re-peated its old errors. The simple truth is thatwith the march of mind absolute government isnecessarily anachronistic. The will of man is anindividual will; and it sweeps into the generalwill only to the point where the degree of fusionmakes possible a social existence. But even whileit accepts it questions and by its doubts it dis-solves. So that, in any final analysis, democraticgovernment is the only practical governmentsimply because it is only in a democracy that anindividual will can safeguard its reserves.124

No man, in fact, will live a life ordered for himfrom without unless the state of which he is parthas accepted a swine-philosophy. It has beati-fied order at the expense of thought. It has en-deavoured to give men the minimum basis ofmaterial satisfaction and dignified their acqui-

escence by the name of citizenship. But that isnot merely a stunted ideal; it is also an impos-sible experience. A state may have every per-quisite of sovereign power. It is yet the clear les-son no less of history than of philosophy thatthe basis of sovereignty is the opinion of men.That was why, in the end, even the emperor ofthe great Roman kingdom came to depend uponthe chance whim of his obscure soldiery. Thatwas why, also, the word of an unknown monkcommanded a respect and exerted an influencewhich shook to its foundations the proud edificeof papal power. Continuous order is the expres-sion less of peace than of death. The Pax Romanawas less the measure of civilisation than of ste-rility; and there came a time when men exer-cised their right to pick and choose among itsbenefits. What every unique sovereignty willsooner or later attempt is the control of mind.Yet it is equally certain that sooner or later itwill exert its effort after control by the materialpacification of men. But liberty has her compen-sations; and the result of that very pacificationis the stimulus to intellectual effort. The menwho have been fed into peace are nourished intoexamination. The offspring of food is revolution.

Bonald made the mistake which has been fatalto every system of politics thus far in history.He took no account of the progress of mind. Heassumed an abstract man and confounded himwith men.125 It is a mistake as easy as it is di-sastrous; for every abstract creation becomes itscreator’s Frankenstein. Men somehow refuse toaccept the categories in which philosopherswould chain them. Their world, whether for goodor evil, is a dynamic world; and they accept nomoment in history as its apogee. But the resultof such kinesis is clearly to make every politicalideal adequate only for the moment when it isformulated, insofar as it is a system which claimsa practical application. And because men arevarious they move in varied direction. Their ef-fort is different and their interpretations of liferefuse reduction to a single scheme. The resultis to demand a system of government of whichthe essential condition is the distribution ofpower. Political good refuses the swaddling-clothes of finality and becomes a shifting con-

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ception. It can not be hegelianised into a per-manent compromise. It asks the validation ofmen and actions in terms of historical experi-ence. For whatever history is not, the ancientswere right when they insisted that it is philoso-phy by example. And since each age has differ-ent memories, there is no constancy of form orsubstance possible over, at any rate, long peri-ods of time. Everything that is systematisedbecomes a category that is capable of decay. Thepeasant of Norman England who saw himselfbound to the soil assuredly did not dream thatone day there would be an England wherein thelaw would know neither bond nor slave; yet wewho analyse the course of those events in whichhe played a part recognise the inevitability ofthe process. The king’s will is law only so far asmen will consent to its exercise. The king’s willis law in the France of the ancien r gime; butthose men who in the summer days of 1789 gath-ered in the tennis-court of Versailles knew howlightly a monistic sovereignty is founded. Bonaldmay have been right in his contempt for all whowere not of his order; he may have ground forhis worship of Bourbon kings. The church inwhich alone he believed salvation to be foundmay in fact have possessed an exclusive right toits conference. Yet the world believed none ofthese things, and because it disbelieved, histheory of the state was no more than the empti-est of dreams. His social philosophy drew itsimportance from the fact that it summed up avital epoch in the history of government. It ex-plains, even if it does not justify, the effort of theRevolution. It makes intelligible the watchwordsand the achievement of the nineteenth century.It shows why men had ceased to be satisfied withthe formulae of absolutism. For it is at war withevery permanent reality of human life.

VIII. The Revival of TraditionalismThe dead still speak, as M. de Vogué has aptlyreminded us;126 and the doctrines of Bonald havefound a curious revivification in our time.127 Theage when it was permissible to adore the revo-lution passed away with the Franco-Germanwar; and with its scientific interpretation a de-cisive challenge was flung at the pretensions ofdemocracy. The authoritarian tradition, in fact,

is far from dead; and it is only within the mostrecent times that the Third Republic has wonthe secure confidence of the French people. Eventoday its claims are rejected by thinkers of nolight significance. To them it represents an in-tellectual attitude not merely distasteful, buteven out of accord with the facts of social life.They look upon the Revolution as the startingpoint of the democratic adventure. They acceptthe enquiries of M. Taine as authentic history,128

and they have not hesitated to condemn the fun-damental dogmas for which it stands. The ideaof national sovereignty appears to them a fla-grant mistake, and as a consequence, they havebeen driven back to the ancien r gime. It is inthe idealisation of its political formulae that theysearch the avenue of social salvation. They denythe validity of the democratic state. For them, itresults in a partition of power which is waste-ful. It makes pretence to an egalitarianism fun-damentally incapable of realisation. It allies it-self to a febrile nationalism which is no morethan the momentary confidence born of a pre-mature faith in the possibilities of science. Thethings they believe essential to the right order-ing of society—religion, unity of power inequal-ity, the mysticism of faith—all these they rightlyperceive are out of accord with the traditions ofdemocratic régime.129 The transformation of themodern state thus seems to them fraught withthe gravest dangers to its welfare. It is the spirit,at any rate, of Bonald; and few things have amore curious interest than this renewed enthu-siasm for his dogmas.

Historically, indeed, the bond of intellectual fili-ation is logical and clear. The traditionalist andultramontane schools exercised upon Combe theprofoundest influence; and positivism, accord-ingly, had no sympathy with democracy. He be-lieved in the value of integrated organisation;and it was from that starting-point that he be-gan his assault upon individualism. He wasimpressed, like Bonald, with the inequalities ofmen; and in the distribution of power he saw itsdissolution. Liberty seemed to him the most fa-tal of errors, and the yearning for it no morethan a disease of the Western mind. He equatedliberty with anarchy, and the Declaration of

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Rights he dismissed as private metaphysics. Hedesired a science of experimental politics andits criteria of good were to be based upon thestatus quo.130 When there was added to his quasi-scientific contempt for individualism, his wor-ship of order and of unity the materials for themodern protest were already prepared. But tohis analysis the illusions of the Franco-Germanwar added the pessimism of Taine and the subtlepyrrhonisms of Renan.131 The corner-stones ofthat edifice the nineteenth century had so pa-tently erected seemed thus to be overthrown. Itthen seemed legitimate to go back to an era un-troubled by the necessity of accepting democ-racy as axiomatic.

It is this restoration which modern traditional-ism has effected; and if the assault has been con-fined to a small group of thinkers it is impos-sible to deny the ability with which it has beenmade. Historical circumstances, moreover, havehelped it much. The last twenty-five years haveseen a steady decline in the vitality of parlia-mentary government.132 The struggle against thechurch, the development of a labour party hos-tile to the state, the patent deficiencies of thecivil administration, the relation between thearmy and the fanatic clericals have all combinedto throw the most unworthy characteristics of abourgeois democracy into its ugliest perspective.Even the stoutest defenders of the Republic havebeen eager for the adoption of new methods, forthe discovery of a more effective synthesis. Inthe result, it has not been difficult to constructa case against the accepted axioms of democraticgovernment. The science which overthrew theantiquated theology of the ancien r gime erectedno adequate system in its place. The politicalmethods of modern government were found tobe worthless instruments so long as they werenot based upon the simultaneous possession ofeconomic power.133 The spread of popular educa-tion achieved far less than had been predictedfor it. In the consequent disillusion protest wasinevitable. Nothing was easier, and nothing wasmore natural, than to reject the political theoryof the Revolution. But where the protest failedwas in its inability to understand—as Bonaldfiled to understand—that the true course was

rather to utilise the experience of the nineteenthcentury and to temper it by logical innovationthan to dismiss the experience of a hundredyears. The disillusion was less disgust than dis-satisfaction; and it was not difficult to perceivethat to the majority of men the cure for demo-cratic failure was more democracy. However uglymight be the perversion of its forms it still, formost, at any rate, wore an aspect more politi-cally acceptable than that of any other system.The distress which gave rise to renewed enquirywas born rather from a realisation of the even-tual certainties of democracy, an impatience withits hesitations, than from any thoroughgoingrejection of its postulates. But those who deniedits adequacy had at the least a superficial basisfor their attack.

It is perhaps not surprising that it is from menof letters rather than from students of politicsthat the assault has mainly come; and they havetherein finely maintained the great French tra-dition of making criticism a commentary uponlife. What is fundamentally important in theirattitude has been best represented by Brunetièreand Bourget. M. Bruneti re, indeed, is less a po-litical than a moral analyst, and less an analystthan a superb master of intellectual controversy;and it is rather with the moral implications thanwith the political structure of democracy thathe has been concerned. He represents essentiallythe reaction against the scientific movement ofthe nineteenth century, and what he has bril-liantly performed is the relentless examinationof its claims. But he has never forgotten thatscience and democracy are twin sisters; and hiscriticism of the one has been, in fact, a veiledassault upon the other. M. Bourget seems almosta reincarnation of Bonald—of a Bonald, indeed,who has read his Comte and his Darwin, andemulated the literary charm of Joseph deMaistre. He has occupied himself with the po-litical foundations of the modern state, and hehas attempted to undermine them by meanswhich Bonald would assuredly not have rejected.Nor has able assistance been wanting to theirenquiry. With every virtue except moderationand clear-sightedness M. Maurras seems to havebeen endowed; and his ruthless polemic has

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given birth to a school of thought which is doingnothing so much as the reinterpretation of theancien régime in terms of modern life.134 M.Barrés has lent the support of his delicate na-tionalism to the reaction; and what his work haslacked in vigour and power has been more thancompensated by the clearness and sincerity ofits expression.135 The conversion of M. Lemaîtreto this school is only the most striking of manysimilar changes.136 It is hardly too much to saythat the protagonists of the reaction remainunequalled in France for the power with whichtheir cause has been advocated.

Complete unity of purpose, indeed, the tradition-alists cannot be said to possess. They are agreedrather upon what they deny than upon theiraffirmations. The pagan eclecticism of M.Maurras can hardly live in permanent comfortwith the strict religious orthodoxy of M. Bourget;nor has the religious doctrine of either any nec-essary or coherent connexion with the positiv-ist Catholicism of Bruneti re. But a school ofthought they have been able to create, and thehypotheses for which they stand are a logicaland adequate whole. They derive, indeed, a cer-tain factitious interest from the political life ofmodern France. They are so passionately in an-tagonism to its fundamental outlines as to de-mand, almost of necessity, a careful examina-tion. Their ideas are the ideas of men who havenot hesitated to hold themselves aloof from aworld with which they feel no sympathy. Thereis a certain self-satisfaction in the completenessof their paradoxes which makes them again andagain willing to make a holocaust of truth thattheir logic may have her victories. But thereinthey are no more than true to the traditions theyrepresent. They elevate their desires into prin-ciples in the approved fashion of Bonald. Theyfollow their master in making their dissatisfac-tion with the age the foundation of their sys-tem. Every theory of the state, indeed, must insome degree be the expression of privatethought. But it has been in a special degree trueof traditionalism that it has, albeit unconsciously,apotheosised the subjective attitude. Its doc-trines have been singularly more personal thanthose of any other school. Insofar as that has

been the case, traditionalism has been, inevita-bly, a narrow and transient expression of dis-content. It has resulted in an reality which isentirely inadequate for the purpose of practicalpolitics. But a weakness for the real and theimpractical is perhaps one of the indulgencespermitted to the upholders of the theocratic sys-tem.

IX. The Traditionalism of M. BrunetièreThe starting-point of Brunetière’s attitude137

seems to have been his dissatisfaction with thenaturalism of the later nineteenth century.138 Inart and in letters alike, he found that the stan-dards of authority evolved in the classical pe-riod of French literature were no longer accepted.This absence of traditional criteria seemed tohim to result in dangerous consequences to so-cial life. Not only were the naturalists pessimis-tic in their general philosophy, but they had sur-rendered all interest in, and all effort after, moraljudgment. They became purely individualist inoutlook, and they proclaimed the worth of expe-rience for its own sake, without reference to itsmoral character. Their aesthetic was entirelysubjective, and they seemed to claim, at what-ever cost, the right to cultivate to the full theirown personality. They trod, in fact, the primrosepath to anarchy. Nor was this all. They did nothesitate to affirm that scientific progress hadjustified their pretensions. They were doing nomore than to claim for art and for literature theirright to the fullest enquiry. In rigidly scientificfashion, they were accumulating observationsupon life. They were largely indifferent to theconsequence of their examination; for it was notthe business of the scientist to concern himselfwith practice. It seemed to Brunetière in themost dangerous sense immoral and unrealisticthus to disregard the reaction of enquiry uponlife. It showed an absence of social feeling, a fail-ure to understand that it is the bonds, ratherthan the interstices of existence that must beemphasised. The lesson of the naturalists wouldloose the chains of social cohesion. The overthrowof this critical anarchism was the business ofevery thinker concerned for the welfare of thestate.

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But an examination of the basis of naturalismled him, obviously, to the discussion of its his-torical foundations.139 He could not hope to un-derstand its origins without going back to theeighteenth century. It was here, essentially, thatthe root of the trouble was to be found. Voltaire,Diderot, the Encyclopédists, these were the firstmen who had not hesitated to peer into everynook and cranny of the social fabric. For antiq-uity they had less a sense of reverence than ofdistaste. They had taught men to be dissatis-fied with their condition, and they had over-thrown the traditional foundations of society. Hecould not but compare the confusion of the eigh-teenth century with the meticulous sense of or-der so characteristic of the seventeenth century.He liked its air of neatness. He liked its confi-dence in objective standards of conduct. He wascharmed by its a priori lack of discontent. Theauthoritarianism of Bossuet, in particular, tookfast hold of his affections.140 He began to traceback to its influence all that was effective forgood in the moral life of France. Unity, faith,authority, order—these were the watchwords heevolved from his researches. Their absence fromthe creations of naturalism was the cause of itsmaleficent influence. It was clearly his task toerect an objective system of critical enquiry ofwhich these should be the essential principles.

But more than this was demanded. Some part,at any rate, of scientific achievement, Brunetire was compelled to admit, and since natural-ism threw around itself the cloak of scientificenquiry, it was vital to set limits to the domainof science. Here, indeed, he was confronted bythe difficulty that while he was anxious to op-pose man and nature, art and science, he washimself the urgent defender of the doctrine ofevolution in the forms of literature.141 It wasclearly necessary to escape that conclusion, or,at the least, to bend it to his purposes. It washere, perhaps, that Brunetière made his mostbrilliant effort.142 The causes of variation areunknown. Change is simply a fact—for whichno reason can be ascribed. Aristotle, Moli èe,Darwin—we can postulate no adequate causefor their emergence.143 They are simply given us;and their effort is the starting-point of each new

direction evolution may take. What Bruneti redid was to deny the applicability of causation tothis field. Ignorabimus he wrote large over theentrance to it. But immediately that admissionis made there is room for a system of ethicswhich, above all, has objective standards of con-duct. When we postulate the impossibility ofknowing the causes of variation, there is needof the dogmas of Christianity. It seems, at leastto the outsider, an amazingly scholastic syllo-gism; but, after all, the syllogism was the inven-tion of the scholastics. For variation is causedby chance, and chance is only the name the eigh-teenth century coined for Providence. Evolutionmakes us a mosaic of ancestral virtue and an-cestral vice—and that is essentially the doctrineof original sin. Here is the basis of the Christianteaching, and we accept it because its mainachievement is to promise salvation at the costmerely of repressing the evil influence of ournatural origin. We have to cease, in fact, to fol-low the reckless will-o’-the-wisp of individualdesire. The main need of life is discipline, andwe require discipline that social life may be pos-sible. The worth of any doctrine thus consists inits social utility which Bruneti re equates withits morality. But the demands of discipline areclearly order and unity; and order and unity canonly be acquired by the recognition of the worthof tradition.144 For tradition is the soul of a na-tion, the deposit of those traditions whereby itslife has been guided. More, it is even a nationalprotector, for it acts as a safeguard against therevolt of inconsistency. To accept tradition is toaccept something which gives to life an objec-tive logic, a guarantee against divergent aimsand contradictory desires. Because we need dis-cipline we must have tradition. But tradition isthe twin-sister of religion and gains therefromthe adequate sanction of self-sacrifice. The onereligion which rightly insists upon their worthis Catholicism, and it was the liberal wing ofthe Catholic party to which, accordingly,Brunetière offered his support.145

There is not an element in this doctrine whichBonald would have failed to recognise. Its insis-tence on discipline as the safeguard againstmoral anarchy is only a more pleasing form of

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the emphasis laid by the earlier thinker on self-sacrifice. And Brunetière in essence rejectedProtestantism for exactly the same reason asBonald—that its foundations already imply an-archy. It was for that reason that he denied thefundamental formula of Descartes, exactly asBonald, a century before, had urged the worth-lessness of metaphysics. Both thinkers agreedthat faith was the primary need—the willing-ness to leap into the dark hinterland of mentalaction beyond the limits justified by rationalistlogic. And, like Bonald, this attitude led him toturn to the church as the best instrument ofmoral unity.146 It would provide, in his view, theobjective criterion of conduct by the enunciationof its dogmas. He even believed that freedom ofthought would thereby be assisted, since thethinker, having at his disposal an infallible testof good, would have the assured means of rightthought. It would thus bring peace to men’s souls,a refuge from the tortures of uncertainty whichdrove the nineteenth century into an acceptanceof moral indifferentism. Here lay the suprememerit of orthodoxy, that it gave life the integra-tion of doctrinal consistency. That, indeed, wasthe virtue de Maistre and Bonald had claimedfor their theories. They had been confronted byan age of disruption, and they had found in in-fallible unity the only relief from doubt. Theyhad urged, as Bruneti re urged, that without thesanctions of authority, the individual soul is castchartless on an unending ocean. It was becausehe cared so deeply for right and wrong that hewas willing to enchain the reason of man; buthe made the mistake of his predecessors andidentified his private theory of right conductwith the public needs of his age.

His whole work, indeed, is a protest against de-mocracy simply because he has so overwhelm-ing a sense of the dangers of moral error. Hedeems the fabric of society so fragile that he of-fers worship to the forces which, at whatevercost, have prevented its overthrow. It is a phi-losophy that is unwilling to take risks. It refusesall experiment of which the results are notmerely predetermined, but are also pronouncedgood by a tribunal which faith has accepted asinfallible. But such a theory can only end by tak-

ing things as they are as the ideal; for anythingelse would be out of accord with tradition, aboveall, out of accord with the oldest of traditionswhich is his own tribunal of enquiry. It matters,perhaps, but little that the progress of psycho-logical science should run directly counter toBrunetière’s ideas. What is mainly of importanceis the realisation that the political implicationsof his thought are the exclusion of liberty on theone hand, and of equality on the other. It involvesthe exclusion of liberty because it insists thatmen shall think only in directions pronouncedgood by external enquiry. It thus takes no ac-count of freedom of conscience. Its standard ofmorals has reference only to the general need.It sacrifices the individual to its sense ofabsorptiveness. It involves the exclusion ofequality because the infallibility it confers uponits tribunal must inevitably be extended to themen who operate it.

We declare, in fact, the divine right of Rome, andthe only equality men can then enjoy is theequality of intellectual servitude. It thus doesmore than release men from thought. It is de-terminist in that its fundamental principles arealready known, and, as with Bonald, the onlybusiness of the thinker is deduction. It demandsthe unity of power; and, thereby, it asks fromeach of us exactly what the modern world hasproclaimed its most priceless heritage. It is ba-sically a static philosophy. It puts the mind ofmen into leading-strings and makes of Rometheir driver. But it has been the whole lesson ofexperience that the development of Roman doc-trine is, for the most part, a development forcedfrom without; and by universalising the domin-ion of Rome Bruneti re was, in effect, erecting abarrier against intellectual advance.147 That theprice of order can be too high seems never tohave crossed his mind. Nor did he occupy him-self with the problem of how order was to beattained. Like Bonald, he seems to have takenit for granted that there would be no period oftransition from the anarchy of which he com-plained to the unity he exalted. He seemed sat-isfied that principles are accepted by the merefact of their enunciation.

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But, after all, the first fundamental truth is theexistence of difference, and to ignore it is to avoidthe central problem. What Bruneti re did was torepeat the error of his predecessor and so to dis-like his age as to misinterpret the conditions ofaction. He failed to understand that the prob-lem in moral as in political life is a problem ofguarantees. All that men are willing to sacrificeto society is the lowest and not the highest com-mon factor of their intimate beliefs. For they arenot simply members of a herd; they are some-thing more. They are individuals who are inter-ested passionately in themselves as an end, andno social philosophy can be adequate which ne-glects that egocentric element. That, indeed, ismerely to say that no social philosophy can beother than pluralistic. Ragged and disjointed asa consequence it may be; and continually out ofaccord with venerable tradition. But this, afterall, is a ragged and disjointed world, and it con-tinually is guilty of unhistorical innovation. Sov-ereignty, in fact, has necessarily to be distrib-uted in order that the purposes of men may beachieved. The test of their achievement, whethermoral or intellectual, or political, is not an im-mediate reference to a permanent and externalcanon, but the consequences of action in the elu-cidation and enrichment of life. It is this, afterall, which makes the loyalties of men so diversi-fied; for they are bundles of conflicting aims.148

It is this too, at bottom, which gives to the loosesovereignty of the democratic state its ultimatejustification: that alone of all governmental con-ceptions it admits the adequate realisation ofpersonality. A theory which would sacrifice themto its cross-section of logic is at once forced andunnatural. It has value, maybe, insofar as itthrows light on the tendencies of the time; butit is out of harmony with its inevitable direc-tion.

X. The Traditionalism of M. BourgetThe work of M. Bourget is little else than anassault upon the foundations of the nineteenthcentury.149 It is from an analysis of what he be-lieves to be its character that he has come to theacceptance of traditionalist doctrine. Brought upin the school of Renan and Taine,150 he has alltheir quasi-scientific precision of statement and

of temper. His starting-point has been the disil-lusion they suffered after the events of 1870.They came to believe that democracy was a po-litical deception, and it was upon the basis oftheir pessimism that Bourget has erected histheory of aristocratic Catholicism. Its resem-blance to the ideas of Bonald is little less thanstartling; and, indeed, it is important that M.Bourget should retain for him so striking andpeculiar an affection.151 For him Bonald remainsone of the great masters of political science, andno one has been more responsible for the resus-citation of the earlier thinker. It is Bonald, alone,moreover, who has surpassed him in his con-tempt for the eighteenth century. To them boththe Revolution is the crystallisation of moral andpolitical error. The Declaration of the Rights ofMan they both dismiss as a puerile exercise inmetaphysics.152 Both are contemptuous alike oflogic and the attempt to deduce a theory of poli-tics from the abstract conceptions of individual-ism. For M. Bourget has no confidence in rea-son. For him it is an instrument of destruction,and he goes back to instinct, tradition, preju-dice, for the real sources of events. He is unin-terested in the idealism of the Revolution. Itseems to him so contrary to the facts it encoun-ters that he can have no patience with its tri-fling. When he has described the facts he hasseen, he believes that he has been given the vi-sion of actual society, and it is in his personalinductions that he has placed his confidence. M.Bourget, indeed, differs from his predecessor inthat he is able to clothe his doctrines in a formof singular literary charm. He has at his com-mand the specious terminology of modern sci-ence,153 so that, often enough, what is in truthno more than a plea can appear in the guise of astatement. He never wanders far from reality,even if his realism is essentially selective. Hiswork is a powerful polemic against the demo-cratic state. Just as Bonald composed his attackin terms of the Revolution, so does M. Bourgetexpress his attitude in terms of parliamentarygovernment.154 But the real defect of Bonald’steaching was its completely subjective charac-ter. He built a state on the power of his own or-der, and deemed that he had thereby renderedservice to the ideal. M. Bourget, indeed, is less

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selfish; for his satisfaction with the bourgeoisieto which, by truth, he belongs, goes no furtherthan the admission that it has its place in anyscheme of political construction. But not lessthan Bonald, his argument is at the service ofhis desires; and he has the less excuse than theearlier thinker simply because he did not writeunder the shadow of 1789.

No one, in fact, can study the work of Bourgetwithout being convinced that the recognition ofcertain temperamental characteristics is funda-mental to the understanding of his attitude.155

If M. Bourget is not a snob, it is at any rate uponthe life of a leisured and cultivated aristocracythat he lavishes his affections. There is no vir-tue with which he is not prepared to endow it.Delicacy of taste, beauty of person, fineness ofperception, clarity of insight—into the heredi-tary possession of these, his aristocracy comesby the simple fact of birth. It alone is capable ofcultivating all that is rich and delicate in life.Nothing is more bitter than Bourget’s contemptfor those who would seek to usurp the functionsof an aristocracy. His plebeians are always de-void of the qualities which can make them ac-ceptable as other than obedient subjects. Theyalways end miserably when they seek to raisethemselves above their class. For, by the merefact of birth they are excluded from the full un-derstanding of elegance and refinement. Theordinary affairs of commerce and agriculture—for these they are hereditarily endowed. But forthe larger spheres of life, social, political, intel-lectual, they have no aptitude. Thus the real trag-edy of life is the exclusion of the men of talentfrom their rightful place in the world.

It must, indeed, be confessed that the refine-ments of M. Bourget’s aristocracy are a littleexotic. Most of his aristocrats are a little weary,and they have drained the cup of life to the dregs.So that they have need of that which will en-able them to maintain existence in its properperspective. It is thus that they come to adoptthe Catholic religion—as a kind of perfume forthe soul. It is thus, too, that they possess them-selves of the moral superiority which distin-guishes their mind from that of the vulgar herd.

For they wear their religion as a beautiful gar-ment, and they have none of the intenserealisation of its presence by which the lowerclasses deface it. Their acceptance of religion islargely a result of their world-weariness on theone hand, and their recognition of its social util-ity on the other. They accept it elegantly, in thespirit of an academician awarding a prize of vir-tue. They do not trouble themselves with dog-mas. They do not, as German peasants have at-tempted, undermine its social character. Theyrecognise its function in the promotion of socialwell-being, and they accept it out of duty to theposition they occupy.

For the fundamental fact in their character isthe uniqueness of their position. M. Bourget hascontinually insisted that the virtues he extolsin the aristocracy are peculiar to that class. Theyform an lite, a caste. Study the world of politicsor of industry, and those qualities are notablyabsent. And their absence is the more notablesince the one object of the bourgeoisie is theircultivation. The simple fact is that nowhere isthere present outside the aristocracy the milieuappropriate to their development. And since itis clear that these are the qualities demandedof a governing race, it is obvious that the aris-tocracy, reinforced, he will admit, by the upperclass of the bourgeoisie, ought to have charge ofgovernment. They alone have the faculties whichwill take from the business of politics its mod-ern uncleanliness. A class-stratification of soci-ety, at once formal and fairly rigid, he deemsessential to its well-being. It is true, of course,that this class does not rule today. It is true alsothat its qualities are devoted to any save politi-cal ends; but that, after all, is the fault of thesystem to which we submit. Such superior be-ings cannot be expected to ask the suffrages ofthe mob, or to mingle with the modern politi-cian. It is true, indeed, that men may be metwho, though not of the aristocracy by birth, seemto partake of its quality. They, however, are ex-ceptional; and the race from which they springis rapidly exhausted by the effort it expends inthe production of such imitations. We cannoterect a theory upon the chance fact of their oc-casional emergence. That would be to consider

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man as an individual and to give him rights invirtue of his own personality. But that is a dou-bly false conception. Social rights M. Bourgetdenies; it is upon social duties that he lays hisemphasis. It is the duty of the aristocrat to ac-cept luxury and refinement just as it is the dutyof the peasant to accept his lot to toil. They ac-cept it, because as individuals they are unim-portant. The main need is to promote the soli-darity of society and that is effected by the ex-pression of its needs in terms of the family. Nowof that the individual is but part and his per-sonal tastes are thus insignificant. The funda-mental fact, indeed, upon which Bourget’s sys-tem of ideas is founded is the denial of an indi-vidual r gime. For immediately we admit itsclaims we remove the basis of a horizontal so-cial structure. We cast confusion into the state.Birth becomes unimportant. Culture is a mat-ter of purchase and sale. Competition becomesthe order of the day and an inelegant dynamicis the basis of the state. But that is the basicerror of which the nineteenth century has beenguilty.

It is clear enough—it is also unimportant—thatsuch an attitude is out of accord with the cur-rent of thought in our time. But when M. Bourgetleft his romances to restate his social theoriesin a more formal guise it was upon the basis ofthese sentiments that he wrote. Nor did he failto claim for his doctrine the benison of science.The fundamental virtue of Bonald, he pointedout, was his realism. He based his theories onthe facts of social experience and his tremen-dous inductions have thus the validation of life.Such a method M. Bourget deemed finely ex-perimentalist in temper. He compared it to thediscoveries of Le Play, and, indeed, the re-searches of the latter have long been annexedby the traditionalists.157 What M. Bourget didnot understand was the simple truth that theimportant contribution, both of Bonald and ofhimself, is not the facts collected, but the inter-pretation that is based on those facts. Bonaldmay emphasise the excesses of the Revolutionjust as M. Bourget himself insists on the defi-ciencies of parliamentary democracy. But theproblem does not end there. There is a side to

the Revolution which is not outrageous just asthere is a side to parliamentary governmentwhich is not deficient. Where the scientific tem-per is not evident in the work of either critic isin the modification of his observations be factswhich, however unwelcome, are still important.The experimentalist method, if it is to be valid,must consist in an accurate report of the experi-ment.

Nor is there more ground for satisfaction in theresults of the enquiry, which, also, are for M.Bourget in accord with the discoveries of science.They are summed up in a plea for religion, foraristocracy, and for monarchy. That is to say thatM. Bourget finds the real need of the nineteenthcentury to consist in the destruction of its ownachievement. Nor is he at all uncomfortable inhis denial of the Revolutionary assumptions. Itis so easy to take its watchword as an abstrac-tion instead of as a programme, that M. Bourgetconsiders it refuted by the mere statement ofthe difficulties it encounters. Liberty he identi-fies with anarchy. He cannot understand theenthusiasm for its attainment. He seems to re-gard it as no more than the product of the un-critical enthusiasm of the eighteenth century forindividualist doctrine. But individualism in onlyan endeavour to escape from the consequencesof the social bond, and he is thus happy in hisright to dismiss it. It is hostile to order and se-curity. It shatters the exercise of legitimate au-thority. Nor is he less confident about the follyof equality.158 This is obviously out of accord withthe facts of every day life. But the mistake of M.Bourget is to think that equality is the expres-sion of anything save an opportunity for the fulldevelopment of personality. The study of his ownmaster, Taine, should have taught him that ob-vious lesson. To proclaim that men are bornequal is not in the least to proclaim, as M.Bourget would have us believe, that they areborn identical. Equality so defined it is, of course,easy to scatter to the winds; and where it is ab-sent there is no real ground for fraternity.Brotherhood is born of similarity of function, andwhere there are the barriers of class, there is noground for its existence. So that when the Revo-lution has been thus dismissed, it is at last pos-

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sible to attempt the reconstruction of a Francewhich has been untrue to herself.

To M. Bourget, indeed, the whole problem is assimple as an algebraic equation, with the con-sequence that his work has all the specious ex-actitude characteristic of Taine. The life of anation is its tradition. That has in it elements oftruth. But M. Bourget would use the traditionof France as a dogma and he will not allow thenineteenth century to form any part of it. Forhim, indeed, tradition is not a living thing, but aseries of dead, inert principles to the logic ofwhich the national life must be chained. The tra-dition of France is monarchical, regional, catho-lic, aristocratic.159 So at least it is if one neglectsits history since the Revolution. But that M.Bourget will do without difficulty because thenineteenth century has been a century of novelexperiment and he is dissatisfied with its re-sults. Disorder, individualism, scepticism, cor-ruption, these have resulted from the adoptionof the Revolutionary ideals; and M. Bourget isunsparing in his denunciation of their source.160

Disorder is bad because only in stability cansecurity be found. Individualism is contrary tothe obvious structure of society. Scepticism isevil because the nature of the social bond de-mands the sanction of religion if it is to operateat all adequately. Corruption is the clear conse-quence of the method a democratic society mustevolve for its governance. It is the natural re-sult of a parliamentary régime and to him thisis the head and centre of disaster. Legislation ispassed in haste to suit the transient whim ofthe electorate. The most sacred rights of societyare lightly violated. Promises are wantonly madeand as wantonly broken. Personalities replaceprinciples, and national institutions aredishonourably perverted to private ends. Partyspirit replaces public spirit. The only fruit ofuniversal suffrage is the pathetic manipulationof the electorate. The pretended establishmentof self-government brings with it only the erec-tion of a sinister oligarchy the more dangerousbecause it is invisible. The elective system failsto pick out those who can best serve the inter-ests of the state. Argument is stifled by the de-velopment of a colossal bureaucratic machine.

Within the chamber, talk has replaced action.The purely idle belief in equality has resultedin the withdrawal of the most capable from pub-lic life. The vital elements of the state, in short,are poisoned at their source. Heroic remediesare essential if so terrible a malady is to be coun-teracted.

It is, of course, undeniable that there has been adecline in the parliamentary life of democraciesin the last quarter of a century. That has beentrue not merely of France but of every countryin the old world and the new. But whereBourget’s criticism is erroneous is in his sug-gestion that it is the root idea of democracywhich is mistaken. The real truth is rather thatwe are working with a machinery adapted todeal with a civilisation immensely less complexthan our own. It is only in our time that the fullfruit of the Industrial Revolution has been gath-ered. Only since 1870 has it been fundamentallynecessary for the state to relate itself to indus-trial problems. The decline in the parliamentarylife of France is the decline that is natural to anorganisation hampered by a multitude of unnec-essary business. France has had to deal withconstitutional problems, the Separation, theproblem of administrative efficiency, a vast revo-lution in foreign policy, a new era in the historyof labour. The whole centre of her life has beenreadjusted at the very moment when the mecha-nism of government has been most inadequate.But there is certainly not perceptible a declinein the quality of French life. Rather does theoutsider see a gain in solidity and effectiveness.Her political thought has never been richer.161

Her economic ideas have rarely been so profuse.Her literary achievements have been immense.The condition of her people has been vastly im-proved. And beyond the traditionalist group ofwhich M. Bourget is so effective a sponsor, it doesnot seem that there have been any doubts ofdemocracy.

Certain new truths, indeed, France has beencompelled to learn. We have too long regardedthe discovery of representative government asa panacea, and nothing is today so greatlyneeded as new methods of administration. It is

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undeniable that what is vaguely termed the gen-eral will of society does not find complete ex-pression either in governments or in legislatures;we are simply forced to the realisation thatmajority government cannot be the last wordon our problems.162 The real crux of the demo-cratic difficulty is the fact that political poweris divined from economic power. Wherein repre-sentative government has been supremely suc-cessful is in the securing of general politicalrights in which rich and poor alike have beeninterested; but once the transition has beenmade from political rights to economic interestthe basic sectionalism of society has been ap-parent to anyone who has had the patience toobserve the facts. What has happened is simplya growing consciousness on the part of the work-ers that the concepts of democracy are as appli-cable to industry as to politics, and we have livedin the time of criticism and unrest which is natu-rally symptomatic of the search for a new syn-thesis.163 But the orientation of the problem isas different as possible from that which M.Bourget has given it. He is so obsessed by thepolitical vices of democracy that he has neglectedaltogether their real source. He has failed en-tirely to see that capitalism on the one hand andthe present form of parliamentary governmenton the other are nothing so much as historiccategories which disappear when they haveserved their purposes. In the result the solutionhe suggests reads less like an answer to ourquestions than an interesting survival from anancient time.

He demands a monarchy.164 One of the follies ofdemocracy is its distribution of power of whichthe only consequence is its nullification. But M.Bourget has only to study history to see thatthe distribution of power is only the expressionof certain social facts which are inherent in thenature of society. It may be true, as he says, thatmonarchy unifies that power; but that is exactlywhy monarchy is more and more rejected as aform of active government by intelligent men. Itmay stand as the symbol of the national soul;but it stands as the symbol of the national soulonly in its antiquarian moments. The self-inter-est of monarchy may demand, as M. Bourget

claims, that it serve the national well-being. Butthe test here must be historical and it is pre-cisely because of its failure so to validate itselfthat the monarchical solution has been rejected.Supple it may be; but there are other forms ofgovernment go less capable of elasticity. M.Bourget, indeed, would urge that if the monarchbe deceived error, after all, is inherent in allhuman endeavour. He suggests that the veryelevation of the monarch’s position, his dynas-tic interests, will make his evasion of error themore essential as his responsibility is thegreater. He finds in the monarchy the power ofselection in which democracy has so signallyfailed. For what is here necessary is continuitywhich implies the removal of certain familiesfrom the mass of the people that they may servethe state. The corollary of his monarchy, in fact,is aristocracy—not, indeed, closed to externalaccess. The man of the people will be permittedto ascend above his station, but he must demon-strate his right and not assume it. Here he goesback to the ideal of the ancien r gime and findsin a hierarchy of classes to each of which its func-tions are attached the true method of social dis-tribution. Of course it goes without saying thatthe members of his aristocracy will be rightlychosen. In mind and attitude, in taste and indesire, they will have all that goes to the mak-ing of a brilliant civilisation. Such qualities itmust possess since, otherwise, it will prove un-acceptable.

Criticism of such demands is as unnecessary ascriticism of Bonald’s ideas. Nor is it easy to havesympathy with Bourget’s plea for a restorationof the Catholic system. It is, of course, true thatCatholicism is social and orderly and mystic. Itwould assist his political schemes in that it hasno room for divergent belief. It acts as the con-solidation of faith. It exalts the heart over thehead; and Bourget, like Bonald, has no doubtthat what comes from the Catholic heart is noble.He demands the Catholic religion as a safeguardagainst the disruptiveness of rationalism.165 Itwill provide men with a sanction of self-sacri-fice. Its hierarchical organisation makes it wellfitted to stand sponsor for the monarchical idea.It is zealous for authority, it has contiguity, it

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has discipline. For the purpose of protecting hisantiquarian state he could hardly have chosenbetter. But the very choice is simultaneouslydemonstrative of M. Bourget’s failure to under-stand his age. The glamour of the theocracy hepostulates no logger haunts the minds of men.The worship of unity is dead. The oneness weseek is the oneness of effort and not of purpose.We are not willing to set conditions to men’sdreams. We are not desirous of returning to theorthodoxy of medieval time. Toleration has beenthe parent of liberalism, and liberalism has ef-fectively destroyed conceptions of society whichleave no room for its innumerable variations ofform and desire. With the power that monarchyimplies we cannot trust any man in so complexa civilisation. We cannot mark off class from classin face of the social and biological evidence wepossess. M. Bourget has to account for the struc-ture of American society and the transforma-tion of the English aristocracy before we canaccept his static theories.165 The invitation heissues to intolerance an age which finds its sur-est guarantee of progress in the freedom of themind dare not for a moment consider. Loisy inFrance, Tyrell in England, stand out as theachievements of a democracy which has rejectedthe moral guarantees a rigid Catholicism hasproffered.167 It is otherwhere we shall search fornew hopes.

XI. The Significance of VarietySo we are led to the rejection of unity. And it isworth while to emphasise the grounds uponwhich we reject it. That for which we are con-cerned is the preservation of individuality. It isfifty years since John Stuart Mill pointed outits relation to human improvement.168 Certainlyif there is one truth to which all history bearswitness it is that unity is the parent of identity.But it is almost an equal commonplace thatwhere men seek the ease and sloth of unifor-mity they are, in fact, if unconsciously, attain-ing the bitterness of stagnation. That was theerror of the Eastern world. It was the secretwhich the great thinkers of Greece taught us bytheir example to avoid.

It is particularly important at this hour to pre-vent so grave a disaster. Democracy has madetremendous progress in this generation. But thedestruction of social and political privilege hasa fatal tendency to extend itself into the sphereof mind. It is, indeed, difficult for a state at onceto accept difference of opinion and to be effec-tive as a striking unit. But that, after all, is theprice we pay for our achievement of freedom.Nor is it unessential to insist upon its worth.“Mankind,” says Mill in a famous sentence,169

“speedily become unable to conceive diversitywhen they have been for some time unaccus-tomed to see it.” To establish the singleness ofpolitical sovereignty is certainly to assist in itssuppression. Political reality is never at bottomsingle, and there is no right purpose in its coer-cion to unity. Let the mind once bow itself tothat yoke, and truth, at a bound, is sacrificed tocomfort. Thus to submit to the pressure of apeace that must inevitably be temporary is, in-deed, the subtlest form of self-indulgence.Thought is by nature revolutionary, and to theconsequence of a great idea it is obvious we canset no limit. But, after all, thought is the oneweapon of tried utility in a difficult and com-plex world. If it is to be effective we must placepower in its hands; for to withdraw from it themeans of active exertion is to blunt its effort af-ter good. Therein, it is clear, the distribution ofsovereignty is involved. Yet the forces that makeagainst our progress are so great that it is hardlyless than treason to our heritage thus to depriveourselves of what service thought may render.Nothing, at any rate, is so certain to make ourcorporate life devoid of its richness and its el-evation.

Notes1. On Bonald the best descriptive account of that of

Moulini (Paris1916) which is, however, weak inits criticism. There are famous essays by Sainte-Beuve in his “Causeries,” Vol. IV, and by Faguet inhis “Politiques et Moralistes,” Vol. I. See alsoBourget, “Etudes et Portraits,” Vol. III,Montesquieu, “Le réalisme de Bonald.”

2. On the character of the Roman church at the timeof the Restoration see the essay on Lamennaisbelow. Even allowing for its anti-clerical bias M.Debidour’s “L’Eglise et L’Etat en France de 1789–

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1870" is easily the best treatment.3. I have discussed the political theory of De Maistre

in the last chapter of my “Problem of Sovereignty.”4. The real understanding of Bonald probably dates

from Comte, Cf. “Politique Positive” III, 605.5. Cf. the very interesting correspondence in Vol. XII

of De Maistre’s collected works and “PrincipeConstitutif ” p. 493.

6. Boutard, “Lamennais,” I, 154.7. Cf. Sainte-Beuve, “Causeries,” IV, 330.8. As M. Faguet, in his brilliant study, so strikingly

points out.9. Sante-Beuve, op. cit., p. 324.10. “Legislation Primitive,” p. 93.11. Cf. his “Considerations.”12. “Principe Générateur,” p. 15.13. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” I, 3.14. Cf. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” I, I, 3, p. 146. “Essai sur

l’ordre social,” p. 282.15. “Observations sur Condorcet,” p. 309.16. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” Bk. III, IV, p. 153.17. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” I, III, p. 146.18. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” p. 289.19. “Essai sur l’ordre social,” p. 282.20. “Théorie du Pouvoir religieux,” I, I, Ch. 3. Cf. I, 1,

VII, note on p. 177, and I, 1, p. 132.21. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” II, VI, V, 356, 357.22. “Théorie du Pouvoir religieux,” I, II, 9.23. “Théorie du Pouvoir religieux,” I, II, 9.24. Montesquieu, “Le réalisme de Bonald;” and cf. M.

Bourget, “Etudes et Portraits,” Vol. III, pp. 23 ff.25. Cf. “Essai sur l’ordre social,” p. 35.26. Ibid., p. 70.27. Nor even of Bossuet. Cf. the “Politique,” VII, art.

VI, prop. V. and VI.28. “Essai sur l’ordre social,” p. 67.29. Ibid.30. “Essai sur l’ordre social,” p. 110.31. Cf. the “Dissertation sur la pensée de l’homme.”32. Cf. “Romans,” XIII, 1, with Théorie de Pouvoir, I,

II, p. 135.33. “Oeuvres,” X, 258.34. Cf. “De. Reg. Prin.” III, VII, and Bossuet,

“Politique,” VII, 6, V and VI.35. “Législation Primitive.” I, 156. This theory of lan-

guage has been effectively criticised by M. Ferrazin the first volume of his “Histoire de Philosophie.”

36. “Législation Primitive,” II, 170.37. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” II, IV, V, p. 329–30.38. Ibid., I, 1, p. 28.39. Ibid., II, IV, V, p. 329–30.40. Ibid., II, IV, p. 128.41. Ibid., I, ii, passim.42. “Essai sur l’ordre social,” p. 33.

43. Cf. Mauduit, “Les Conceptions Politiques etSociales de Bonald,” p. 83.

44. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” II, v, vi, 283ˆ–4.45. Ibid., II, i, IV, 38.46. Ibid., 292.47. Ibid., 296.48. Ibid., 350.49. Ibid., 353 f.50. Ibid., 177.51. Ibid., 306, 340.52. Ibid., 22.53. Ibid., 335.54. “Principe Constitutif,” p. 450.55. “Essai sur l’ordre social,” p. 99.56. “Essai analytique,” p. 57.57. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” iv, v, 356.58. Cf. Bossuet, “Hist. des Variations,” Bk I, pp. 316,

340, 419, etc.59. “Politique Positive,” iii, 614.60. “Essai sur l’ordre social,” p. 33.61. Cf. Faguet, op. cit., i, p.62. “Principe Constitutif,” p. 441 f.63. Ibid., p. 445.64. Cf. what is said below of M. Bourget’s reconstruc-

tion of these arguments.65. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” V, vii.66. “Principe Constitutif,” Ch. IX.67. Pensées Diverses, p. 6.68. La famille Agricole et Industrielle.”69. Cf. “Mélanges,” p. 441.70. Ibid., p. 505.71. “Pensées Diverses,” p. 172.72. “Principe Contitutif,” p. 449.73. Ibid. p. 450.74. “Demonstr. Phil.,” p. 108-9.75. “Pensées Diverses,” p. 12.76. “Observations sur l’ouvrage de Madame de Stael,”

p. 128.77. “Legislation Primitive,” Bk. II, Ch. iv, p. 228.78. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” Vol. I, Bk. i, Ch. ii.79. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” Bk. VI, Ch. III, p. 411.80. Cf. the interesting little work of M. Léon de

Montesquieu, “Raison d’Etat.” This is, of course,the whole basis of M. Duguit’s theories. See espe-cially his “Transformations du Droit Public.”

81. “Théorie du P. Religieux,” Bk. VI, Ch. II.82. Cf. “Pens es Diverses,” p. 33.83. “Essai sur l’ordre social,” p. 65.84. “Principe Constitutif,” Ch. X, p. 465.85. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” Bk. I, Ch. IX. Cf. Bossuet,

op. cit., Bk. VI, 1 and 2.86. “Principe Comtitutif,” Ch. XI, p. 468.87. “De la liberté de la presse,” p. 3.88. Ibid., p. 13.

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89. Ibid., p. 16.90. Ibid., p. 29.91. Ibid., p. 44.92. Ibid., p. 61.93. Ibid., p. 117.94. Ibid., p. 137.95. Ibid., p. 142.96. Ibid., p. 143.97. Ibid., p. 148.98. Ibid., p. 156.99. Ibid., p. 157.100. “De la Justice Divine,” p. 132.101. Ibid., p. 145.102. Ibid.103. Ibid., p: 149.104. Ibid., p. 150.105. Ibid., p. 155.106. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” I, VI.107. Ibid., I, IV.108. “Théorie du Pouvoir,” II, Bk. I, Ch. II, p. 22.109. “Leg. Prim.,” II, 115.110. Ibid., i, 180.111. “Oeuvres,” XII, 65.112. “Pens es Diverses,” p. 33.113. “Oeuvres,” X, 258.114. “Pens es Diverses,” p. 12.115. “Oeuvres,” X, 296.116. “Oeuvres,” XI, 121.117. “La Justice Divine,” p. XIII.118. Ibid., 22.119. “Pens es Diverses,” p. 29.120. “Causeries,” IV, 330.121. “Pens es,” p. 172.122. Saite-Beuve, “Causeries,” IV, 330.123. I say “some sort” because after M. Aulard’s re-

lentless examination in his “Taine, Historien de laRévolution Française” it is impossible to have anyconfidence in Taine’s authority.

124. This has been brilliantly asserted in LordMorley’s “Notes on Politics and History.”

125. That is to say that the effort to depict him as arealist is without basis in fact.

126. His “Les Morts qui Parlent,” indeed, is nothingso much as a hymn in praise of tradition. Cf. M.Bourget’s essay in “Etudes et Portraits” Vol. III.

127. M. M. Bourget and Salamon have edited a selec-tion of his works with a preface by the former. Cf.also L. Dimier, “Les Maîtres de la ContreRévolution” and the two laborious articles by C.Marechalinthe “Annales de Philosophie Chrtienne” for 1910 and 1911.

128. Cf. M. Bourget’s study, “Etude et Portraits,” III,82–113.

129. Cf. the very able and suggestive analysis of their

attitude by D. Powdi, “Traditionalisme etDémocratie.”

130. Cf. the remarkable essay of M. Faguet in the thirdvolume of his “Politiques et Moralistes.” The his-torically, but not intellectually, important volumeof M. Maurras—“L’Avenir de l’Intelligence”—isuseful in this connexion.

131. On the anti-democratic theories of Renan, M. G.Strauss’ “La Politique de Renan” is of great impor-tance.

132. Works like Ostrogorski’s “Democracy and theOrganisation of Political Parties,” Wallas’ “HumanNature in Politics,” Michel’s “Political Parties” andWalter Lippmann’s “Preface to Politics” show thisattitude very remarkably. Cf. also M. CharlesBenoist, “La Crise de l’Etat Moderne.” Vol. i.

133. This is really the starting-point of the syndical-ist attack on the state. See, above all, the very bril-liant articles of M. E. Berth in the “MouvementSocialiste” for 1907–8.

134. The important work of M. Maurras is scatteredover “L’Action Française.” But see his “Enquête SurLa Monarchie” (1909), his “Dilemme de MarcSagnier” and his “Trois Idées Politiques.” An in-teresting criticism is that of Descoqs, “A Traversl’Oeuvre de M. Maurras.”

135. Cf. his “L’Eunemi des Lois” and his “Scènes etDoctrines du Nationalism” especially the preface.There is a brilliant critique of his work in M.Parodi’s volume.

136. Cf. Maurras, “Enqu te,” 427 ff.137. On Brunetière’s work generally see Parodi, op.

cit. 31–71, and the powerful essay by V. Guiraud,“Les Maitres de l’Heure,” 59–141.

138. Cf. “Le Roman Naturaliste” passim.139. Cf. “Etudes Critiques,” 4th series—the essays on

Montesqieu, Voltaire, Rousseau.140. The posthumous volume on Bossuet edited by

M. Guiraud is decisive testimony on this point.141. Cf. “L’Evolution de la poésie lyrique” and

“L’Evolution des genres” and “La Doctrineevolutive” in the sixth series of “Etudes Critiques.”

142. What follows is in reality a summary of his fourvolumes, the “Discours de Combat” and the “SurLes Chemin de Croyance.” The fundamental ar-ticles are “La Renaissance de l’idéalisme,” “L’Artet la morale, Le besoin de croire” in the first, “L’Idéede solidarit ” in the second, “La Renaissance dupaganisme, l’action sociale du Christianisme,l’Evolution du concept de science” in the third, vol-ume of the “Discours.” See also his “Après le procès”in Revue des Deux Mondes for 1898.

143. Cf. “Génie dans l’art” in Revue des Deux Mondesfor 1884.

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144. “Les Ennemis de l’Ami Française” in the firstseries of the “Discours.”

145. Cf. “Tradition et Développement” in the “Annalesde Phil. Chr.” for 1906.

146. Cf. “Après une visite au Vatican” in “QuestionsActuelles.”

147. As he himself realised. Cf. “Discours,” 3rd series,p. 229.

148. Cf. Mr. Lippman’s note in The New Republic forApril 14, 1917, and my “Problem of Sovereignty,”passim.

149. It is very difficult to particularise. But no onewho reads “L’Etape” and “Un Divorce” with thethree volumes of “Etudes et Portraits” can mistakethe direction. There is a very clever attack on M.Bourget in Jules Sageret’s “Les Grands Convertis.”See also V. Guiraud, op. cit., and Parodi op. cit.

150. Cf. “Lettre Autobiographique.”151. Cf. “Etudes,” III, 23 ff.152. Cf. “Etudes,” III, the essay on Le P ril Primaire.153. Cf. the curious first essay in the first volume of

the “Etudes.”154. Cf. especially the “Crise du Parliamentarisme”

in Vol. II of “Pages de Critique.”155. On all this the earlier pages of M. Sageret’s book

are both apt and amusing.156. “Etudes,” III, 264.157. M. Léon de Montesquieu has, indeed, edited an

anthology of Le Play’s writings on this principle.158. “Etudes,” III, 140 ff.159. Cf. his letter to M. Maurras in the “Enqu ête,”

and the latter’s comment.160. “Pages de Doctrine,” Vol. II, 52 ff.161. It is hardly necessary to mention names. But

the work of Duguit, of Geny, of Paul-Boncour, ofLeroy and of Hauriou constitutes an achievementof which any nation might well be proud.

162. Cf. Berth’s articles cited above. Æ’s “NationalBeing” is an important landmark in this connec-tion. Cf. The New Republic, Vol. X, p. 270 and thefirst chapter of my “Problem of Sovereignty.”

163. Of which M. Paul-Boncour in his “FédéralismeEconomique” (1901) has brilliantly sketched theoutlines. Cf. also Maxime Leroy’s ‘Transformationsde la Puissance Publique.”

164. On all this M. Maurras’ “Enquête” is fundamen-tal.

165. Cf. “Pages de Critique,” Vol. II, p. 110 ff.166. The illogical character of his “Outre-Mer” is one

of the strangest of M. Bourget’s many inconsisten-cies; for the aristocracy he found there is barelyfifty years old.

167. Cf. the essay on Lamennais below.168. “Liberty,” Chapter III.

169. Ibid. (Everyman’s ed.), p. 131.

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Chapter Three: Lamennais

I. The Problem of LamennaisThe enigma of Lamennais remains still a prob-lem for those who seek to probe the secret of thehuman mind.1 The winds of controversy that sosorely swept his troubled life even yet are farfrom stilled. To many, he remains the arch-apos-tate of the nineteenth century; and to them, hisabandonment of beliefs for which he had at onetime so stoutly fought is, without exception, thegreatest treason of which we have evidence.2 Hedid not, like Newman, live to receive the hom-age of his friends, even while he retained therespect of those who rejected his philosophicoutlook. He did not, like Tyrrell, create in hisdeath a reformation of which, even now, the con-sequence can be but dimly conceived. It was byhard and tortuous thought that he abandonedthe beliefs of his youth; and those on whose af-fection his life had been founded, left him to anend of which the proud courage could not con-ceal the lonely despair.3 There is a sense, indeed,in which his career is little less than the mirrorof his age. For the course of his life representsnot merely the reaction of Catholicism from thedestructive assault of the French Revolution, butalso the dawning perception in the minds of ablemen that when due rejection of its errors hasbeen achieved, it still embodied political truthwhich is fundamental to the creative under-standing of modern life.4 The high-priest of theCatholic reaction, it was his fortune, partly, nodoubt, by what he wrote, but, above all, by whathe was and what he symbolised, to forge themightiest weapon in its undoing. By an intellec-tual evolution of which it is difficult to deny thelogic,5 he came to argue that all for which in hisearlier days he had stood as so passionately theprotagonist, was out of accord with the need ofhis time. Little enough is left now of the greatedifice he so laboriously constructed. Pages, in-deed, there are in his work of which Renan said6

that no more brilliant anthology exists than thatwhich could be gathered from it. But his booksare no longer read;7 for they were written es-sentially for a series of specific situations andthe great work he dreamed of writing he did notlive to complete.

Yet he remains as the champion of two mightycauses which still battle for the empire of themind. The eternal struggle between order andliberty has received no more arresting embodi-ment than in his own febrile and tormented soul.The memory that remains not even the dullweight of time can, in the result, deprive of itsfascination. He strove to answer problems ofwhich we are still searching the solution. If wenow state them differently, their fundamentalcontent has in no sense been altered. That hewrote in an age before theology had been madescientific8 has in no wise disturbed the basicprinciples of his plea. That he did not grasp thetrue basis of the democratic faith hardly weak-ens the argument he made on its behalf. He stoodat the parting between two worlds. He strove toarrest the onset of forces he was at the lastdriven to recognise as irresistible. It is the dra-matic quality of his challenge to those whom hehad so splendidly led which gives him in thenineteenth century a place at once exceptionaland important. He dare not be forgotten so longas men are willing to examine the principlesupon which their life is founded. For few havefaced so courageously the difficulties of exist-ence. None has suffered more nobly in the effortto confound them.

II. The Church in the Napoleonic AgeHe had grown to manhood in the most complexand troubled age the church had known sincethe cataclysm of the sixteenth century. If thepapacy had refused to make of itself the unques-tioning instrument of Napoleon’s purpose, itcould not withstand the fury of his onset. Hehad proclaimed himself the protector of the ideasof 1682,9 and the principles of clerical national-ism were invoked to justify an Erastian régime.Napoleon, in fact, looked upon the church as nomore than an effective political weapon,10 andthereby he gave to ultramontanism a new rea-son for existence. A church which lay at the heelof a military adventurer must search out afreshthe foundations of its being. The localism uponwhich it had built so much seemed, in the re-sult, likely to prove fatal to its sense of traditionand of personality. It was not unnatural thatthose who were attached to it by the closest of

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personal ties should turn from the old Gallicantheories to principles which seemed to give it awider basis for its claim to freedom. Sons ofFrance its priests might be: but, above all, theywere citizens of a religious society. To own alle-giance to one who persecuted their church wasto admit that the ecclesiastical power was infe-rior to the secular. But that involved the betrayalof a fundamental tradition. It seemed, too, tosuggest that the events of which Napoleon wasthe symbol had won from them an adherencethat was logically impossible.11 They dare notreconcile themselves with the Revolution.12

Many of them it had sent to the scaffold; manywere in exile. Of those who remained in Francenot the least part had refused to take oathswhich seemed to them the denial of their faith.For them, the church was itself a state, and theywould not bargain over the nature of their citi-zenship with an organisation hostile to its pur-poses. And of that revolution, Napoleon was theheir. If he had restored a clerical order, it wasclear that he did not love it. The Pope was a pris-oner in his lands. Many of the cardinals were incaptivity; and those who stood by his purposeswere no more than the weak creatures of hisdefiant ambition.13 What, above all, Napoleontaught the church was the impossibility of re-maining a function of the state. It must workout again the principles of its freedom. It mustre-establish its separateness that it might re-gain its purity. A church could not claim catho-licity if it became the instrument of a single andjealous power. Nor did Napoleon render it thehomage of an unique affection. To Jew andCatholic, to Protestant and Mohammedan heproffered his goodwill indifferently. But in thecredo of the Roman Church such toleration foundno place. A new synthesis was required if it wasto be true to its ancient heritage.

So it was that men began to turn their minds tothe task of its reconstruction. In that missionwhich was in truth the most tragic of exiles, DeMaistre was forging the new weapons of a re-generated papacy.14 Bonald had already assertedin his tremendous, if tedious syllogisms, the olddogmas of the ancient conflict between Rome andan earlier empire. The new ultramontanism,

indeed, was no more than a different aspect ofthe old. Nor was what it preached absent fromthe hearts of thousands, even if the iron hand ofNapoleon’s crafty minister stifled it at the ut-terance.15 But de Maistre and Bonald were con-cerned less with the church than with the state.If each adopted the theocratic solution it wasnot because they realised, a priori, that the start-ing-point of inquiry must be the rightness ofecclesiastical control. They approached the prob-lem as statesmen, and their establishment ofthe papal sovereignty was, for them, less a prin-ciple than an induction. It was from the tremen-dous experience of an age so full as to make theprevious generation already antiquity that theywent back to Rome as to the parent of all socialorder. They urged the necessity of an ultramon-tane policy rather as an effective supplement toother means than as itself the basis of all things.Loyalty to, and passion for its splendor they ofcourse in no sense lacked. But what was neededwas a philosopher who should speak in the nameof the Church, and deny the principles of theRevolution solely as the servant of its claims. IfBonald and de Maistre served that end, it wasthe accident of good fortune rather than of de-sign. But it was in the name of the Church thatLamennais came to do battle with the Revolu-tion, to deny its principles and to refute its pur-poses. He came to vindicate the church from thetrammels of state-control. For secular politicshe had no interest. It was religion alone whichheld his allegiance. With the state, with Napo-leon, he in no conscious sense concerned him-self,16 save insofar as they affected the subjectof his enquiry. How to regain for the church herancient sway over the minds of men,—this andthis only was his problem. It was in the answerhe made that he created the Roman Church ofthe nineteenth century.

He was a child of the Breton country, and hisfamily inherited the simple loyalties of thatprimitive race.17 But Lamennais, from the out-set, was different. His temperament was morose,and the fits of nervous anger to which he wasliable account, in some sort, for the solitude ofhis childhood. Books and the sea were his maincompanions, and to the end of his life he retained

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a passionate affection for the wild coast of Brit-tany. Away from it, indeed, he was never reallyhappy, and once, in Paris, he compared himselfto those exiles who sat down in ancient days byBabylonian waters.18 He read much and widely;and it is difficult to doubt that his early acquain-tance with Rousseau and Voltaire must in somedegree have influenced his mind.19 His own theo-ries on education, indeed, show distinct tracesof the influence of Emile;20 but the pressure ofevents must have effaced the early impressionof such disturbing thoughts. It was to his familythat priests fled from the persecutions of theJacobins, and in their house that they celebrated,at dead of night a mass the more sweet becauseit was surrounded by danger.21 It is not difficultto understand how firm an impression suchscenes should have imprinted on his mind; norcan one hesitate to trace to them the secret ofhis hatred for the Revolution and its work.

But though he was deeply attached to the Catho-lic faith, he did not shrink from questioning it;and it was not until the age of twenty-two thathe made his first communion.22 That the ero-sion of his doubts was mainly the work of hisbrother it is not difficult to assume; and oncethey had passed Lamennais was able to acceptthe dogmas of his faith not merely in full sincer-ity but with some surprise that he had everdoubted them.23 But that early hesitation is im-portant, because it shows that his attachmentto Catholicism was never unthinking. If, at thebehest of his brother, he plunged into the bot-tomless abyss of theological apologetics, he still,even at this time, had a deep affection for Platoand Malebranche, for Cicero and Montaigne. Weknow too little, indeed, of these early years to domore than vaguely guess at their intellectualnature.24 Royalist he was, of course, by inherit-ance. Catholic he could not fail to be in the sensethat he accepted it as superior to all other reli-gions. Yet there is no trace of fanaticism in hisattitude, and the one certain passion which theseyears evoked was a hatred of the University inno degree traceable to any save personalcauses.25 The real starting-point of his religiousadventure came in 1807 when he went with hisbrother to the little house at La Chênaie which

was their joint inheritance. Jean Lamennais hadonly one object in life, the service of his church;and his indefatigable energy spurred on theundertaking of a common task. The result wasthe appearance, in 1808, of a joint-work on thecondition of the Church. That is the true begin-ning of his career as a servant ofultramontanism.

We do not, of course, know how much of this earlywork is the product of Lamennais’ own thought.That it enshrines much hard work on the partof his brother is clearly unquestionable; and inthe fact that Lamennais himself refused it aplace in his collected works,26 is perhaps evidencethat he did not regard himself as its principalauthor.27 Certain it is, however, that it containsno doctrine which he would in his Catholic dayshave disavowed. Already its one clear effort isfor the advancement of the church. Already hehas a vivid sense of its corporate independence.Just as the experience of political pressure ledNewman to the passionate denunciation ofErastianism,28 so does Lamennais’ dislike ofecclesiastical subjection lead him to demand anextensive cleric freedom. He stands at the out-set as the avowed champion of its extremeclaims, and he seems to enter the list as a knightwho will encounter all adversaries with glad-ness. It is not a book of criticism but of asser-tion. It does not argue; it only pretends to re-fute. It is simply a statement of principles madeon the assumption that they are axiomatic incharacter. It attack the heresies from which thechurch has suffered. It paints in vehementcolours the evils of liberty of thought.29 It de-rides, almost with passion, the incompetence ofthe human mind. The whole achievement of theeighteenth century is dismissed with bitter con-tempt. The church is pictured as standing whereit stood after the civil wars of the sixteenth cen-tury. What is needed is a new effort after free-dom. The church must be released from themeddling of Jansenist magistrates.30 There mustbe an end of the deadly egoism of the philoso-phers.31 What can be hoped where the Revolu-tion has spoiled, and the Directory persecuted.32

If with Napoleon the Concordat has come thatis the beginning and not the end of virtue.33 Not

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until the church is restored to the fullness ofomnicompetent power is there real hope for itsfuture. What is needed is a regenerated clergywhich, now that the storm shows signs of pass-ing, can attempt the work of reconstruction. Thelife of the church must be renewed in all its rich-ness. The corporate vigour of its institutionsmust be restored.34 In scholarship and in educa-tion it must resume its leadership and its con-trol.35 The enemies are indifference and athe-ism, and without knowledge they cannot be com-bated.36 The book is clearly a programme; and itis interesting to note how admirably it fits intothe effort of his liberal years. But it is also, onthe whole, a moderate book, nor does it, save byimplication, attack the Napoleonic settlement.Rather does it, not without much shrewdness,suggest the inevitable lines upon which thatsettlement must develop. Congregations are tobe increased, missions are to be multiplied, thefaith more stoutly avowed. He was proposing,in fact, a church that should be worthy of theempire. But that innovation must have beenunacceptable to the imperial plans; for the bookwas confiscated by the police immediately on itsappearance. The Pope had just hurled his ex-communication at the empire, and it was no timeto think of Catholic freedom.37

It is probably from that confiscation thatLamennais’ hatred of Gallicanism is perhapsmost certainly to be traced. It suggested to himthat a strong church was not desirable to theemperor. Napoleon desired to keep it in itschains; and he boasted of their connection withthe national tradition.38 Lamennais could thenbut draw the conclusion that the result ofGallicanism was the subjection of the church,and that only in its abandonment could freedombe found. There is not, it is true, anything in the“Réflexions” directly incompatible with Gallicandoctrine. But the events of Napoleon’s last yearswere to force Lamennais to the conviction thata free church must henceforth mean a Romanchurch, and he did not hesitate to draw the in-ference. It is in the light of this attitude that thestudy of episcopal origins is probably to be ex-plained. The difficulties over the papal confir-mation of Napoleon’s nominees to the vacant

bishoprics39 gave to such an effort a peculiarimportance. For to show the direct dependenceof the bishops upon Christ is to argue, even iftacitly, that imperial interference is without jus-tification. Apostolic succession involves apostolicindependence; and Lamennais can urge thatwhen the edifice of freedom is threatened, thetime is not ripe for concession to the civil power.40

The church must revolve on her own axis, andthat the more proudly because of her divine ori-gin. The two works, though they excited but littlecomment—Lamennais himself complains of theindifference with which they were received41—nevertheless are important in that they reveala thought that is already formed. They did not,indeed, bring him reputation; nor did they stillthe tormenting doubt of his vocation which stillcaused him deep concern.42 But they gave him asense of his powers and were to prove the stimu-lus to further effort.

He had, already, in 1809, been received into mi-nor orders, but he found no comfort in thethought of his priesthood. Already his letters arefull of that bitter sadness from which he neverobtained release.43 “Il n’y a plus pour moi,” hewrote,44 “d’autre saison que la saison destempêtes;” and the thought was truer than hecould then have conceived. He was uncertain ofhis career. Moments of confidence were suc-ceeded by long periods of hesitation in whichthinking and reading were alike impossible.45

The earnest efforts of his friends could bring nopeace to his agitated mind. In 1812, he seemeddecided that the final step must be taken;46 buthe could not bring himself to act upon it. Mean-while he continued to write. In 1814, he pub-lished, just before the hundred days a passion-ate attack on the university as a servile instru-ment of the state. He re-edited the “Traditionde l’Eglise” and made it the occasion of a vehe-ment attack upon the emperor.47 He dreamed ofa journal which should support the papal cause.48

He thought of spending his days with his brotherin perpetual collaboration.49 But the mood soonpassed. Even the Restoration gave him no plea-sure; it was but the exchange of a strong tyrantfor a feeble despot.50 He disliked the antagonismof the Gallican bishops to Rome.51

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Ultramontanism seemed to him the one suremeans of restoring Catholicism to its rightfulposition in France. So he re-edited his“Réflexions” in such a manner as to make moreevident its Roman bias. A clergy with its ownmeans of subsistence obeying only the sovereignand infallible pontiff seems to him now the onesure means of success.52 It was the beginning ofthat tremendous assault which sought to re-winfor Rome the ancient dominion she had lost.

But the dream was not to last. Napoleon sud-denly returned from Elba, and Lamennais, con-vinced that he was in personal danger, fled toEngland. He found little consolation there. Hisfriendship with the abb Carron, indeed,strengthened his resolution to enter the priest-hood,53 and he seems even to have thought of amissionary enterprise in America. ButNapoleon’s effort was broken into pieces at Wa-terloo; and Lamennais’ return to France madehis path inevitable.

But it was with a bitter heart that he strength-ened himself for the last step. There is in hisletters no sign of any gladness, no admission ofany satisfaction. Rather does it seem to havebeen a response to the urgency of his friends. Ifit caused him anguish, they seemed even happythat he should be thus given so splendid an op-portunity of self-sacrifice.54 He was almostdragged to the altar by his brother and the abbCarron; and there is no single fact to contradictthe view that his decision was in truth wrungfrom him against his will.55 Nor is it less certainthat for him the step seemed to end all prospectof his happiness.56 But it was, at any rate, a de-cision, and from the knowledge that it was irre-vocable he may have derived some comfort.Henceforth, he was dedicated to the church andit was his function to do honour to her service.It was partly to drown the memory of his pain,partly, perhaps, that he might by work convincehimself, that he took up with vigour his old po-lemic. A new era had dawned for France; and itmight be that he could shape it to his purposes.

III. Early UltramontanismIf the Bourbon restoration seemed a triumph forthe Catholic Church, it was, in truth, a victoryto which the facts themselves had set conditions.It was true that everywhere the union of throneand altar seemed the indispensable condition ofnational safety.57 Nor was it likely that men whohad suffered so pitiable an exile would allow theideals of the Revolution to obtain political orreligious expression. But two fundamental factsstood in the way of a restoration of the ancienrégime. The Charter was a guarantee of religioustoleration; without it Louis XVIII could neverhave returned to the French throne. Whateverprivileges the Catholic Church might, in the fu-ture, receive, it could not, as in the past, be thereligious body to which the French State ex-tended a unique protection. It would be com-pelled to endure the criticism of other religioussocieties which were no longer excluded frompolitical existence. Nor was this all. The Char-ter had pledged Louis to the irrevocability of thesale of those national possessions in large partderived from ecclesiastical confiscation; and ifthis meant anything it meant that the restora-tion of church wealth would depend upon thedoubtful generosity of an almost bankrupt state.

Nor was it a united church which returned topower. While men like Lamennais urged thatultramontanism had been justified by the expe-rience of the Revolution, there were not want-ing able and influential men who insisted on therectitude of Gallican theories. The French clergy,as a body, would admit neither papal absolut-ism nor papal infallibility.58 They relied on thegenerosity of the crown as the bulwark of theirfuture. They had no sympathy with theRomanising tendencies of de Maistre and ofBonald. They were satisfied with the r gime of acharter which, whatever its defects, had declaredCatholicism the religion of the state. They werecontent to believe that historic necessity wouldresult in the restoration of what the Revolutionhad destroyed. They had none of the intracta-bility of the Petite Eglise; they lacked the deepsense of corporate independence by which theUltramontanes were distinguished. Where theyerred was in their failure to perceive that the

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promises of the Charter were a fundamentalstumbling-block in the pathway of their dreams.Whatever they might in substance achieve—andof concessions they were to have a plethora—the formal recognition of their desires had be-come impossible. Louis XVIII might love to callhimself the eldest son of the Church,59 but hewas a son who by no means recognised the patriapotestas. The spirit of criticism had gone too farto make it possible for their ideas to obtain ac-ceptance. Their ambition was bound up with anage that was past. The future of the Church laywith newer conceptions.

It was the signal merit of Lamennais to haveperceived, even before the Restoration, that itdid not, in fact, promise real hope for thechurch.60 The Revolution had taught him thefutility of placing confidence in the state. Hesuspected its motives, and he felt that it wasguilty of a silence upon ecclesiastical problemswhich, indicated its lack of identity with the in-terests of Catholicism.61 The fundamental prob-lem was the general indifference to religiousmatters which characterised the age. If the tem-per of the people remained profoundly Catholic,it did not find expression in dogmatic channels.The essential task was to analyse the conditionsof such an attitude and to attempt their remedy.Chateaubriand had, indeed, sketched in magicprose the glories of Christianity; but he had con-veyed an emotion rather than resolved a prob-lem.62 What Lamennais desired was to indicatethe means whereby the Catholic church mightregain its institutional integrity. It was withoutreference to the state that he desired to write.He would consider men as members of hischurch, and discuss the terms upon which itsempire might be restored. The “Essay on Indif-ference in Matters of Religion” was publishedat the end of 1817, and its result was to makeLamennais the first theologian in France. Fortythousand copies were sold in a few months.63 Theveteran de Maistre wrote of it with passionateenthusiasm,64 nor were Chateaubriand andBonald less generous in their praise.65 If therewere some who detected grounds for theologicalsuspicion, most men, as Lacordaire has told us,66

looked upon its author as a new Bossuet. Hence-

forward he was the uncontested chief of the Ul-tramontane party; and the government itself wasanxious to win the adherence of one who hadthus, in a single day, attained so notable a fame.67

The plan of the book is simple in the extreme. Itis an attempt to show that social salvation de-pends upon the supremacy of Catholicism, andit demands intolerance as the price of that vic-tory. It is the work of a man disturbed by thebewildering lack of unity in his time. Everywherethere is indifference to fundamental dogma; ev-erywhere men have erected their system of pri-vate alternatives. On all sides there is an evi-dent neglect of spiritual truth. Reason and thesenses fight once again their eternal combat. Butthe fight against reason is the fight against or-der;68 and the result has been the pitiful lack ofmoral and political certitude. He does not, in-deed, claim that this is a novel situation. Chris-tianity—which for him is the combination of thespiritual truths thus far known to man—hasstruggled continuously to secure the para-mountcy of reason.69 It fought the selfish inter-ests of imperial Rome; it triumphed over thepersecutions of the decadent pagans; the attacksof protestant sects revealed the unbreakablestrength of its foundations. Deism, atheism,philosophy—all these have left it unmoved.70

But the age in which he lives differs from itspredecessors in the contempt for all belief bywhich it is characterised. Lamennais insists onthe danger of this attitude. Action is the conse-quence of opinion, and when we know the faithof men we can predict their conduct.71 Every ideareacts upon the social structure.72 But everydoctrine, being as it is either right or wrong, istherefore, of necessity, dangerous or beneficialto the well-being of society. The essential basisof an adequate social order Christianity had, atany rate before the Reformation, been able tosupply. It had given a sanction to obedience. Ithad purified the customs of men. From its foun-tain the law had drawn its strength.73 But withthe Reformation there came a change. It was nolonger admitted that authority was the basis offaith, and intellectual libertinism had replacedit. The Divine reason had been compelled to ab-

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dicate, and the human mind had not shrunkfrom the sacrilege of replacement.74 Each manhad become intellectual emperor over himself,and the spirit of independence erected anarchyinto a social principle. It is obvious that societycannot acquiesce in its virtual annihilation.

The indifference he castigates so passionatelyhas taken different forms in the life about him.Some deny religion for themselves, but admitits political value. They regard it as an admi-rable means of popular restraint.75 ButLamennais has no patience with this atheism.It cannot, so he claims, account for religious ori-gins. It cannot explain the universal basis ofsociety in religion.76 It cannot explain thestrength of the religious sanction not less inpolitics than in law.77 He insists on the evil ofthe hypocrisy that would force upon men a faithin fact untrue.78 Nor will he admit the naturalreligion of Rousseau. Humanity, he urges, hasnever been content with deism which is, in fact,only the vestibule of atheism.79 It is no moresatisfactory in its social result, and he cannotresist from heaping contumely upon its foremostrepresentative. He does not, moreover, find Prot-estantism any less unsatisfactory.80 It is the apo-theosis of religious individualism. It destroys theunity of the church.81 It has no answer to thosewho, like itself, take their stand upon the teach-ing of scripture.82 It cannot have fundamentalarticles—whether sentiment or unanimity, or theadmission of decisive significance.83 It in fact de-nies the inspiration of God by substituting forhis guidance the results of human interpreta-tion. But, as a consequence, it leads in the endto atheism; for both claim to speak in the nameof reason, and they are alike confounded by itssocial inadequacy.84

He had thus, in substance, denied the logic ofany attitude distinct from that of Catholicism.What he had next to attempt was the construc-tive demonstration of its necessity. He had toshow that religion was socially invaluable, andthat by religion could only be understood theposition he himself maintained. The end of manis happiness; but the condition of happiness isrepose. Here is the first reason of religious util-

ity for without it there is no contentment.85

Surely the cause of such a pronouncement is tobe found in Lamennais’ own troubled soul. Hehad gone into the church that he might findpeace. It was then but natural that he shouldinsist upon its splendour. But repose can comeonly when man has discovered the laws of hisbeing. Without them men cannot realise theirend. But those laws are religion and it is thusthat without religion men cannot attain theirend. Philosophy is useless for that purpose. Whatit does is to make of man a God, and thus todestroy the bonds of social existence.86 That isan attitude socially impossible. All that we are,all truth that we can know, comes in its originfrom God.87 We have to put trust in him simplybecause from nowhere else is to be derived thecertitude and faith which are the conditions ofexistence.88 The result of religion is thus to putman in a right relation to his environment. Itassures that order and fixity he so passionatelydesired. It centralises his life, and the great ob-ject of human endeavour must be the discoveryof unity. That, indeed, is, for him, the whole ob-ject of order.89 To see life in terms of a singleprinciple was to see it in the one context that issocially adequate.

But unity demands its conditions. It can only beestablished by a system of relations. It necessi-tates the abolition of interstices. The structureof society must be monistic.90 Lamennais haslittle difficulty in showing that this demands anhierarchical organisation. The individual mustbe sacrificed simply because he has no interestexcept in relation to the larger whole. The realunit, in fact, is society itself and man becomesno more than a fragmentary moment of its ex-istence.91 But the equilibrium must be main-tained and power is its instrument. It is, indeed,the fatal error of philosophy that it destroys thatpower; for when it proclaims the self-mastery ofmen it in fact removes the foundation of author-ity. No one will, he urges,92 has any real right toassert its superiority over another. That is theflaw in Rousseau’s social contract.93 To make willthe basis of society is at once to admit anarchy.But to derive society from God, to coerce its ele-ments into oneness by the force of religion is to

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find a basis for the beliefs he cherished so deeply.It is then not difficult to urge that man existsfor the glory of God and that the perfect andeternal society is that in which the glory of Godis most amply pursued.94 The littleness of theindividual beside so infinite an end is clear; andLamennais can take comfort in the pain that hehas suffered by the thought that he in fact min-isters to a harmony to which his very pain con-tributes.

It is here, moreover, that the church emerges;for man has to relate himself to God, and it wasthrough Christ that the mediation was accom-plished. But the fundamental achievement ofChrist was the foundation of his church,95 andwe have then the text of the whole argument.For the church was clearly founded that Christmight preserve those rules of social order he hadrevealed in his gospel. When he confided theirpreservation to the church he in fact entrustedit with the government of society. He made itthe vital link in that system of relations whichLamennais had postulated as fundamental. Thatis why the denial of Catholic sovereignty is acrime;96 for it is the denial through human prideof an order established by God. All power, in itsorigin, must then be derived from the church. Itis the guardian of social relationships. But thechurch means Rome, and Rome, as Lamennaiswas soon to argue, means the Pope. So it wasthat he went back to Rome that he might dis-cover there the lordship of the world.

IV. The Glorification of RomeIt is not difficult to trace the origin of the firstsection of his essay.97 To Bossuet and Pascal but,above all, to Bonald, it is immensely indebted.98

It reflects the general reaction from individual-ism so characteristic of his age. Its exaltation ofauthority, its insistence on philosophy as sociallydisruptive; its translation of man into an entirelyreligious context—these are the terms uponwhich Bonald and de Maistre had proposed torebuild the world. Like them, even if by impli-cation only,99 it was to Rome that he was drivenback for his answer. But the book is everywheredistinguished by the magnificent originality ofits spirit. No one save Lamennais could have

written it simply because it bears in every linethe intense expression of the bitter strugglethrough which he had lived. His denial of theimportance of the individual is simply the self-knowledge that he must sacrifice his ambitionto the demand of his friends. His picture of theevils of philosophy is the angry farewell to oneof the delights of his youth, the attempt to con-vince himself that the sacrifice has been worththe making. The book, in fact, is essentially apersonal document. But it is also more than that.Its implications are far more significant thanthe results it expressly declares. Lamennais islaying the foundation of an argument of whichthe conclusion is an ecclesiastical imperialismbased upon independence of the state. He is, intruth, insisting that for centuries the centre ofworld-importance—a centre, moreover, distin-guished in his eyes by the divinity of its origin—has been Rome. In that aspect it is but a step tothe demonstration that the ecclesiastical feder-alism in which the Gallicans put their trust100

has no root in historical reality. It subjugatesthe church to the state. For if power is Roman inits derivation, there was good ground for the tre-mendous claims of Gregory VII, and theminimising efforts of 1682 are so much error.Such an attitude, moreover, has even deeperimmediate significance for the France of histime. It condemns the Revolution out of hand. Itis the text-book of intolerance, for it proclaimsthe importance of orthodoxy in its liberal mean-ing of correct doctrine. That is, perhaps, in somesort due to Lamennais’ own character. Whateverhe believed, it was essential for him to believewholeheartedly. He was above all things a greatpamphleteer, and it was thus fundamental to hiswork that he should be capable, granted his pas-sionate temperament, of seeing but a single sideof any problem. The vivid eloquence of the bookgives it, even after a hundred years, a sense ofburning life which but little literature of its char-acter possesses. “Ce livre,” wrote de Maistre,101

“ce livre est un coup de tonerre sous un ciel deplomb.” But that thunderclap was, in truth, nomore than the vague herald of the storm.

For a decade after the publication of the firstpart of the “Essai” Lamennais, while he was

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never friendly to the French state, was at anyrate not in active opposition to it. Nor is the rea-son far to seek. If the Bourbons did not yield tothe enormous pretensions of the church therewas always hope of their surrender. The historyof the Restoration, indeed, is little more than acontinuous effort of the church to capture thepolitical machinery of France. If too much wasnot to be expected from Louis XVIII—after all agood-humoured sceptic of the eighteenth cen-tury102—it was known that his heir dreamed ofnothing save a return to the golden days of theancien régime. And even Louis was willing to domuch to efface the results of the Revolution. TheConcordat of 1817, whatever the defects of itsapplication was, after all, a great victory for thechurch. An extensive attack was launchedagainst the university—in a sense not the leastfundamental of all Revolutionary institutions.103

The Jesuits came out of their hiding-places andmade of the Rue du Bac a seat of governmentwhich challenged comparison with that of thecrown.104 Missions and congregations multipliedwith extraordinary rapidity. Members who saton the Parliamentary Commission which exam-ined the Concordat of 1817, did not hesitate, asa duty, to inform the Pope of its proceedings.105

When it became clear that the project, in its origi-nal form, did not meet with the approval of theChamber, its amelioration was effected by an actof grace from Rome and, even then, not throughthe ordinary diplomatic channels, but by a rep-resentation to the French government by theGrand Almoner of the French church.106 Whenthe Concordat of 1817 was finally abrogated, theclergy did not hesitate to stigmatize a ministryof which, from its own point of view, the sole faultwas surely no more than weakness, as atheistin character.107 Men like Bonald even affirmedthat the creation of new bishoprics—in part, atleast, a financial matter—depended not at allupon the wishes of the Chamber, but entirelyupon negotiation between Louis and Rome.108

When Richelieu resigned in 1821, it was permis-sible to doubt whether the state had not beenreduced to the police department of the church.

It was as a journalist fighting for these ends thatLamennais is remarkable in these years. But

he was clearly dissatisfied with the hesitationsof the government.109 He seems to have consid-ered that the end of its weakness must be a newand more terrible revolution. So that he was notillogical in giving his support to those who werefighting for the most extreme claims the churchcould put forward.110 But association with Villèleand Chateaubriand inevitably meant the con-fusion of religious with political ends, and uponthe latter Lamennais had no opinions. It is clear,moreover, that Lamennais disliked the use ofreligion as a political weapon. The extreme Righthad, after all, ends to serve which made the re-ligious question only a single aspect of its policy;nor was he certain that in those other aspectshe agreed with its aims. He had already come toregard opposition to the political results of theRevolution as impossible.111 His own thoughtwas almost exclusively occupied with very dif-ferent things.

What, obviously, he was trying to do was to workout the principles upon which the French churchcould be regarded as itself a state or rather partof the Roman Catholic state—of which theFrench government must not diminish the sov-ereign rights. He denies, for example, the rightof the Minister of the Interior to ask for accountof its charitable donations;112 that is simply, forhim, the irrelevance of unnecessary despotism.He insists that Gallican doctrine is subversiveof the government of the church; and to postu-late the inferiority of the Pope to the canon lawhe identifies with a spirit of license and rebel-lion.113 He admits that the exercise of the cleri-cal function is essential to the welfare of thestate; but he is anxious for the church to buildup, by means of foundations, its own revenuesrather than depend upon official subvention.114

He wishes to free the sacrament of marriagefrom its connexion with the civil law; for themarriage of Catholics concerns only the churchwhich does not extend the admission of legiti-macy to any other act of union.115 He seeks tofree the observance of Sunday from any reasonsthat are not purely religious in character.116

When a Protestant is prosecuted for his failureto place a carpet before his house on the occa-sion of a religious procession, Lamennais agrees

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with the accused that the extension of tolera-tion under the charter releases the state fromany attempt to assist the church.117 The state,he insists, is now non-religious in character, andwhere there is not complete fusion it is neces-sary that there should be the recognition of com-plete independence. So the civil authority maynot force upon the church the burial of those whohave violated its laws.118 The church has its owncode of legislation and its self-sufficiency mustbe recognised.119 From the principles of religiousfreedom that the charter has consecrated hedraws the inference that the right to form asso-ciations is fundamental; for without them theCatholic church cannot prosper.120 Because manbelongs to two societies, the religious and thecivil, his education is the function of both alike;121

but he denies that government can in any senseact as the controlling agent in the process. Thereal decision must rest with the family, whoserights in this aspect no government may in-vade.122 Clearly he is seeking to make of the al-legiance of men to his church a thing in nowisedistinct from that which the state may demand.

Nor is other proof of this attitude lacking. Hisinterpretation of the Concordat of 1817 casts aspecial illumination upon his doctrines. Theroyal nomination to the bishoprics it establishedhe looks upon as the concession made of graceby one sovereign to another.123 It would, in hisview, be impossible for the Chamber to createbishoprics or to define their functions. “Un pareilpouvoir,” he declared,124 “.... seraitune sacrilègevéritable de l’autorité spirituelle.” He goes evenfurther. He denies that the Chamber had theright to deal with the Concordat at all. In hisview, the virtual withdrawal of that agreementwas due not to its refusal by the representativesof the people, but by their unwillingness to pro-vide the funds for its application. The Concor-dat itself he regards as no more than a piece ofprivate legislation for the Roman church whichthe Pope, out of courtesy, had communicated tothe king of France. Certain relations betweenthe two required a readjustment of financialarrangements, but that was all. The analogybetween this conception and the Catholic inter-pretation of Wiseman’s famous pastoral of

1851,125 is of course clear. Each looks upon thechurch as containing within itself all the essen-tial elements of a state. That the field of territo-rial action is the same as that of the state properit regards as unessential; for the content of itsregulation is purely mental in character. Butinsofar as men give allegiance to the papal crownit has the right to exercise a sovereignty overthem. “Le Christianisme,” he wrote,126 “est unesociété.... mais point de société sans pouvoirs etsans devoirs, sans commandement et sansobéissance; donc il existe un pouvoir et desdevoirs spirituels, une autorité ayant droit decommander aux esprits, qui sont tenus de luiobéir.... qui n’admit pas un pouvoir souverain,perpétuel et permanent, ou ne s’entend pas, ounie l’Eglise.” Obviously, such a conception of thechurch leaves no room for secular interference.Rather does it almost challenge it by the infi-nite power to which it lays claim. And that wasthe more inevitable since Lamennais makes con-tinual insistence of the necessity of religion tothe state. At the same time to deny the state theright to suggest conditions upon which that re-lation may be established is virtually to denythe right of the state to settle the terms uponwhich it may exist.

Not even from that conclusion did Lamennaisshrink. The state has to decide between athe-ism and religion. If it chooses to admit the lat-ter it must not attempt the control of its asso-ciations. It must submit, where the influence ofthe church is concerned, to the discipline it de-mands.127 That is, in effect, to submit to the Pope;for he accepts with eager gladness the conclu-sion of de Maistre that the power of the sover-eign pontiff is illimitable.128 To put one’s confi-dence in councils is not merely heretical, buteven destructive of the basic conception of thechurch. For the church above all things is anunity, and to suggest a power above, or concur-rent with, that of the Pope is to destroy thatunity.129 So he does not hesitate to define reli-gious liberty as obedience to the civil power andto argue that liberty is greatest where that obe-dience is most complete.130 To free man from re-ligious obedience seems to him not different fromhis erection into God; for from whom does power

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originate if not from God?131 He denies the sov-ereignty of the people because its consequenceis the subversion of all social order, and a doc-trine cannot be true of which the results are sodisastrous.132 So, too, tolerance becomes impos-sible; for it makes of power the plaything ofambitious pride, and thereby destroys at onceits object and its function.133

It is a powerful assault against both individual-ism and the foundations of the modern state.But what it lacked was the demonstration—which neither Bonald nor de Maistre provided—that individualism is as a fact defective in itsphilosophic foundations. It was easy to dismissthe right of free enquiry as the basis of belief;but the real necessity was to show wherein itserror consisted. It was to that task thatLamennais addressed himself in the second partof the “Essai sur l’indifférence” which he pub-lished in 1821. The volume, indeed, made noth-ing like the sensation of the earlier portion; andso careful a judge as Barante seems to havefound it tiresome.134 But the book has an impor-tant place in the intellectual history ofLamennais since the theory by which he soughtto refute individualism, is, in fact, that whichcontributes most singularly to the destructionof his ultramontane ideas. It is in realityCartesianism that he is attacking. The philo-sophic analogue of protestantism, it is the par-ent of social disorganisation. So immense wasthe authority of Descartes that practically un-aided he had given a passport to rationalism intheology.135 What Lamennais strove to show wasthe bankruptcy of philosophy, its inability tosolve the central problems by which man is faced.He urges that the core of life is, in fact, not doubtbut certainty and that the basis of this certaintyis the unanimous testimony of men. In such anaspect, truth is easily obtainable. It is no more,but no less, than the generality of men believes.It is not a system that he expounds. What hedoes is to take those dogmas most necessary tohis system and to proclaim their truth by thedemonstration of their common acceptance.136

Men have faith in God, and therefore God ex-ists.137 The religion which rests on the broadestbasis of visible authority is the Roman Catholic

which therefore is the most incontestably true.138

But if it is true it must be revealed from God;139

and that is to give it the authority it had claimedfor its principles in the earlier portion of his es-say.

Of the philosophic weakness of such an argu-ment it is not necessary here to speak.140 It oc-casioned the most vehement controversy, andthere were not a few who regarded it as hereti-cal.141 The fundamental point was the fact thatit left open the road to liberalism. ForLamennais, after all, had only to convince him-self that the majority of men disbelieved in eccle-siastical conservatism to be able to urge its un-truth. At the moment he might be the defenderof ultramontane doctrine, but it was the defenceof a passionate individualist who thought thatmost men believed it was right simply becausehe did so himself. Rome, indeed, gave a tacitadmission of the theological rectitude of his doc-trines by permitting the appearance of an Ital-ian translation.142 Whatever Rome may lack, shehas the virtue of abundant patience; and she wascontent to tolerate the uncertainties of theologi-cal novelty where the political consequenceswere at the moment so beneficial.

Meanwhile, the political situation was givingnew determination to the extreme royalistswhile it made the radicals more desperate. Theseeds of the Revolution would have their har-vest and if the retirement of Decazes meant thesurrender of the king to the Right, it was evi-dent enough that the intransigeance of thatparty was leading to disaster. Lamennais, cer-tainly, did not deceive himself. The violence ofthe ministry seemed to him to be no less threat-ening than that of the Revolutionaries;143 andhe found their theory of a state-religion in everysense embarrassing. Between political atheismand spoliation he was not anxious to make achoice.144 The only sure remedy was the frankadoption of Christianity as the basis of society,and for that step the government lacked thenecessary courage.145 It was impossible, as heurged,146 to give any sanction to authority with-out the establishment of a régime almost anti-thetic to that of the Restoration. He saw fear

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and jealousy as the guardians of nationalpolicy.147 The principles of the Holy allianceseemed to him worthless; and already he fore-told the onset of a new revolution.148 The dislikeof the Jesuits seemed to render impossible agenuinely religious policy such as he desired.149

When men like Courier and Béranger were will-ing to undergo prosecution for their cause theunity he cherished was clearly far-off. The pressmight be controlled; but the passionate opposi-tion of the liberals showed that patience wouldhave its limits.150 It was easy to attack such pa-pers as showed a contempt for the State reli-gion, and to deliver up the university to thepriests. But each step that was taken onlyshowed more clearly how utterly the old régimehad passed. Guizot and Cousin might cease tolecture;151 but it was impossible permanently tosilence such men. Nor did the Spanish policy ofthe ministry prove as efficacious as might havebeen desired. The restoration of absolutismmight be preached as a crusade, but the war waseverywhere realised to be a disastrous failurewhich served only to make more evident theimpossibility of royalist extremism. Lamennais.might justify the Inquisition;152 but he knew inhis heart the folly of such efforts.153 So high didpassion run that the minister of the interior ac-tually invited the clergy to preach Gallican doc-trines, and particularly the articles of 1682, inthe vain hope of assuaging men’s anger.154 WhenCharles X mounted the throne in the autumn of1824 the clerical party may have obtained theking it desired; but it was the tragedy of his ac-cession that his ideas made a successful reignimpossible. For Charles was still the Countd’Artois and he was incapable of understandingthe age in which he was to rule. The man ofCoblentz could not govern a France which hadtasted the sweets of Revolution.

The demands of the clerical party, in fact, wereinconsistent with the charter which had beenthe express condition of the Bourbon restora-tion. What churchmen like Clermont-Tonnerredesired was simply the absorption of the stateby the church; and if his audacious programmeresulted in his prosecution, it was symptomaticof the temper of his party.155 Charles’ ministers

might draw up new projects of a code of sacri-lege in the manner of the middle ages;156 but inthe long run they could not meet the argumentsof men like Constant and Royer-Collard.157 Theking might be given power to authorise by ordi-nance the establishment of new congregations.158

But this in fact, was not a church-policy to whichLamennais could give his adhesion. It wasGallican to the core since it emphasised by itsvery nature the dependence of the church on thegoodwill of the king. Villèle with his law of sac-rilege seemed to him like the serpent temptingEve in Paradise.159 It seemed less like service tothe church than an act of devotion to thecrown.160 “On pousse de toutes parts” he wrote,161

“à une rupture avec Rome et l’établissementd’une Eglise national, d’une Eglise representa-tive.” What he desired was an opportunity forthe church to live freely its own life. One mayimagine that he felt this the more keenly sincehis reception at Rome in the previous year hadbeen all that his heart could have desired; theman who found in the workroom of the Pope noother decoration save the image of the Virginand his own portrait162 was not likely to belittlethe value of Roman influence, and that at a timewhen Rome was more than suspicious of theGallicanism of French ecclesiastical policy.163

Nor, from his own standpoint, was he wrong inhis suspicions. The Gallican church had em-braced the cause of royalism with a fervourwhich suggested nothing so much as Anglicanenthusiasm for the house of Stuart. Their bish-ops no less than their priests seem to have con-vinced themselves that in the establishment ofa royal despotism they would find the means ofecclesiastical triumph. It is true that they didnot hesitate to make their victory the conditionof their support; and it is even possible to arguethat many of them went further in their de-mands than Lamennais himself would havedone.164 But the fundamental fact remained thatthey were satisfied to work out their own salva-tion through the state. What they wanted wasthe exclusive establishment of the ancien r gime;and they in no sense realised that they wereseparated from their ideal by the flaming swordof the Revolution. Lamennais saw more deeply

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and more truly. He was far from certain thatthe cause of monarchy was destined to tri-umph;165 and he was unwilling to prejudice thechurch by alliance with an institution which,after all, would profit more than it would conferbenefit by the alliance. He was acutely consciousof the important dissensions within the ranksof those who were eager to rebuild the ecclesi-astical edifice. Clermont-Tonnerre might de-mand an ultramontanism expressed in terms ofstate-control; but there were men who, likeMontlosier,166 while earnest supporters of achurch as the Jansenists conceived it, were yetbitter in their reproaches of a government which,as they urged, had surrendered itself to theclergy.167 In any case, he did not like the idea ofstate-dependence. What he was convinced of wasthe power of the church to stand on its own foun-dations. It could reach the minds of men with-out the intervention of secular government. Itwas to the demonstration of that fundamentalbelief that he turned his energies.

V. The Attack on the Secular StateWhat, clearly, Lamennais feared was the sover-eignty of the state; and it was to avoid its con-trol over religious affairs that he elaborated inhis discussion of the relations between religionand politics the basis of that theocracy whichreached its inevitable culmination in the decreesof the Vatican Council.168 He submits every sortand kind of question to the authority of thechurch, and the judgment of the church heequates with the papal judgment. The wholework, in fact, is a passionate protest against theimplicit federalism of 1682. He does not, like deMaistre, attempt a historic justification of theultramontane theory. Rather does he assert thesimple doctrine that only, as a practical ques-tion, in the unified sovereignty of Rome can re-lief be found from the dangers by which thechurch is confronted. Every idea which tends todiscredit the necessity of its unique control is,as he insists, a fatal blow at the whole ecclesias-tical structure. What, of course, he is attackingis essentially the principles of liberalism. Heattempts to discredit them by proof that theyare the logical precursor of anarchy. He deniesthe adequacy of any system which does not base

itself and its rights upon the authoritative pro-nouncement of a single and supreme power.Without a centralised government he believesthat every safeguard of orthodoxy is open to de-struction. And since religion is the safeguard ofthe whole social edifice, it is clear that upon theacceptance of ultramontanism the salvation ofsociety itself may without difficulty be made todepend.169

Lamennais, at any rate, so makes it; and it isinteresting to reflect that when his own changeof attitude was so near at hand the starting-pointof his attitude should have been a distrust ofdemocracy. The régime of the time he regardedas already—it seems incredible enough—nomore than a representative republic,170 and itwas with a grim picture of its defects that hebegan his survey. The existence of the chamberhe insisted was already the division of the sov-ereignty of the state.171 The king was no morethan a great memory of the past. His functionshad passed from him to a ministry dependentupon Parliament. But that Parliament itselfderived its powers from the people, so thatFrance was already that democracy which is thesource of political illusion.172 But democracylacks stability. It has no principles and it is irre-sistibly in a condition of perpetual agitation. Youcannot teach it. It is contemptuous of authorityand it trusts no one of superior talent. Thosewho attain its favours are always the mediocre,and they win their position by servility and dis-honest adroitness. Democracy destroyschristianity; for the latter centres itself roundthe idea of a single and supreme authority whichis alien from the spirit of democratic govern-ment. And while christianity is conservative,democracy is by nature liberal so that there isalready a fundamental incompatibility. It is thusthat he explains the hostility of the Revolutionto the church; for to strike at the guardian oforthodoxy is to prepare the way for thategalitaranism which he regards as no more thanthe parent of universal confusion.173 There are,of course, minor confusions also, corruption, thedestruction of all sense of right, atheism and ahighly-flavoured type of despotic rule are sooneror later inevitable.174 Legislation means no more

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than the triumph of special interests, adminis-tration is the victory of caprice and incoher-ence.175 There is no longer room for virtue, andthe multiplication of private speculation andinvention results in the confusion of public pros-perity with the progress of civilisation.176

Such an exordium does not promise well forparticularisation. When he applies these gener-alities to the France of the Restoration, it is atonce clear to him that the state is atheist.177 Itis true that the charter declares Catholicism tobe the religion of France, but these are wordswithout meaning. It has become essential to con-ciliate, and the real purpose of the charter canno longer be maintained.178 The result of thispolitical atheism has been to destroy the hold ofreligion on domestic society. No one can now hopefor a religious revival; indifference, negligence,avowed disbelief are the characteristics of thetime.179 Public instruction has become a politi-cal institution; and Bossuet’s Defense of the ar-ticles of 1682 has become a text-book for theyoung.180 The law has come to look upon religionsimply as a political weapon; it is now a thing tobe administered, a public establishment whichis recognised out of courtesy because some mil-lions of French men happen to believe in a cer-tain form of it.181 It has thus become essential toregard Catholicism with defiance, for alone ofall religions does it pretend to set limits to thesovereignty of such anarchic doctrines.182 Prot-estantism is in different case. Lacking as it doesboth dogma and discipline it has no corporatebond. It is by its very nature destined to depen-dence upon the civil power. But the duration ofCatholicism would alone prove it to be the stron-gest of societies. It has, however, other and deci-sive virtues. It is divine in its institution andindependent by its nature. It has its own hier-archy, its own laws, its inalienable sovereignty.It has remained unchanging from its origin. Ithas the noblest of missions. It teaches in thename of the greatest legislator of all. Whateverof stability the modern world possesses it owesto the Catholic church. Yet the exercise of itsrights is hampered on every side by jealous men;and they seek to dissolve its unity as a corpo-rate force. In such a situation the one object of

men’s efforts must be the preservation of itsoneness that it may remain as the life-givingforce of civilisation.183

What, then, he has to discuss are the conditionsunder which the existence of Catholicism is pos-sible. He fastens at once upon its unity as thefundamental safeguard of its continuance. Forhim the whole motive force of the church hasbeen Rome. It is he insists,184 the constitutingpower of christianity. Only the name of Romedeters the enemies of social order from their fa-tal work. “Point de pape, point d’Eglise,” and thatwhether as a matter of history or of dogma. Thechurch is a corporation in which true religionfinds its resting place.185 But, fundamentally, asit has been universal and perpetual, so it hasbeen always one. But it could not be one unlessit had a centre of unity, and that centre is to befound in the sovereign pontiff. So that if the popeis thus to be identified with the church—UbiPetrus ibi ecclesia186—the consequences are clear.The Pope must be infallible and none must con-test his authority. He is a supreme monarch, foronce his decisions are called into question hissovereignty is worthless. But the syllogism ismore tremendous even than its premiss. Pointd’Eglise, point de christianisme. Idle dreamershave thought to revise the religion of Christ byreforming the church, but the result of their ef-forts has always been to destroy the principlesof religion itself.187 For to deny a single dogma isto destroy the structure of the whole; and whatman cannot prove by his reason he must believeon faith.188 So we are led to our conclusion. Pointde christianisme, point de religion.... et parconséquent point de société. Once we declareourselves independent of christianity duty isdestroyed and vague sentiment takes its place.189

Everyone, as in his own time, does as he pleases;the obligatory character of faith ceases to bindthe conscience of men. But thus to loose thebonds of religion is to deprive society of the sanc-tions upon which its existence depends. So toattack the pope is a crime against society, anattempt at the destruction of the very principleof civilisation.190 That we may be men, we must,in such an analysis, embrace ultramontane doc-trine; and he will show from the examination of

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its antithesis how deadly are the effects of itsrejection.

It is clear that in such an analysis whateverseems to diminish the strength of papalism is asevere blow at the roots of the church. Here isthe real root of Lamennais’ distrust of Gallicandoctrine. It lays emphasis on the particularchurch instead of the universal. It fore-shadowsa federal instead of a unitary organisation of itspowers. What, above all, arouses his distrust isthe fact that Gallicanism is not ecclesiastical butpolitical in its origin.191 It may demand “liber-ties” for the French church, but it ask them onlythat the state may the more completely destroyits independence. Gallicanism speak of liberty;but the liberties of the church are rights thatthe pope concedes, and he would not concede thefreedom of doctrine or of governance to a bodywhich cannot meet save by secular permission.192

But his objections go even deeper. The real ef-fort of Gallicanism is summed up in two propo-sitions each of which is fatal to Catholicism. Itasserts the independence of temporal sover-eignty. It assumes the superiority of a generalcouncil to the Pope. But he will admit neither ofthese conclusions. For to assert the independenceof temporal power is at once to assert the dual-ity of the world and thus to render impossiblethat reduction to unity for which he was so anx-ious. Moreover since the church and the churchonly is the source of the divine law such a doc-trine assumes that a law made by men is to rankas of equal worth with what comes directly fromGod.193 It does not even admit that God’s lawmust be supreme since it confers sovereignpower upon what is by definition non-religiousin nature. He does not deny the existence of thetwo powers; but he insists on the dogmatic andhistorical inferiority of the secular.194 Nor willhe admit that a council can control the papacy.That is to establish a collective sovereignty andthus to transform the church from the monar-chy it ideally is into a republic such as Rome orVenice.195 But a collective sovereignty is no longerunified, and to postulate it is thus to destroythe fundamental fact that the church is one,196

Lamennais embark upon a long and acrimoni-ous dissection of the tendencies towards church

nationalism so notably represented in his timeby bishops like Frayssinous and laymen likeMontlosier,197 He denies that popes can ever err.He insists that the decrees of 1682 simply de-liver the clergy into the royal hands.198 But thatis to weaken the allegiance they owe to Rome,and to weaken that allegiance is to destroy thecorporate character of the church. It is there-fore not merely uncatholic, but in its very na-ture it is the kind church that tends to depen-dence upon the good will of the state,199 Even inthe France of the Restoration, that good will isapparent in the lack of fixity in the relationsbetween the church and the government,200 To-day the church receives its subvention, but noone knows the possibilities of the morrow. Thelaw passes an annual judgment upon the advis-ability of its continuance; and its educationaldesires are frustrated by the existence of theuniversity. The whole mechanism of church gov-ernment, in fact, is operated tentatively and withdifficulty when such continual account of thestate has to be taken. It is only in complete in-dependence that the terms of a satisfactory ex-istence can be found.201

So he drives us back to the dreams ofHildebrand. There is but one pope and all kingsare his subjects. The Pope must rule because,without his guidance there is no alternative butanarchy.202 Where men erect themselves thejudges of every social dogma the fall ofcivilisation is certain. He deems that cataclysmalready at hand; and it is to protect Franceagainst its onset that he proposes this pitilesssolution. But, as with Bonald, Lamennais innowise suggests the means by which that solu-tion is to be applied to events. Nothing is morefatally easy than the diagnosis of social evils andtheir removal by heroic remedies. Lamennaislived at a time when the principle of authoritycould no longer command the widespread assentof men. If Royer-Collard and Guizot could findno comfort in his theories, it was assuredly notbecause they were hostile to the division of sov-ereign power. It was simply because an immensepolitical experience had taught men that thesafeguard against its abuse was its partition.Lamennais was striving to breathe new life into

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a loyalty that was already dead. The alliance ofthrone and altar no longer possessed the magicof the eighteenth century to support it; and hewas profoundly right in his insistence that insuch a partnership the throne would mostgreatly benefit. The dissolution of the alliancewould, as he urged, give the church a new senseof freedom. She would cease to be chained to thewheels of the monarchic chariot. But the deduc-tion from separation is not supremacy. It is onething to believe that Rome is mistress of theworld; but the fundamental fact remains thatthe greater part of men are unwilling to con-cede her right to dominion. He was right in hisurgent assertion that Rome was a world-stateand that the attempt to federalise her gover-nance would be out of accord with her historictraditions. Rome has, since the Conciliar move-ment at least,203 been consistently Austinian intemper. She has set the model for centralisedgovernment, and not even the catastrophe of aReformation or a Revolution could sway her inthe direction of change. But she has been moreand more compelled to surrender her positionas a temporal power. She has been more andmore compelled to confine her jurisdiction to thespiritual control of those who are willing to sub-mit to her guidance. Even in Lamennais’ owntime she was losing that temporal expression ofher penalties which, in the middle ages, hadmade what we now call the state, rank as nomore than her constable. Luther had a final re-tort to her claims when he invented the divineright of kings.204 Effective she still might bewithin her sphere—how effective the greatestof her advocates was himself within a decade tolearn. But the effectiveness of her effort was nolonger external; it had come to depend upon theconsent of men. Membership of the state was nolonger conditional upon baptism within her com-munion; and that, after all, was the final blowto her widest claims.205 Her sovereignty, in fact,had been reduced from the universality of pre-Reformation times to a will, still, indeed, great,but now compelled to struggle not so much toadvance, as actually to maintain its position.Men had freed themselves from the notion thatpower is justified by the mere fact of its exist-ence. They had learned—and it is here that

Rousseau has a claim on our gratitude that wehave still to pay—that the fundamental prob-lem in politics is not the description or mainte-nance of the organs of authority but the inquiryinto their legitimacy.206 In that light the claimsof Lamennais were already obsolete.

Where, indeed, there was much to be said forhis attitude was in his firm refusal to base histheory of social organisation upon no other con-sideration than that of public policy. Here, it istrue, he was obviously medieval; for the aban-donment of the attempt to discover a naturalorder founded upon divine right is the chief po-litical characteristic of the modern world. Wehave come to see that not the least significantcriterion of any political structure is its expres-sion in terms of the general happiness of com-mon men. It is, perhaps, a more terrestrial stan-dard than that which Lamennais adopts. He wasabove all anxious that men should be right; andhe meant by right the acceptance of the extremelimits of Catholic doctrine. It is obvious, of course,that intolerance is implied in such an attitudeand the modern rejection of intolerance seemsbased upon two assumptions of whichLamennais could take no account. We are toouncertain of the truth of any spiritual interpre-tation of life to give it the final sanction of com-plete authority; and we find that the historicalresults of intolerance in no sense justify its ex-ercise. It is, in some sense, the banishment ofGod from politics; and in that sense we live inan anti-theocratic age. We have passed, as Mr.Figgis has finely pointed out,207 “from the de-fence of rights to the realisation of right,” and itis from actual experience that we give to rightits modern connotation. What Lamennais did notrealise was the historic fact that the multiplica-tion of authority arose from exactly that pro-cess. Catholicism had abused its powers; and inthe political no less than the religious sphere—he would, of course, have denied the legitimacyof such separation—new institutions arose todefend what men, if wrongly, at any rate sin-cerely, had come to regard as fundamental. Thevery existence of such diversity had relegatedto the impossible the theory for which he stood.The old high-prerogative notion of sovereignty,

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three centuries of a history of which the Revolu-tion was only a dramatic climax, had securelyslain. His own theory of certitude by universalconsent should surely have made him appreci-ate the significance of that diversity of opinionhe so deeply regretted. But the time had not yetcome when that realisation should be drivenrelentlessly into his soul.

VI. The Transition to LiberalismIt was, at any rate, a striking protest; and if itmet everywhere with a doubtful reception208 itwas yet a challenge which no weak governmentdare allow to pass unanswered. That was themore certainly the case since the very monthbefore the publication of its second part the vet-eran Montlosier had charged the ministry witha cowardly surrender to the clerical party;209 andeven if the accusation were only in part thetruth,210 yet Lamennais’ arraignment of the al-liance between throne and altar seemed to givecolour to his pretensions. The only step theydeemed it possible to take was his prosecution;and his virtual acquittal,211 after an argumentin which his counsel, the great Berryer, deniedthat the decrees of 1682 were a part of Frenchlaw, was in every sense a personal triumph.212

But it was noteworthy that he had already ar-rayed against himself the episcopal powers ofFrance. The bishops, headed by Frayssinous,addressed a declaration to the crown which wasunexceptionally Gallican in sentiment;213 and itwas henceforth clear to Lamennais that neitherfrom the crown nor from the episcopate was helpto be expected.

That is the real source of his later liberalism.Disappointed by officialism in church and state,his only resource was the general mass of men.But, as yet, he had other hopes. He was still pre-pared to stake everything upon the action ofRome, and his letters show how much he builtupon the accession of an energetic nuncio to thecharge of French affairs.214 Not that he concealedfrom himself the gravity of the situation. A longstruggle was in front of him. From all sides therepoured forth acrimonious criticism of his prin-ciples.215 He believed, indeed, that the body ofthe clergy was well-disposed to him, and he still

insisted on the glorious future of the church.216

But that made him the more insistent on theneed for a direction of their enthusiasm. “Tousles yeux,” he wrote,217 “sont fixés sur Rome....qu’elle continue de se taire, qui osera, qui pourra,parler?”

He had ceased to expect aid from the state. Hiscondemnation had completed in him a long pro-cess of disillusion. He could not interpret it oth-erwise than as a determination upon the part ofgovernment to use the church for its purposes.So that Rome only was left, and it was upon theissue of that confidence that his future depended.He seems to have thought highly of the Pope,218

and though he declared that the idea of a na-tional church was in everyone’s mind, he did notdoubt that once a frank word came from Rome,the loyalty of the provinces to the true concep-tion of Catholicism would assert itself.219 Rome,as he thought, could not long endure the super-vision of its decrees by the government.220 Sogreat was the servility of the Gallican party thatit had disgusted even the honest liberals. He wasalready prepared to believe that they would lenda new support to his cause if Rome would but doits duty. “Le monde a chang é,” he wrote to afriend,221 “il cherche un maître: il est orphelin, ilcherche un père. Le trouvera-t-il? Voilà la ques-tion.” For, on all sides, the ultramontane posi-tion was menaced. Men who held his opinionswere ruthlessly dismissed.222 A society for thepropagation of pious books was attacked becausehe supported it.223 Orders of which the bishopsdid not approve were prevented from undertak-ing missions. People even went so far as to whis-per that at Rome itself Lamennais’ opinions wereheld in little esteem.224 It is little wonder thathe should have begun to feel a deep distrust ofhis opponents and that there should have creptinto his writings that note of acrimony whichmade a distinguished Jesuit protest against hisbitterness.225 Even in the Jesuits be had lost allconfidence. Attacked as the society was on allsides, it had not ceased to intrigue with everyparty; and its declared ultramontane opinionswere, for him, no excuse for the hatred it engen-dered in the minds of honest men.226 The nunciolistened with politeness to his expositions of

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policy; but his responses seem to have been nomore than diplomatic expressions of the papaldifficulties.227 If the ideas for which he stoodsponsor were gaining widespread acceptance hestill feared greatly the influence of authorityagainst them.228

More and more he was driven to distrust thestate. “Il faut d’avance,” he said,229 “poser lesbases d’une nouvelle societé.... c’est folie decompter sur les gouvernements qui ne sont plusdes gouvernements, qui ne peuvent plus leredevenir. Il s’agir de faire des peuples.” It is anote which constantly recurs. Government mightattempt the control of the press,280 but he saw init only a weapon by which ultramontanismmight receive its deathblow. He was appalled atthe incapacity of the clergy. Only a great reformcould effect the requisite change.231 More andmore he feared that religion had ceased to exer-cise an influence over the minds of men. Europehad become simply a vast alliance of the strongagainst the weak and a system of principles gaveway to a system of interests. Only when theyregained their empire would it be possible tohope. Only one man could draw the attention ofthe peoples to their existence, and he was si-lent.232

That silence is the fundamental fact inLamennais’ transition to liberalism. Romeseemed to him too temporising in her attitude.233

If she showed signs of compromise, that wouldbe false to the future.234 A new generation wasarising which needed her direction. The progressof revolutionary ideas was evident on everyhand. The government interfered with increas-ing enthusiasm in clerical affairs. Speed, aboveeverything, was necessary to the church’s safety.“Une immense liberté,” he wrote towards theclose of 1828,235 “est indispensable pour que lesvérités qui sauveront le monde.” But that lib-erty could come only when Rome should speak.Lamennais did not understand the thousandpolitical considerations which were the cause ofher silence. He was asking her to devote herselfto spiritual empire alone; but that was to inviteher to surrender a faculty of temporal interfer-ence to which she held firmly. Nor did he yet

understand that for Rome he was himself lessthe guardian of a truth which meant everythingto her future than the head of a party withinthe French church of which the success was morethan doubtful. Rome would probably have agreedto many elements in his programme. But shemust have realised that what he demanded286

she would not attain without a struggle far morebitter than Lamennais can even have dreamed.He was, after all, free; and he could follow hisprinciples to their logical conclusion. But Romehad a hundred warring interests to conciliateand innumerable traditions to obey. In the re-sult, an abyss developed inevitably between theirviews. His influence was growing and many ofthe younger generation were rallying to his side.The “Ecole Menaisienne” was already conceivedat the end of 1828. Men like Gerbet and deSalinis were already his firm friends. Little bylittle he was coming to see that authority, evenin the church, may be poisoned at its source. Itwas with this feeling already deeply rooted thathe published, early in 1829, his “Progrès de laRévolution.”

It is not so complete a rupture with his earlierviews as he was presently to make; but the bookmarks in a real sense the birth of liberal Ca-tholicism and there are few of its doctrines onemay not implicitly find there. In a society thatis really Christian, Lamennais points out, theunity of the people is secured by spiritual ties;as they submit to the prince so should they sub-mit to God.237 But from the time when Louis XIVproclaimed the destruction of the two powersthe realisation of that ideal has become impos-sible. Two theories at least have arisen whichaim at or result in its destruction.238 A liberal-ism so logical as that of the Globe,239 must breakevery social bond; for while it denies sovereigntyeither to king or people, it replaces them onlyby individual opinion which is, in truth, to letloose the floodgates of anarchy. Nor is itfavourable to liberty; for the condition of libertyis the existence of a legitimate power which shallact in accordance with the eternal principles ofjustice.240 Nor is Gallicanism in better case. Itis, in truth, a gloss for servitude. It does no morethan free kings from the moral code and leads

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to their deification. It makes men think of reli-gion as the natural ally of despotism and thusdissipates their affection for it. What is neededis a Christian order. After all, it is under the aegisof Catholicism that liberty was first born; andthe guarantee of its continuance is the submis-sion of the temporal power to the spiritual. Ifmen turn once more to the church the destruc-tive combat between liberalism and theGallicans will cease.241 With neither should theclergy ally itself. Rather should it proclaim itsentire dissociation with all political life, and itsconnexion only with Rome. It must assert itsancient rights. The bishops must resuscitate thediocesan synods and the provincial councils. Themismanagement of the state in education andworship must cease. The clergy must free itselffrom the reproach of ignorance and take accountof the march of knowledge.242 The reign of thechurch will be the work of liberty; from freedomonly can truth be born. Liberty of conscience, lib-erty of the press, liberty in education—these andnot less than these are his demands.243 “Sortezde la maison de servitude.... entrez en posses-sion de la liberté.” It is a cry that the churchhad not heard in two hundred years of her his-tory.

The book is the logical consequence of his ear-lier work. Where, before, he had trusted kings,he now trusted the people; where before he hadtrusted Rome, he now puts his confidence in thecollective power of the priesthood. He has seenthat kingship has traditions which make its rec-onciliation, in any full sense, with Catholic ide-als impossible. And if monarchy is thus held backin the state, his experience of Rome’s hesitationssuggested that the condition of the church is notdifferent. To be driven back as he was to the gen-eral body of its members was to find its realmeaning in the life that it led. It is surely thisthat explains the almost complete absence ofdogmatic discussion from his enquiry. He is in-terested in Catholicism as a spirit which maybecome again the mistress of men’s souls. In-deed, he is so far cognisant of the changing in-tellectual perspective that he insists on the ne-cessity of the clergy being fully abreast ofprogress in scholarship. It is here, clearly, that

the tenor of his liberalism is evident. That forwhich he is seeking is the conditions upon whichthe Christian church—for him that societasperfecta which seems destined eternally to hauntthe minds of men—may develop unheeded.Doubtless he is still anxious that she may winthe empire of the world. He is still—as he re-mained to the end—in the full sense of the worda theocrat. But he has already come to under-stand that the realms of church and state areby their nature distinct. He is already, even if,in some sort, unconsciously, admitting that au-thority cannot be single. He had hardly, as yet,worked out the implications of his admission.He perhaps did not then realise that he wasthereby reducing the church to the condition ofa voluntary society which, even if it had the fea-tures of a state, was nevertheless distinct fromthe territorial character of the secular organ. Heno longer, as in 1818, spoke of government asall-powerful. He had not, indeed, as yet embracedliberalism in any full sense of the word. He ap-pealed to it as men who are persecuted alwaysmake appeal to the principles of freedom. Buthe had come to understand that without it theguarantees of progress would be lacking. He dis-liked its vagueness; and he hoped to abrogate itby establishing his demand upon the basis of anacceptance of the Christian faith. He believedthen, as he always believed, that only in the ac-ceptance of the spirit of Christianity could Eu-rope find its salvation. That was what he meantby saying that unity would be reborn in thestruggle for freedom. That was why he welcomedthe onset of the revolution he so clearly foresaw.Renovation must be the child of destruction; thetempest, as he said, would purify the air. But hedid not yet know that he was speaking the lan-guage of revolutionary democracy as he wasabandoning the ideal of papal Rome.

VII. The Foundation of L�Avenir“When a certain number of men,” Lamennaiswrote early in 1829,244 “keenly conscious of thosetruths which are the basis of social security shallunite among themselves, then we shall have thegerm of a new order.... for that end two thingsare essential: we must enlighten men’s mindsby discussion, and we must strengthen their

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hearts by fighting. From that it follows that lib-erty, whether we have it, or whether we merelyseek it, is today the first need of the people as itis the indispensable condition of our salvation.”That is, in brief, the whole method andprogramme of Liberal Catholicism as Lamennaisconceived it. The opposition to his attitude waspassionate and strong. The Archbishop of Parispreached and wrote publicly against him;245 thenuncio regretted the violence of his attitude.246

His fierce determination was ascribed on everyhand to pride and an overweening confidence inhis own conclusions. Few realised, as didLamennais himself,247 the magnitude of the taskhe had undertaken. With the bishops unitedlyagainst him, the silence of Rome was ever moreexasperating; and the death of Leo XII deprivedhim of one who was perhaps his friend.248 Thechurch seemed to him as one given up in thearena to gladiators and wild beasts.249 Not eventhe Revolution of 1830 seems to have stirred himvery deeply. He had long prophesied its coming;and he valued it only as a sign that his previ-sion was not mistaken;250 nor did he conceal hisview—nor his satisfaction—that the crisis musteventually end in a republic. The situationmainly interested him as a means to the greaterfreedom for which he was now so anxious.“Chacun,” he wrote,251 “chacun doit aujourd’huichercher sa sûreté dans la sûreté de tous, c’est àdire dans une liberté commune. La liberté, c’estle droit et la faculté de se défendre contre toutevolont arbitraire et oppressive.” The problemwas the translation of that attitude into termsof Catholic life.

He did not embark upon its solution unprepared.His retreat at La Chênaie had for some timebeen a kind of communal retreat for those fewclose friends who, like Gerbet and Salinis,thought as he did upon the fundamental ques-tions. As early as 1825 he had dreamed of open-ing there a kind of institute, where, with a fewchosen comrades, he might work and think andpray. At Malestroit he had founded the littleCongregation of Saint Peter which won the high-est praise from Leo XII.252 Its object was, aboveall, to harmonise the results of science and reli-gion. “Lorsque l’Eglise tenoit entre ses mains le

sceptre de la science,” he wrote,253 “c’etait unedes causes de l’ascendant qu’elle avait sur lesesprits.” That was, perhaps, a somewhat chimeri-cal ambition to anyone who had any historicsense of the Catholic church. But over his com-panions, as even a hostile witness like Wisemanbears testimony,254 his ascendancy was amazing.It was under his aegis that Rohrbacher beganthat history of the church which, if its lustre bedim now, was for its time a mighty undertaking.Boré came there; the grim Lacordaire who cameto doubt remained to bless; Sainte-Beuve felt itsinfluence; and the letters of Maurice de Guérinbear witness to the joy that tender and gracefulspirit felt in the friendship of his master. And alittle later towards the end of November, 1830,there came to his aid the ablest and most re-nowned of his disciples in Montalembert.255 Withsuch men as these he could indeed face the fu-ture without fear.

If, at first, the Revolution of 1830 seemed hos-tile to the Catholic forces, it soon became evi-dent that this was in fact a passing mood.256 Thenation, as a whole, found its full satisfaction inhaving deposed the king who had broken theCharter of 1814; and it was sufficiently Catho-lic in character to indulge in no more than spo-radic and momentary excesses. Nor did the gov-ernment show itself more inimical. The newdynasty was, after all, too frail to embark on thetroubled seas of religious persecution; and if theCharter of 1830 was more liberal than its pre-decessor it in nowise deprived Catholicism of itspre-eminence. Lamennais did not disguise fromhimself that difficult times lay ahead; but hebelieved that the support of the Orleans dynastywould lead to the protection of those rights bywhich alone the existence of religion was pos-sible.257 Almost immediately the means of activepropaganda were to hand in the foundation ofthat journal L’Avenir which in its feverishly bril-liant career, did more, perhaps, than any otherweapon to fasten the roots of liberal doctrinedeep down in the soil of Catholicism. “Son but,”Lamennais told his friends,258 “(est) d’unir, surla base de la liberté, les hommes de toutes lesopinions attachés à l’ordre.” At almost the sametime there was instituted a society for the de-

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fense of religious liberty.259 It undertook to sup-port every religious school. It protected the clergyfrom wrongful prosecution. It safeguarded theright of association. It desired to act as the com-mon link by which all religious societies inFrance should be linked together for mutualprotection against all attacks on the liberty oftheir faith.260 Both journal and society are sim-ply Lamennais; nowhere is there any thoughtin either of which he is not the directive inspi-ration. His letters take on a note of optimism bywhich, in general, they were rarely distin-guished.261 He seems clearly to have felt thegreatness of the work he had undertaken; norwas he any longer possessed by the old tenors ofits futility.

The Avenir lasted for a year, when the hostilityof Rome compelled its suspension. Certainly nojournal has ever more splendidly filled itsprogramme. Its very disappearance was impor-tant; for it marked the first of the three greatdefeats suffered by liberal Catholics in the firstcentury of their existence.262 Yet in the shortperiod of its existence it was able to elaborate apolitical theory of which no one can as yet fore-tell the complete potentialities. Lamennais him-self has told us the essence of the doctrines hetherein preached. It started out from the as-sumption that the right to command, which hecalls sovereignty, belongs to God alone;263 everyone is dependent upon Him and therefore noperson can possess, in the strict sense, sover-eign powers. As a consequence, all men are equalin their rights; for their rights are derived fromtheir nature which come equally from God. Lib-erty is thus the essential condition of civil insti-tutions. The power which is given to rulers isderived from the agreement of men to arrangefor the protection of their liberties. Rulers, as aresult, possess only that power which is judgedby the citizens of a state necessary to the con-servation of the law of their being.264 Men havethus imprescriptible rights and it follows thatliberalism must always be the basis of their ex-istence. The Revolution and the Restoration alikedenied these truths; it was by a policy of con-certed violence that in their different ways eachsought to govern. The monarchy of the Restora-

tion, moreover, used religion as a politicalweapon and thereby brought it into discredit.265

They deprived it, in fact, of the character of areligion by taking from it its character of inde-pendence. They used it as a means against thatdemocratic r gime which is always incompatiblewith monarchy;266 and they bought its compli-ance by the gift of money, of dignity and of power.But a struggle inevitably arose when the peoplecame to realise that the state was being usedfor the interest of a privileged class. The peopledemanded their rights and they did not hesi-tate to take them. A new order was born; and itwas to preserve Catholicism from the evils bywhich it was threatened that the Avenir cameinto being.267 It is upon that foundation that itseffort was made. It insisted upon the separationof religion and politics; a religion which is en-dowed by the state is no longer a religion but anestablishment. It asked for the tight to estab-lish schools, the abolition of episcopal nomina-tion, the complete independence of church andstate. For the essence of their doctrine was tolook upon Catholicism as in itself a sufficientway of life, bound not to earth but to God. So, byseparating itself from the world, it secured theconditions of its freedom. So it became the mir-ror of that which it was destined to enshrine.268

There is no article in the Avenir throughout itshistory which is not faithful to this programme.It is difficult to do full justice to the eloquentpassion with which it is throughout advocated.It is clear enough that Lamennais was happy inthe work of propagation. His letters reveal a newfaith in things which triumphs over the diffi-cult physical conditions under which helaboured. He saw the work grow on every hand.The response to his charitable appeals was re-markable.269 The demand for men of letterswhom he could trust came from every part ofFrance.270 They gave active support to the Bel-gian Revolution and the Polish insurrection.271

They followed the efforts of O’Connell in Irelandwith eager enthusiasm.272 They had feelings ofdeep sympathy for the kindred ideals of G rresand Dollinger.273 They dreamed of a generalunion of Catholic forces throughout the world ofwhich the end was to be the attainment of a gen-

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eral freedom for all peoples.274 They protestedagainst the enmity of science and religion; forCatholicism dare not fear truth otherwise it wasnot worthy of preservation. Nor is it difficult tosee that in the process of work Lamennais be-came more and more convinced of the rightnessof his attitude; certainly not even in the darkdays of his suspension did his conviction for amoment falter.

It is not easy to mistake their system. On themorrow of a revolution they saw, as they deemed,but two things still firm amid the universal dis-order: the action of providence and the need forliberty. It is with their integral reconciliationthat they are, above all, concerned.275 It is in ef-fect, a demand that the spiritual future of thechurch be based upon an acceptance of what, inthe most liberal estimate, the Revolution maybe taken to mean; with the addition that wherethe Revolution misunderstood the significanceof corporate freedom,276 Lamennais insists uponits attainment. From that basis they make theirjudgments. Their connexion with Rome must beuninterrupted and direct; to attempt the con-trol of such communication is an intolerable andoppressive surveillance. For it means that thepapal power over the church is reduced to a nul-lity, and without that power the church can haveno real existence.277 They insist on the right ofassociation. The holding of opinions implies theright to take means for their protection. Man isso pre-eminently a social being that without suchright his life is deprived of half its meaning.278

They demand liberty of instruction; for it issurely clear that without the opportunity to edu-cate their children in Catholic principles theyhave no means of ensuring what they believe tobe their salvation.279 Nor does their demand endthere. They recognise that religious liberty is theoffspring of political liberty. That was why theyrejoiced at the Polish insurrection.280 That waswhy the power of government was by its verycharacter an object of suspicion in their eyes. Itwas the very power of government which reallylay at the bottom of their advocacy of separa-tion. It was an historical deduction from theirexperience that a church so fettered cannot fromthe nature of things be free. Their desire for lib-

erty of the press is only the implicit translationof liberty of thought into terms of action. Theirinsistence on such a form of election as will en-able the suffrage to be exercised by the hum-blest men is a result of their desire to give powerthe broadest basis of consent; and it was for thatreason that Lamennais declared himself opposedto the existence of an hereditary chamber.281 Norwas it less consistent with his theory of powerthat he should have demanded administrativedecentralisation. It was part of the natural rightto self-government that he should desire tominimise the evil influence of the absorptiveeffect of the Napoleonic system. If we once ad-mit the right of a people to look after its ownaffairs it becomes sufficiently obvious that fed-eralism more nearly meets the needs of a com-plex society than the unitary state.282 Nor washe logical in his view that only in the increasingapplication of intelligence to public questions,the continuous realisation that this is a chang-ing world and that Catholicism must meet theimplications of its changing perspective, couldthere be a victory for his principles.283 In the end,it is to that conception that all liberal Catholi-cism goes back. The idea of a developing tradi-tion was for him the simple deduction from theobvious fact that Catholicism was a living per-sonality which, if true to itself, was surely des-tined to conquer the world. If he states his be-lief, less in terms of a dissatisfaction with itsnarrow dogmas than of discontent with its nar-row political outlook, that only means that hewas the child of his age. The need of the mo-ment was political; the scientific criticism ofCatholic dogmatics began to penetrate only aquarter of a century later. Yet his anxiety for alearned priesthood is sufficient evidence that hewas not without some understanding of the needthat one day would come.

What, then, emerges from it all? The real prob-lem by which he was confronted was the prob-lem of government. He did not for one momentdoubt the eternal truth of the fundamental max-ims for which Christianity stands. But he hadcome to the stage where it was necessary to dis-tinguish between the collective conscience ofChristian society—the general will which lay

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buried beneath the appearance of evil and mis-understanding—and the consciously formulatedpractice of those who actually governed it. Hehad come to disbelieve that the church could befully represented by her ministers. What shewas, no one body of men could claim to be. Shewas essentially a brotherhood of a life to be livedon certain principles and the fundamental testof her worth was the regulation of her conductin the terms of those principles. That was whyhe was prepared to reject the authority of thestate. As a consistent Christian he could not re-gard himself as linked to what was in idea nei-ther religious nor free. And that sense of antago-nism to secular things made him anxious to in-sist in every particular upon the distinct andcorporate life of the church—its self-sufficiency,its own right to freedom, to government, to de-velopment. It was for the expression of its per-sonality that he above all cared; and he did notgreatly mind that the sense of power a state-relation might add to it should be withdrawn. Itdid not greatly matter to him that he did not—perhaps could not—attempt the definition ofCatholicism. For him the vital test was—as it isthe vital test of every society—that he felt itsmeaning deeply enough to be able to share fullyand richly in its life. He would never—certainly,at least, before 1834,—have denied that thechurch must actively organise her strength; hispassionate defence of ultramontanism is thesufficient proof of that. But he was virtuallyclaiming already a right to judge it, was reserv-ing for himself the power to insist that, whenthe last order has been issued, it was, after all, amatter for his own judgment whether he wouldaccept it. All his work had gone to show that hehad, as much as any Catholic authority, a deepsense of the disintegrating effect of schism, awish that there should be unity of purpose evenif there were variety of effort. He had the deepand abiding sense of the church as an apostolicsociety of which the mission was the prepara-tion of the city of God. But that is clearly a Ca-tholicism distinct in a fundamental sense fromthe sectarian orthodoxy of the schools or thepolitical ambitions of Rome. It is, as the great-est of his successors said of the true Catholi-cism of his own time, “simply a spiritual society

organised purely in the interests of religion andmorality.”284

Such an attitude, of course, involves the livingof one’s faith rather than the observance of itsdogma or its ritual. Here, surely, is one of thekeys to Lamennais’ hatred of Gallicanism; for,as he interpreted it, it rendered impossible anyfull realisation of the Christian life. ForGallicanism, as it had developed under the Res-toration,285 had become an exclusive and intol-erant search for power. It had lost sight of thesignificance of the spirit of the church, in theeffort to re-assert a specialised and departmen-tal control over a section of the thoughts of men;and it was not very careful as to the means itused to that end.286 With such an attitude he hadno sympathy. As an essay in the ideal church forwhich he lived it seemed to him abortive by thevery fact that it trod the path of the state. Thedesires he cherished were different. A freechurch in a free state was reserved for other andgreater destinies. It would link itself to the cur-rent of social change which was to fashion a newworld. Science and liberty would be its comrades,and it would advance in kinship with theprofoundest hopes of democracy.287 If it rejectedthe sovereignty of kings, it was only that it mightbe true to itself. If it is suspicious of authority, itis only because it has experienced its evils. If hewas prepared still to maintain extra ecclesiasmsalus nulla, what he meant by the church wasno longer obedience to a single power. He be-lieved, it is true, in the unified governance ofthe church; but he believed in it only so long asthat governance was in accord with liberal doc-trine. It is clear that he is already in the stagewhen in a choice between what Tyrrell called“the only absolute duty and the highest sort ofconditional duty”288 there could be no alterna-tive. That is not to say he was a Protestant. Hissense of the dangers of religious individualismwere far too keen for that to be possible. It meantonly that his sense of the church was such thathe could give to her only the best that was inhimself. The real problem was her attitude tohis gift.

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VII. The Appeal to RomeHad Lamennais been content with the composi-tion of a hymn to liberty it is possible that hisviews, if they involved discussion, would yet haveavoided condemnation. But, from the outset, bothhe and his disciples were anxious to promotetheir utilisation. Within a month of its first pub-lication, Lacordaire urged the French bishopsnot to accept the nominations of LouisPhilippe,289 while Lamennais demanded theimmediate abrogation of royal control. The re-sult was a prosecution by the government inwhich both were acquitted.290 If, as Lamennaishimself thought, the verdict wrought immensegood,291 it was yet only the beginning of theirdifficulties. His own sense of their contingencyis clear from his letter of a month later to Car-dinal Weld. It assures him of their entire goodwill towards Rome, their humble dependenceupon the papal commands.292 He was soon repu-diating calumnies which accused him—as falselyas intelligibly—of a desire to destroy the episco-pate.293 But more serious was the attack on theirdemocratic principles from the Father-generalof the Theatines, Ventura; not only was he afriend of Lamennais, but he was well acquaintedwith Roman opinion.294 Lamennais, indeed, morethan refuted his objections but the criticism,published as it was in the most intransigeant ofthe Gallican journals, was full of significance.295

Bishops began to urge him to cease his propa-ganda.296 It was bruited abroad that the latenuncio had denounced him as one of the great-est enemies by which the church was con-fronted.297 The Jesuits began to cast subtledoubts upon the orthodoxy of his principles.298

Dupanloup, then on the threshold of his im-mense influence, had begun to intrigue for hiscondemnation. Lamennais, he said,299 “entra neles jeunes prêtres dans l’indépendence politiqueet la rébellion religieuse.” Nor did Rome speakas he had hoped. “Là on ne voit rien,” he wroteof the papacy,300 “on ne comprend rien encore;on est plongé, perdu dans les ténèbresexterieures des intérêts terrestres, qui nelaissent pénétrer aucun rayon de lumière.”Priests who were suspected of adhesion to hisdoctrines were attacked; and the clerical sub-scriptions to the Avenir suffered a forcible de-

cline.301 They were threatened by interdict andintrigue, and Rome gave support to those accu-sations. Their demand for encouragement fromRome met with no response.302 The note of sad-ness begins to reappear in his letters. “Ce n’estpas le courage que je perds”, he answered afriend who urged him not to lose hope,303 “maisla voix; je prévois que bientôt elle nous manqueraaucun moyen de résister à l’oppositionépiscopale.” In October of 1831 he wrote toMontalembert that it was hopeless to continuein the face of such relentless antagonism.304

Lacordaire urged that they go to Rome to jus-tify their attitude; and though Montalembertseems already to have feared condemnation,Lamennais himself insisted that it was impos-sible.305 On the 15th of November the Avenir wassuspended, and the three friends set out, “as didthe soldiers of Israel” to convince the papacy ofthe honesty of their intentions and the justiceof their cause.306

The Roman adventure is to Lamennais what,three centuries before the visit of Luther was tothat greatest of schismatics. It is the real turn-ing-point of his life. It brought to the final testhis theory of the part that Rome was to play inthe governance of the world. He had never de-nied the omnicompetence of the Pope. He hadalways insisted that the plenitudo potestatiswas, in this realm, at least, justified by its exer-cise. At the distribution of religious power hehad frankly scoffed. He had again and again beenurgent as to the necessity of monarchical andunified direction by the church. Not even whenhe had come, by 1829, to realise the necessity ofliberal principles had he changed his convictionsin this regard. Nor did he doubt that Rome wouldwelcome the opportunities that freedom offered.There is not a tithe of evidence that Lamennaisexpected an unfavourable reception; but theamazing dishonesty of his treatment completedin him a disillusion of which the first seeds werealready sown. What he learned was the dangerof unified authority even in the Catholic church.He was defeated by papal unwillingness to sepa-rate the spheres of temporal and spiritual. Hefound that, in thought, at any rate, the papalideal was still the dream of a worldly dominion

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against which three centuries of reformers haduttered in vain their protest. He learned thatthe papacy regarded itself as a temporal powerwhich had benefited by the possession of cer-tain valuable spiritual weapons. The Rome ofwhich he dreamed vanished the more speedilyas he contemplated it in actuality. It was a Romewhich was unwilling to regain a spiritual em-pire if secular dominion must be sacrificed.

It is, in fact, clear enough—even when the evi-dence arrayed against him by Rome itself is con-sidered307—that the main grounds of his condem-nation were not religious but political in char-acter. Religious they could not be, for the suffi-cient reason that to the composition of his lib-eral Catholicism no element of dogma contrib-uted. Gregory XVI sacrificed him to the fear thatthe prolongation of his active career might em-broil him with the governments of Europe. Theage was not liberal in its outlook. The papalstates themselves were the centre of nationaldisaffection. The English administration of Ire-land was rarely more harsh and never moreunpopular. Russia was breaking into pieces themen who dreamed of a reconstructed Poland.Under the shadow of liberal phrases theOrleanist monarchy was erecting a despotismnot less ugly than the old. In Prussia an omni-competent bureaucracy was codifying the max-ims of Machiavelli upon the relations of religionto the state. Austria seemed, under the oppres-sive reactionism of Metternich, to confound theapplication of the penal code with that of theBeatitudes. It was the antithesis of such doc-trine that Lamennais came to urge; and whathe offered to Rome was an alternative in whichthe nobler choice could have been taken only bymen who did not deem themselves bound by theordinary canons of secular diplomacy.

The powers themselves did not fail to urge Romealong this course. Simultaneously with his ar-rival in Rome, the French ambassador demandedhis condemnation;308 and he was able to reportto his government that the pope was as compli-ant as he could desire.309 The weight ofMetternich’s incomparable authority was usedto the same purpose. “Elle appartient,” he wrote

of the Avenir,310 “au désordre, comme les feuillesdévouées au pur radicalisme.” The Archbishopof Paris was urgent in his request for immedi-ate and adverse action, while he skilfullymingled praise of intention with hostility to re-sult.311 Even Russian influence was exercised forthe same end.312 The commission appointed bythe Pope to deal with Lamennais’ doctrines couldby no bible fortune have been favourable to him.Ventura had already published his suspicions.Lambruschini was, to say the least, distrustfulof the whole tendency of which Lamennais wasrepresentative. Soglia had, towards the end of1830, written to Lamennais urging him to re-trace his steps.313 Means were taken to preventdirect access to the Pope; and if they were al-lowed to present a memorial in which their po-sition was defended, still Lamennais began tofeel the amazing falsity of his position. What,after all, could Gregory do, a simple monkcaught, as they were caught, in the meshes of alabyrinthine system?314 The sense of embarrass-ment on both sides was very painful. “Notredémarche,” wrote Montalembert,315 “sicatholique et si simple, a jeté la cour de Romedans un embarras qu’elle ne nous a paspardonné; uniquement occupés de leurs intêretstemporels, qui se trouvent dans la position duplus critique, les cardinaux et les prélats quientourent le saint-père voient avec le plus grandmécontentement les efforts que nous avons faitspour détacher la réligion et l’Eglise de la causesdes rois qui sont, a leurs yeux, la Providencevivante de ce monde.” It was no more than thesimple truth.

On every side, indeed, the situation conspiredagainst them. If the pope was uniquely sover-eign he still had need of his delegates and hewas compelled, in some degree, to give ear totheir complaints. So, even before any decisiveaction was taken, he accused Lamennais of sow-ing discontent among the French clergy316 andto rid himself of a troublesome visitor, he fore-shadowed a long examination of doctrine whichmade his continued stay in Rome inadvisable.The fact of the matter was, as Lamennais beganto realise,317 that Rome had a choice between theliberalism of her original inception and the tem-

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poral interests resultant on her massiveorganisation, and she was not prepared to sac-rifice substantial material possessions. Beforethe pilgrims separated, they were allowed to seethe Pope; but discourse on the weather and thesardonic offer of snuff stifled from the outset alleffort at discussion.318 Lacordaire returned toFrance, Montalembert set out for Germany.Lamennais himself, for the moment, remainedin Rome. His stay there was only serving themore firmly to convince him that it was essen-tial to continue his work. He began with almostfeverish energy to draw up programmes of de-tailed future activity.319 He began to write a trea-tise on the ills by which the church was op-pressed. Meanwhile the French ambassador wasable to inform his government that Rome wasset firmly against all such liberalising innova-tion.320 The revolt that simultaneously broke outin the papal states was not without its lesson. Ifliberalism involved the occupation of Ancona byan Austrian garrison—a step which seemedlikely to embroil Gregory with the rest of Eu-rope321—he would have none of it. The Frenchbishops gave him all the help he could desire.Lamennais’ enemies, to the papal satisfaction,drew up a formidable list of his suggested her-esies.322 Upon their basis Lambruschini reportedin favour of action. The sacred Congregation atlast settled down to the final stage and recom-mended formally that his programme should becondemned.328

It meant the rejection of a church which shouldpursue a religious avocation. It meant insistenceupon the belief that Rome, whatever her inter-ests in the other world, has a very definiteconnexion with the secular problems of thepresent. No one who reads the correspondenceof Lamennais in Italy can doubt that this wasthe foremost impression defeat would makeupon his mind. Rome already seemed to him,morally, a desert where none could breathe.324

He did not in any sense blame the Pope for hissilence; but he regarded him as the tool of cor-rupt and ambitious men.325 It is certain that atthis time at any rate he had no other thoughtthan obedience to the church.326 But he wouldhave been less than human if he had not felt

bitterly the intrigues against him. Yet some hopehe must have retained almost to the end, sincehe was insistent that funds should be obtainedfor the continuance of the Avenir.327 How shouldhe not who had boasted so long of the splendourof Rome, and could not but feel certain of therightness of his cause? He was, indeed, saddenedby the self-effacement of the papacy, its generaldeafness to popular desire, the ambition of thecardinals, and their absorption in secular inter-ests. It was, to him, humiliating to find Romecompletely dependent upon the good will of theEuropean concert, painfully without answer forthe new problems that confronted men. He couldnot avoid the thought that its preoccupation withpolitics was the root cause of its blindness to anew world. Nor did its internal condition makefor betterment. The secular ecclesiastics weretoo ignorant, the very means of instruction wereuselessly difficult of access. Rome was sufferingfrom intellectual deterioration, and her attemptat the control of new opinion resulted in oppres-sion.328 He drew a striking picture of the suspi-cion with which the papacy was everywhere re-garded.329 He insisted again that only in the as-sertion of her permanent alliance with the forcesof freedom could she restore her ascendency overthe world, But he was asking too much of aninstitution so securely wedded to her past tra-ditions, and he realised that it was useless tolinger.

He left Italy, and, with Montalembert, who joinedhim at Florence, he set out for Munich. There hemet Görres and Dollinger, and found in theirideas a fine kinship with his own.330 It was thatsame Dollinger who, a quarter of a century later,was to bring the whole weight of his incompa-rable learning and magnificent honesty to theservice of ecclesiastical liberalism. There is adramatic fitness in his presence at Lamennais’side when the news of the latter’s condemna-tion was published to the world.

IX. The CondemnationThe encyclical Mirari Vos,331 is the first step onthe road which led, first though the Syllabus of1864 and the definition of papal infallability,332

and later though the condemnation of modern-

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ism in the Pascendi, to the proclamation of waron the basis of modern society by Rome. ToLamennais’ plea that the cause of the churchand the cause of society are one, it virtually re-plied that while that was undoubtedly true, thechurch would only permit the triumph of thesocial cause upon its own terms. But those termswere themselves the hard-won creed of a demo-cratic time; and by their rejection the papacydeclared its determination to stand aside frommodern progress as we generally conceive it.332

No one will deny the greatness of that defiance.What, in fact, it has involved, is a claim to a com-plete lordship over the minds of men. Pius X onlycompleted, on the dogmatic side, what GregoryXVI outlined on the political. In that aspect thework of de Maistre, and of Lamennais before1830, has borne its due fruit. The papacy hasgiven birth to a political and intellectual sys-tem of which the broad outlines are perfectlyclear. The Roman Catholic church has become acentralized and, for its members, an infallibledespotism. It has insisted that the life of theworld must be written in religious terms; whichis virtually to pronounce that the pope is its sov-ereign since to him has been confined the con-trol of religious destinies. Gregory XVI, at thevery outset of his encyclical, repudiated as nox-ious the notion that the church was in need ofregeneration.334 He lightly castigated those whoattacked the celibacy of the clergy and the in-dissolubility of marriage.335 But the great evil ofthe time was indifferentism, and from that ev-ery species of intellectual delirium is born.336

Liberty of conscience is impossible; in result itis an invitation to erroneous opinion. It leads toa contempt for sacred things and for laws thatdemand respect. It is the root of all social evil.Nothing has so much contributed to the decayof great empires than such immoderate freedomof opinion.337 It of course follows that the libertyof the press is likewise condemned; it is no morethan the instrument which secures the expan-sion of monstrous errors.338 He insists on thenecessity of submission to princes. To deny theirright to authority is to deny the divinity of power.Nor must men preach the desirability of sepa-rating church from state. That union results inbenefit to both and only the partisans of a bound-

less license can deny its virtue.339 He attacks theassociation of catholics with men of other reli-gions; it results only in the demand for impos-sible liberties and the destruction of worthyauthority.340 Such doctrines he condemns as thereasoning of an insolent pride, the confidence ofmen in a reason that by its nature is weak andbroken. Perhaps the most significant clause inthe encyclical is its ending. That whichLamennais had demanded was, above all, thefreedom of the church from secular interference,its independence from all external institutionsby the very fact that it was a church. Of all thisGregory makes not merely abstraction but de-nial. It is upon the princes, whom he calls hischildren, that he lays the task of executing histheories. They have their authority not less forthe protection of the church. It is in them thathe puts his trust.341

Not even Metternich could have desired a morecomplete condemnation. The direction whichLamennais had endeavoured to give to the forcesof Catholicism was repulsed to the minutestdetail. He was offered a clear alternative. Ei-ther he must continue his work outside thechurch or he must submit to a catholicism inwhich he had ceased to find spiritual consola-tion. He could not take refuge in the propaga-tion of his political ideas; for the religious impli-cations of catholicism were so defined in theencyclical as clearly to include the whole field ofpolitical inquiry. That doctrine of the two king-doms which, in reality, lay at the bottom of thephilosophy of the Avenir could draw no suste-nance from the papal pronouncement. He didnot conceal its significance from himself. “Lesprinces et le pape,” he wrote,342 “ont crut qu’ens’unissant, ils arrêteraient le mouvement despeuples et les maintiendraient sous le joug.Grégoire XVI, comme vous avez vu, vient deproclamer cette grande alliance, et de condamnerpar là les catholiques à l’inaction. Ils ne peuventpas défendre l’Eglise contre la volonté de sonchef; nous nous tairons donc.” The Avenir andthe Agence Générale were suppressed with per-fect submission to the papal authority;343 andthe pope had written in approving acceptance.344

Not, indeed, that he had surrendered any of his

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opinions. He had simply agreed to silence be-cause one who had the right to command himhad so ordered. He was not less fearful for thefuture of catholicism than before; the tempesthe had descried would yet shake Christianity toits foundations.345 Meanwhile he asked only forpeace.

But it was exactly peace that his opponents werenot willing he should enjoy. Vague whispers be-gan to be bruited abroad which were calculatedto do him harm at Rome. It was suggested thathis submission had been merely formal and thathe did not mean it. Men pointed out that he hadmade no formal abjuration of his principles. Itwas the hounding of the wounded lion to his lair.He was reduced to the utmost poverty;346 thepope had condemned him; the bishops stilltreated him as their enemy. He had, of course, agigantic problem before him. If an infallible popecondemned a liberalism he believed to be essen-tial what must be his attitude?347 It was simpleenough for him to say that infallibility came onlywhen the papal voice was that of the wholechurch,348 but who was to judge the occasion?He seemed himself uncertain. “Laissons aller,”he wrote to Montalembert,349 “le pape et lesévêques.... il n’y a rien à faire par le clergé, niavec le clergé,” and there are surely few whocannot pardon that weariness of spirit.

The event which seems to have precipitated thecatastrophe was the publication byMontalembert, early in 1833, of his translationof Micki wicz’s hymn to Polish liberty in whichhe passionately defended the late insurrection.Since Rome had approved its suppression, theenemies of Lamennais did not hesitate to drawthe conclusion that they were contemptuous ofpapal authority.350 Accusations were scatteredbroadcast that he was guilty of insincerity; andGregory himself made protestations to the Arch-bishops of Toulouse.351 All his friends begged himto be silent and to submit once more. He waswilling enough where religion alone was con-cerned. But outside the church he demanded anabsolute freedom. “In purely temporal affairs,”he declared,352 “particularly where France is con-cerned, I recognise no authority with the right

either to impose opinions upon me or to dictatemy conduct. I say boldly that in this sphere—which is unconnected with the spiritual power—I will never abdicate the independence thatcomes to me in virtue of my humanity, and thatalike in thought and action I will take counselonly of my conscience and my reason.”

It was undoubtedly a defiance of Roman sover-eignty, an assertion of the supremacy of that lastinwardness of the human mind which resistsall authority save its own conviction of rectitude.He wrote to Rome that so far as the church wasconcerned no speech or writing of his would dis-cuss it; and he asseverated his acceptance ofpapal control in faith and morals.353 He insistedthat all he had promised in the Munich declara-tion had been fulfilled and more than fulfilled.354

He resigned the headship of the Congregationof St. Peter and the little society of La Chesnaiewas dissolved. But the pope was not satisfied.He insisted that a new submission was essen-tial when the affront of Montalembert was bornein mind.355 The letter was written privately tothe Bishop of Rennes who promptly publishedit with some comments which were simply cal-umnies.356 Lamennais replied by another appealto the pope in which he emphasised his submis-sion in all that religion demands as well as hiseagerness to please him so far as his consciencewould allow; but he insisted on his right to free-dom in purely temporal affairs.357 “I have de-fended the rights of God and of the church,” hewrote to a friend,358 “I will not insult God bydeserting those of humanity;” and he insistedthat to proclaim the twofold sovereignty of Romewould be to surrender men to an insupportabletyranny. Nor could the urgency of his most inti-mate associates move him from that position.“My conscience will not allow me,” he toldMontalembert,359 “to abandon the traditionaldoctrine of two societies, each distinct in its ownsphere, and I will make no declaration whichsuggests even my implicit abandonment of it.”To Rome such a limitation seemed entirely un-satisfactory.360 Lamennais has told us himselfthat at this juncture he began to feel uncertainas to the very basis of Catholic authority. Hewished only for peace and he would sign any

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declaration they chose to exact from him.361 Aplenary submission was exacted and Rome con-gratulated itself on a magnificent victory.362

But Lamennais’ own mind was still tortured bydoubt. He was distressed at the abuse Romewould make of such power as she claimed whenshe came to exert it over temporal interests.363

He had signed the declaration because he de-sired, above all, not to be regarded as a rebeland a schismatic. He saw in the situation sim-ply the necessity of peace, and to that end hewould, as he bitterly said,364 have been willingto identity the Pope with God. What the eventhad impressed upon him was the urgent neces-sity of distinguishing between the divine andhuman elements in the church that the confu-sion of their demands might be avoided. For him-self he was determined to avoid for the futureall contact with ecclesiastical affairs.365 He wasbeginning to make plainer to himself that dis-tinction between Catholicism and Christianitywhich had for some time impressed him.366 Heangrily repulsed some curious attempts to at-tract him to Rome.367 But even in this difficultposition his antagonists did not cease to annoyhim. The Archbishop of Paris was insistent thathe should thank the Pope for the acceptance ofhis submission. A priest of Saint-Sulpice pub-lished an acrimonious attack against him towhich, by the nature of his agreement, he couldmake no reply.368 His health was broken, and sogenerous a soul as Maurice de Guérin was movedto indignation by his sufferings.369 He neededsomething that would restore his self-confidenceand make him feel that he had not deserted hisideals. After all, he was certain of their truth;and peace at the price at which he bought it wasnot worth the purchase.370 He was deeply movedby the cruelty with which the Lyons insurrec-tion was suppressed;371 and that seems to havebeen the last pain he could bear. He was not aman to whom silence came easily and where hefelt profoundly his thought took expression inhis pen. By the end of April, 1834, the “Parolesd’un Croyant” was ready for the press. He seemsto have had no illusions as to the bitterness itwould arouse; but the time had come when hecould contain himself no longer. “I have seen,”

he wrote,372 “the tears which becloud the eyes ofthe people; I hear their cries of pain, and myheart yearns to comfort them.” He did not doubtthat he would be attacked. Men would tell himthat he ought to have kept silence. The simpleanswer was that he could not. “How could I besilent,” he asked,373 “surrounded, as we are, bysuch iniquity, such tyranny, such pain, suchwant? I have felt that deeply. I have said my say.Could I consent to allow future generations tolay to my memory’s account one of those iniqui-tous silences which harm not less, and oftenmore, than direct connivance at wrong?” He feltthis the more keenly since his thought had nowreached a point where he looked for salvation inpurely political propaganda. He reported toMontalembert—still faithful to him whenLacordaire had already deserted his ideals—arumour that the Russian ambassador had ac-cused him of desiring to make Catholicism apower once more, an effort which Russia wouldnever permit. “I am glad,” he said,374 “that hewill not permit it. That way we shall find no so-lution.”

Only those who read day by day the letters tohis closest friends can realise what the decisionmust have cost him. He did not hide from him-self that he was burning the bridges behind him.To write a hymn to the splendour of democracywas indeed, after all that had passed, to hurldefiance at Rome. It is useless to blame him. Itis too fatally easy to ascribe his determinationto pride, to self-confidence, to an overweeningsense of his own rightness for such analysis tobe satisfactory. The issue is far more complex.Rome had extorted from him the admission ofdogmas to which, in his heart, he could give noassent. If, like Tyrrell, like Dollinger, he strovehard to stand by the ancient ways, to make him-self one with what he believed to be the realsplendour of a Catholicism that enshrouded it-self in an appearance of evil, there came at lastthe realisation that, in any final examination,he must take for truth and right conduct thatwhich his conscience told him he might identitywith truth and right conduct. Rome, he admit-ted freely, had the power to demand obediencefrom him; but the power to exact it she did not

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possess. It was the simple fact that in the lastresort only his own conscience could be sover-eign that he asserted. Wrong remained to himwrong however much his masters might pro-claim its rectitude. He counted the cost of mea-suring his forces against the greatest of ecclesi-astical institutions. It might bend him; certainlyit he remained subject to its strength it wouldabsorb his forces as the rivers are absorbed inthe endless sea. But he was too confident of hisown soul thus to mangle it. What Rome called asubmissive sacrifice he branded as an unrigh-teous desertion. What she called the victory ofher collective wisdom he denounced as the blind-ness of her past. So he took the privilege of ev-ery human being to think out for himself theconditions of his intellectual striving.

X. The Red Cap on the CrossWhere even the magic of Sainte-Beuve has failedto give adequately the significance of the “Pa-roles d’un Croyant,” none else may attempt itsanalysis. It is a lyrical version of the “Commu-nist Manifesto.” It denies the legitimacy of allauthority that is not based upon the widest lib-erty and heralds in its destruction the onset ofa brighter dawn. It is written in a style that hasa splendour and elevation not merely unique inLamennais’ own work, but in the whole rangeof French literature. It is instinct with a pas-sionate generosity, and its flaming mysticism hasin it much of the exquisite character of à Kempis.Sainte-Beuve has told us how the workmen re-sponsible for its composition could hardly con-tinue for their excitement.375 New editions couldhardly keep pace with the demand. Lamennaishimself has written how workingmen contrib-uted from their savings to buy a copy that theymight read together at night; and how it wasread aloud in the workshops.376 Students de-claimed its finest passages in the Gardens ofthe Luxembourg; and even the members of theChamber of Deputies forgot the pressure of pub-lic business in their anxiety to feel the throb ofits eloquence.377

But no one can attack the foundations of an ex-isting order without waking the slumbering vigi-lance of property.378 “It is the apocalypse of Sa-

tan,” wrote his friend, the Baron de Vitrolles.379

“It is the red cap of liberty upon a cross.” TheDuchesse de Dino was amazed at hisJacobinism.380 A distinguished journalist de-nounced him as the herald of insurrection.381

Guizot has left us a curious and involved ex-pression of horror at Lamennais’ tergiversa-tions.382 De Rigny, the minister of foreign affairs,wrote to Rome at the universal astonishmentthat such ideas should emanate from a priest.383

The Gazette d’Augsburg declared that if the devilvisited the world, he would come with the “Pa-roles” in his hand.384 There was no question ofdefence, nor did Lamennais desire it. He hadwritten, as he said, to salve his conscience andto cleanse his soul from its association with aninsupportable tyranny.385 Refutations poured inon every side. The book was speedily prohibitedat Rome, though Lamennais at first thought itdoubtful whether the pope would pronounce of-ficially against it.386 Lacordaire, with a cruellyindecent haste, had signalised it as the end ofthe Menasien school,387 and his own brother didnot dare to read it.388 If there were favourablevoices they were nowhere those of authority. Itis clear enough that this adverse opinion failedto move Lamennais from the certainty that hehad done right. Once he was certain of that, hecared little for their praise or blame.389

Rome, as always, moved slowly. The reports thatcame to Lamennais seemed, on the whole, tosuggest that she would keep silent.390 But it was,in reality, impossible for the papacy not to pro-nounce its judgment. The encyclical “Mirari Vos”was hardly two years old; and its plea for politi-cal obedience was implicitly set at naught byLamennais’ work. The French government itselfwas in a quandary. Had it prosecuted Lamennaisfor sedition it was more than doubtful if a jurycould have been persuaded to convict him, andit dare not risk the chance of failure. Metternich,indeed, did what the French ministry did notfeel able to do, and sent a passionate denuncia-tion of the book to Rome, and Russia also madeits protest.391 It is doubtful enough if Gregoryneeded such persuasion. His secretary of state,Bernetti, looked already upon Lamennais as aCatholic Luther.392 The Pope himself spoke freely

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of the pain the book had caused him; and in theencyclical “Singulari nos” of June 25, 1834 thecondemnation was published. It rightly recallsthat Lamennais had agreed to obey the teach-ings of the “Mirari vos” and that the “Paroles”was a defiance of its letter and its spirit. It ex-cited disobedience to kings, contempt for law andorder, destruction as well of religious as of po-litical power. Its attitude to authority was de-nounced as an outrage to the civil and ecclesias-tical hierarchy—a mere cloak for the attainmentof freedom of conscience and the press. It at-tacked Lamennais’ call to the peoples of theworld to unite, its justification of tyrannicide,the astute temerity with which it had cited scrip-ture to its purpose. “Its propositions,” said theEncyclical,393 “are false, calumnies, rash, condu-cive to anarchy, contrary to the word of God,impious, scandalous, erroneous and already con-demned by the church in such heresies as thoseof the Waldenses, the Wyclifites and the follow-ers of Hus.” It was, in fact, a doctrine totally outof accord with the political direction that Gre-gory had finally chosen.394 The historical rela-tion of Lamennais’ teaching is, after all, mereverbiage; his democracy had as much connexionwith the doubtful communism of Wyclif as withthe antagonistic safeguard of the FourteenthAmendment; though Lamennais, like the greatEnglish heretic, did sever the action of the churchfrom that of the world by reason of his deep senseof its unearthly dignity.395 If it is a sin to lovethe church so greatly as to be fearful of its deg-radation, assuredly no one will question therightness of the papal condemnation.

If Lamennais was surprised, the blow seems tohave hurt him less for himself than for hisfriends.396 He did, indeed, feel deeply indignantthat a power he had served so well and so deeplyloved should speak of him as the basest of men.He hated the low intrigues which had led to hisfall. He objected to the condemnation of a bookin terms so vague as never to specify whereinits error consisted. He did not for a moment be-lieve that the blow could at all arrest the on-rush of forces which were working towards thedestruction of an intolerable régime.397 He was,indeed, unfortunate in his attempt to distinguish

between the voice of Gregory the pope, and thatof Gregory the man; Rome has given us no crite-rion for making such delicate distinctions.398 Hiscomplaint that Lamartine and Chateaubriandspoke as he did and yet escaped condemnationmisses the point that they were not, after all,priests, and the measure of authority that couldbe exacted from them was therefore different. Itwas useless to hope that peace could be made.The fact was that so long as Lamennais madehis conscience the supreme arbiter of his faiththere was no place for him in the church unlesshis doctrine coincided with that of Rome. He sawin the fight the same old struggle of medievaltime;399 and not even the most earnest solicita-tions of Montalembert could induce him to with-draw from his position. At the end of 1834 evenMontalembert deserted him so that the last ofhis disciples was gone.400 He was now alone andthere remained only the task of completing thedefence of his ideas. The “Affaires de Rome,”which he published towards the end of 1836, wasthe narrative of his difficulties with the Papacy.It is a magnificent piece of dispassionate analy-sis, unanswerable as it has gone practically un-challenged. Only at the end does he permit him-self reflections and it is then only to prophesythat since the victory of democratic principlesis certain, Rome must embrace liberalism orperish. But Rome had chosen another path andthe break between them was final. Henceforthhe devoted himself entirely to the cause of thepeople. There is a certain dramatic irony in thethought that, almost simultaneously, Newmanhad entered upon that struggle against dogmaticliberalism which ended in his adoption of theCatholic faith.401

XI. ImplicationsIt is an astounding evolution. Yet it is an evolu-tion conditioned at every stage by the logic of abitter experience. Lamennais started out with afirm belief in royalism and the church. He wasthe envenomed antagonist of the Revolution, andfew have drawn up, from his standpoint, an ablerindictment of its tendencies. He distrusted thepeople and he found no comfort in the dogmasof individualism. He came, in the end, to see thatall for which he had previously contended was a

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tissue of error. Nor is clarity wanting to the ba-sis of his change. He saw the church used as nomore than a political instrument, and, likeChalmers and Newman, he made insistenceupon its corporate independence. It was herethat he found the means of a sympathetic ac-quaintance with liberal doctrine. But he soonfound that ecclesiastical liberalism is only partof a larger whole. He discovered that, when thegovernment of men is despotic, religion is toovaluable an instrument in the security of servi-tude to be left untrammelled. So he was led tothe examination of the political basis of despoticgovernment and thence to its rejection. He cameto understand that a free state was the condi-tion of a free church, that he had, in fact, alliesexactly in that party for which he had earlierprofessed the deepest hostility. He urged uponthe church an adventure in liberalism. Let it oncemake the people free and its own triumph mustinevitably follow. If Rome would abandon thepursuit of earthly power and devote herself tothe liberation of those who loved her most deeply,she could save herself from the contaminationthat came from alliance with the apostles ofpolitical tyranny.

He did not, at the outset, doubt that such anappeal must win response. But he had totallymistaken the character of the church. He hadhimself been the protagonist in the definition ofher Austinianism without, as it seems, under-standing the real significance inherent in suchpower. For Rome could not embrace the cause ofthe people and remain blind to her own condi-tion. The men who directed her government weretoo deeply fond of power ever to submit to itspartition. To make alliance with liberalismwould be to condemn the church’s past, to lessenthe empire to which her greatest governors hadfor eight centuries laid claim. Herself rigidlyauthoritarian in temper, her natural affinity waswith those powers which were struggling againstthe tidal wave of democratic advance. What, intruth, Lamennais asked was that she should beuntrue to her special ethos. Of dogma, indeed,he might make entire abstraction; but to ask thechurch to concern herself with the discoveriesof modern civilisation was to demand her ad-

mission that there was a truth of which she wasnot the appointed guardian from the dawn ofher history. She would not suffer such diminu-tion of her sovereignty. If the choice was betweena claim to the widest powers and an alliancewith the unknown future, she would take herstand by that past which had given her thosepowers. Her situation was consistent.Lamennais would have made a newer and a dif-ferent Rome. He would have turned a state intoa church. For Rome is the one fundamental in-stitution of medieval times which has retainedthe indicia of her universal dominion. Today,perhaps, they are no more than a magnificentgesture, but they bear witness to the tenacity ofher memory.

Her expulsion of Lamennais was the registra-tion of her sovereign power. Yet, by that veryexercise, she demonstrated her impotence. Eventhe mightiest prince, as Hume pointed out in afamous essay, is dependent upon his ability tolead men by their opinion. It was herein thatRome failed. For while she possessed the exter-nal sanction, she could not exact passive obedi-ence. She might command, but she lacked anysecurity that she would be obeyed. She demon-strated once more not, perhaps, so much for her-self as for the world outside, that a final controlof opinion rests always with each individualmember of an association, and that whateverthe penalties attached to its adoption. Nor wasthis all. The rejection of Lamennais from a soci-ety he so deeply loved is, when the last criticismof him has been made, still a tremendous trag-edy, and it is well to enquire into its conditions.For what, basically, was he condemned? He hadno faith in any creed except Catholicism. No manof his generation had more eloquently repelledthe seductions of alternative creeds. He wasunequalled, save by de Maistre, in the unlim-ited hope he placed in the benefits of papal sov-ereignty. It is, as an acute observer noted at thecritical epoch of Lamennais’ life, little less thanastounding that it should have repulsed the oneman of genius who then lent it the service of hispowers.402

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The answer involves the most gigantic problemby which we are confronted: the nature of cor-porate personality. Wherein that personalityconsists is sufficiently matter of strenuous de-bate. The claim of Lamennais was that the realbasis of the church was not its doctrines but itslife. He saw in it a living society which, even inchange, remains true to itself and not a mass ofindividuals united by a chance agreement uponcertain formulae.403 The conception of Rome wasfar more akin to the legal interpretation of theEnglish courts. The members of the church wereto it simply an associated body of beneficiarieswho profited by the commands enjoined by agoverning court. In such an aspect, the with-drawal of Lamennais was inevitable. If he couldnot obey the commands, he could not profit there-from. If he was out of sympathy with its dogma,he was out of accord with its principles. Yet noone who reads what Lamennais has written candeny his essential sympathy with the broad aimsof Catholicism. If Lamennais had lived in thetime of Leo XIII his condemnation would havebeen extremely dubious; but that, to say theleast, is to assert that there is an integral partof the Catholic church with which he was at one.To deny the validity of dissent is to prohibit thegrowth of corporate opinion, to insist on change-lessness as the basis of the church. Yet it is im-possible to deny that the church has changed,impossible, at any rate till answer has beenmade to its own historian’s account of its coun-cils, or to the masterly polemic of Dollinger.Newman’s “Doctrine of Development” is not yeton the Index; and it is simply a plea for the rec-ognition in dogma of that which Lamennais de-manded in politics.

For, after all, he was asking no more than theopportunity to convince the church of the supe-riority of one way of life to another—as SaintFrancis made his plea for poverty, as, in anothersphere, the Jesuits made demand for thedogmatisation of the Immaculate Conception. Hedid not ask it to change its personality, any morethan Gerson did when he would have federalisedits government, or Mariana when, contrary tothe later teaching of Gregory XVI, he issued ajustification of tyrannicide.404 For, after all, the

collective experience of the church, the sense ofits collective experience, is a greater thing thanits interpretation at any given moment of itshistory. Papal infallibility meant something verydifferent to Newman from what it did to Man-ning; yet, somehow, the church was wide enoughto include them both.405 It is characteristic of anysociety, whether or no it be religious in its na-ture, that it should contain elements in somesort diverse. We cannot, in fact, avoid the inces-sant evolution of doctrine so long as man is athinking animal. To each one of us the fact ap-pears somehow different and, as a result, theinterpretation can hardly coincide.406

It means, perhaps, that within everyorganisation, as within each individual, theremust be a continuous struggle between life andtradition. In that sense, the career of Lamennaiswould be intelligible as the expression of a mo-ment in which tradition was victorious. But thelarger problem still remains. To ascribe thewhole life of a society entirely to one element orthe other is a dichotomy that is wanting in per-spective. It is to mistake life for anatomy orphysiology. The body cannot function without itsbackground; and a skeleton is still dead matter,even if it have living form. The principles of anysociety are not and can not be an expression ofthe totality of motives by which men bind them-selves into a community. For community is likefriendship in that it lies too deep for words. Itsrelations do not end with their formal utterance,and it subsists even where majority and minor-ity conflict. The fundamental thing is to remaintrue to the life of the society. It has, indeed, prin-ciples so fundamental that their violation in-volves the rejection of that life. One could notdeny the historic existence of Christ, and yetremain a member of the Catholic church. If thebasis of Lamennais’ condemnation be found here,then it would be argued that the alliance of Ca-tholicism and the political system of the FrenchRestoration is fundamental to membership ofthe church; but it is evident that this is not thecase. That, indeed, is the weakness of Lamennais’ultramontane teaching. He equated the churchwith its head, and he found himself, in the re-sult, compelled to deny the truth of his infalli-

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bility. From the standpoint of organisation hediscovered that while it might have its conve-niences it was not free from grave difficulty. For,once admit the fact of variety, and the “tradizioneson io” of Pius IX may be heresy in a cominggeneration. It is the distinction which Rousseaumakes between the “general” will and the willof all. The “general” will, in this aspect, is thewill that is true to the social life not at any givenmoment, but in the broad perspective of its his-tory and its prospects. The “will of all” is thewill that, at a given moment, gets itself obeyed.In an Austinian system like that of Rome the“will of all” becomes concentrated in the personof the pope. We judge its identity with the will ofthe church in the light of the years that lie ahead.

The quarrel of Lamennais with Rome, in fact,goes back to one of the decisive moments of thefifteenth century. The defeat of the federalisingefforts of Gerson and Nicholas of Cusa at thegreat council of Basle in 1449 resulted in theerection of a papal absolutism. It is the decisivestep on a road that lead logically to the defini-tion of papal infallibility in 1870. But the resultwas to give to Rome exactly those powers againstwhich Lamennais made complaint in the mod-ern state. When the Reformation split Europeinto a collection of diverse sovereignties eachstate inherited the shattered fragments of theRoman imperium. It was in that sense that theobsequious Parliament of Henry VIII declaredthe realm of England to an an empire. But thehistory of the ensuing three centuries is therecord of a transference of sovereign power froma single head to the general body of the state.By Rome alone, in Western Europe, was this ten-dency successfully resisted; and by Rome alonehas the maintenance of absolutism been consis-tently secured. The knowledge of her vast pre-tensions was, throughout the nineteenth century,a fertile source of diplomatic difficulty. It wasfrom those pretensions that, little by little, thestates of Europe were compelled to build up whatis essentially an alternative scheme of civic life.It was those pretensions which made of tolera-tion the ultimate dogma of modern politics. Itwas those pretensions which resulted in thestern control of Catholic life. The Roman church

was nowhere free. Her claim to statehood wason all sides met by the response that her com-peting system of allegiance was incompatiblewith the sovereignty of the state. It was againstthe assumption that the sovereignty of the statemust be unique that Lamennais made his firstprotest in the name of liberalism. It was a claimmade in the face of an external power. It did notdiscuss the conditions of an interior life withinthe church itself. It sought only to show, as deMaistre had attempted to demonstrate, that inher corporate freedom Rome will find suchmeans of dominion as will enable her to governthe world. But corporate freedom was not a syn-thesis in which a system of which Metternichwas the symbol could find, comfort or hope.

From the protest against external bondsLamennais turned to the internal life of thechurch. But here, too, be found himself con-fronted by a similar problem. The virtual apo-theosis of the Roman pontiff stifled on every sidethe initiative of the individual. There was nolimit set to the bounds of papal authority, and,as a consequence, there was no room in thechurch for any save those who agreed with theexpressed declaration of its will. Loyalty wasinterpreted to mean not faith in the future ofthe church, not belief in the principles of itscreeds, but acceptance of the political principlesby which its sovereign chose to be guided. Ofcourse such a sovereignty must, in practice, havebeen limited by the obvious facts of life. Butwhere, as in Lamennais’ own case, the individualwas forced to dissent from the conclusions ofauthority no choice was offered between obedi-ence and expulsion. He felt that the Romantheory was false. The liberalism he had appliedto the external relations of the church he en-deavoured to insist must be true of her internalrelations also. To be a true church her will mustbe the will of her whole personality and not of apart of it. It must synthesise the whole, and nota part, of her purpose. It must, in actual terms,be something more than the voice of a feeble oldman dominated by an ambitious and graspingbureaucracy. They substituted their private ad-vantage for the public need, and the church paidthe penalty of such prostitution of its purposes.

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He learned, in fact, what has been one of thefundamental lessons in the history of the mod-ern state. Disguise it how we will, the sover-eignty of the state will mean, in the long run,the sovereignty of the rulers who govern it.407

On occasion, indeed, the exercise of power bythose who misrepresent the general will mayresult in their dethronement; but history is suf-ficiently uncatastrophic to make revolution theexception rather than the rule of political life.Lamennais might protest that the sense of thechurch was against the decision of Gregory; butthe only defence he could make was an appealto the future. That, for the most part, is the de-fect of any distinction between the will of thestate and of those who govern it. The latter, atany given moment, possesses the formal at-tributes of sovereign power. There is no meansof questioning it save the means of patience. But,after all, the counsel that truth will eventuallyprevail is a maxim for eternity rather than formortal men. Lamennais found that the concen-tration of power in the hands of the papal gov-ernment deprived him of every normal meansof protest and of argument. In the result, thereis every cause to understand why the protago-nist of ultramontanism should have become thetribune of the people.

Nor was his second discovery less important. Hehad himself suggested that the centralised sys-tem of French civil administration neglected thewelfare of the provinces. He found that thecentralisation of the Roman church was not lessunfortunate. Here, again, it is to the conciliarmovement that the main thread of his ideas goesback. He confronted, intellectually, exactly thesituation that the Europe of the fifteenth cen-tury confronted in matters of organisation. AnEngland that had passed its statutes of Provisorsand Praemunire knew the dangers of a unitarygovernment. The plea of Gerson was franklyutilitarian and he argued that “solus populisuprema lex” cannot safely be interpreted interms of centralisation.408 So, too, did Nicholasof Cusa speak in the name of Germany when hemade his striking plea against the reduction ofa Christian community to papal serfdom. Thedifficulties of the sixteenth century were mate-

rial difficulties—problems of finance, of juris-diction, of place. Those of the nineteenth cen-tury by which Lamennais was confronted werespiritual in character, but it is to the same sourcethat they are to be traced. So long as the powersof the constituent parts of the Roman churchwere derivative and not original it was uselessto contend against the papal will. The Romanbureaucracy had everything on its side. It wasuseless to appeal to history or to tradition for ofthese the Pope was the appointed interpreter. Itwas meaning to accuse him of error, for he hadbeen made the church and the church had beendignified by infallibility. It was useless to pro-test that, after all, the Pope was a man and thussubject to error. It was the future to decidewhether he had spoken with the Jovian thun-der of an ex-cathedra decision. The whole prob-lem was but one instance of the fundamentaltruth upon which Dr. Figgis has insisted that“wherever blind obedience is preached, there isdanger of moral corruption.”409 The institution,in fact, which can safely deny the necessity ofcriticism, the value of dissent from its conclu-sions, the resultant good of a re-examination ofits foundations, is thus far unknown to humanhistory. The claim of perfection is a common er-ror among societies, but it is never made savewhere there is evidence of decay. The omnipo-tent autocracy of Rome revealed its ignoranceof the real conditions of social existence when itmade that claim. For the totality of influences,spiritual, intellectual, historic, that go to thebuilding of a community are not to be resumedin the dicta of authority. There is no loyalty com-pelling enough to absorb the affections of men.All that we can hope is so effectually to excludethe possibility that its demands may be rejectedas to minimise the dangers of anarchy. But thatis only to urge that the basis of our institutionsmust be liberty.

XII. The InheritanceOnce again in her history Rome was given theopportunity to make her peace with modern life.The modernist movement was, of course, for themost part, and directly, a theological movement.But, indirectly at least, the problems it raisedwere not theological questions at all, but gov-

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ernmental questions, and it was a discussion asto the nature of a particular form of communitythat was in reality the main issue. The criticalwork of men like Loisy may have provided themovement with its intellectual penumbra. Hedoubtless expressed its yearnings after a moreadequate scholarship with an ability that hasmade him one of the most striking figures of ourtime. But the thinker most representative of themodernist spirit was not Loisy but Tyrrell.410 Forit was Tyrrell, above all, who realised from theoutset that what was in fact in debate was thenature of communal authority. He never deniedthe fundamental necessity of order in a state;where he was insistent was upon the limits thatmay be set to its demands. He was not a scholar;and the technical details of M. Loisy’s researcheshe doubtless would have been willing to concedeas beyond his purview. What he essentially urgedwas the fact that Catholicism was a life, and thatthe only unchanging principle of life is the factof change. Like Lamennais, the fundamentalburden of his protest was a regret that the endof Catholicism should have perished in pursuitof means.411 A member of the most ultramon-tane of ecclesiastical foundations, he had anunique opportunity to study its objects and totest its purposes. It was by the deliberate choiceof conscience that he took the road which ledeventually to his excommunication. But in histravelling he had evolved a theory of social struc-ture which is one of the most precious posses-sions of our time.

The real problem that confronted him was theplace of liberty in organised life. With unlimitedindividualism he had no sort of sympathy; forthe rights of one man must inevitably conflictwith the claims of another and order is essen-tial to the maintenance of a just equilibrium. Sohe saw that the Catholic church is not a groupof men who can believe anything they please.“As to dogmas and Catholic truths,” he wrote,412

“all loyal sons of the church are bound to acceptthem.” That is no more than to say that theCatholic church has a certain personality loy-alty to which is essential to membership. Buthe saw also that loyalty to the Catholic life wasnot the same thing as loyalty to its government.

Where that government seemed to him false tothe church he was bound, as Newman held him-self bound, to proceed by the light of his con-science.413 “I am driven on,” he wrote,414 “by afatality to follow the dominant influence of mylife even if it should break the heart of all theworld,” and thereby he proclaimed the truthwhich lies at the bottom of every scheme of so-cial arrangement. Rome seemed to him to besuffering from a feverish worship of authority,and to demand as a consequence an uncriticaland unquestioning obedience from Catholicswhich it is not in human nature to give.415 Theproblem then confronted him as to whether heshould obey those who had the technical rightto demand his submission, or follow what hebelieved to be the truth. Like Lamennais, hecame to see clearly that in such a choice therewas in fact no real alternative.

What baffled him was the unqualified absolut-ism of Rome. She was not amenable, as hedeemed,416 to the arguments of truth and jus-tice. The seal of orthodoxy was set upon viewswhich virtually denied all personality to thechurch as a whole to concentrate it in the Popealone.417 But such a view, as Dollinger had longbefore shown, was totally out of accord with thehistory of the church. “It is in the collective mindof the church,” he says,418 “not in the separatemind of the Pontiff that the truth is elaborated....so the Pope cannot be conceived to speak ex-ca-thedra except when he professedly investigatesthe ecumenical mind.” Infallibility, in fact, isreserved for those occasions where the papal willinterprets the “real” will of the church. Obedi-ence then becomes due not to the Pope as a per-son, but to the Pope as the registering centre ofa general consensus of opinion. But, it is clearenough, such a consensus would take account ofminds like Loisy and Tyrrell and their directcondemnation would be thus impossible. So thathe can draw a distinction, often, indeed, an an-tithesis, between obedience to authority andobedience to the church, precisely as Lamennaishad done when he urged that Rome only wasagainst him. Moreover such an absolutism wasobviously bound to result in stagnation. “A creedand a theology,” he wrote,419 “ought to have been

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merely and only the product of her spiritual lifeand its exigencies.” But in such an aspect itwould be necessary for dogma to undergo con-tinuous adaptation to the varying needs of eachage. The difficulty with Rome was exactly heruse of sovereign power to prevent the exerciseof that adaptive faculty. She claimed to projecther decisions without the category of time; andby claiming an mediately eternal character forher pronouncements she misunderstood thenature of society. For the “only adequate organof religious development” was to him “the rec-ognition of the entire Christian people as thetrue and immediate Vicarius Christi.”420

The distinction, of course, is fundamental; it isthe distinction between autocracy and demo-cratic government. The “consciously formulatedmind and will of the governing body of thechurch” could not obtain his final allegiance justbecause in his view, it mistook its class interestfor the interest of the whole.421 That governingbody was endeavouring to make the life of thechurch run into channels which were, in fact,not wide enough to contain it. To him the uncon-scious self of the church was, equally with theconscious, the personality to which he owed hisallegiance.422 The fault of Rome was to neglectthat deeper life and it had thus far failed in itswork of the improvement of civilisation. To Rome,then, he would owe no duty save that of doingwhat in him lay of bringing her back to a senseof her greater mission. Nor was he confoundedby the obvious difficulty that if the governmentof the church had failed no one could officiallyrecord her nature. “When authority,” he wrote,423

“is dumb or stultifies itself, private convictionresumes its previous rights and liberties.” Forauthority is based upon trust and the violationof trust is duly resultant in its dissolution.

Such a distinction between clericalism and Ca-tholicism424 is obviously fundamental enough.The weakness of individualism is admitted, andthe purpose of submission to collectiveorganisation is to remedy it. “Our courage andhope and confidence,” he said in a noble pas-sage,425 “are measured by our sense of thestrength of the army to which we belong, of the

history of her past victories.” But the victoriesmust be the victories of truth and the strengththe strength of virtue. To share in a collectiveexperience is not to be assured of salvation ef-fortlessly. The soldier upon whom there is bornein a sense of purpose so wrong that the wholepersonality of the army becomes for him an evilthing has no alternative save to lay down hissword. That does not mean that his originalmembership was wrong. “On their spiritualside,” he said of societies in general,426 “and inso far as they are freely self-forming, their fu-ture evades all prediction since it is not con-tained in or predetermined by their present....spiritual development is not a process of pas-sive unfolding, of which each step is vigorouslydetermined by the preceding: but a process ofactive reconstruction, conditioned by the chancematerials furnished by the quite incalculablesuccession of experiences.” Life, in fact, refusesthe categories of a formal syllogism, just asLamennais’ ultramontanism broadened, by ac-tual contact with chance experience, into a lib-eral doctrine so wide that his theology was ab-sorbed into its expanse. So Tyrrell understood:as Lamennais came to see, that the vital fact inmembership of any society was not the actualbond but that of which the bond was symbol. Hewas compelled by his standards of right notmerely to be a member of his fellowship, but alsoto stand outside and judge it.

Nor was that dualism insignificant since itformed the basis of the society’s authority. “It isnot their red robes,” he said,427 “but my own judg-ment about them that gives the pack of cardi-nals any title to distinction. Like Elizabeth, ithas frocked them, and can unfrock them. It isthey who are in peril, not we.” The ability towithstand such a judgment is surely not the testof social worth. It is obvious enough, in religionabove all things, that the judgment will not bemade save in the most decisive conflicts of in-terpretation; and the only criterion of adequatecompromise is the conveyance, on one side orthe other, of genuine conviction. Nor does itmatter where the problem of conflict shall arise.We too little realise that the fundamental prin-ciples are so important as inevitably to challenge

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an incessant discussion. Nor is it less inevitablethat the existence of variety in temperamentshould result in diversity of interpretation.Newman and Manning could never have agreedin the meaning they attached to the dogmas ofthe church any more than it would have beenpossible for Cromwell to make his peace withCharles I. What is required on both sides is awillingness, not, at the final conflict, to use thebludgeon of authority instead of the rapier ofargument. It was exactly the lack of that will-ingness on the part of Rome which resulted inher mistaken conception of authority. So long asshe held that her governmental interpretationof dogma was not a phase but eternal, she couldnot, as Tyrrell saw, but be hostile to intellectualliberty. Partly, of course, her hostility was theresult of her belief in the divinity of her mis-sion; but even when the temperamental conse-quences of that attitude are admitted grave dif-ficulties remain. For even if it be granted thatthe Roman church is an eternal society, it hashad periods in its history which are not the ex-pression of a golden age. Did she not forget, asTyrrell asked,428 “that development means deathand decay as well as growth, that it means con-tinuity only by way of reproduction in a newgeneration?” Even if Rome expelled from herprinciples the idea of development she could notdestroy it; for even she must be bound by thelaws of nature.

The problem Tyrrell thus confronted in thechurch he found not less acute within the Soci-ety of Jesus itself. In the whole range of theo-logical literature there are few analyses moreincomparable at once in their subtlety and theirsimplicity than the account he penned of hisrelations with the Society.429 Nothing of thesplendour of Newman’s own Apologia seemswanting to it; and it has the additional merit ofbeing written from an impersonal attitude thatonly adds the greater weight to its authority. Itbegins by a refutation of the ordinary chargesagainst the Jesuit order. “I do not see in the So-ciety of Jesus a monstrous and deliberate con-spiracy against liberty and progress in religionand civilisation.”430 What he attacks is the atti-tude of those within the order who object to criti-

cism on the ground of disloyalty. One who lovesthe society to which he belongs must inevitablywork for it; what he found was that to work forthe interests of Catholicism, as he understoodthem, was to invoke the hostility of his superi-ors. To defend liberalism, as he defended it, wasto be the upholder of a cause to the destructionof which the whole forces of the Society weredevoted. Nor could he change its purpose. “Thealterations needed to adapt it to our days,” hewrote,431 “were too radical to he ever recognisedor carried out by a body whose supreme govern-ment was vested in the rare assembly of a sen-ate of men.... of whom only about one-eighth rep-resented the living and progressive nationali-ties of the world. Unable to progress with itsenvironment, the Society could only hope to liveand to retain its ascendency in the church bykeeping its environment unchanged.” He did notblame it completely. “Corporations and crowdsare non-moral agencies, and, judged by the stan-dard of individual ethics, seem to commit atro-cious crimes which, in fact, are no more crimesthan the ravages of sea and storm, or of brutepassion, or of other natural forces.”432 He ratherdissented from the whole idea for which it hadcome to stand.433 He objected to its exaction of“a slavish, unintelligent military obedience”which destroyed the whole purpose of the truesubmission to society.434 He regards it as impor-tation from state to church and as “wedded toprinciples subversive of.... social order andprogress.”435 It has become less a zeal forprogress than an enthusiasm for mechanicaluniformity. It has abandoned its trust in unityof spirit to replace it by a juridical compulsion.436

It has neglected the many-sidedness of person-ality. “Even a soldier” he finely says,437 “has alife outside his barracks in which he is a manand not merely an instrument.... he does not,like the Jesuit, deliberately, as a matter of reli-gion and principle, merge his whole life in hisprofession, nor of set purpose disown his per-sonality and rights as a free spiritual indi-vidual.” Yet it is to this obedience that societydrives its members. It sets as the correlative ofits autocracy an obedience that is blind anduncriticising. Such a method “is the worst andmost profoundly immoral forms of government

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that the world has yet known. For the essenceof all vice and immorality is the destruction ofspiritual liberty.”438

He does not, it has been pointed out, blame thesociety as he would blame a man. “So far,” hewrites,439 “as a society has a self at all, it mustbe self-assertive, self-complacent, proud, egotis-tical;” but it is just because of its inherent open-ness to these dangers that the loyalty of its mem-bers dare not be unlimited. “A sane and healthyloyalty, far from blinding a man, will make himkeenly critical of his regiment and observant ofits defects and weakness, and will check any sortof dangerous complacency and optimism.” Heinsisted on the significance of the influence ex-erted by the corporate action of the society uponthe character of its members. He denounced itscorporate complacency. “The first condition ofprogress and improvement,” he said,440 “is a con-fession of fault or of fallibility.” But this the so-ciety virtually refused to admit since it wouldhave been an invitation to thought upon the partof its members. But thought was incompatiblewith passivity, and it was that deadly negationof personality which, above all, the society de-sired.

“What was the result? “I see in Jesuitism,” hewrote,441 “.... just the counter-extravagance ofProtestantism; on this side liberty misinter-preted as the contempt of authority; on that,authority misinterpreted as the contempt of lib-erty, The Society’s boast is to have stayed thespread of Protestantism and to have saved halfEurope to the church. Its success has been itsruin; its action has been met with reaction; inbuttressing, it has crushed liberty and estab-lished Absolutism.... The true synthesis of lib-erty and authority is still to seek.” Assuredly,Tyrrell himself did not pretend to supply it. Butwhere he insisted upon the extravagance of ab-solute power he was surely correct in his asser-tions. His own case is the clearest proof of thedangers of a system which regards itself as im-mune from attack. The fact is that Nature ex-presses herself less in absolutes than in com-promises. It may be true, as a distinguishedFrench thinker has argued,442 that only in the

absolute affirmative can the seeds of progressbe discovered; yet the penalty of such formula-tion is the inability to supply more than a tem-porary need. Such lack of elasticity is surely initself evidence of an unfitness to survive in anenvironment where the true criterion of worthis an adaptability to a changing environment.

Nor is this all. No discussion of socialorganisation is satisfactory which does not takeaccount of the inherently plural character ofhuman personality. That was what Tyrrell meantby his urgent insistence upon freedom. For how-ever rich may be the genius of a man for fellow-ship he has also an inwardness of perceptionwhich no association can absorb. Few men havebeen more passionately at one with the churchthan was Lamennais before 1829; yet evenamidst the fever of a passionate activity he re-mained a brooding and lonely being. It is theexistence of that intimate and precious arcanumof the soul which makes loyalty, in the last analy-sis, in every case a matter of the private judg-ment of each of us. Organisation may attempt,as Tyrrell urged that the Society of Jesus at-tempted, to root out the recesses. Doubtless along training in subjection to despotism is morepowerful than the individual will. Yet the expe-rience of nations seems to suggest that the ef-fect is one rather to be stamped afresh upon eachgeneration than to be inherited by the memoryof a people. Excessive authoritarianism breedsless affection for, than suspicion of, a govern-ment. For it is guilty of one of the gravest falla-cies in the business of administration by its ef-fort to treat men as uniform machines. No gov-ernment is secure which fails to remember theuniqueness of the individual. Practical legisla-tion may take the greatest common measure ofconsent or of desire, but where men are drivenback to first principles it is only moral unanim-ity that is, as the fathers of the church were wiseenough to realise, in the full sense effective.Every Ireland will have its Ulster443 where fun-damental human emotion is at stake and notheory of society that neglects it will be adequatebecause it will be then no more than a theory ofcoercion. A papal condemnation may drive aMontalembert and a Hefele into acceptance of

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ideals to which they have been a stranger; but aLamennais and a Dollinger will remain un-moved, and it is the protest that will live ratherthan the acquiescence.

In the last instance, then, the individual canmake his appeal beyond that tribunal which, forpractical purposes, is clothed with sovereignpower. “Above the constitutional headship,”wrote Tyrrell,444 “there is the pre-constitutional,which is a necessary fact and not a doctrine. Itcannot be denied that in the life of that form-less church which underlies the hierarchicorganisation, God’s spirit exercises a silent butsovereign criticism; that his resistlessly effec-tual judgment is made known, not in the pre-cise language of definition and decree, but in theslow manifestation of practical results; in thesurvival of what has proved itself life-giving; inthe decay and oblivion of all whose value wasbut relative and temporary.” It is, perhaps, anappeal to the future; but it is an appeal to whichjudgment must be rendered, since it takes itsstand upon the basic character of the institu-tion involved. It means, of course, ultimately, arefusal on the part of men to accept the reduc-tion of social form to unity for such reductionimplies, as we have learned, the destruction ofwhat is living and vigorously individual to bereplaced by a meaningless uniformity. ALamennais who surrendered his liberalism oth-erwise than by the slow arrival of a convictionof its error would be no longer, in any real sense,the Lamennais we know. That is why, despiteits practical efficiency as a working instrument,authority must, at every stage of its activitysubmit to the closest scrutiny. It must not soexert itself as to involve treason on the part ofits members to their consciences. From some,doubtless, that treason will not be difficult tosecure; but there will always be those who, likeLamennais and Tyrrell, feel themselves boundto show “that resistance was still a contingencyto be reckoned with.... that Rome was tradingon the assumption that the idea of actual obedi-ence had so triumphed that she might say or doanything, however reckless.”445 The choice hasits difficulties and, as Tyrrell finely said,446 “thedeliverers of the crowd will be stoned and cruci-

fied by the crowd... (but when).... the religion ofthe crowd is corrupted.... there we cannot be withthe crowd.” Both of them saw that Rome hadgone beyond the boundaries of her real purpose,that she was asking from her children an alle-giance to ends in fact unconcerned with the trueethos of catholicism. To Lamennais she was theally of despotism as to Tyrrell she was the as-sailant of civilisation and each saw the fatalprospects of her effort. “Rome,” wrote Tyrrell ina letter that might have been Lamennais’447

“Rome cares nothing for religion—only forpower..... Hinc illae lacrimae! she will never yieldwillingly. But her power will soon be broken topieces by the pressure of modern governments—weary of her turbulence and sedition; and thenperhaps she may have no reason to oppose mod-ernism and may remember her true raison d’tre.” But until that return had been made obe-dience was impossible. “I rightly or wronglyhold,” Tyrrell said to one who consulted him indistress,448 “there is a limit to ecclesiastical asto civil authority—a time when resistance isduty and submission treason. If I believe thecaptain is unawares steering for the rocks I willnot obey him. I am not infallible; he may be right;but I must go by my own moral certainties.” Thatis still the watchword of the deepest freedom.

Yet there is one weakness in Tyrrell’s attitudeupon which it is worth while for a moment toinsist. There are few things more dangerous thanthe effort to evolve for corporate personality astandard of judgment different from the crite-rion by which we judge of the conduct of men. Itis, of course, true enough that the unity of cor-porate life is less strong, in the sense that it isless tangible, than that of individual personal-ity. Yet it is clear enough that in law, in politics,in economics, at the present time, the emphasisof our needs is driving us to an insistence uponvicarious liability. We are forced more and moreto recognise that while, in the last resort, a cor-porate relation is, basically, a relation of indi-viduals, nevertheless, for most practical pur-poses, it is of the fact of their unity that we musttake notice. How Rome is built up matters, tooutsiders, but little; but the influence of theRome so built upon modern life matters to all of

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us very greatly. A modern corporation acts as anindividual would act in a similar situation; thatis to say by agents and servants. Surely, if thatbe the case, an adequate interpretation of theiractivities must take account of the real unitywhence they derive.449

It is not an adequate reply to answer as certainlyTyrrell, perhaps Lamennais also, would haveanswered, that the “real” will of an institutionmay differ from that of those who operate it, thatthe will of the Roman Church is not the will ofits sovereign pontiff. The will upon which ourjudgment must be expressed is surely the willthat is promulgated and obeyed. The dumb andenforced acquiescence of a people may be trag-edy enough; but if the cohesive force of their ac-quiescence is bent to the corporate purpose it isdifficult to see how the separation of their actsfrom its own may be made. For, after all, it isprecisely the fact of their acquiescence whichpermits the registration of wrong. The onlycourse is active dissent from the conclusions ofauthority, as both Lamennais and Tyrrell im-plicitly admitted when they withdrew from theRoman Communion rather than follow it inpaths they deemed mistaken. Lamennais couldeasily have urged that it was folly to pit hisstrength against Rome and have acquiesced inthe condemnation of democracy. Tyrrell couldsimilarly have insisted that his single effortwould not avail to teach Rome the inevitabilityof modernist doctrine. Yet they would not havebeen Lamennais and Tyrrell if they had beensilent even where they loved so greatly.

For the fact is that to argue, as Tyrrell argued,that a social will is by its nature more liable toegoism than an individual will means surely nomore than the answer that we must then bemore vigorous in the application of our stan-dards. Our judgment that corporate sin is moreeasily to be excused is probably no more thanan inference from the separation Machiavellieffected between politics and ethics. How fatalthat step has been Lord Acton has magistrallydemonstrated in a famous argument.450 It is, inshort, a simple excuse for wrongful conduct.Because, as in the famous Taff Vale case, men

will do things for their trade union which theywould hesitate to do in private life, that is noreason to excuse an institution of which the na-ture demands illegal activities from its agents.Because the church of Rome was anxious to dis-credit the efforts of the French republic, that doesnot justify the activities which culminated in thecurious tissue of falsehood and corruption re-vealed by the publication of the nuncio’s dis-patches.451 If we are definitely wedded to a com-plex scheme of group-loyalties, the only methodof moral safety is to demand from each groupthe standards exacted from its individual mem-ber. The argument so often and so unthinkinglymade about the non-existence of corporate mindmisses the point completely. We are dealing withunified action and we cannot mistake the realcharacter of its personality. We have too recentlyhad demonstration of the tragic evil which comesfrom elevating it without the moral law, to bewilling to allow it release from the penalty of itscorporate offences.

Such an attitude, indeed, would serve tostrengthen the position of Lamennais. It is nomore than the affirmation that what, above all,we need is the democratic interpretation of theprinciples of authority. We refuse to reduce theindividual to a nullity simply because he is ahuman being. The basis of our social organisationis living and not mechanical; it is founded uponthe consciences of men. It does not conceal fromitself the dangers to which it lies open. Con-sciously, it is a threat against order. Consciously,it offers a loophole to what may well resolve it-self into revolution. But that is only because weare certain that the supreme thing in the mod-ern world is the love of what men deem to beright. A society which is able to admit the pro-test of its members has already safeguarded it-self against the shock of disruption. If the prin-ciple of its life be the exclusion of fundamentaldissent, that life is already poisoned at its source.That was why Tyrrell flung abroad his flamingprotest against the evil of absolutism. The indi-vidual doubtless, will often be mistaken just asauthority itself has never been free from error.Yet in the clash of ideas we shall find the meansof truth. There is no other safeguard of progress.

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XIII. ConclusionLamennais never returned to the Catholicchurch. He lived and died and suffered withthose for whom he had chosen the path of exile.His ideas grew more and more liberal until, to-wards the end, he found himself in close kin-ship with the apostles of communism. Of the lovethe common people bore him there is evidenceenough; and his pen was ceaselessly employedin the task of their liberation. He found newfriends who, in some measure, at least, healedthe wounds that had been caused by the defec-tion of the old. The church made divers effortsto secure his conversion but always without suc-cess. His death seems to have meant but littleto a democracy that was being fed on the dan-gerous fruits of imperial adventure. Yet even asit was, so great was the honour of his name thatthe government of Louis Napoleon compelled hisinterment in the earlier hours of dawn. He wasburied, as he had wished, without any religiousceremonial; and it was by his request thatAuguste Barbet refused the usual offer of a cross.That was perhaps less an epitaph than a proph-ecy.

Notes1. I have appended to this essay a critical note on the

more important discussions of Lamennais.2. Cf. Guillon, “Histoire de la Nouvelle Hérésie du

XIXme siècle,” and the work of Lamennais’ friend,Gerbet, “Réflexions, sur la chute de M. deLamennais” (1838). Lacordaire’s “Notice sur lerétablissment en France de l’ordre des FrèresPrêcheurs,” p. 68 f. is in the same tone.

3. Cf. the comment of the Duchesse de Dino, “.... etl’abbé de Lamennais qui meurt comme un pauvrechien aveugle.” Chronique, Vol. IV, p. 159. (3 March1854).

4. The paper below on Royer-Collard endeavours toillustrate this thesis.

5. Cf. Janet, “Philosophie de Lamennais,” p. 56 f.6. “Essais de Morale et de critique.” M. Maréchal has

edited such an anthology for his strictly ultramon-tane years.

7. Most of them are now unprocurable except by acci-dent.

8. Renan has emphasised the significance of his lackof a critical spirit. “Essais de Morale et de Critique,”p. 154.

9. Nielsen, “History of the Papacy in the XIXth Cen-tury,” I, 317.

10. Ibid., I, 223 f.11. Cf. the speech of Pius VI printed in Theiner’s

“Documents,” I, p. 1 f.12. In this aspect it is important to remember that

the Concordat of 1801 was in truth an ultramon-tane victory and was generally so regarded. Cf.Debidour, “L’Eglise et L’Etat,” p. 210 f.

13. Though Manry, of course, had great talents.14. I have discussed De Maistre’s solution of the prob-

lem of the Revolution in the previous volume ofthese studies.

15. For Fouch ’s work as censor see D’Haussonville,“L’Eglise Romaine et le premier empire,” passim.

16. Note, however, the eulogistic passage in the“Réflexions sur l’Etat de l’Eglise,” p. 21.

17. Lamennais’s ancestry has been copiously studiedby M. Maréchal in his “La famille de Lamennais”(1913).

18. Spuller, “Lamennais,” p. 27.19. Cf. Duine, “Notes de Lamennais” (1907).20. “Correspondance” (ed. Forgues), i, 61.21. Cf. Spuller, op. cit., p. 35.22. The story of these early difficulties is fully traced

in Maréchal, “La Jeunesse de Lamennais,” pp. 31–87.

23. Cf. Laveille, “Vie de J. M. de Lamennais,” I, 47–8.24. One cannot help feeling that M. Maréchal’s fine

book is marred exactly by this assumption of a logi-cal sequence in Lamennais’s ideas.

25. Spuller, op. cit., p. 67.26. “Correspondence” (ed. Forgues), i, 10.27. This would seem the net result of M. Maréchal’s

laborious researches. Cf. his “Jeunesse deLamennais,” Bk II, Ch. 1.

28. Cf. my “Problem of Sovereignty,” Ch. III.29. “Réflexions,” p. 49.30. Ibid., p. 59 f.31. Ibid., 46–59.32. Ibid., 67. 90.33. Ibid., 95–100.34. Ibid., 116–34.35. Ibid., 134–42.36. Ibid., 142–50.37. Debidour, op. cit. 263.38. Ibid., 275.39. Ibid., 265–8.40. Cf. Blaize, “Oeuvres In dites de Lamennais,” I,

108.41. Spuller, op. cit., p. 55.42. Blaize, op. cit. I, 106.43. Cf. the pathetic letter printed in Roussel,

“Lamennais,” I, 22 f.

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44. Blaize, op. cit., I, 107.45. Ibid., I, 89.46. Forgues, “Correspond.” I, xvi.47. See esp. “Tradit.,” II, 306–8. M. Maréchal places

their composition in 1813. “Jeunesse deLamennais,” p. 423.

48. Blaize, i, 136.49. Blaize, I, 168.50. Ibid., I, 150.51. Ibid., 1, 170.52. “Réflexions” (ed. of 1814), p. 96.53. Blaize, op. cit., I, 215.54. Ibid., I, 259.55. Cf. Spuller, op. cit., p. 87.56. Cf. the tragic letter in Blaize, op. cit., I, 263.57. See, for instance, the remarks of the Bishop of

Troyes in “L’Ami de la religion,” I, 101.58. Cf. Frayssinous, “Les Vrais Principes de l’Eglise

Gallicane” (ed. of 1826), p. 89.59. Debidour, op. cit., p. 332.60. Cf. Blaize, op. cit., I, 152, 159, 170, 177.61. Blaize, op. cit., i, 201.62. Cf. Spuller, op. cit., p. 92.63. Boutard, “Lamennais,” I, 152.64. “Oeuvres,” XIV, 224.65. Boutard, op. cit., I, 152–4.66. “Consid rations sur le syst me philosophique de

M. de Lamennais,” Ch. I.67. Blaize, op. cit., I, 285.68. “Essai,” I, 9 (ed. Gannier).69. Ibid., p. 11.70. Ibid., p. 12–18.71. Ibid., p. 30.72. Ibid., p. 31.73. Ibid., p. 33.74. Ibid., p. 35.75. Ibid., Ch. II.76. “Oeuvres” (ed. of 1834), i, 32.77. Ibid., 34.78. Ibid., 35–8.79. Ibid., Ch. IV and V.80. Ibid., Ch. VI and VII.81. Ibid., I, 62 f.82. “Oeuvres,” I, 60.83. Ibid., I, 65 f.84. Ibid., I, 73 f.85. Ibid., I, 82.86. Ibid., I, 85.87. Ibid., I, 90.88. Ibid., I, 91.89. Ibid., I, 97.90. Ibid., I, 98.91. Ibid.92. Ibid., I, 99.

93. Ibid., I, 99.94. Ibid., I, 134.95. Ibid., I, 137.96. Ibid., I, 139.97. Cf. M. Maréchal’s fine analysis, op. cit., 577–634.98. Lamennais, indeed, speaks with immense admi-

ration for the latter throughout his work.99. It is to be noted that it was only later final attack

on Gallicanism in 1825 and the following years thatLamennais expressly drew the obvious conclusionsfrom the “Essay on Indifference”.

100. A federalism, of course, which goes back to theconciliar movement Cf. Dr. Figgis’ classic analysisin “From Gerson to Grotius” passim, but especiallypp. 16, 92.

101. Boutard, op. cit., I, 152.102. Cf. Debidour, op. cit., p. 331.103. It is indeed possible to make the struggle for

educational control between church and state thecentral thread in the history of France since theRevolution. Cf. the admirable book of Grimaud,“Histoire de la liberté d’enseignement” (1898).

104. Cf. G. de Grandmaison, “La Congregation.”passim.

105. Debidour, op. cit., 353.106. Ibid., 355.107. Ibid., 357.108. Ibid., 361.109. Cf. the letter of November 10, 1819, to Benoit

D’Azy Laveille, op. cit. p. 83.110. Cf. Boutard, I, 170.111. Laveille, op. cit., p. 94, letter of March 2, 1820.112. “Oeuvres,” I, 604.113. “Oeuvres,” I, 606.114. “Oeuvres,” I, 614.115. “Oeuvres,” I, 616–23.116. Ibid., I, 625.117. Ibid., I, 626.118. Ibid., I, 618.119. It is interesting to compare this situation with

the similar controversy in England over the De-ceased Wives’ Sisters Act. Cf. my “Problem of Sov-ereignty,” p. 118, n. 23.

120. Ibid., I, 629 f.121. Ibid. I, 649.122. Ibid., I, 656.123. “Oeuvres,” II, 123.124. Ibid.125. Cf. my “Problem of Sovereignty,” p. 145 f.126. “Oeuvres,” II, 129. The article is particularly

important as it is an enthusiastic review of deMaistre’s “Du Pape” which had then just appeared.

127. “Oeuvres,” II, 156 ff.128. Ibid., II, 135.

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129. Ibid., II, 134.130. Ibid., II, 165.131. Ibid., II, l86.132. Ibid., II, 188. In this he agrees with the famous

speech of Chateaubriand, Journel Officiel, 25 Feb-ruary, 1823.

133. Ibid., II, 193.134. “Souvenirs,” Vol. III, p. 126. Cf. p. 28.135. “Essai,” Pt. II, Ch. 1.136. “Works,” I, 177 f.137. Ibid., I, l86 f.138. Ibid., I, 229 f.139. Ibid., I, 237 f.140. Cf. Janet, “La philosophie de Lamennais,” p. 26

f, and Ferraz, op. cit., II, 180-210.141. Cf. Laveille, op. cit., p. 121. Letter of November

9, 1821, and Bousard, op. cit., Vol. I, Ch. XIV.142. “Correspond” (ed. Forgues), I, 41 f, and Cf.

Boutard, I, 217, for a list of distinguished Catho-lics who accepted it.

143. “Corresp. entre Lamennais et Vitrolles,” p. 86. Icite this volume as Vitrolles.

144. “Vitrolles,” p. 93.145. Ibid., 99.146. Ibid., 100.147. Ibid., 120.148. Ibid., p. 125, letter of Jan. 1, 123 cf., p. 132.149. Laveille, op. cit. 164, letter of Jan. 24, 123.150. Debidour, op. cit. 369.151. “Bardoux Guizot,” p. 34.152. “Works,” I, 193.153. As the whole of his correspondenee with Vitrolles

from 1822–4 makes evident.154. Debidour, op. cit. 376.155. Ibid.156. Ibid., 379.157. See his great speech in Barante, Royer-Collard,

II, 242 f, and the following essay.158. Debidour, op. cit. 383.159. “Correspond” (ed. Forgues), I, 191, March 13, 25.160. Ibid., I, 195, April 30, 25.161. Ibid., I, 208, October 12, 25.162. Boutard, op. cit. I, Ch. XVI. It is impossible to

know how much credence may be attached to thefamous story that Leo XII made Lamennais a car-dinal in petto.

163. Artaud, “Hist. de Leon XII,” I, Ch. 20.164. Cf. the judgment of Viel-Castel, “Hist. de la

Restauration,” Vol. XIV, p. 29.165. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), I, 208, October 13, 25.166. See Bardoux’s able monograph, “Montlosier et

le Gallicaisme.”167. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), I, 209.168. The “De la Religion Considerée dans ses rap-

ports avec l’ordre politique et civil” was originallypublished in two parts, the first four chapters as avolume in 1825 and the last set in 1826. I havediscussed them as a single work.

169. For a useful discussion of the whole work cf. Janetop. cit. pp. 37–54.

170. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), Vol. I, p. 209.171. “Oeuvres,” II, 15.172. Ibid., II, 16.173. Ibid.174. Ibid., 17.175. Ibid., 18.176. Ibid., 19.177. Ibid., Chap. II.178. Ibid., 20ˆ–21.179. Ibid., 25 f.180. Ibid., 29.181. Ibid., 33.182. Ibid., 34.183. Ibid., 85.184. Ibid., 44. The phrase is De Maistre’s.185. Ibid., 47.186. Ambrose’s comment on Psalm XL.187. Ibid., 48.188. Ibid., 49.189. Ibid., 50.190. Ibid., 52.191. Ibid., 53.192. Ibid., 55.193. Ibid., 57.194. Ibid., 61.195. Ibid., 65.196. Ibid., 67.197. Cf. Frayssinous, “Les Vrais Principes de l’Eglise

Gallicane” (1818); Montlosier, “De la MonarchieFrançaise au ler Janvier,” 1824 (1824) and Bardouxop. cit.

198. “Oeuvres” II, 73.199. Cf. Chapter VIII, passim.200. Ibid., 85.201. Cf. Chap. IX, passim.202. Ibid., 93.203. Cf. Figgis,” From Gerson to Grotius,” Lect. II. N.

Valois “Le Pape et le Concile” is a magnificentanalysis of the whole attempt at, and failure of,the revolution in organisation.

204. Of course it is much earlier in origin; but whatLuther did was finally to make it effective asagainst Rome.

205. Cf. for this view or in its most extreme form the“Summa” of Augustinus Triumphus (1473) XXVI,5.

206. Cf. the remarks on the distinction betweenMontesquieu’s theories and his own in the fifth

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book of the Emile; and for his insistence that forcegives no right the “Contrat Social” Bk. I, Chs. IIIand IV. I think T. H. Green accepted this view. WorksII, 396 f.

207. From “Gerson to Grotius,” p. 17. The whole lec-ture is a very precious possession.

208. Cf. Boutard, op. cit. I, 302–3.209. “Memoire à consulter sur un système,” etc.

(1826).210. It is denied, not without some interesting evi-

dence by Grandmaison in his interesting work “LaCongrégation.”

211. He was fined thirty francs.212. See Lamennais’ own description of the trial in

his “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), I, 246.213. Boutard I, 334 f.214. “Corresp.” I, 241.215. See an account of these attacks in Boutard, I,

345 f.216. “Corresp.” I, 253.217. Ibid., I, 257.218. Ibid., I, 273.219. Ibid., I, 274.220. Ibid., I, 276.221. Ibid., I, 288.222. Ibid., I, 279.223. Ibid., I, 270.224. Ibid., I, 274. Cf. Boutard, op. cit. I, 350.225. Ibid., I, 355.226 “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), I, 295. 227 Ibid., I, 298–

9.228. Ibid., I, 309.229. Ibid., I, 310–1.230. Debidour, op. cit. 397 f.231. Vitrolles, p. 180.232. Spuller, op. cit. 144. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), I,

348–9.233. Ibid., I, 436.234. Ibid., I, 466.235. Ibid., I, 486.236. His programme is briefly summarised in the let-

ter of Jan. 26, 1828. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), I, 416.237. “Oeuvres,” II, 242.238. “Les Progrès,” etc., Ch. II and III.239. The paper of Royer-Collard and the doctrinaire

liberals. Cf. the admirable paper of Paul Janet inthe Revue de Deux Mondes for 1879.

240. “Oeuvres,” II, 249.241. “Oeuvres,” II, 251 f.242. “Oeuvres,” II, 290 f.243. Cf. the preface to the Progrès de la Revolution.244. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), Vol. II, p. 6.245. See his two letters in reply, “Oeuvres,” II, 323 ff.246. Dudon, “Lamennais et le Saint-Siège,” p. 76.

Lambruschini himself seems not to have disagreedwith his arguments.

247. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 27.248. Ibid., II, 15, and cf. his remarks on p. 18.249. Ibid., p. 51.250. Ibid., II, 161.251. Ibid., II, 160.252. Dudon, op. cit. p. 70. M. Dudon attributes this

praise to mere politeness on the Pope’s part; butwhen one considers the general relation betweenLeo and Lamennais that conclusion seems undulysceptical.

253. Spuller op. cit., p. 161.254. Cf. his “Four Last Popes,” p. 301 f.255. The first volume of Lecanuet’s admirable “Life

of Montalembert” details the history of their rela-tions in full.

256. Cf. Debidour, op. cit., p. 412.257. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 168 f.258. Ibid., II, 173.259. Ibid., II, 185, and Boutard, op. cit., II, 181 f.260. See their statutos summarised in Debidour, op.

cit., 421.261. e.g., “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 177, and cf.

Laveille, op. cit., 258.262. I suppose it would generally be admitted that

the history of liberal Catholicism can reasonablybe divided into the Lamennais period; that whichculminates in their defeat at the Vatican council;and that which culminates in the issue of the en-cyclical pascendi. I have discussed the significanceof the second episode in the fourth chapter of my“Problem of Sovereignty.” The last is discussedbelow.

263. “Oeuvres,” II, 362.264. Ibid., II, 363.265. Ibid., II, 366.266. Ibid., II, 367.267. Ibid., II, 368.268. Ibid., II, 370.269. Cf. “Oeuvres,” II, 368.270. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 193.271. Avenir, no. of Sept. 17, 31. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues),

II, 189.272. Boutard, op. cit., II, 202.273. Avenir, Nov. 21, 30; Dec. 2, 30; May 11, 31.274. Boutard, op. cit., II, 213 f.275. Avenir, Oct. 16, 1830.276. Cf. the essay on “Administrative Syndicalism.”277. Avenir, Oct. 26, 1830.278. Avenir, Oct. 30, 30.279. Ibid., Nov. 26, 30.280. Ibid., Sept. 17, 31.281. Ibid., May 28, 31.

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282 Ibid., June 28, 31.283. Ibid., June 30, 31.284. Tyrrell, “A Much-abused Letter,” p. 64. I do not

think there is a sentence in this magnificent justi-fication that Lamennais would have repudiated.

285. One has to distinguish between different hands;that of Grégoire, or that which goes back to Porte-Royal, are very different from that of Frayssinous.

286. It is interesting to note Macaulay’s deep indig-nation against the church of the Restoration. Onthe margin of Paul-Leuis Courier’s pamphlet “Re-sponse aux Anonymes,” No. 2, he wrote “Worthy ofDemosthenes. It makes my blood boil against thataccursed tyranny.” Trevelyan, Life (Nelson ed.), II,502.

287. “Oeuvres,” II, 372.288. Tyrrell, op. cit. 99.289. Avenir, Nov. 25, 30.290. Boutard, op. cit., II, 216–223.291. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 197.292. Ibid., II, 198, Feb. 27, 131.293. Ibid., II, 199–202.294. Dudon, op. cit., p. 94.295. Lamennais’ reply is in the Avenir for Feb. 12, 31.

Ventura published his criticism as an open letterin the Gazette de France.

296. “Correspondence,” II, 214.297. Ibid., II, 225.298. Dudon, op. cit., 95.299. Lagrange, “Dupanloup,” I, 121.300. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 213.301. Ibid., II, 227 f.302. Ibid., II, 228. This is doubtless a reference to the

letter to Cardinal Weld.303. Ibid., II, 230.304. “Lettres Montalembert,” pp. 6–7.305. Boutard, op. cit., II, 255.306. “Oeuvres,” II, 480. Cf. Corresp. (ed. Forgues), II,

231.307. Cf. Dudon, “Lamennais et le Saint-Siège” for the

orthodox Roman interpretation of this time. It issuch criticism as his that has led me to useLamennais’ “Affaires de Rome” only as a checkupon the immediately contemporaneous docu-ments.

308. Dudon, op. cit., 110 f.309. Ibid., 113.310. Ibid., 118.311. Ibid., 122.312. Ibid., 129.313. Ibid., 135.314. Blaize, op. cit., II, 92.315. Dudon, op. cit., 151.316. Ibid., 154.

317. Blaize, op. cit., II, 99.318. See Montalembert’s account of the interview in

Lecanuet’s life, I, 228.319. Blaize, op. cit., II, 115, 122.320. Dudon, op. cit., 163.321. Nielsen, op. cit., II, 60 f.322. Dudon, op. cit., 168 f.323. Ibid., 177.324. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 235.325. Ibid., II, 236.326. Ibid., II, 238.327. “Lettres à Montalembert,” p. 9.328. “Oeuvres,” II, 573 f.329. Ibid., II, 378.330. Boutard, op. cit., II, 325.331. See the text of the encyclical in Lamennais,

“Oeuvres,” II, 603 ff, or Dudon, op. cit., 389–400.332. I have tried to point out the significance of these

in my “Problem of Sovereigty,” pp. 176 f.333. It is interesting to compare Tyrrell’s judgment

on this episode at the time when his orthodoxy wasunquestioned. See his, “Faith of the Millions,” Vol.II, p. 86 f.

334. Lamennais “Oeuvres,” II, 604.335. Ibid., II, 608.336. Ibid., II, 609.337. Ibid., II, 610.338. Ibid.339. Ibid., II, 612.340. Ibid., II, 613.341. Ibid., II, 613-4.342. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 245.343. Boutard, op. cit., II, 340.344. Ibid., II, 346.345. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 250.346. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 264.347. Cf. the letter to Count Kzewuski. “Corresp.” (ed.

Forgues), II, 270.348. Ibid., II, 272.349. “Lettres Montalembert,” p. 43.350. Boutard, op. cit., II, 366.351. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 306–7. Boutard, op.

cit., II, 368.352. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 307.353. Ibid., II, 309.354. Ibid., II, 312–4. The letter is clearly written to a

Roman Cardinal.355. Boutard, op. cit., II, 378.356. Ibid., II, 379.357. “Oeuvres,” II, 555.358. Laveille, op. cit., p. 303.359. See the fundamental statement of his position

in the letter to Montalembert of Nov. 25, ’33.“Lettres M.,” p. 219 f.

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360. “Oeuvres,” II, 558–9.361. Ibid., II, 561.362. Dudon, op. cit., 292 f. 363. “Lettres

Montalembert,” p. 229.364. Ibid., p. 231.365. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 351, 353.366. “Lettres Montalembert,” p. 124.367. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 351.368. Boutard, op. cit., II, 403.369. “Lettres,” Jan. 10, Feb. 1, May 10, ’34.370. This feeling comes out very clearly in his letter

of March 29, ’34, to the Archbishops of Paris,“Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), II, 360.

371. Ibid., II, 362–4.372. Ibid., II, 367.373. Ibid., II, 369.374. “Lettres Montalembert,” p. 254.375. “Nouveaux Lundis,” Vol. I, p. 39 f.376. “Lettres Montalembert,” 316.377. Ibid., 270.378. Mr. Gladstone has an interesting reflection on

this attitude. Morley, “Life,” III. 352.379. “Vitrolles,” p. 248.380. “Souvenirs de Barante,” Vol. V, p. 137.381. S. M. Girardin, “Souvenirs,” p. 270.382. Cf. his “Memoirs” (Eng. trans.), Vol. III, Ch. III,

passim.383. Boutard, op. cit., III, 39.384. Ibid., III, 43.385. “Corresp.” (ed. Forgues), I, 115386. Ibid., II, 380.387. “Considérations sur le système philosophique de

M. de La Mennais.”388. Boutard, III, 51.389. “Lettres Montalembert,” p. 260.390. Ibid., 287., Lavalle, op. cit., 324.391. Boutard, op. cit., III, 76–8.392. Ibid., 82.393. See the integral text in Dudon, Op. cit. 427 f.394. Cf. Nielsen, Op. cit. 11, 64 f.395. Cf. Mr. Poole’s comments, “Illustrations of the

History of Medieval Thought,” p. 302 f.396. “Lettres Montalembert,” p. 306.397. “Corresp.,” II, 386.398. “Lettres Montalembert,” p. 307.399. Ibid., 324.400. Boutard, op. cit., III, 103.401. “Apologia” (ed. Ward), p. 150; and cf. my “Prob-

lem of Sovereignty,” Chapter III.402. Cf. the very interesting comments of d’Herbelot,

“Lettres à Montalembert,” pp. 88–9, 146. Thesewere written as early as 1829.

403. I have discussed this question partly in my pa-per on the “Personality of Associations,” 29 Harv.

L. Rev. 404, and partly in that on “the strict inter-pretation of ecclesiastical trusts” in 36 CanadianL. T. 190. The whole foree of the distinction betweenthe two views will be apparent to anyone who com-pares the judgments of Lords Halsbury andMacnaghten in the Free Church of Scotland Caseas published in Mr. Orr’s verbatim report.

404. Cf. Figgis,”From Gerson to Grotius,” pp. 191–3.On all this his fourth lecture in “Churches in Mod-ern State” is invaluable. See also a very good littlebook by Mr. Richard Roberts, “The Church in theCommonwealth.”

405. Cf. My “Problem of Sovereignty,” Chapter IV.406. On all this the reader will find invaluable assis-

tance in the two famous books of M. Loisy, “Autourd’un petit livre” and “Quelques Réflexions.”

407. I have discussed in detail this contention in thefirst chapter of this book.

408. Cf. Figgis, “From Gerson to Grotius,” p. 64 f; andfor the whole problem of Valois, “Le Pape et leConcile,” Vol. I, Ch. II–III.

409. Figgis, “Churches in the Modern State,” p. 154.410. Miss Petre’s biography is our main authority. His

most important works are (1) “A Much-abusedLetter;” (2) “Through Scylla and Charybdis;” (3)“Medievalism;” (4) “Lex Credendi.” The reader willalso find much of importance in the two volumesof essays collected under the title “The Faith ofthe Millions.

411. “Life,” II, 74.412. “Life,” II, 129.413. Ibid., II, 141.414. Ibid., II, 142.415. Ibid., II, 146.416. Ibid., II, 149.417. Ibid., II, 156.418. Ibid., II, 156.419. Ibid., II, 185.420. Ibid., II, 191.421. “A Much-abused Letter,” p. 58.422. Cf. the very beautiful passage in Ibid., p. 52 f.423. Ibid., 47.424. Ibid., 66.425. Ibid., 83.426. “Through Scylla and Charybdis,” p. 13.427. “Life,” II, 196.428. Ibid., II, 220.429. Ibid., II, Ch. XII, and the letter to Father Martin

printed as Appendix III.430. Ibid., II, 272.431. Ibid., 277–8.432. Ibid., II, 279. Cf. his essay on the Corporate Mind

in “Through Scylla and Charybdis.”433. “Life,” II, 465.

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434. Ibid., II, 467.435. Ibid., II, 469.436. Ibid., II, 476.437. Ibid., II, 479 f.438. Ibid., II, 481.439. Ibid., II, 482.440. Ibid., II, 485.441. Ibid., II, 497.442. Cf. M. Sorel’s preface, p. 12, to M. Berth’s “Les

Méfaits des Intellectuals.”443. This must not be taken to indicate a belief that

Ulster has been right.444. “Through Scylla and Charybdis,” p. 381445. “Life,” II, 340.446. Ibid., II, 347.447. Ibid., II, 355.448. Ibid., II, 405.449. Cf. my papers in 29 Harv. L. Rev. 404 and 26 Yale

Law Journal 122 f.450. Cf. the great inaugural lecture, reprinted in his

“Lectures in Modern History” with the introduc-tion to Mr. Burd’s edition of “The Prince.”

451. Cf. the collection of documents published as “LesFiches Pontificales de Monsignor Montagnini”(Paris, 1908).

Chapter Four: The Political Theoryof Royer-Collard1

I. The Significance of the RestorationThe restoration of the Bourbon House createdmore problems than it solved. It was intendedby the allies less as a consecration of politicaldoctrine than as the refutation of the Napole-onic idea. It had, indeed, the merit of preserv-ing, to some extent, the self-respect of the Frenchnation by returning to it a ruler supported byevery historic tradition in France anterior to theRevolution. But it was exactly therein that itserror is to be found; for to make abstraction ofthe Revolution had already become impossible.The new system, in fact, was, from the outset,incapable even of understanding the problemswith which it was called upon to deal. Those whohad returned with Louis from exile in nowiseperceived that new and acceptable dogmas hadalready replaced the prejudiced privileges of theancien régime. They came not to fulfil but to de-stroy. They did not realise that even the despoticsystem of Napoleon had taken due account ofthe revolutionary spirit. They were, above allthings, eager to restore the social and politicaledifice of the eighteenth century. They did notunderstand that their principles, no less thantheir methods, were already obsolete.

For the Revolution, despite its excesses, had beena fruitful epoch in political thought. It had beenan incredible experience in the formation of po-litical habits. Those who had tasted the sweetsof national sovereignty were not willing to re-sign their power because Napoleon had beenbeaten upon the battlefield. From the thousandstrands of the complex web of the Revolution, acertain order and meaning had eventuallyemerged. The idea of privilege had suffered afinal shock. The sovereignty of the state had beentransferred from king to people. The Declara-tion of Rights had embodied an enthusiasticbelief in the dignity of human personality whichsuggested the potentialities of a new and profit-able organization of society. The idea of tolera-tion, if it had been bent by the oppression ofNapoleon and the unclean craftiness of Fouché,was far from broken. The third estate had ar-

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rived at manhood; from being nothing it hadcome, as in Sieyès’ superb prophecy, to demandall. If it was a serious limitation upon democraticgrowth that the workers should have been ex-cluded from power still, when nobility and bour-geoisie stood face to face, the prospects of ad-vance were fortunate. For no one could doubtwhere the victory must one day lie.

Little enough, indeed, of all this was perceivedby those whom the downfall of Napoleon hadswept into power. What rather is remarkable isthe rapidity with which the old order was es-tablished again. The reaction was as thorough-going as the Revolution; and even if the essen-tial work of the Revolution had penetrated toosubtly into the structure of the social fabric tobe overthrown at all speedily, signs are not want-ing that it was not for lack of ill-will towards it.The Restoration divides itself clearly into threeperiods; and only in one brief moment was therethe faint hope that a compromise with liberal-ism might be effected. No justification save thatof revenge can ever be found for the pitiless ex-travagance of the reaction which followed thehundred days;2 not even the combined efforts ofa king and government which alike took no sat-isfaction in persecution were able to withstandthe brutality of its effort. From 1816, when themoderation of M. Decazes stayed for a period offour years the desire of royalism to come todeath-grips with the remaining factions whichclung to the ideas of 1793, there was hope ofpeace. But the period was full of troubles anddissension; and the assassination of the Duc deBerri persuaded Louis that a compromise withliberalism was an invitation to disaster. Hence-forth, as M. Scherer has finely said,3 it was al-ready Charles X who ruled. The system that thecharter had endeavored to inaugurate wasstruck at its foundations. The reactionary effortsof the Royalists only spurred their opponents togreater violence. It was the old antagonism be-tween the migr s and the Revolution in whichthe former had learned that the methods of par-liamentary government can be used to effect anadministrative despotism. henceforth they hadno other object; and the barricades of 1830 werethe one possible answer to their pretensions.

It was an assault upon individualism that theyattempted; and thinkers were not lacking whowere willing to invent a theory upon which toembroider the necessity of oppression. Nor is thepassion by which they were inspired unintelli-gible to a generation which has felt the shock ofan European catastrophe. They proclaimed thesuperiority of society to the individual and drewtherefrom the inference that their own self-in-terest might be equated therewith. To the revo-lutionary insistence that only by his own effortscould man create an adequate civilisation, theyretorted that the only true creation could comefrom the hands of God. Where the Revolutionhad asserted the significance of novelty theyaffirmed the supreme value of tradition. Theysought out the true principles of social order anddiscovered them in the antithesis of revolution-ary doctrine. Whether their interest was in poli-tics, as with Bonald, or in religion, as withLamennais, it was always the secret of unity forwhich they were searching. They were convincedthat the source of the Revolution had been theweakness of authority and they sought to re-establish it upon an unshakeable foundation.They had no experience of a world in whichpower might be safeguarded by its dispersion.All they could understand was its expression inthe ancient terms. They considered the problemof the relation of the individual to the state andanswered unhesitatingly that he must be ab-sorbed by it. It is the beatification of the statusquo and it is very intelligible. Their fundamen-tal desire was to safe-guard a system which theybelieved essential for social salvation. That ithappened to coincide with their retention of thecontrol of the state was perhaps rather acciden-tal than the result of set purpose. For they were,in some sort, empirical in their outlook. Theyhad a real sense of the growth of institutions.4

They set themselves firmly against a politicaltheory which should fit its facts to an a priorisystem. But their empiricism was essentiallyemotional and, in reality, it signified no morethan the translation into facts of their politicaldesires. Their sense of development was limitedto their respect for certain well-worn and tradi-tional avenues of growth. They were almostamazingly unable to understand that the Revo-

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lution was a fact no less than a tragedy; andtheir effort to ignore its meaning was only evi-dence of their intellectual limitation.

The truth simply is that they were in no realsense seekers of truth. Political ideas for themwere essentially offensive weapons. They heldthemselves at liberty to misinterpret ideas, tofalsify conclusions, to distort purposes. Theirview of human nature was uniformly low andthey were never logical enough to admit thattheir vilification must apply equally to them-selves. They seized upon a single fact in the po-litical history of France and made of it a gospelof defiance. Power was theirs, and the efforts ofphilosophers and evil men had hurled them fromwhat was rightly their own. What, then, theyhad to do was to search out the conditions uponwhich the maintenance of its restoration mightbe possible. Of the obvious change in social per-spective they took no account. That commercialgrowth and intellectual discovery was render-ing obsolete the paternal system for which theystood sponsor they had no shadow of perception.That the source of authority in anything so com-plex as a political society can never in fact besingle they did not in the least degree under-stand. They wished the people well; but the pos-session of will they restricted to themselves.They did not grasp the basic fact that the stateis in truth no more than a will-organisation andthat if, on occasion, that will may result in uni-fied activity that gives no guarantee of perma-nent unity. They misunderstood the conditionsof state-life. They did not perceive that there arealways limits to the exercise of power. They wereso nicely tender of their own consciences thatthey did not admit the existence of conscienceoutside their own order. They were so satisfiedwith their manipulation of the state that theymistook their private good for the general wel-fare and Paris retorted in its usual fashion tothat error.

Their theocracy, in brief, was as violent as thepassionate democracy they so virulently con-demned. Yet it is important to remember thattheir ideas were not coded to France. The war ofliberation resulted in England in seventeen abor-

tive years of stagnation and distress. The verypoets who had written hymns to liberty foundexcuses for the deferment of its application. Thetypical English statesman of the age was Eldon;and the toryism he represented was not lessprofound than that of France. The English bish-ops adopted an attitude to Catholic emancipa-tion which suggested nothing so much as a be-lief that England was the private appanage ofthe English church.5 The Duke of Wellington waslittle more able to appreciate the drift of opin-ion than the Prince de Polignac. If Englandavoided a theoretical revolution, the Reform Actof 1832 was symbolical of a new era in the his-tory of political structure. It was the admissionthat Toryism was dead, and when Sir Robert Peelbecame Prime Minister his first act was to rec-ognize that a revolution had been silently ef-fected.

Nor was the reaction less marked in Germany.6The effort of Savigny was toward nothing somuch as the dethronement of the rationalismby which the eighteenth century had been dis-tinguished. “Law,” he said in effect, “cannot bemade at the behest of men;” and if he was justi-fied in his emphasis on the thousand forces thatgo to its construction he was yet as surely trans-forming the doctrine of evolution into a defenceof conservatism. His theory of legislative func-tion is so precisely the antithesis of that ofRousseau as naturally to occasion the suspicionthat he was answering the latter. His sacrificeof the individual to the state, his insistence uponthe superiority of its life to that of its constitu-ent parts7 could be used, in the hands of Hegel,as the high road to a thoroughgoing absolutism.Herder and Schelling could find sufficient beautyin the romance of Rome to disguise the direc-tion in which its ideals were bending. Fichte didnot hesitate to absorb the individual in thestate.8 In such an analysis personality becomesno more than the opportunity to become part ofan immense organism in which no intersticesare to be found. But such negation of the indi-vidual mind is, in fact, no more in its resultsthan a theocracy in which God has been replacedby the King of Prussia. Germany, in fact, threwoff the bonds of Roman despotism only to dem-

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onstrate that the root of her objection was lessto the despotism than to its foreign character.So she, too, could forge the weapons which, inBismarck’s hands, were to stimulate the idealof a world reduced to an unity expressed in termsof German dominion.

Liberalism, in such an attitude, was clearly dif-ficult enough. Much of this distrust of freedomwas, of course, intelligible. It was a dictum ofSir Henry Maine’s that progress is the excep-tion in history; and certainly in each epoch ofnovel ideas the universal tendency of those whohold the reins of power has been to insist uponthe virtue of traditional system. They feared sogreatly the movement of liberal ideas that itseems never to have occurred to them that theymight be harnessed to government. They metthe proclamation of belief with an emphatic de-fiance; and demonstrated once more the dangerthat is inherent in the very fact of power. Thosewho stood by the cause of freedom in these diffi-cult years had much obloquy to undergo. To ac-cept the fact of the Revolution was held to besynonymous with a justification of its excesses.To put the individual outside the state, to denyhis absorption by the various loyalties by whichhe was bound, was regarded as giving a handleto every sort and kind of dangerous ambition.Anyone who reads the long list of legislative ef-forts during the Bourbon Restoration can makeno mistake as to its nature. Control of the judi-ciary, censorship of the press, restriction uponthe right of association, laws of exception, limi-tation upon the right of franchise, a system ofmilitary privilege9—by these on every hand weare confronted. The idea of toleration seems al-most dead. The generous enthusiasm of 1789 ishardly to be perceived. It is a cynical genera-tion, mistrustful, wearied, without conviction ofprogress, without courage to experiment. It is ageneration that has seen its parents gamble fortheir lives and conceived a natural distaste foradventure. Yet it is also a generation redeemedfrom unrelieved suspicion of men by the devotedeagerness of some few of its most distinguishedfigures. A generation in which Guizot learnedthe principles of representative government andin which Royer-Collard united to ethics the poli-

tics from which it had been too long divorced, isnot entirely without its fascination. It serves, atany rate, to enforce the lesson that even the mostvicious of political systems contains within it-self the germs of self-destruction.

II. The Theory of the CharterThere is little or no dramatic interest in the lifeof Royer-Collard. he was a typical member of thebourgeosie whom one at least of his opponentsdid not hesitate to characterise as jealous of theancient nobility.10 He sat in the National Assem-bly, and his deep opposition to the Jacobin policyresulted in a narrow escape from the guillotine.11

With the coming of more moderate days he satin the Council of Five Hundred and was, for atime, the cherished adviser of the exiled Bour-bons. In the Napoleonic régime he withdrew frompolitical life and occupied himself with the studyof philosophy as a lecturer at the Sorbonne. Withthe return of Louis XVIII he took a distinguishedplace in the lower house of the Chamber of Depu-ties and remained there almost to his death.Apart from a place on the Council of State, adirectorship in the council of Public Instructionand a brief Presidency of the Chamber, he heldno political office. He was in sympathy with noadministration save at a single moment in hiscareer. Save for his association with Guizot, DeSerre and Camille Jordan, it is not untrue tosuggest that he never belonged to a politicalparty, in the sense of merging his convictionswith those of a group of men. His authority camefrom the power of his eloquence, the impressivedistinction of his personality, the substantialsplendour of his convictions. He was, indeed, adifficult colleague. He had a sufficient sense ofhis power to make others realise a little acutelyhis awareness of it.12 He was regarded for so longas infallible by a group of admiring friends thathe came, in the end, almost to share their con-victions upon that question.13 His spirit was dif-ficult alike from his mistrust of power and of itsexercise,14 as from his persistent and disdainfulrefusal of office.15 Whether Villèle is right in hissuspicion that his aloofness came from a pridethat had been hurt by the ingratitude of LouisXVIII16 the fact remains that while he was will-ing to disturb ministers he was never eager to

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construct them. Of his private life we know littleor nothing; and though his love of Pascal is evi-dence enough of his sincere attachment for thesomewhat mellowed jansenism amidst which hewas educated, we have little enough evidencewhereby to estimate its influence upon his opin-ions. All that can be said of the man himself isthat he was sincere, that he was honest, and thathe was deservedly eminent. There have been fewmen in history whose life is so completely to besought in the doctrines that he preached.

The name that has become attached to his schoolis, in truth, in no small degree misleading. Wetend to think of the Doctrinaires as a body ofmen who applied arid principles to circum-stances for which they are unsuited. It is muchmore accurate to compare them to that FourthParty which rendered so great a service to En-glish politics in the last century. Different aswere their constituent personalities, the fourmen in each were invaluable alike from the in-dependence as from the ability of their criticism.Each continually drove back government uponthe principles from which it took its vise, prin-ciples too often so implicit in the business ofdeliberation as to be forgotten by those whomthey inspire. Not that the Doctrinaires were anyclearer than Lord Randolph Churchill in theirultimate metaphysic. What surrounds them isless a theory than an atmosphere, so that M.Michel could without injustice claim that whatthey attempted was simply the analysis and jus-tification of a certain interpretation of circum-stances.17 Yet the assertion is perhaps less trueof Royer-Collard than it is of his colleagues. Any-one who compares the political theory of Guizotwith his policy as minister will not be inclinedto doubt the grotesque flexibility of his ideas.Royer-Collard’s attitude was in every situationconsistent. If he seemed to be effecting a com-promise between the ancien r gime and the Revo-lution, he would probably have explained hiseffort by justifying it. The whole of his life wasspent in the insistence that government dependsupon rational principles of compromise. He wasalike opposed to the gloomy extravagances ofroyalism as to the democratic pretensions of thedisappointed heirs of the Revolution. Each sig-

nified for him the party of a despotism and heendeavored to search out the philosophy of ajuste milieu. It was thus that he was led, asGuizot has aptly remarked,18 to the maintenanceof interests rather than the affirmation of rights.That was why he equally condemned theChambre Introuvable and the ideas of 1793. Forhe believed that the true analysis of politicalstructure renders impossible any conception ofnational interests which suggests their unifiednature. He on the contrary insisted that the stateis composed of interests often antagonistic be-tween which an equilibrium must be maintainedby compromise. The maintenance of that balancewas the business of government and it was inthat very absence of unity that he therefore dis-covered merit; for, by its very nature, it set, ashe deemed, a limit to the abuse of power.

What, in fact, is the keynote of his whole doc-trine is the denial of the existence of sovereignty.He admitted the existence of power but he wasalways, as Guizot remarked,19 a moralist whowas suspicious of its exercise. The result washis insistence that its necessary should be dis-covered and it was to that search that he de-voted himself.20 The peculiar expression of policyfor which he stood was embodied in the charter.To him the charter was not so much a compro-mise as a solution. He never seems to haverealised how unwillingly it had been drawn fromthe restored king. He did not feel, with so manyof his contemporaries, its lack of clarity. He didnot understand their refusal to believe in itscertainties. “For all of us,” Barante has said,21

“it was simply a formality exacted by circum-stances and destined to perish with them. TheLiberals saw with what repugnance and, conse-quently, with how little good faith, submissionhad been made to the necessities of the Revolu-tion.” Royer-Collard did not regard it in this way.Sceptical of all things he may have been by na-ture;22 but in the virtues of the charter he putcomplete confidence. It was for him a touchstoneby which the rightness of all action might betested. He looked upon it as the crystallised ex-perience of the whole of French history.

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It was the expression of such limitations uponthe exercise of power as the past seemed to sug-gest. Sovereignty of king and people it alike re-jected. The one presupposed a despotism and theother a republic. But France by her politicalnature was a monarchy in which the king gov-erned by means of his ministers. He chose hisministers and his will was law. But upon hisaction a vital check was laid. The Chamber ofDeputies was a deliberative council resort towhich gave government the means of readingwisdom in legislation.23 Since the object of roy-alty was to translate into action the balance ofinterests within the Chamber the result was tolimit the possibility of despotic government.Neither king nor Parliament was therefore sov-ereign for the simple reason that the power ofeach was limited, either in practice or in theory.To each was assigned functions which, while theymight involve the exercise of will, never admit-ted the possibility of a will without control. Theking was government, and government mightinvolve the exercise of force; but the problem wasalways the extent of force to be used and thetest was the principles of the Charter. Nor didhe admit an uncontrolled right in the people.They represented only the brute mass of menand he would not admit that the mere agglom-eration of numbers would justify the exercise ofsovereign powers. The despotism of many wasfor him still a despotism, and he rejected it.24

He would no more admit that principles so fun-damental can be contradicted by tradition ornumber than he would have admitted the jus-tice of extravagance.

The psychological background of this attitude itis not difficult to discover. The abuse of sover-eignty under the ancien r gime had resulted inthe despotism of the Convention. In each casethe claim of uncontrolled power had resulted inthe destruction of liberty. It did not matter thatin one case that lack of limitation could give it-self historic background. It was unimportantthat in the other men were tasting, for the firsttime, a right which they had been too long de-nied. He saw clearly that some system of checksand balances was essential if order and peacewere to be safeguarded. That safeguard he dis-

covered in the Charter. It was the connective tis-sue of the body-politic. It represented the prin-ciples upon which the state could with securitylead its life. To say that the charter was thesource of law was to say that any specific exer-cise of power was in accord with the tradition ofFrance.25 And the charter divided power. If itgave the king the power of government, it gavepower of criticism, of suggestion, of grievance tothe aristocracy and the delegates of the people.So complex is its scheme of contribution to law-making that when the act is on the statute-booknone can in reality say whence, exactly, it is de-rived. But that is to show that the charter issuccessful. It is to admit that varying interestshave combined in a result which, because lim-ited by all, is acceptable to all.

It is the whole history of France that he finds inthe charter.26 Long centuries have gone to itspainful elaboration. It was needful that heshould urge the accuracy of this fiction in orderthereby that he might counterbalance thestrength of royalism. For, clearly, that upon whichhe was engaged was the substitution of a rule oflaw for a rule of force. Unless he could gain theadmission that the strength of a law is not thechance acquiescence of a majority behind it theadministration of power would be therein de-prived of its moral significance. But, to that end,it was essential that he should not have tostruggle against the past and he prevented thatcatastrophe by annexing it. He saw quite clearlythat two powers stood face to face. The monar-chy had elaborated the dogma of personal sov-ereignty; the Revolution had transferred it tothe nation. If he could emphasise the legitimacyof the one, by which he meant its full accord withthe national tradition, he could then insist uponthe significance of the other. He could point outthat the decline of royal absolutism was onlythe growth of a condition already inherent inthe ancien régime. France was the synthesis ofmany sovereignties which need not always claima royal origin.27 They had lived together; and thatwas to say that the conception of a balance ofinternal powers was already old. What the Revo-lution had done was to abolish those sovereign-ties and to leave the individual face to face with

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the state. “Nous ne sommes pas citoyens,” hesaid in an effective phrase,28 “nous sommes desadministrés,” and the problem was to preventthe submergence of the individual that had beeneffected by the centralisation of power.

That, in effect, was the object of the charter. Thepath from the despotism of the ancien régime tothe new despotism of the Revolution was largelyaccidental but equally dangerous. “Ladémocratie,” he said in a famous sentence, “couleà pleins bords”29 and there was for him no needto suspect it of needing safeguards any moreinherent than the ancient monarchy had pos-sessed. What then it clearly became necessaryto do was to put certain states of fact beyondthe reach of ordinary administration. France hadbecome egalitarian and centralised. The pres-sure of its parts must not overwhelm certainprinciples that safeguard the fullness of life.These principles are rights in the possession ofwhich the individual will find protection againstabsorption.30 These rights will be general in char-acter; Jacques Bonhomme has been made thecenter of the French state by the Revolution.They will be private rights in the sense that theyattach to individual personality. But they willbe general in that unlike the rights of the an-cien régime they will not be exceptional in char-acter. They will replace the old privileges thatthe flood-tide of 1789 had borne away upon itseddies. They will be a centre of inviolability andthus a limitation upon power. Therein he findsof course, the main source of their virtue.

III. Necessary FreedomsBroadly speaking, the liberties which lie at thebase of his system were four in number. Libertyof the press he would perhaps have regarded asmost fundamental. It was, for him, not merely acondition of political liberty, but, even more, itsvery foundation.31 That it might result in abusehe would certainly not have denied any morethan he would have refused to punish the viola-tion of the right to publication.32 The problemfor him was to find the conditions under whichthe right could be most wisely exercised. It waswrong to dispair of a solution. It was wrong be-cause the result of so desperate a conclusion

must result either in an anarchy or in despo-tism.33 But it was only by means of the pressthat the ideas of the mass of men might becomeknown. Such knowledge clearly must set limitsto the exercise of power. It is a safeguard; for itis from popular silence that, above all, the ideaof despotism draws its richest nourishment.“Power,” he said in a striking sentence,34 “likethe individual, has its temperament, its man-ner, its natural instinct.” But that is to say thatit is capable of being influenced, and freedom ofthe press was a valuable weapon to that end. Itsinconvenience to government he in no sense de-nied; but he attributed that inconvenience lessto the inherent nature of thought than to theabsorptiveness of power. So long as a desire forarbitrary action is checked at every point of itsadvance by those whose business it is to exam-ine its justification, its translation in fact is suf-ficiently remote to ensure the general security.35

That in practice it will become the possession ofa few he knew. But he was unwilling to leave atthe mercy of government the surest method ofcriticising it. It was a barrier against absolu-tion. In his eyes it needed no further justifica-tion.

It was, indeed, for him the replacement of thoseold checks on the abuse of monarchy which hadcharacterised the ancien r gime. Just as the in-dependent magistracies of ancient France hadlimited the full exercise of sovereignty for thecommon good, so is freedom of the press a po-litical institution which safeguards the rule oflaw. “The day on which it perishes,” he said,36 “isthe day on which we shall return to servitude.”He insisted, moreover, upon its necessity foranother reason. The democracy of France wasfull of spirit and energy. It was possible to di-rect, it was impossible to destroy its progress.What it meant was the admission of an evergreater number of men to the full benefits ofcivilisation.37 Nothing so surely prevented thegrowth of wrongheaded thinking in a changingsociety as the free interchange of thought. De-mocracy had power; and nothing was more use-less than the failure to recognise that the pos-session of power meant influence in the work ofgovernment. The whole problem by which they

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were confronted was the instruments by whichthat power should be exerted. To deprive thepeople of a liberty which had taken such deeproot in France was to destroy the surest guar-antee of peace. It was to drive underground ideaswhich must then translate themselves into ac-tion without the purifying influence of criticismand of correction.38 It was to offer no alternativebetween conquest and resolution. It resulted inthe profanation of Justice. “The only remedy forliberty” he said in a magnificent speech,39 “isprison, the only remedy for intelligence is igno-rance.” But upon both of these it is only the mostdishonourable of governments that takes itsstand.

In similar fashion he demanded freedom of reli-gious belief. Every church was a power in thestate and its danger to the body politic couldonly be mitigated by the admission of its free-dom.40 That was why a privileged church re-sulted in discontent as it was why a theocracywas the most dangerous form of absolute rule.41

For to add to political power the sanction of reli-gion was to make captive the intelligence of men.That was why a church to which freedom hadbeen guaranteed was a perpetual pledge of pri-vate liberty.42 It was the admission that there isno institution so vast as to absorb the completeallegiance of man. It made him conscious of hisduty to his intelligence which, in fact, is his dutyto his humanity. It results in the freedom of hissoul. It insists upon the development of his con-science. It enables him to refuse submission towrong by the creation of a criterion of right whichis not merely the judgment of the state. It is apowerful safeguard of originality because, byreminding the citizen of the perpetual duty ofpolitical judgment, it guards that individualismwhich makes him adamant against the assaultof absolute power.

Nor is he less insistent upon the influence ofreligious freedom on the church itself. Where thechurch is free it is an association of consciencesand at once a moral element is introduced intoits composition.43 It is a republic within the state,an association which sets limits to the demandthe state may make upon its members. But once

its freedom is changed into state-union the con-ditions of value disappear. Inevitably it becomesofficialised. Inevitably those who direct it arecompelled to subvert it to their purposes fromthe very temptations it offers. It lives on thebounty of the state and the price of its mainte-nance is at least its silence and in general itssupport. It brings to the centralised power asource of authority of which the possession isfraught with danger. It gives a religious sanc-tion to state-decisions which are in fact entirelywithout relation to ecclesiastical purposes. Itaggravates the possibility of despotism by ting-ing government with the suspicious colours oftheocracy. It offers temptation in another direc-tion. It asks, inevitably, for privileges.44 It de-sires to exalt itself at the cost of its competitors.It ceases to regard any conscience other than itsown. It puts itself under the protection of thepolitical police. It submits the choice of its rul-ers to government.45 It meddles in the appanageof temporal power. What it may gain in dignityit loses in independence. It becomes a socialmagistracy, and the basic purpose of its exist-ence is diverted to temporal ends. He cannotresist the comparison between the simplicity andeffectiveness of the catholic church in Englandand the stately grandeur of the AnglicanChurch.46 The latter he regarded rightly as nomore than the creature of the civil power. It hadceased to be a church and had been debased intoan establishment. “Let a religious organisation,”he said,47 “be exclusive or ever dominant andone may rest assured that its ministers will berich and important in political life, that they willexercise a vast dominion and intervene withoutcessation in civil life, to bring it under their owncontrol.” No one who reads the history of theChurch of England in the first half of the nine-teenth century can doubt that it is an illustra-tion of this general principle. No one who is ac-quainted with the history of the Catholic Churchin France under the ancien r gime can mistakethe fact that it was exactly from these vices thatit suffered. It was nonsense, in his eyes, to ar-gue that a state which does not profess somedefinite religious belief is already atheist.48 Thechoice is not between fidelity and theocracy. Thechoice is between the use of an illegitimate

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weapon for wrongful purposes and the admis-sion that the function of religion does not enterinto the field of politics. The charter, as he in-sisted, had recognised its value by giving it themeans of independence. It offered them the pro-tection of the law; but it realised so far the dan-ger of choosing out some form of faith for espe-cial favour that it preferred the loneliness of acomplete impartiality between them.49

The recognition of literary freedom and religiousindependence is the admission of impalpableinfluence. Both result less in the control of prac-tical power than in the creation of an atmospherein which it may be suitably restrained. The onethrows the full glare of public criticism on gov-ernmental activity. The other, by its refusal toadmit the entire absorption of the individual inthe state, gives him a certain externality whichquickens the public conscience by its insistenceon the significance of the elements which go tothe constitution of the whole. But more than thatis required. Power that is uncontrolled in prac-tical affairs can hardly be limited by theoreticalcriticism. It is only when opposition becomesmaterialised into a legal barrier that we havereal safeguards against absolutism. Such a safe-guard he believed to exist in the immovabilityof the magistrate. Just as the admission of free-dom of conscience puts a conscience outside thestate that account may be taken of its actions,so does the permanent tenure of judicial officeinvolve the admission that not even the statecan transgress the principles of justice. It is theguarantee of impartiality in the fundamentalprocess of the state. The judge is the guardianof all the natural and social rights of man.50 It isupon his integrity alone that they depend. Thewhole existence of society is dependent upon thesatisfactory administration of his office. But evena judge is human and he needs protectionagainst his frailties. If the fear of dismissal isbefore his mind he must inevitably be affectedin his decisions by the result they will exerciseupon his career. He is given permanent tenurein order that he shall be free from such a possi-bility. He is lovable because he is then in a posi-tion to protect the principles of the charter evenagainst those who appointed him to office.51 His

immovability simply connotes his independence.It is a recognition of the fallibility of the state. Itsets a limit to the temptations of power. Un-doubtedly, he is a functionary of the state; buthe is a functionary appointed for the expresspurpose of protecting society against itself.52 Itis the guarantee of those privileges that reasondemonstrates to be necessary to social welfare.

Yet all these liberties he counts as nothing com-pared to the supreme privilege of parliamentarygovernment. This, above all, is the final checkupon absolutism. This, above all, provides themass of men with the material means of guar-anteeing a régime of liberty. For what, in thelast analysis, is meant by parliamentary gov-ernment? The right of self-determination in fi-nance and of its supervision when the vote hasbeen made.53 Liberty, at bottom, is a matter ofhard purchase. You keep the government in thepath of right conduct by the potential refusal ofthe means of its subsistence. Should its foreignpolicy displease you can refuse the funds for itssupport. If its domestic administration is unjust,you may keep your hands in your pockets. It is,perhaps, somewhat rude as a governmentalmethod; yet, of all, it is the most efficacious. Iteffects a practical revolution without the de-struction of a single life.

Of course it is itself a power that has its dan-gers; and few have sketched more vividly thanRoyer-Collard the inherently sinister potentiali-ties of a parliamentary system. It tends, by itsnature, to absorb the very power it limits.54 In-stead of making laws, of applying the principlesof the Charter to the political situations whichmay arise, it desires to invade the executive func-tion and to undertake the actual work of admin-istration. That is, of course, simply a manifesta-tion of the thirst for power which is common toevery person and institution. But when a par-liament attempts it, it steps outside its propersphere. Government requires rapid decision,secret determination, continuous resolve.55 Itmust in the last resort be unified action, theaction of, at the most, a small group so single inthought as to act as one will. With a modernparliament he denies that such action is pos-

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sible. It is responsible to the nation and, by itsvery nature, it must discover the will of the na-tion before it can act. A deputy is thinking lessof the governmental decision that has to be madethan of the verdict that will be passed upon hisdecision by his constituency at the next election.He cannot work swiftly and silently. What he isdemands at once deliberation and prominence.But that is to say that his business is the elabo-ration of general principles which is in no sensethe business of administration.

Royer-Collard is naturally led to examine theroots whence this theory of usurpation takes itsorigin. It starts out from the assumption of thesovereignty of the people. It suggests that theChamber of Deputies as the representatives ofthe sovereign people is the recipient by delega-tion of their sovereignty. But that is to assumethe identity of parliamentary government withrepresentative government and he hotly deniedthe equation.56 The deputies do not represent thenation. They represent the interests of the na-tion, and he insists upon the vital character ofthe distinction.57 Were they to represent the na-tion no form of government save a republic wouldbe possible. To represent the nation is to repre-sent man, an eager, passionate thinking being,who possesses in himself an atom of power. Butyou cannot, so Royer-Collard argues, delegatethat power.58 It rests where it originates and eachcan only exert it for himself. Representative gov-ernment is, he sees clearly enough, majority gov-ernment and power goes to the party whom thegreater part of the citizen-body supports. Butthat is already direct government which is notthe government of France. The deputies dependfor their existence not upon the people but uponthe charter.59 The charter conferred rights uponthe people but it did not give them representa-tion. What it did was to create a body of menwho should represent in the constitution of thestate the divers interests of the nation. To rep-resent the historic unity of France it gave thegovernment to the King. To represent the upperclasses it created the House of Peers. But fromeach of these there is a distinct interest—thatof the people and the charter represented thatinterest in the Chamber of Deputies.60 It was

careful to insist upon indirect representation forthe very reason that it is from the charter thatthe Chamber derives; had it been intended tocreate representative government only univer-sal suffrage would have been logically defen-sible.61 In such an analysis the chamber is sim-ply a function of the state. It is not coeval withit. It cannot pretend to override the two checksupon the exercise of its powers.

For Royer-Collard saw clearly that the effort ofthe popular chamber was aimed at the posses-sion of sovereignty. If that sovereignty did notexist, it was clear enough that its effort was vain.It is clear that it was not intended from the merefact that there are two chambers. There are twochambers because there are two interests andneither of them can uniquely be sovereign.62 Heemphasises that conclusion the more vehe-mently because of every aspirant to supremepower it is of parliament that he is most suspi-cious. It hides itself behind its corporate person-ality and thus lacks the responsibility of actualoffice.63 It is the maker of laws and so continu-ally encroaching upon authority that is not itsown by very reason of that favourable situation.It can obtain control of the executive, as it canbreak the independence of the judicial power. Itcan destroy the external guarantees of freedomby curbing alike thought and conscience. Thatis why limits have been placed to its activity.That is why, for example, the charter did notestablish single-chamber government. Had itdone so, it might equally have established aplebiscite. But each alike is the manifestationof a supposed popular sovereignty and of its ex-istence he has already made denial. For what-ever sovereignty we recognise is a depositary offorce and from it will originate law. Since hiseffort is to trace the origin of law to a reason-able interpretation of conditions in the light ofcertain fundamental principles of justice, it isobvious that he cannot admit that conclusion.

What then, he asked himself, is the people? Hehad no doubt of the reply. The people, like theKing and like the aristocracy, is simply the de-positary of a function in the state.64 It has to seta limit to absolutism. But it has, simultaneously,

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to be prevented from usurping that power whichit has itself come to limit. That is why it is coun-terbalanced by king and nobles. That is why itcannot vote at pleasure but only as the funda-mental law may permit it.65 That is why the char-ter did not recognise universal suffrage. That iswhy the chamber is only partly renewed at ageneral election; for a total renewal would be aplebiscite, and the force behind a plebiscitewould, whether for good or for evil, be too mas-sive to make effective resistance possible.66 Itwould then engender the creation of a sover-eignty, and in that creation would be involvedthe denial of the charter. It would be an ochloc-racy of the most dangerous kind, and it is withvehemence that he repudiates its consecration.

IV. ImplicationsM. Faguet has insisted that the political systemof Royer-Collard is in no sense a metaphysic andthere is certainly a sense in which this is en-tirely true.67 For what it clearly desires to do isto effect the canonization of one fundamentaltruth derived from his own experience. He hadlearned alike from history and his own share inthe Revolution that the use of power is poison-ous to those who exert it. That for which he wasanxious was the prevention of its exertion fordangerous ends. He did not care greatly whetherthe wielder of it were one or many. What he de-sired was to prevent the recurrence of a timewhen the personality of men should be stifledby the authority of the state. That does not meanto say that he was in any sense anarchistic inoutlook. Again and again in his career he ac-cepted the necessity of repressive legislationwhen occasion for its passage seemed to himevident. But for the normal state he was clearthat political life would be intolerable unlesscertain limitations of power were postulated asfundamental. The individual must have certainliberties no matter what inconvenience may flowfrom their possession. He must have certain lib-erties because once their possession is deniedthe result is either Louis XIV or the Conven-tion. That is what he meant by his famous doc-trine that liberties are the capacities to resist.68

It is an opportunity to deny the validity of en-croachment. It is a chance to insist upon the

submission of any given situation to the analy-sis of reason. It was, on the whole, a simple andpractical attitude, intelligible enough when onereads it in the light of his time. For he was wit-nessing, after all, a gigantic struggle betweentwo parties anxious on the one hand to main-tain, on the other to destroy, the work of theRevolution. He saw clearly enough that theircollision must inevitably be violent. What hesought to outline was a political method underwhich an orderly progress became possible. Hehad no sympathy for those who, like Villèle, re-garded the work of government as the privilegedpossession of king and nobles. His defence of le-gitimacy shows how little he appreciated thespirit of democracy in his time. His philosophywas one of check and balances, derived, perhaps,from an admiration of the way in which the Brit-ish constitution had preserved the equipoise ofinterests without a revolution.

Not that he desired to see France governed uponthe English model. Few of his speeches are moreadmirable than that in which he insists on thespecialist character of a national tradition.69

France cannot import the English constitutionsimply because she is France; to do so would beto reverse the significance of a thousand yearsof history. His mind was essentially compromis-ing in its outlook and the rigidity with which heis usually credited comes not from his enuncia-tion of a system of dogmas as from his constantsearch for the conditions under which a com-promise may be effected. When there was hopeof a moderate liberalism under Decazes he didnot object to the grant of extraordinary powers;it was under the oppressive absolutism ofCharles X that his insistence upon the value ofliberty found its full strength.

The influence of Montesquieu upon his mind is,of course, obvious enough. That separation ofpowers upon which the former insisted as thekey to liberty became in Royer-Collard’s handsthe corner-stone of his political edifice.70 But inhis hands it also underwent a vast extension.He desired not so much the separation of pow-ers as the separation of power. What he wantedwas to prevent the supreme force of the state

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from being concentrated at any single pointwithin it. So long as the possibility of effectiveresistance had to be considered there was a rea-sonable certainty that power would not beabused. His insistence that sovereignty is nomore than a peculiar synthesis of power is im-mensely valuable. It prevents the attribution tothe state of any mystical rights or functions. Hesaw that while the state as a whole has, fromthe nature of things, the theoretical possessionof all power, actually that power is always dis-tributed among its constituent elements. Thesovereignty of the state then comes to mean inactual practice the amount of power that is ex-erted by the governing body of the state. WhatRoyer-Collard emphasised was the danger ofpermitting that power to become so great as tooverride all possible expression of differencewithin the community. What you have to do isnot to strangle opinion but to persuade it. Hence,for example, his postulation of liberty of the pressas fundamental. A government that is continu-ously subjected to the raking fire of criticism isin fact a limited government; it cannot becomea despotism save by the real consent of its sub-jects—which is to say that it cannot become adespotism.71 For, to its subjects, two appeals arealready addressed and the question of obediencebecomes a problem of how far the decision ofauthority outweighs in the strength of its ap-peal the moral force of organized opposition toit.

It is difficult to deny the validity of such an ar-gument. The separation of powers is admittedlya cumbersome conception. Translated into thepractical expression of the American Constitu-tion it may result, as an acute observer hasemphasised, simply in the confusion of powers.72

But that is simply because in its orthodox formit forces a natural assumption into an unnatu-ral classification. The threefold division of gov-ernmental power into executive, legislative andjudicial, is only the rough apportionment of con-venience and does not exist in the nature ofthings. Indeed the profoundest student of theAmerican Constitution has recently and ex-pressly emphasised the conclusion that the logicof judicial review involves ipso facto the exer-

cise of legislative power.73 But what Royer-Col-lard saw clearly is that our inability to force somuddle-headed a classification upon govern-ment is not equivalent to the conference upon itof absolutism. What on the contrary it suggestsis the need of setting limits to its power by theadmission that without it there exist rightswhich, on occasion, will call its activity into se-rious question. Admittedly those rights are onlyvaguely defined. Admittedly, he did not lay downthe conditions under which they may justifiablybe exercised.74 But that only means that he re-fused to prophecy the future. It only means thathe recognized how difficult it is to forecast theprecise manner in which events will shape them-selves. He laid down the general principles uponwhich the conduct of authority must be judgedin each situation; but his own career as a mem-ber of the chamber revealed how clearly he un-derstood the compulsion of circumstance. Heknew that the France of the Restoration mustconfront its problems differently from the Franceof 1789.75 The exact nuance of the change he darenot have predicted. What he saw was that solong as the existence of the state was not threat-ened there must be an eternal conflict betweenits constituent parts. Events have not thus farcontradicted the general correctness of his in-terpretation.

In such an analysis, of course, the conception ofan unitary state must disappear. Where there issentient existence, there will be judgment; wher-ever there is personality there will be power. Thestate then becomes multicellular in character.It develops features traditionally associated withwhat we term federal organisation. The vastclaims of legal theory for any single organ of thestate begin to lose their substantiality. Not, in-deed, that they lose their legal correctness. Nocourt will question the legal right of parliamentto work its will in whatever way may to itselfseem most necessary.76 Our doubts of its author-ity must obtain a sanction in every case extra-judicial. Yet it is surely clear that a theory solittle connected with the reality of political lifeis unsatisfactory enough. That is where the forceof Royer-Collard’s analysis becomes obvious. Therights he demanded as the guarantee against

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absolutism are rights which, sooner or later, nostate can afford to disregard. He may, indeed,have been vague enough in his conception of lib-erty; though here it might justly be argued thatthose who have been most precise in its defini-tion have usually been unable to make their con-cept stand the test of analysis. The simple factis, as he seems to have perceived, that liberty isless a tangible substance than an atmosphere.77

We know what it is less by its presence than byits absence. It is the sense of a cramped person-ality, the arrest for spiritual development, thatsignifies encroachment upon its necessities. ToRoyer-Collard certain rights might be definedwhich would prevent the onset of despotism. Hedefined those rights; and their fundamental ob-ject was to prevent the concentration of powerat any isolated centre of the state. That, surely,is the fundamental characteristic of federal gov-ernment.

He insisted upon its value less for the reasonswe should today assign to it than for the singlecause that it prevented the absolutist tendencyof government to have its sway. But it is of in-terest to note that the milieu in which hesketched the nature of power should have swungso exactly upon the lines he suggested. He livedin a period of developing parliamentary power.It was the Chamber of Deputies which overthrewthe government of the Restoration just as, inEngland, the fortunes of the ministry dependedupon the goodwill of the House of Commons. Butthere has been an interesting divergence at thispoint between the experiences of France and ofEngland. Right down to our own day the greatfact in French administrative history has beenthe increasing power of the Chamber of Depu-ties; and the demand for administrative au-tonomy on the part of the fonctionnaire is sim-ply the effort to restore a balance of power thathas been regrettably lost.78 The instinct of tyr-anny which is so nourished by acquaintance withpower has led in France to an impossible situa-tion.79 Today, as a consequence, the rights thatthe civil servant is claiming are exactly calcu-lated to take from the Chamber of Deputies allpower save that regulation by the proclamation

of general principles which, fundamentally, wasRoyer-Collard’s conception of its function.80

In England the evolution has been in an almostantithetic direction. Where Bagehot could notethe overwhelming supremacy of Parliament thefact which confronts the modern observer is theeven greater power of the executive body.81 TheHouse of Commons has come to depend uponthe cabinet; and as yet, at any rate, we have dis-covered no means of restoring an effective bal-ance of power. Yet here, too, the result has beenexactly what one who accepts the general analy-sis for which Royer-Collard stood sponsor mighthave predicted. More and more the executiveorgan has attempted to free itself from the tram-mels of the rule of law. The development of aspecialised administrative code was probablyinevitable; and certainly French experience sug-gests that its growth can well harmonise withthe simultaneous acceptance of the idea of re-sponsibility. The fact still remains that, as yet,the increasing power of the bureaucratic side ofEnglish government has not brought with it itscompensations in the safe-guarding of generalliberty.82 It is more than absurd to talk this earlyof a transition to the servile state. Yet it is diffi-cult not to analyse the latest fruits of Englishlegislation in terms of a movement from con-tract to status.83 Synchronously, indeed, may beobserved the appearance, in half-articulate fash-ion of the attitude which the French callsolidarist—the attempt to interpret political lifein terms of function instead of terms of prop-erty. The growing distrust of tatisme is, doubt-less, significant enough in this regard: and it isworth while suggesting that it is in the concep-tion of a fundamental social interdependencewhich an tatiste r gime obscures that we shallregain the synthesis we require.84

Nor must the significant moment of Americandevelopment be disregarded. Of the conflict be-tween centralised and local authority it is notnecessary here to speak. But due attention mustbe paid by any observer who would grasp thereal nature of sovereignty to the process ofAmerican government at the present time. Ob-servers have long insisted that the traditional

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institutions of 1787 would prove unequal to thestrain of crisis; and if the Civil War seemed, insome degree, to negative that conclusion, it isemphatically accurate at the present time. Theoriginal suspicion of executive authority threwthe burden of power into the hands of Congress,and so long as the ordinary conception of repre-sentative government reflected with accuracythe conditions of American life, the emphasis ofauthority began slowly to move away from thatcentre. It has become commonplace to assert thatthe President is today more powerful than atany time in American history. It is still moreobvious that congressional debate has largelyceased to influence the character of public opin-ion. New instruments of opinion are everywherein the making. The conventions of the AmericanConstitution already merit examination. Newadministrative organs are already in process ofconstruction. Much of what has come into beinghas no popular mandate for its rulings; it de-pends on what seems to have become the farmore effective sanction of expert confidence.Congress, it is clear, would be chary enough ofrisking a total collision with its opinions. No onecan estimate the future of these novelties ex-cept to feel dimly but decisively that they havea future. The individual congressman has un-dergone an eclipse as complete as that of theprivate member of the House of Commons. TheCongressional committees have become less themoulders of legislation than its pathetic becausegrudging recipients. The key to the whole hascome to lie in the president’s hands and in thediscernment of the few chosen councillors he hasgathered about him. This is not, it is clear, thegovernment envisaged by the constitution.Equally certainly, it is not a government whichmeets with the approval of Congress. In somesort issue has been joined between the two; butthe fact that it is already a government whichfunctions suggests the inevitable outcome.85

Observation, then, seems to tend in the direc-tion of confirming the conclusion at which Royer-Collard arrived. It would seem to demonstratethat the legal theory of sovereignty is withoutroot in actual existence. It would suggest thatthere exists rather a broad thing we call power

and that sovereignty is simply its exercise inactual terms of life. Sovereignty, then, is simplyan act of will. It depends upon the consent ofthe members of the state for its effectiveness.Generally speaking, what decisions the organof sovereignty may make will obtain acceptance;and Royer-Collard most certainly would not havedoubted that government is so vital a thing asto make the refusal of obedience the extrememarginal case. But the consecration of a regioninto which government may not normally enteris the guarantee of a reservoir of resistancewhich confirms his theory that no conception ofpower is adequate into which the element ofmorality does not enter; and that is already tosay that no power can in any event be absolute.86

What we do, then, is to remove the check uponthe exercise of sovereignty from without the or-gan which exerts it. We insist upon the exter-nality of the individual. We make of him a com-plete personality who, while he is a member ofthe state, and thereby contributes to the justifi-cation of its authority, is, at the same time, some-thing more. It is an affirmation of political plu-ralism, the belief that while the state is respon-sible to itself, is a moral being from which self-judgment is expected, the nature of power de-mands also the retention of the safeguard thatwe, too, as beings with personality, are compellednot merely to passive reaction to its decisionsbut to active registration of our dissent there-from. What, of course, it suggests is a type ofgovernment very different from anything wehave thus far known. If the spirit ofdecentralisation is implicitly present in everystate, it would seem an economy of organisationto give it distinct existence in form.

That problem, indeed, Royer-Collard did not face,for the sufficiently good reason that he was notconfronted by it. Those who occupied themselveswith the politics of the Restoration had a differ-ent task from our own. The nations of Europehad made holy alliance against democratic prin-ciples and the main problem for all whorecognised, as did Royer-Collard, that the basicdemand of the Revolution was right, were occu-pied in the affirmation of it. That involved a dif-ferent and simpler struggle from our own. The

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distinction between the ancien r gime and theRevolution was, after all, clear even to the leastacute spectator of events. The whole problem wassimply whether the basis of government shouldbe the will of one or a generalised representa-tion of the will of all. The Restoration answeredthat question in two antithetic ways. The Roy-alists proclaimed loudly that the intellectualteachings of the Revolution had produced suchdisastrous results as to be inacceptable to hon-est men. They desired for that cause the returnto the conception of power by which the ancien rgime had been governed. Those who may broadlybe termed liberal in outlook suggested what wasin effect a compromise. While they distrustedthe dogmas of royalism they were a little scepti-cal of the full and logic consequences of its ne-gation. What they sought was the synthesis ofthe potentialities of both; and it was by the limi-tation of authority in the recognition of indi-vidual rights that are, generally speaking, in-violable, that they sought to effect it. The solu-tion, of course, was too simple. The ancient in-stitutions of France could not be at once idealisedand modernised. The practical defect of Royer-Collard’s own outlook was that he did not takesufficient account of the legacies of hatred thathad been inherited. His own confidence in thecharter was pathetically unique. To Charles X itwas a subject of abhorrence; to Barante it wasuseless because it was operated without goodwill;87 to Chateaubriand it was merely the ma-terial for an elegant, if capricious, pamphlet.88

The charter did not, as Royer-Collard had hoped,reconcile the institutions it had established; itmerely provided a basis for their more violentdivision. The fact was that it sought the unifica-tion of two permanently irreconcilable prin-ciples—an active monarchy and a democracy.Until the triumph of the one or the other hadbeen secured, their collision was unavoidable.

V. Ethics and PoliticsIf the main motive of this outlook is the effort tosolve a fairly definite and practical problem, theanswer has an ethical implication which it isworth while for a moment to examine. Royer-Collard was the philosophic disciple of Reid,89

and, like the latter, his metaphysical work was

really an attempt to find means of escape fromthe scepticism of Hume. That to which his analy-sis led him was an insistence on the worth ofconscience. Few theorists of his time have sogreatly emphasised the importance of what con-tribution each individual can make to the gen-eral fabric of state-thought. He had realised thatthe insistence the Revolution had laid upon theworth of human personality was in some sortits most vital work. For it immediately involveson the part of the state an effort to organisemeans whereby that personality may obtainexpression. Here, clearly enough, emerges thereal significance of the connotation he attachedto freedom. Liberty, for him, is the hindrance ofattack upon the development of personality. Thatis why he is so anxious to put beyond the area ofordinary interference certain rights withoutwhich personality is worthless. That was why,also, he was suspicious of authority. For whereauthority encroaches beyond the domain thatcircumstance will, in a rational analysis, ascribeto it, it negatives the meaning of personality.That was the defect of the ancien r gime. It con-fined humanity within certain bounds and therichness of which it was capable failed to obtainadequate recognition. Of course Royer-Collardhad here the defects of his time. His perceptionof the value of the individual conscience did notgo far enough to make him see the necessity ofuniversalising its political expression. He wasso wrapped up in his doctrine that what obtainsrepresentation is not will but interests that hefailed to realise that interests are no more thanthe material expression of will. He did not pushfar enough his analysis of the basis of the state.Had he done so he would have grasped firmlywhat, in fact he only dimly perceived; that it isin actual life impossible to test the legitimacy ofa will that clamors for expression merely by thediscussion of its origin.90 His own theory, indeed,was one of function; and he satisfied himself thatthe interests of the French people were suffi-ciently expressed in the power of the middleclasses to which he himself belonged. The day ofthe workers had not yet dawned; and the attemptto explain the economic significance of class-dis-tinction certain English thinkers had only be-gun to attempt. It is, of course, an inconsistency

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in his thought to have stopped at a point wherethe conference of political power would then haveprevented the violence he hated so passionately.But his thought was always limited by the ne-cessities he encountered; and he did not pursueits implications into the realm of abstract pos-sibility.

Whatever that limitation, his insistence on thevalue of personality as the real source of politi-cal power is very important. It is difficult not tofeel that it is derived, above all, from Kant. HenriMichel has pointed out how greatly Guizot, atany rate, was influenced by the German specu-lation of his time;91 and what influenced Guizotwould not have been unknown to Royer-Collard.His own spiritualist philosophy led him to at-tach great weight to the idea of the soul; and herealised early that it is an attitude favorable toliberty.92 If, as he was never weary of insisting,man alone, of all creatures, is given the facultyof judgment, no state can be adequate in whichprovision is not made for its exercise.93 Indeed,it is that faculty of judgment which in fact liesat the basis of society. What it demands is therecognition that certain ideal rights are inher-ent in the fact of individual existence. The selfcannot be itself unless it is given material uponwhich to pass judgment. But the provision of thatmaterial is already the recognition of liberty ofconscience. It involves the conception of a per-sonality that is more than the sum of its rela-tions. It is not, of course, in any sense a legalconception. That which, in any state, is the ac-cepted organ of ultimate power may refuse therecognition in its code of such rights. But thereis set alongside the legal conception of right amoral claim of which it is difficult to make de-nial of the inherent superiority. Actual law andideal law may never coincide; but where theycome into conflict there can hardly be doubt asto where the ultimate allegiance is due. But suchan analysis must surely mean that the claim ofthe state upon us is emphatically subjective,depends, for its validity, upon the moral appealit makes to our conscience. Where its policyseems to step beyond right, it becomes, as Royer-Collard realised in 1830, a moral duty to warnthose who are exercising its control, that the

acquiescence of its constituent wills has becomeat least matter of doubt.94 And, in the last re-sort, the refusal of obedience is inevitable. Thatrefusal, indeed, may involve pain to him whothus makes his challenge; and, indeed, as Mr.Barker has argued,95 it may well be that thepresumption is against us.

Yet the duty surely remains. There are few rightsmore precious than the right to be wrong. Foronce we accept the idea of the state as not merelythe whole of ourselves, but a thing without us ofwhich we are compelled to take ceaseless ac-count, it is clear that we can accept no doctrinethat would derive our rights from the state andcondition than by the decisions of its will. Thatis, in fact, to postulate for the state a kind ofcentralised infallibility of which we have thusfar had no experience. It is difficult to conceiveof its decisions as having in any sense “a finalmoral value,” for that is to confer upon ourselvestoo vast a relief from thought. Here, surely, isthe real meaning of the new form given by Kantto the fundamental principle of law.96 Before histime law had attempted no more than the pres-ervation of order. The condition of society hadrendered peace the vital social interest. Dissentthen clearly becomes an attitude contrary to law;for dissent is nothing if it is not the disturbanceof peace. So there comes a strife between theinterest of the individual who would make hisprotest and that of the state which would pre-vent him. What Kant did was to insist that theproblem we have to solve is the reconciliation ofgovernment with liberty. Justice, for him, wassimply the opportunity for the good-will to ob-tain its fullest development in action; and hesought to find wherein the balance of individualinterest and social interest might be discovered.Our own problem is in nowise different. If ourgreatest need is, at the moment, organisation,that does not in any sense lessen, rather does itincrease, the value of individual responsibility.97

A state in which the liability of its members isshifted to the shoulders of government is notlikely long to remain free. Organization may,indeed, leave room for initiative; but the verycondition of its preservation is in the under-standing of individualism. It would, indeed, be

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a simple world if all of us could be swept intothe vortex of an all-embracing personality likethe state. But a truer analysis seems to suggestthat, as James said, “every smallest bit of expe-rience is a multum in parvo plurally related.”98

Because experience is many and not one the in-dividual personality can not engulf itself in asingle expression of one of its aspects. When, thatis to say, you have described man as a memberof the state you have not exhausted his nature.He refuses that reduction to unity. He refuses itfor the simple reason that it does not representthe facts. He is not merely a member of the state.His capacity for fellowship is not so meagrelyexhausted. Above all, there are moments whenthe Athanasius element in his nature must haveits way. But that is to admit already breakageand ignorance in the world, to postulate a dis-continuity which impels decision as to where theleap shall be taken.

Here, surely, is the moral background of the lib-erty that Royer-Collard envisaged. It is the onecertain guarantee against absolutism. It deniesperfection by the very fact of its insistence thatthe object of individual judgment is to securemoral progress. It does not deny personality tothe state. On the contrary, it is the ascription ofmoral purpose to the state which it deduces fromthe fact of personality. But it realises that, likethe individual, the will of the state is not a simpleeffort after good. It would, perhaps, be simple ifwe could base our activity upon such an analy-sis. But the will of any being may be pervertedto wrong ends; and exactly as the state will judgeus for the use we make of our personality, so,reciprocally, we must judge the state. For, afterall, our own will is swept into the strength of itsdecisions; and where we deem it wrong only theactive registration of dissent can excuse us fromparticipation in its crimes. Royer-Collard hadexperience enough of a state that wrought itsown purposes without the hindrance of dissent.He realised the uselessness of any doctrine that,merely for the sake of survival, would confusepacific conduct with good conduct. It is, indeed,clear that a state in which the only effective willis that which at the moment of expression hasto be taken for the general will can never be a

democratic state. For the very condition of demo-cratic organisation lies in the realisation thatself-government means something more than tocontribute one’s mite of personal agreement tothe vast whole of which one is part, and, in thisaspect, it is surely significant of much that whattime the democratic state seemed to waste inthe effort to attain unity of action in fact gave tothat action a moral strength denied to unthink-ing acquiescence.99

But, in such a conception, it is clear that theobject we ascribe to the state is something morethan survival. It is to that end only that acqui-escence is directed. A freedom of conscientiousobjection such as Poland knew, may have beenthe inevitable precursor of partition. We mayhave, as Royer-Collard realised, to sacrifice therigidity of our theory to the changing perspec-tive of events.100 But that simply involves ourrealisation that the cost of survival may be toogreat; to perish, as he once bitterly remarked,101

may also be a solution. A state may, asMachiavelli said, go to work against good andcharity, but assuredly the result of its effort willbe written deeply in the life it will thenceforthlead. That was the point of Huxley’s oft-misin-terpreted dictum that the cosmic process is op-posed to the ethical. For all that the state is pri-marily concerned to do is to secure survival andthat means fitting its methods to a non-moralend. But if the environment be bad, the ethicalprocess suffers as a consequence. In a world ofmurderers the survival of any one man does notguarantee an ethical superiority. That was surelythe meaning of Aristotle’s distinction betweenthe good man and the good citizen. Herr vonBethmann-Hollweg may have saved his statewhen he agreed to hack his way through Bel-gium; but he himself admitted that it was acrime. The state was working its end throughhim; but most of us are agreed that its end wasnot a moral end. It is interesting to speculate asto our judgment of one who, in such a crisis,should fearlessly challenge the state-decision.In our own time, certainly, it seems to have prof-ited it but little to aim at the conquest of theworld at the cost of its soul.

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This does not mean that the ethic of the statemust be distinct from that of the individual.Anyone who studies the historical consequenceof such a difference will be convinced of its im-possibility. It means rather that we must rejectthe test of state-life which insists on its quanti-tative expansion and look rather to its qualita-tive intensity. In that aspect we are compelledto stand outside the state and judge it. Therewill come to us clearly the knowledge that thereis an end greater than its survival and perpetu-ation. Most of us would rather have perishedwith Leonidas at Thermopylae than have sur-vived with the Persian tyrant; but Persia sur-vived. Was the end its survival served more ethi-cal than the end that would have been servedby its downfall? Most of us would doubt it. Andit then becomes surely arguable that one of theresults of recent evolution has been to make theindividual bi-partite—no less himself an endthan contributory to the end of the state. Thetest of value in an institution may be rather itsadvantage to the state than to the individual,but who is to judge its value if not ourselves?102

An individual may decide on a course whichenables justice to be done even though the stateperish in the doing of it. From the standpoint ofsurvival that may not serve the state. But thatonly leads to the insistence that even if the ethi-cal process be the derivative of the cosmic it isnot one with it, any more than a man is one withthe father from whom he derives. “The simpletruth has to be told,” says Meredith of NevilBeauchamp, “how he loved his country, and foranother and a broader love growing out of hisfirst passion, fought it.”

It is at least a conceivable attitude, even if it israre. Undeniably, of course, it is an attitudefraught with elements of danger to the bodypolitic. The state-life cannot be lived if its mem-bers may make rebellion against its authority.But the rarity of their dissent is a factor of vitalconsequence. No one could have predicted thatthe Royer-Collard of 1814 would, in 1830, haveacquiesced in the overthrow of legitimism; yetthe sequence of events drove him to an opposi-tion upon which he entered with grave dis-trust.103 The fact is that the business of the state

is the service of men, and where her defectionfrom that course imperils the rightness of herconduct somewhere or other the protest will bemade. And it may then be urged that a statewhich is in fear of revolution by reason of itspolicy is less likely to be wrong than a statewhose citizens have ceased to aim their con-sciences against it. Ambition, tyranny, selfish-ness, these men will fight in whatever guise theymay be discovered; and it is in their willingnessso to do battle that the real safeguard of moralsis to be found. A conception of the relationshipbetween rulers and ruled which does not includethe possibility of renouncing the relation is al-ways incomplete; for it is demanding a measureof loyalty and unselfishness from subjects fargreater than is sought from their governor.

The difficulty of anarchy must, of course, befaced;104 and no consideration of politics wouldbe adequate which failed to take account of itsdangers. No one was more convinced then Royer-Collard that government is necessary; no one,assuredly, would have more willingly admittedthe vastness of the problem. If Luther may takeupon himself the purgation of the world-church,how shall she retain the splendor of her empire?Yet the problem is, in fact less simple. It is im-portant to remember that creative oppositionhas come, less from those either fatally certainof their opinion, or eager to play the martyr, thanfrom those who, with Luther, can simply retortthat they cannot do otherwise. Yet such whole-hearted antagonism will not come to a statewhich seeks the path of justice. It is when a fun-damental choice must be made between rightand wrong that men like Luther grow daringenough to shake the world. It is when, as in 1830,warning has been neglected and principletrampled underfoot that men like Royer-Collard,fitted by nature for the part of order rather thanthat of change, will be content to remake theinstitutions of the state. The danger of anarchyintervenes when wrong has become unendur-able. It remains where the path of right conductis yet uncertain. It is useless to hope that suchmoments will never come. None can say wherethe supreme twinge of conscience may be felt. Asupreme issue may be clothed in the garb of an

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army-officer accused of espionage;105 it may befound in the exaction of an educational tax. Yetfew can read the long history of protest againststate-policy without feeling that, on the whole,the fact of its existence has been productive ofgood. The Lamennais of the nineteenth centurymay vainly choose the path of exile; but he willinspire the victorious Lamennais of a later ageas he will instruct the institution which cast himforth. Great events such as this become so inti-mate and vital a part of the state-tradition thatnone can measure the efficacy of their result.We shall not write in the future the history of asecond Galileo. The state, no less than thechurch, must learn that is not paramount in therealm of ideas. Few things are more fatal thanthe triumph of authority over truth.106

The great fact that Royer-Collard perceived wasthat in the denial of infallibility to authority wemay prevent that disastrous victory.107 When weinsist that, in the last analysis, only the indi-vidual is sovereign over himself, we make it pos-sible for him to contribute his best to the sum ofsocial life. But his best, assuredly, is not blindobedience. His best is the utmost insight of whichhis judgment is capable. Compared to that, thechance of disorder is relatively unimportant. Forthe probability is that a view which men will soembrace as to ask the final test of its survival isa view that responds to some inherent need ofnature. Christianity, in its early history, wasexactly a danger of this kind to the empire itwas slowly permeating. The christian had choicebetween his civic obedience and his religiousloyalty. He saw, on the one hand, the vast au-thority of an empire so great that its very limitswere hardly conceivable by him. He saw on theother a little fellowship of souls driven under-ground, testifying its faith only at the cost ofsuffering, suspected on all sides of crimes themere thought of which was a stain upon theirreputation and their opinions. In the perspec-tive of time the weight of authority as againstwhat the christian deemed to have been truthseems almost unutterably large; to have cast hishandful of incense was so pitifully easy a thing.Yet, also in the perspective of time, it is impos-sible to doubt that the christian did service to

citation when he counted the empire of author-ity without meaning as against the empire ofwhat to him was truth. “The worth of a state,”Mill finely said,108 “in the long run is the worthof the individuals composing it; and a state whichpostpones the interests of their mental expan-sion and elevation to a little more administra-tive skill, or of that semblance of it which prac-tice of it gives, in the details of business; a statewhich dwarfs its men, in order that they may bemore docile instruments in its hands even forbeneficial purposes, will find that with smallmen no great thing can really be accomplished;and that the perfection of machinery to which ithas sacrificed everything will in the end avail itnothing, for want of the vital power which, inorder that the machine might work moresmoothly, it has preferred to banish.” We darenot, in brief, surrender the individual conscience.

Only upon its continuous exercise can our statebe securely founded. Only therein can we dis-cover the essential compromise between funda-mental principles which is the real nature ofpublic policy. Here, surely, lies the greatness ofRoyer-Collard’s doctrine. For he came to impor-tance in public life at a time when two antitheticsystems of political organisation stood face toface. He was able to understand that neither wasof itself strong enough to triumph. He was quickto perceive that the unlimited victory of eitherwould be in no sense an unmitigated benefit.He opposed the theory of the royalists becauseit made the state the privileged possession of asingle interest. He opposed the theory of democ-racy because, as he conceived, France was notready to accept pretensions alien to what hadthus far been the historic system of her institu-tions. But in each he perceived a truth whichmight, in combination, work for good. The valueof royalism lay in its insistence upon continuity.Royer-Collard himself admitted that no ratio-nal interpretation of national existence can everbe catastrophic and he accepted the fact of mon-archy as the basis of the state. But he simulta-neously realised that the danger of monarchicalgovernment lies in its natural tendency to abso-lution. The apocryphal equation of Louis XIV hadbecome already an anachronism. What was

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needed was the impetus of a doctrine whichshould take account of the personality of eachmember of the state, and give to that personal-ity the opportunity for self-expression. He sawthat so limited, no monarch can aim at absolutepower without invoking disaster. Yet he saw, too,that a personality of which the exercise was atevery stage limited by the will of the state wasin no real sense capable of activity. So it wasthat while he admitted that the idea of nationalsurvival was fundamental, he insisted also thatthe individual by reason of his humanity hascertain rights no state may contravene. He de-fined those rights; and he pointed out whereinthey tend to the guarantee of liberty. It was anoble effort nobly sustained.

That it had defects and inconsistencies is unde-niable. It is too often the speculation rather ofan orator than of a philosopher. It is the specu-lation of a man of affairs in that it limited itselfto the analysis of situations which actually con-fronted the chamber of Deputies. It is a systemrather by implication than by statement. It hadnot the coherent prevision of the possibilities oflabour, or, if it suspected its advent, it was curi-ously suspicious of the result. It tended too of-ten to express itself in terms of a mathematicalbalance from which the facts are in the real liferemote. But it remains, even when these defectshave been noted, a constructive advance uponthe ideas of his age. It is not a mere collection ofunreasoned prejudices like the attitude of Villèle;it is more than the uncritical opportunism ofGuizot. It was based upon an immense experi-ence, and it was an experience that had beendeeply felt and carefully understood. It was anexperience which taught him that however valu-able may be the benefits of order, they are use-less so long as they stifle the spontaneity of thehuman mind. It led him to insist that traditionis of today as well as of the centuries that arepast. He tried to free a generation that had suf-fered from the ills that had been inherited. Hesketched the foundations of a state that shouldbase its order upon freedom. There are fewhigher claims to the enduring gratitude of men.

Notes:1. The fundamental authority is the life of de Barante

which collects the text of Royer’s speeches. M.Faguet has a brilliant study of him in the first vol-ume of his “Politiques et Moralistes” to which I ammuch indebted. There is a useful little life bySpuller. and M. Nismes-Desmarets has recentlypublished a laborious and exhaustive analysis ofhis political doctrines. The essay by Scherer in thefirst volume of his “Etudes” and that by C. de Rmusat in the second of his collected papers are bothof much value.

2. M. Viviani has finely described it in his contribu-tion to Jaurés’ “Histoire Socialiste.” See Vol. VII p.99, 103.

3. “Etudes,” I, 68.4. Cf. H. Michel, “L’Idée de l’Etat,” p. 167 f.5. Cf. my “Problem of Sovereignty,” p. 123. The intel-

lectual current of time is finely analysed in Pro-fessor Dicey’s classic “Law and Public Opinion,”Lect. V.

6. The really admirable essay of R. Haym “DieRomantische Schule” is a mine of wisdom upon thisproblem.

7. Cf. his “Heutige System das Röm. Rechts,” Bk. I,Ch. II, Sec. 9.

8. His “Geschlossene Handelstaat” (1800) is a strik-ing example of this attitude.

9. Cf. the speech of Royer-Collard, Barante, 1, 371 f.10. Villèle, “Mémoires,” I, 346.11. See the splendid story of his escape in the Life by

Spuller, p. 29–30.12. Cf. Vitrolles, “Memoires,” III, 73.13. Cf. remarks of the Duchess de Broglie in Barante,

“Memoires, “II, 374.14. Cf. Guizot “Memoires” (Eng. trans.), I, 117.15. Spuller. op. cit. 154.16. Villèle, op. cit. II, 46.17. Michel, “L’Idée de L’Etat,” p. 291.18. Guizot, “Memoires” (Eng. trans.), I, 154.19. “Memoires,” 1, 117.20. Barante, “Life,” II, 130.21. “Memoires,” Vol. I, p. 385.22. Ibid., III, 20.23. Barante, I, 219.24. Ibid., II, 152, 463.25. Cf. Faguet, op. cit., I, 263.26. Ibid.27. Barante, II, 13.28. Ibid., II, 131.29. Ibid., II, 134.30. Ibid., I, 298.31. Ibid., I, 340.

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32. Barante, II, 500.33. Ibid., I, 341.34. Ibid., I, 349.35. Ibid., II, 132.36. Barante, II, 133.37. Ibid., II, 134.38. Ibid., II, 138.39. Ibid., II, 293.40. Barante, II, 99.41. II, 103.42. Ibid., II, 100.43. Ibid.44. Barante, I, 321.45. Ibid., II, 101.46. Ibid., II, 100.47. Ibid., II, 101.48. Barante, II, 250.49. Ibid., II, 252.50. Barante, I, 171.51. Ibid., I, 172.52. Barante, I, 172.53. Ibid., I, 22.54. Ibid., I, 219.55. Barante, II, 132.56. Ibid., I, 228.57. Ibid., I, 229.58. This is the whole tenour of the speeches on elec-

toral reform.59. Barante, II, 20.60. Ibid., I, 230.61. Ibid., I, 222 f.62. Barante, II, 18-20.63. Ibid., I, 472.64. Barante, I, 212.65. Ibid., 211, 298.66. II, 32f.67. Faguet, op. cit., I, 285.68. Cf. Faguet, op. cit., I, 291.69. Barante, I, 216 f.70. Barante, I, 207 f.71. Cf. Barante, II, 15 f.72. Cf. Mr. Lippmann’s remarks, The New Republic,

Vol. X, p. 151.73. See the dissent of Holmes, J. in Southern Pacific

v. Jensen, 244 U. S. 221.74. Barante, II, 237, 309.75. This is indeed the whole essenee of the Doctri-

naires’ position.76. i.e., What Professor Dicey calls “legal sovereignty;”

my whole point is that this is an entirely unnatu-ral conception as a separate fact.

77. Cf. the eloquent remarks of Mr. Philipps, “EuropeUnbound,” Chap. II.

78. Cf. Lefas, “L’Etat et les Fonctiounaires.”

79. As is admirably pointed out by M. Leroy in his“Transformations de puissance publique.”

80. Barante, II, 193 f.81. Cf. Low, “The Governance of England,” passim.82. Cf. Dicey, “The Growth of Administrative Law,” in

the Law Quarterly Review for 1916. There is someinteresting material in a curious volume by E. S. P.Haynes. “The Decline of Liberty in England.”

83. Cf. Pound in Harvard Law Review for January,1917.

84. Cf. my introduction to Duguit’s “Transformationsdu Droit Public” in its English form and his “DroitSocial, Droit Individuel.”

85. There is no better comment on this change thanMr. Croly’s articles in The New Republic from Aprilto September, 1917.

86. As Lord Bryce has noted, Cf. his essays on “Obe-dience and Sovereignty” in his “Studies in Historyand Jurisprudence.”

87. “Mémoires,” II, 180.88. “La Monarchie Selon la Charte.” For the circum-

stances of its origin cf. Daudet, “Louis XVIII etDecazes,” pp. 153–5, 169–70. Viel Castel, “Histoire,”Vol. V, pp. 240–53.

89. Barante, II, 70 f.90. This, I think, is the real defect of his interpreta-

tion of the charter.91. Op. cit., 298.92. Ferraz, “Histoire de la Philosophie,” III, 157.93. Barante, II, 293.94. Cf. Barante, II, 419.95. “English Political Thought,” p. 60. The whole chap-

ter is immensely valuable.96. Cf. Janet, “Science Politique,” II, 576 f.97. Cf. the suggestive paper of Dean Pound in the

American Journal of Sociology for May, 1917.98. “A Pluralistic Universe,” p. 321.99. Even the most zealous advocates of state-unity

seem to have admitted this, cf. London Times, May17, 1917, p. 231.

100. Barante, I, 302.101. The dilemma is in reality worth more consider-

ation than is usually given to it; but the instinct ofstate-life is very strong.

102. This, as I conceive, is the real defect of such ide-alistic interpretations of the state as that of Mr.Bosanquet. Cf. the first chapter of this volume andthe first essay in my “Problem of Sovereignty.”

103. Cf. Barante, II, 34 f.104. This is the difficulty felt by my able reviewer in

the Times Literary Supplement, May 17, 1917.105. Cf. Halévy, “Apologie pour notre passé” (1910).106. As Lamennais and Tyrrell saw in their sphere.107. This is the whole point of Lord Acton’s fine pro-

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test. “History of Freedom,” p. 151.108. “Liberty” (Everyman’s ed.), p. 170.

Chapter Five: AdministrativeSyndicalism in France1

I. The Right of AssociationFrench tradition has not been favourable to thegrowth of associations.2 Man may be, even inFrance, a community-building animal, but thestate has watched narrowly his efforts at con-struction. It is only within the last thirty yearsthat the bonds of a restraining vigilance havebeen finally relaxed. The right of association was,before the Revolution, strictly dependent uponthe monarchical will. The royal sovereignty tow-ered above all, so that even the natural tendencyto labor organisation became nothing so muchas a vast secret society living less by govern-mental benison than by defiance of it. It seemsclear enough that what associations, whetherreligious or secular, were able to exist, were theoffspring of a privilege tardily given and illiber-ally exercised. For to exert even the legislativepowers implied in the concession of recognisedpersonality seemed to the jurist no less than tothe political theorist to involve a derogation fromstate-power. The king must be master of his es-tate; and he will not hesitate to teach his sub-jects that sovereignty knows no limits save hisgood pleasure. The ancien régime implied a mo-nistic state; and when for the crown was substi-tuted the nation, the worship of a unified indi-visibility underwent no change. Rather did itincrease in intensity; for the associations of thatperiod which the Revolution made at a strokeantiquity were the symbols of a hated privilege.So it was that Le Chapelier could take to heartthe teaching of Rousseau;3 and when corporatefreedom interposed a loyalty between state andindividual, it could not avoid destruction.

It was hardly a generous outlook even if, in theevent, it has its explanation. For where the stateattempts the absorption either to drive them ofthe loyalties of men, what it effects is underground or to transfer their energies to a spherewhere the restraint is mitigated. The law mightforbid the Jesuits to preform their religious func-tions in the state; but the historian has no diffi-culty in discovering their presence under a va-riety of different forms.4 Nor is it unmeaning to

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suggest that the division of French parties intoa plethora of groups owes its origin less to anyinherent naturalness or to a proved benefit inthe performance of party-functions than to thepossibility such division affords for the erectionof a system of loyalties external to that of thestate. Certainly no such phenomenon has beenseen in Anglo-Saxon countries where, on thewhole, the right of association has found but littlelegal hindrance;5 and it is surely notable in thisconnection that when de Tocqueville visitedAmerica, within half a century of the founda-tion of the Republic, what should, above all, haveimpressed him was the astounding wealth ofAmerican group-life.6

Such suppression was, in fact, no more than adecadent inheritance from the Roman concep-tion of the state.7 It might be necessary whenthe restored Bourbons were aiming at the de-struction of the Revolutionary ideals. It had itsvalue when the effort of Guizot was towards theerection of a quasi-despotism under democraticforms. The brief history of the second republicshows an immediate restoration to men of theforms under which their natural instincts mayobtain the satisfaction of unconcealed gregari-ousness.8 But the plebiscite which enabled LouisNapoleon to renew the system of his great an-cestor involved the adoption of that ancestor’sattitude to all loyalties which might stand be-tween him and his subjects. The third republic,in its early history at least, was too precariouslyestablished to venture on a freedom which, inthe result, might well have proved too costly. Itwas not until 1884 that M. Waldeck-Rousseautook his courage in his hands and allowed whatwas virtually freedom of professional associa-tion. It was not until seventeen years later thatthe ideals of 1848 were at last fulfilled and ageneral right of association established. Yet, eventoday, the significant limitations that exist beartestimony to the stubborn persistence of theolder ideas.

Into one branch of the state the idea of a free-dom of association penetrated with even greaterdifficulty. A civil servant was, in the ancien re-gime, above all a servant of the king; and in that

centralised system which de Tocqueville has somagistrally shown to be anterior to the Revolu-tion, the idea of a reciprocal relation betweenmaster and servant seems not to have entered.For down to the very eve of 1789 the govern-ment of France possesses, at least to an exter-nal observer, many of the characteristics of theking’s household.9 The king cannot have abouthim servants displeasing to his majesty. He may,indeed, like a fourteenth century king, announcethat he will look not to the man but to the of-fice;10 but when sovereignty is no more than theroyal pleasure this is but a counsel of perfec-tion. It does not, at any rate, seem to have beenenforced, and the principles of administrationwere left unchanged by the Revolution save thatthe genius of Napoleon secured an efficiencybefore unknown.11

It is not until the later years of the nineteenthcentury that signs of a change could be ob-served.12 Whatever breach in hierarchical sys-tems the tidal wave of democratic advance mayhave made, in the administrative régime it didnot progress. Divine right may have been over-thrown. A new and more fruitful conception ofthe state may have forced its way to general ac-ceptance.13 The irresponsibility of public powermay have been at last reduced to the admissionof limitations; but behind the veil of the inter-nal processes of governmental activity no forcecould penetrate. The picture drawn by Balzac inthe third decade of the nineteenth century wasas true, in all its essential details, at the begin-ning of the twentieth.14 A complete and arbitrarycontrol over the details of administration was,after all, an idea that had behind it the weightof a long, if not an honourable tradition. It hadsurvived, within a century, no less than seven rgimes—which seemed at least a pragmaticallyadequate test of its efficacy. Nor was it a systemwhich might be expected to arouse much popu-lar interest. Mr. Graham Wallas has made it acommonplace to observe that a democracy is butrarely interested in the processes of adminis-tration. What compels its attention is not somuch methods as results. Where it is, largelyspeaking, indifferent even to the more dramaticaspects of its own political adventure,15 it could

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hardly be expected to concentrate its mind onthe mechanical routine in which, from day today, the civil servant is engaged. So long as theservices of government were performed withwhat seemed an adequate efficiency, the sover-eign elector was content to allow his sovereigntyto go by default. It is a political maxim of someimport that what is unseen does not exist. Pub-lic attention was not concentrated upon the prob-lem of administration simply because its exist-ence as a problem went unrealised. It was onlywhen it became obvious that the transformationof the state had affected no less its organizationthan its functioning, that it became clear that anew administrative synthesis was being in facteffected.

It was an inevitable synthesis to anyone whohad observed at all accurately the evolution ofthe state. Its sovereignty might go unquestionedso long as the functions it endeavored to per-form were hardly related to the positive side ofnational existence. A state which limited its ser-vices to the provision of police, defence and jus-tice had hardly need of new conceptions. Butwith the advent of what Professor Dicey hascalled the collectivist age the infallibility of pub-lic power was no longer acceptable. The stateitself became an industrial instrument; and itwas inevitable that those who worked for itshould be unable to regard it differently fromany other employer. Just as the private entre-preneur was being more and more subjected toa new legislative status,16 so did the worker de-sire that the state should recognize the superi-ority of law to itself. Nor was this all. On all sides,pressure upon the political mechanisms of thestate assumed almost alarming proportions.Parliaments seemed, often enough, little morethan bodies which registered the will of a suc-cessful combatant in a conflict where it had novoice.17 Fiction might declare its will nationaland sovereign; but that lighthearted sacrifice totradition was not in fact deceptive. The life ofthe state, in fact, had overflowed the boundariesin which political organisation would have en-cased it, with the natural result that voluntaryeffort of every kind began at once to enforce andto supplement political action. It was impossible

even for French tradition to resist the impulseimplied in these changes; and the loi des asso-ciations of M. Waldeck-Rousseau did no morethan enshrine popular aspiration in legislativeform.

In actual fact, it was simply logical that thegrowth of associations should change the per-spective of the life of the state. Once new loyal-ties had been established they became for theirmembers sovereign within the limit to whichthey fulfilled the purposes with which theysympathised. It became clear, for example, thatin a choice between loyalty to his fellow-work-ers in a trade, and loyalty to a state which aimedat preventing those workers from attaining cer-tain ends they deemed good, there was no in-herent certainty that the average trade-union-ist would feel a deeper claim on the part of thestate. Raison d’ tat lost its magic exactly at thepoint where the variety of group-life made itclear that the will of the state is operated by itsagents and that those agents, whom the dissen-tient worker might himself help both to chooseand dismiss, could lay no claim to infallibility.Indeed, where they came from a class withwhich, mistakenly or no, he believed himself inpermanent conflict, he might even cease to be-lieve that the state had any claim upon his loy-alty at all. It would become, for him, the instru-ment of men with whom he was at war, and hiseffort would be directed towards its destruc-tion.18

It is in the light of such a development that thegrowth of a demand for autonomy in the Frenchpublic services must be understood. When theold notion of sovereignty showed signs of decay,it was inevitable that those most greatly affectedby its control should seek release from its tram-mels. With the growth of state-enterprise in in-dustry it was even more inevitable that the state-proletariat thus brought into being should refusethe surrender of privileges it had fought so hardto win outside the public service. And in an agewhen the notion of authority itself was, in itsold acceptance, assailed on every hand, to theservants of the state there seemed little enoughreason to abstain from additional criticism. It

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might be true that the entrance of these revolu-tionary ideals into the civil service was hardlyperceived by the mass of men. Thedemocratisation of institutions had become sogeneral that it is doubtful if men were aware ofthe retention of despotic ideals in the internalorganisation of government. Where, indeed, itdid, it was easy for statesmen to lull the awak-ening suspicion by depicting revolt as an attackupon that process upon which the life of the statedepended. Government was democratic in itsorigins. Its birth might thus be used to throw acloak of saintliness about it. So that even if theadministration of France remained arbitrary inmethod and hierarchical in structure it had somesort of popular sanction for its retention of anantique custom. A far more radical effort wasneeded if public opinion was to realise the sig-nificance of administrative corporateness.

II. The Complaints of the Civil ServiceThe claim of the civil servant of the right to as-sociation has raised legal and political problemsof a magnitude so immense that it is almostimpossible to set limits to their implication. Theyhave been very variously regarded. To some theherald of release19 from a state dangerous be-cause it is as inefficient and arbitrary as it isunintelligent and all-powerful, to others20 it islittle less than an invitation to anarchy. If thecivil servant claim the right to defy the statefrom whom can obedience be expected? Yet, infact, the problem is less simple than such state-ment seems to make it. The effort of the civilservant is less towards defiance of the state thantowards the discovery of means whereby thechallenge may be rendered unnecessary. In thataspect the movement is less towards anarchythan towards order. And a demand so widespreadmust, after all, have had its causes. The claimput forward by those who advocate the right toassociation is simple. It is that the abuses fromwhich they have suffered are inherent in thepresent system. It is impossible, in their view,at all effectively to mend the civil service. Whathas become essential is its complete reconstruc-tion. It is a technical ideal they have in view—an insistence that administration is a profes-sional service so expert in character as to de-

mand a regulation beyond political control of theordinary kind.21 But their critics see in theircause no more than an effort which may wellparalyse the national life. They urge that whatis demanded is derived less from an enthusi-asm for administrative efficiency than from theordinary phenomena of corporate selfishness.Nor is public opinion more sympathetic. A peoplewhich sees on every hand great increase both inthe number of civil servants and in the budgetthey entail, has not the patience, even if it hadthe time, to examine those demands in detail.The civil service seems to the average man themost comfortable of existences. The salary isfixed and certain. There is no fear of unemploy-ment. Economic crises leave it unaffected. Pro-vision is made against both accident and old age.In a period of growing taxation what he tends tosee is less the grievance than the privilege ofsuch labour. He remembers not the services hehas secured from public administration so muchas the ills he has suffered from its suspension.What impresses him is less the result of unin-terrupted routine than the disasters which mayattend such dislocation as the famous postalstrike of 1909. He knows that there are closeupon a million civil servants in France, and Guyde Maupassant has with genial irony convincedhim that they have causes for other sentimentthan grievance.22 Complaints are for him nomore than the unusual accompaniments of aprocess in which he has no interest. They repre-sent the failure of services which he pays taxesin order to guarantee. They thus defeat for himthe end of the state; and he finds it difficult tounderstand, much less to condone, the ambitionsthey imply.

Yet the problem cannot be thus easily dismissed.More than a thousand societies testify to thedetermination of the civil service to protect itsinterest against abuses. They constitute essen-tially trade-unions, and, like trade-unions, theyaim above all at the defence of the economic in-terests of their members. They have, too, theadditional object of safe-guarding professionalstandards, exactly as similar organizationsamong lawyers and doctors. Nor can it be de-nied that their grievances are real. Not, indeed,

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that they have developed in any special degreein the last ten years. Rather it is that duringthe last ten years there has come an increasingconsciousness of the way in which they may bestbe removed. So long as the sovereignty of thestate went virtually without challenge, it washardly conceivable that where others were si-lent, its own servants would resist. It was onlywith the visible transformation of the very na-ture of public power that a realisation came ofwhat weapons lay in their hands.28

The main abuse of which the civil service com-plains is naturally favouritism. Positions of trustare at the mercy of the government. Partisan-ship is the test of public advancement; and evenso distinguished a statesman as M. Waldeck-Rousseau did not hesitate to assert that confi-dence could be given only to those of whose po-litical views the government had the assuranceimplied in support.24 Irregularities of every kindare committed, so that the very rules by whichthe different departments of the civil service aregoverned become in fact worthless. An officialmay be nominated to the police service withoutpassing the necessary examination. A distin-guished historian like M. Delisle can be dis-missed from a lifelong post at the Archives tomake room for a young political nominee igno-rant of even the rudiments of his profession. Aninspector in the ministry of education is almostat the mercy of a deputy who can not only de-stroy his career, but that of the teachers withwhose supervision he is charged.25 Similar com-plaints come from the post-office, the govern-ment arsenals, even the magistracies.25 Francehas what has been in England unnecessary since1870, its Black Book of political nepotism.27 In asingle year, M. Simyan, the under-secretary ofstate for posts and telegraphs, received morethan one hundred thousand letters recommend-ing candidates for office almost entirely on po-litical grounds.28 M. Steeg has given numerousinstances in the Chamber of Deputies itself ofnominations that have been granted in everypart of the civil service for reasons other thanmerit, and without regard to the regulationsinvolved.29 Against the political power a deputycan exert the fact is clear that few officials dare

hope to compete. They cannot make headwayagainst the influence of a man upon whose votethe government is counting for its very exist-ence, and that the more certainly in a countrywhere, as in France, the executive has not yetmade itself master of the legislature. It is surelyclear that the civil servant is literally driven tocombine against the minister to preserve thevery regulations by which the department issupposed to be governed.

The private opinions of the civil servant are sub-ject to a degrading surveillance. “The state,” saysM. Leroy-Beaulieu with graphic emphasis,30

“strangles its personnel.” It seems, indeed, toimagine that it has the right completely to con-trol the personal life of its officials in everyparticular. M. Briand’s ministry, at the time ofthe Separation, refused even to guarantee offi-cials freedom of religious worship.31 A teacherwas dismissed for visiting the cur of his com-mune, and not even the unanimous petition ofits inhabitants could secure his reinstatement.32

A postmistress was transferred on the groundof reactionary opinions because one of her sonswas a priest, and the other employed by a noto-rious conservative.33 An inspector was dismissedfor refusing to answer political letters of recom-mendation.34 And one distinguished politician,M. Clémenceau, does not seem to doubt thatwhat the governments pays for is intellectualservitude.35 “The government,” said M. Dubief,a former minister of commerce,36 “will not sur-render the right to know the attitude of its ser-vants to the republic.”

It of course follows that if private opinions areso carefully scrutinised their public expressionis rigidly suppressed.37 Liberty of action is nec-essarily denied if private opinion is to be con-trolled. Teachers have been dismissed for mak-ing pacifist speeches.38 Officials who take a lead-ing part in the work of professional organisationfind themselves interrogated, suspended, evendismissed.39 A teacher was dismissed for attack-ing the prefect of his department in the press.The maritime prefect of Toulon refused to ad-mit into the arsenal the trade paper of the Ma-rine Workers’ Federation. A clerk who prophesied

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in the journal of his association that conditionsin the local treasury must eventually result in astrike was dismissed for so doing. Discipline, itwas argued in all these cases, is impossible ifthe right to criticise anything relating to gov-ernment is assumed. Yet when the administra-tive means of individual protest are deemed in-adequate it is difficult to see how, on the onehand, the technical journal of a profession canavoid the discussion of a technical problem, orwhy it is more inappropriate for a civil servantto have opinions on pacifism than it is for Mr.Disraeli to make epigrams about Darwin.

Problems such as these are the most complexthe administrative issue affords, for their solu-tion involves the regulation of parliamentarygovernment in a way that has thus far beenunknown.40 The questions raised by the mate-rial situation of the civil servant are far less com-plex in character. It is natural enough that allkinds of grievances should exist in relation tothe physical conditions of service. Wages are of-ten low; the hours of labour are deemed over-long; vacations do not come at a time when theycan be adequately profitable. Not, indeed, thatthe civil service has not involved a constantlyincreasing expenditure. In the post-office, forexample, where the intensity of grievance hason two occasions led to a serious strike, the ex-penses have increased in ten years from 177 to297 million francs, and the receipts have notrisen proportionately.41 The same is true, in somedegree, of every government department,42 andthat at a time when it is claimed by M.Clémenceau that they are all overstaffed.43 Theproblem of pensions is no more than a variationupon a similar theme.

The problem of administrative discipline andpromotion is far more complex, and the reportof every commission that has discussed the sub-ject shows that it has nowhere been satisfac-tory solved. The right to discipline a civil ser-vant has as its aim the repression of such con-duct as may hurt the condition of the public ser-vice. That, after all, is simple and obviousenough; but the way in which the repression isto be exercised involves immense difficulties. Is

it action taken by the minister in the name ofthe state? Does he therein occupy the positionof an employer who settles at his pleasure howhe will deal with an inefficient workman? Is itaction taken by the minister in the name of thestate, as the head, for instance, of a railway com-pany may act as the representative of the cor-porate person? Or is it, as the civil servantsclaim, action taken still, indeed, by the minis-ter, but acting as the head of a professional andtechnical service temporarily placed under hiscontrol? The tendency of ministers themselvesis to act upon the first hypothesis; it is only natu-ral, when the evolution of the idea of public ser-vice is borne in mind, that this should be thecase. Every minister is in theory charged withthe compilation of rules to deal with the offi-cials in his department. It is not, then, difficultfor him to assume that it he can make and un-make them at his will, his power is autocratic.The hierarchical structure of French adminis-tration44 tends, in any case, to identity order witha somewhat arbitrary exercise of power. Disci-pline, it has been argued, is impossible it demo-cratic cooperation on the part of the civil serviceis admitted. That autocracy is naturally a mat-ter of grave suspicion to the official. He desiresto replace it by a method which will enable himto share in the determination of punishments.He has, indeed, already a certain share in thecouncils of discipline; but this is always minor-ity representation and rarely elective.45 He isanxious, moreover, that official control shouldbe strictly limited to acts done in the course ofpublic employment. If M. Nègre, for example,displays a poster containing an open letter tothe Prime Minister of a somewhat critical char-acter, he ought not to be penalised for an actobviously done, so it is claimed, in his capacityas a citizen.46 The civil servant demands the re-placement of such arbitrary power by a systemof guarantees. The entrance to public employ-ment should be so regulated as to put it beyondthe reach of ordinary ministerial control. Fair-ness should be guaranteed by communicatingto every civil servant the documents upon whichhis position depends. Punishments should nolonger be arbitrary and accidental. They shouldbe applied not secretly and from above, but

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openly, and from below. The council of disciplineshould cease to be a mere board of advice com-posed of the minister’s nominees. It is only bythe removal of these grievances that the civilservice can recover its confidence in the good-will of government.

And as with discipline, so with promotion. Ifthere is perhaps a tendency among officials tolay too great emphasis on length of service—the natural tendency of the expert to confuseantiquity with experience—some safeguard issurely needed against the abuse of favouritism.Unless a bulwark is erected against promotionat pleasure, the deputy, as now, will pick out hiscandidates for promotion. There are numerousinstances of the acceleration of advancement forpurely political reasons. At present there is toolittle guarantee that a meritorious continuity ofservice may count at all. No precautions aretaken to see that those whose names are ac-cepted for promotion are really worthy of it. Avacancy in a higher position is filled in the mostarbitrary fashion. Where seniority counts, itcounts absolutely instead of relatively, so thatno precaution can be taken to see that it iscoupled with efficiency. No system exists whichregulates the transference of officials from onedepartment to another. If a civil servant ad-vances, as he thinks, too slowly in one depart-ment, he uses political influence to obtain a po-sition two or three grades higher in another. Itis obvious enough that thus to remain at themercy of what is practically the minister’s whimshould make the official demand the security ofprofessional standards organised under a char-ter of independence.47

No one can doubt the broad conclusion impliedin these grievances. Each of them is too vast tomake individual effort in any probable senseproductive. Each of them demands concertedaction if speedy redress is to be obtained. Thatis why the last decade has seen the immensegrowth of trade unionism among the civil ser-vants. That growth was itself the effect of anintolerable situation, and without it the crisiswould never have occurred. But it is one thingto form associations and another to secure their

recognition. The law of 1884 admitted associa-tion for the purpose of safe-guarding professionalinterests; but it is absolutely clear that its ex-tension to the civil service was at no momentintended.48 The law of 1901 permits the forma-tion of societies for any general purpose not con-trary to public well-being; but it lacks the pro-fessional and economic connotation that attachesto the law of 1884.49 It is the benefit of the firstlaw that the civil servants demand. Without it,and all that it implies, the right of associationwould be fruitless. For ministers have beenprodigal in their promises; and it is sufficientlyclear that the mere formation of amiable andwell-intentioned groups who have neitherthreats to make, nor the weapons with which tofulfil them can prove at all effective.50

The result has been to drive the lower grades ofthe civil service more and more in the directionof the syndicalist movement. Teachers, postalworkers, hospital warders, have formed trade-unions despite the legal prohibition that seemsto exist. They attempt to join the Bourses deTravail.51 The more eager spirits do not hesitateto claim, and sometimes to secure, affiliationwith the Confédération Générale du Travail; andthus to make proclaim of their eager desire tooverthrow the bourgeois state.52 Prohibitions anddismissals have made little difference. Dismiss-als can always be recalled by pressure in thechamber, and since they are the only means bywhich the prohibition can be enforced it is notsurprising that they remain ineffective.53 Nor arethe different departments remaining distinct.Federations and congresses, sometimes eveninternational in character, testify to the commu-nity of feeling by which the civil service is pen-etrated.54

The implication of the demand to associate un-der the law of 1884 is, of course, perfectly clear.When the association becomes a recognisedtrade-union it possesses the right to strike; andcertainly there are few among the more ad-vanced fonctionnaires who deny their apprecia-tion of this weapon. If it is answered that thestrike is not only brutal but often ineffective,the civil servant makes reply, just as the syndi-

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calist, that nothing is so likely to give his col-leagues their proper sense of class-conscious-ness. Indeed, the emphasis on the law of 1884is, above all, an emphasis of sentiment.55 Thehumble fonctionnaire cannot help feeling thatto call him a member of the governing classes isan absurd misapplication of terms. Relative tothe government, his situation is exactly the situ-ation of an ordinary member of the working-classes and the equation of position demands,in his view, the equation of methods.56 Argumentsderived from legal theory rather naturally leavehim a little cold. When he is told by so sympa-thetic an observer as M. Duguit57 that a strikein the civil service is subversive of its very na-ture he is not likely, until his grievances havereceived their fundamental remedy, to be over-whelmed with a sense of shame. He will say quitesimply that he is immediately, interested not inthe functioning of a service for ends of which hedoes not approve by methods from which he suf-fers, but in taking the shortest route to a trans-formation of the whole system. He has techni-cal ideals without doubt; but one cannot havetechnical ideals until an adequate milieu fortheir application has been obtained.

III. The Claims of the Civil ServiceWhat, obviously enough, is important in all thisis the end it has in view. It is not so much arevolt as a revolution, and it is at the heart ofthe unified state that it is aimed. The reality ofthe grievances under which the civil service haslaboured is unquestionable; but the sentimentto which they have given rise is no longer to beassuaged by their amendment. For the real prob-lem that has been created is not a doubt of theend to which the state is directed, but a doubtwhether the present mechanisms of governmentcan in fact attain that end.58 The need of author-ity is undoubted; but challenge is issued to thatauthority simply because the fonctionnaire nolonger believes that its autocratic exercise canachieve the purposes for which, theoretically, itexists. The fact that authority depends on itsacceptance by those over whom it is exerted nolonger needs demonstration. Here, as elsewhere,the capital fact is demonstrated that the funda-mental problem of political science is not how

power originated, but how it can be justified.59

What the theorists of this movement have doneis to divide the state into rulers and subjectsand to proclaim to the latter that the object ofthe state cannot, in the present synthesis, befulfilled. So that they are compelled by convic-tion to join hands with the revolutionary ele-ments of modern society that, from their jointefforts, a new state may be born.

Even so barely stated, the argument is far-reach-ing enough; but the method of its detailed pre-sentation gives it a strength that is even morestriking. Unquestionably, of course, the move-ment contains men of moderate opinions whodid not sympathise with the active enmity tothe state displayed in the postal strike and de-sire no more than an improvement in their po-sition.60 Undoubtedly also, as in every greatmovement, the opinion of the associations has,for the most part, been guided by the ability andenergy of a few. But, equally clearly, it is thisactive minority that has formulated the acceptedprinciples of the movement, and their leader-ship is responsible both for the direction it hastaken and the successes it has attained.61 Theirattitude is simply that of the militant proletariat.They look upon the administrative world as ba-sically akin to that of industry. The class-struggleis no less real there. The humbler civil servantthere, as in industry can free himself only byhis own efforts. His triumph will come only fromthe strength and power of his associations whichmust more and more attempt the domination ofthe services to which he belongs. By the strengthof those groups he can attain the desired reforms,if not peaceably, then by the accepted methodsof direct action. The result will be the transfor-mation of the state.

It is an arresting analogy that is not without itsfascination. The humbler fonctionnaires seem,undoubtedly, to constitute an administrativeproletariat. The hierarchical control exercisedover them by their technical superiors is in nosense likely to produce any real sentiment of co-operation. The attitude adopted to them by theparliamentarians is in every sense lamentable.It is only at a crisis that they obtain a hearing;

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but the promises so prodigally made are rarely,if ever, fulfilled. The statesmen are too occupiedwith the mechanisms of politics to care for theprocesses by which their decisions are fulfilled.And within the administration itself there is ahierarchy of classes which corresponds to thatof the general social organisation.62 The divisionbetween the privileged few who are well-paidand the mass whose salary is inadequate is verymarked. The average civil-servant cannot hopeto arrive at those posts; and where promotion issecure, it applies only to the central adminis-tration and not to the provinces.63 There is, infact, a general disproportion between labour andreward exactly as in private industry.64 And ifthe higher fonctionnaires thus reap the profit oftheir subordinates’ work, the state itself is forthe mass of civil servants simply an employer.That is, of course, clear when it makes matchesor builds ships. It is not less an employer whenit takes charge of public instruction. Its work ofadministration requires a manual and intellec-tual proletariat just like any business house.Even in its judicial aspect, so M. Leroy hasclaimed,65 the reality of this character is appar-ent. Clearly, if the state is an employer its ser-vants are wage-earners, and they cannot,through the accidental choice of employment,deprive themselves of means which will preventtheir exploitation. Their position, as M.Millerand has said,66 is no more than a particu-lar instance of a general industrial problem. Thefight is a struggle against privileges, whether,as in industry, those of the rich, or as in politics,those of the government.67

If they are a proletariat, they must, like theworkers, accomplish their own salvation. To thatend a sense of unity is vital and nothing can begained until it has been created. So thefonctionnaires have not only formed what cor-respond to craft unions, but also federations ofworkers in the different departments. They haveseen that an injury to one may affect the strengthof the whole; and they have not hesitated tomake corporate protest against individual in-justice.68 They have supported one another attimes of crisis. They have held congresses whereassurances of fraternity have been exchanged.

And their feeling of identity with the working-classes has led to an important rapprochementbetween them. Its basis; indeed, was alreadyprepared in the existence of an undeniable pro-letariat in the state-monopolies;69 and the stepsthence to civil servants who in the technicalsense are associated with the administrationwas not a great one. The teachers were the firstto take action. Not only did they attempt to jointhe Bourses de Travail—despite ministerial pro-hibition70—but they have gone so far as to seekaffiliation with the Confédération Générale duTravail which is avowedly revolutionary in pur-pose. Undoubtedly, indeed, that action has failedto secure unanimous support. But what is im-portant is the fact that it should have won anysupport at all. “We shall march by its side,” saidM. Nègre, the outstanding person in the move-ment,71 “to work together for the emancipationof the industrial and intellectual proletariat.”M. Nègre is a teacher, and his attitude is themore striking in that the intellectual position ofthe teacher in France would seem to relate himto the middle class; but the avowed exponentsof official syndicalism have at length acceptedtheir adhesion.72

Nor is there any distinction of method betweenthe militant fonctionnaire and the militant pro-letariat. The whole purpose of their desire tobenefit rather from the law of 1884 than fromthat of 1901 is the ability the former affords ofusing the weapon of the strike. “The collectivesuspension of work,” says M. Briquet,73 “is theindispensable aim of every labour-group whichdesires effectively to promote the collective in-terests of its members.” Indeed, a simple asso-ciation, the Association of Postal Workers, hasnot hesitated to disregard the technical distinc-tion between the two laws. It is for them simplya sterile discussion of doctrine with which theyhave no concern.74 The police of Lyons did nothesitate to go on strike, and, after the face of thegovernment had been saved, it appears that theywere successful.75 The teachers, indeed, in somerespects the most advanced of all thefonctionnaires, have not proceeded so far; for itis clear that in their case the temporary sus-pension of a public service that would be in-

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volved, does not relate with sufficient intimacyto the necessary conduct of the national life. Ifthese strikes have not had the large results ofwhich their leaders dreamed, they have at anyrate shown the powerlessness of law to preventthem. They have demonstrated the all-importantfact that a challenge can be issued to govern-ment. They have suggested, since the movementis only at its beginning, that it is a challenge towhich there may one day be no possible reply.

It is, then, essentially a revolutionary spirit withwhich the government is called upon to deal.Exactly as the ultimate aim of the industrialmovement is an attempt to create an industrialdemocracy, so do the fonctionnaires aim at thecreation of an administrative democracy. Theyare compelled, therefore, to be suspicious ofpower. The state is to them, as it is to the work-ers, the real citadel to assault. To attack the gov-ernment is to sap the foundations of an author-ity the basic purpose of which seems to themillegitimate.76 The present system of adminis-trative organisation seems to them unsatisfac-tory simply because its underlying principles areinconsistent with the aims they have in view. Solong as the hierarchy is maintained, thedemocratisation of administrative power is im-possible. So long as the present division existsbetween the higher civil service and the hum-bler fonctionnaires, the former, whose positionis, for the most part, secure, are bound to gravi-tate towards the deputies and make the civilservice political instead of technical in charac-ter. That is why the fonctionnaire refuses hisconfidence to the Chamber. Its object is too dif-ferent to be compatible with his own. It is, so tospeak, itself a trade-union and its administra-tive exertions are only one of the ways in whichit promotes the interests of its members. It also,then, uses a kind of direct action for its purposes;and the gesture of the civil service is thus notdistinct in quality from that of the politician.This discontent with authority expresses itselfin many ways—open contempt for administra-tive regulations,77 vituperation of the Parlia-ment,78 distrust even of the republic itself. “Weno longer believe in words,” said an able repre-sentative of this attitude,79 “we demand reali-

ties; we have lost our attachment for forms. Wecalculate their worth and measure their produc-tivity. We no longer sacrifice ourselves for senti-ment, we consult our interests. The heroic timeshave passed away; the hour of practical efforthas arrived.”

The civil service, indeed, has not stopped its ef-fort at the mere criticism of the administrativesystem. It has been compelled to realise that theadministrative system is, in fact, but the reflexof a larger whole. There are other institutionswithin the state which equally constitute its stal-wart defences. Its military organisation is es-sentially a reservoir of state-power. To become asoldier is so it is argued, to lose contact with theworking-class, and to destroy a system whichthus uses that class against itself is clearly fun-damental. A congress of teachers has pledgeditself to pacifism, and some of them have suf-fered dismissal for the violence of their anti-militarist propaganda.80 As is usually the case,the offspring of pacifist doctrine has been inter-nationalism, and at any rate before 1914, manymembers of the civil service had gone far towardsits adoption.

The fonctionnaires, in fact, do not conceal fromthemselves that it is nothing less than an en-tire social reconstruction at which they are aim-ing. That they can effect it alone, they do not fora moment profess to believe; but they urge thatgovernment normally disposes of so great apower that without their assistance a success-ful revolution can be hardly accomplished. Nor,given the conditions, is that an exaggerated as-sumption. Each group of them, moreover, has itsfunction in the task. It is the duty of the teacherto begin in childhood the revolutionary educa-tion of the people; while those actually concernedwith the technical work of administration canoverthrow the whole machine at the criticalmoment of its functioning. M. Jaurés, indeed, wasin nowise disturbed by the character of the move-ment. “The affiliation,” he said,81 “of civil ser-vants to the labour movement, to the class-struggle, is a revolutionary fact. It is not lessthan a revolution when the servants of the statework to reconstruct the basis of that social or-

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der of which the state is the expression and theguardian.” It is a movement which has pen-etrated every section of the civil service. It isably organized and its propaganda is conductedwith relentless energy. It has a brilliant litera-ture, and a press of its own. It has definite endsto pursue, and it is evolving means by whichthose ends may be attained. It is a movementwhich at every stage of its progress, has beenmarked by the courageous termination of itsleaders. Certain it is that one who is at all inter-ested in the development of political processesdare neglect the richness of its possibilities.

For, after all, no social movement is unique inits age. Political change has links with the pastso strict and so far-reaching that it is rarely pos-sible to ascribe novelty to what the heralds ofan idea themselves deem striking innovation.Certainly this is the case with administrativesyndicalism. It represents a crisis for which therehas been long and careful preparation. It is partof a larger federal synthesis which has ramifi-cations throughout the industrial world. Thevery solutions it proposes have intellectual an-cestors which were themselves the product oftheir time. This is not, indeed, to argue that ad-ministrative syndicalism is a phenomenon soordinary that it can with safety be neglected. Itdraws a special importance from a situationwhich has of necessity tended to throw it intostriking relief. It has succeeded simply becausethe evolution it summarises is beginning at lastto translate itself into terms of practical achieve-ment. It is a variation upon the theme of eco-nomic federation which is itself the offspring ofa breakdown in the machinery of capitalistorganisation. It represents in relation to thestate simply what the large aspects of syndical-ism represent in industrial change. It gives anew connotation to sovereignty. It federalises thewill of the state. The lines, indeed, of its evolu-tion can not yet with any certainty be drawn.We can use descriptive terms, suggest tenden-cies, discover signs of change. In the elements ofopposition are to be discovered the means ofmore intimate analysis. From whatever sourcethey are derived, it is a crisis that the facts sug-gest. The tidal wave of democratic advance has

at last reached the inmost recesses of the impe-rial state. Our task is the measurement of theenergy it conveys.

IV. ImplicationsIt is usual to distinguish three different systemsof administrative organisation.82 What has beencalled the monarchical solution would leave thecivil service at the mercy of the executive power.The present r gime, that is to say, might be al-tered in its accidentals, but its fundamental fea-tures would remain unchanged. Such a method,it is clear, would leave the main cause of thepresent unrest entirely unsolved. It would in-volve a patent contradiction between a demo-cratically organised political system and an au-tocratic administrative system. It would with-draw a whole field of social activity from thedominant influences of the time. It would look,not to the organisation that is to be, but to thepast history of the state. It could be maintainedonly by violence, and probably at the sacrifice ofadministrative efficiency. The second means isits direct antithesis. It proposes to hand over tothe civil service the control of administrativefunctions. The political head of a departmentwould state his demands, and his orders wouldbe filled by the fonctionnaires themselves. Thedepartment would be in every way autonomous,so that there would be no room left for the griev-ances by which the service is oppressed. This,clearly enough, is the organisation which meetswith most favour among the civil servants them-selves. It transforms them into a technical pro-fession, and it leaves no opportunity for personalcauses external to the service to interfere withits functioning. The third solution is midwaybetween the two others. It envisages a statu-tory organisation of the civil service. The minis-ter will remain in control, but it will be a legallyconditioned control. Every step of his policy willbe conditioned by statute. The method of pro-motion, the redress of grievance, administrativeresponsibility, the mechanism of suggestion, willbe at every stage controlled by legal regulations.The vise of the monarchical system will thusdisappear while the danger of administrativeindependence of the national life is sufficientlysafeguarded. The justice of the complaints urged

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against the monarchical system is admitted, butit is not felt that they justify so great an innova-tion as administrative syndicalism would entail.

Very clearly, the starting-point of any enquirymust discuss the origins of moderncentralisation. That is in nowise doubtful. Weneed not agree with Taine’s theory that the Revo-lution resulted in the deterioration of humannature83 to agree that the general chaos pre-vented the employment of the mechanisms ofliberalism. Where the very existence of powerwas threatened, it was only by its concentrationthat it could survive. What Napoleon did was tosynthesise that power within himself; and theequality that remained was the equality of acommon subjection to his will. He realised thataction in the modern state must be as certainlyunified as deliberation must be multiple. Hedemanded from the civil service an absoluteabandonment of their personality.84 It was thefulfilment of Sièyes’ prevision. “Power,” he hadsaid,85 “will come from above; from below therewill be simply confidence,” and that was no morethan a simple statement of fact. And certainlyhis administrative system was not his least du-rable work. The country was satisfied with anadministration that was at any rate efficient;and the reaction upon it of political democracywas as yet too novel to be at all impressive. Sothat Napoleon’s successors could not only usehis system but even extend it. “Ce sont desadministrés,” writes M. Chardon,86 “qui depropos délibérés, étendent chaque jour l’empirede l’administration,” and, indeed the fact is ob-vious enough; for not the least important resultof the extension of collectivism has been the gen-eral expectation that government not only can,but must, meet every conceivable emergency.87

But while administrative power was thus ex-tended, its exercise underwent no democraticpercolation. The executive power retained itsimperial purple. Nothing in the whole path ofthe nineteenth century seemed able to influenceits organisation. Government, as in the time ofNapoleon, is the representative of the sovereignpeople, and to confide power to those who arenot elected would be to create a state within a

state and destroy the unity of the whole. That iswhy Taine’s brilliant description of the Napole-onic prefect remains not less true today than ofthe time of which he wrote.88 The civil servant isnot an actor in the events of which he is the ad-ministrator. He is a kind of perpetual secretary;and M. Chardon insists that there are able andcompetent men who never have a single deci-sion to take throughout their career.89 The ser-vice is recruited in exactly the same way as atthe Revolution; everything is controlled by thecentral power. If France has no longer Napoleon,she has his ministers, and they are less success-ful in their psychology in the degree to whichthey lack his personal fascination. Here, again,it was Taine who perceived the real crux of theproblem. “They do not,” he said,90 “look uponhuman association... as concerted initiative gen-erated from below... but as a hierarchy of au-thorities imposed from above.” Where the fun-damental change in the modern state is an evo-lution almost directly antithetic to this attitude,it has left untouched the civil service. Not eventhe admission of corporate freedom has pen-etrated within the executive realm.91

It is a persistence as difficult to justify as it iseasy to understand. It is difficult to justify be-cause it is an apparent and, as it seems, unnec-essary contradiction of democratic government.It is surely an erroneous attitude to separatecompetence and responsibility; and that, in fact,is the result of the present system. It is easy tounderstand because, from a long historical chainof events,92 the average citizen in the moderndemocracy seems anxious, above all, to performhis political functions vicariously. What he asksfrom the professional politician is orderly gov-ernment and he rarely examines the means bywhich it is attained. Whether M. Clémenceauever really remarked that he could remain inoffice so long as he wanted,93 the fact remainsthat he epitomized very neatly the typical gov-ernmental attitude to the civil service. Democ-racy seems to have considered that the securityof its life depended on the retention of the hier-archical system.94 That may, perhaps, have beentrue before the separation when the safety ofthe republic was still a matter of debate. But

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with the assurance of its survival, the Napole-onic system is already obsolete.

That, indeed, is the real meaning of the growthof administrative syndicalism. It has come be-cause there is now no reason to restrain it. An-tiquity is not a reason; and democracy is, inter-nally at least, in little danger of disappearance.The executive power can not make a plea for itsautocratic exercise when the army is no longera source of disloyalty, and the church has beenreduced to a shadow of its former influence. Theonly reason for the retention of the present sys-tem is the power it places in the hands of states-men. It enables them to corrupt both the civilservice and the electorate. The one he can holdby the fear of dismissal, the other by the hope ofoffice. But it is too obviously humiliating for thecivil servant to remain subject both to public andprivate control. The only justification of arbitrarypower is the impossibility of democratic power.That impossibility the civil servant denies. Hemaintains that it is based upon an entirely falseconception of the implications of sovereignty. Thetheory that the state must, by its very defini-tion, be irresponsible seems to him without rootin political fact. He knows what that irresponsi-bility has meant in the past. He has weighed itand rejected it. The hour has come for new sys-tems.

It is in some such fashion that the monarchicalsystem is rejected, and, psychologically at least,there seems every reason for its rejection. Noadministrative system can be adequate in whichpower is concentrated and not disturbed. Noservice can attract ability where the influenceit offers is hidden and potential, not real andresponsible.95 Nor are the syndicalists moreenamoured of a status that is guaranteed byparliament. They are too suspicious of the stateto feel secure at what emanates from its organs.96

It is, after all, from the Parliament above all thatthey have suffered; and it is largely by the ma-nipulation of the civil service that the majorityin the chamber retains its power. They do notbelieve in the modern state simply becausetheirs has been the most intimate experience ofit. What laws have been suggested are all of them

conservative in character. They attempt the com-promise of two irreconcilable theories. The ad-ministration wants to exercise a final controlwhere the civil service demands autonomy. Norare they eager for a special position in the state.That suggestion is for them no more than anerroneous idea derived from the original irre-sponsibility of the sovereign state. It is a decay-ing theory97 and they will not found their reliefupon it. Nor is it, in any case, destined very longto survive. Every day, the jurisprudence of theConseil d’Etat makes one more inroad upon itslife.98 The dogma is already too seriously com-promised to be capable any longer of valid ap-plication. It would still leave their relation tothe state non-contractual in character to regu-late their position by statute. What they desireis a service on equal terms, a right to make theirsituation a part of the common law. Nor arethey—and this is of Supreme importance—will-ing to enjoy a situation which would in fact breakthe bonds of their friendship with the industrialproletariat. For to attach themselves to thepresent state is to surrender the right to workfor its transformation. It was exactly the needof that change they above all felt at the time oftheir original revolt against its excesses. Clearly,to accept a favour from its hands would be todesert not merely those who stood by them intheir need, but also the original and avowedpurpose of their movement. They will not sharein so great a self-stultification.

So that for them there is no alternative save themonarchical and syndicalist solutions. They re-ject the first because an organization which de-prives the workers of a voice in the determina-tion of their labour is in fact psychologically andmorally inadequate. The second alone is satis-factory because there only is there guaranteethat the humanity of the administrative prole-tariat is recognised. There only can the methodof action be in such fashion a fusion of wills thatevery voice can find representation in the re-sult,99 can make administrative personalitydemocratic in a corporate sense. They believe,moreover, that institutional evolution is far morein accord with the position they have taken upthan with the proposal of a statute. The parlia-

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mentary solution does not, after all, depend uponan improvement in the condition of the peopleas a whole. Thereby merely to base governmentupon number is still to leave it open to the pa-thetic manipulation by which it has been tra-duced during the nineteenth century,100 for weare less confident than before that majority-ruleis a final solution. They point to the increasingdevelopment—common to the whole world—ofa political life outside the ordinary cadres ofparliamentary systems.101 Not only are they, asit seems, determined to make the governmentinferior to law by making it responsible, but also,by associations of every kind, they bring pres-sure to bear upon the legislative process. It is anew and striking effort to bring authority withinthe bounds of popular control.102 It makes it lesslikely to remain merely a weapon in the handsof those who exercise it. Nor can the significanceof the elaboration of legislative projects by thosewho have a professional relation to their func-tioning be underestimated.103 What we are be-ginning to see is virtually lawmaking by thoseover whom the particular statute will exerciseits empire. To say that the system is in its in-fancy is in nowise to belittle its implications. Itis a new source of legislative power, even if it bean indirect one; and it clearly bears, in very de-cisive fashion upon the nature of parliamentaryauthority. For the preparation of law by the pri-vate initiative of experts is the preparation oflaw by men whose opinion it is difficult to ne-glect.104 Public opinion may be a reserve power,but no one can mistake the ultimate control itcan exert, and public opinion tends more andmore to appreciate the evolution of this techni-cal legislation. It almost seems, in fact, that ademocracy which has been thwarted of its au-thority by its unification has found new meansof its assertion by dividing the source of power.

In such an atmosphere, the attitude which re-gards the state as in any sense an institution ofa special character can hardly survive. Once theequality of citizens before the law is postulated,it is evident that their internal relations mustbe democratically organised. We have passed, asM. Duguit has insisted, from a régime of subjec-tive rights to a régime of objective duties. That,

from those duties, rights may find a secondaryjustification does not alter the fact that the realdefence of authority is to show the objective ne-cessity of its exercise.105 Let it be granted thatthe personality of the state is real, it yet doesnot follow that corporate personality begetsrights superior to individual rights.106 What eachstate-action must show is that the force it en-tails produces a result so valuable that the lifeof society would be the poorer for its absence.But that is to say that the real test of state-theory is not the principles upon which thattheory is based so much as the manner in whichthey function. The principle, in fact, cannot beseparated from the process; its teleology is, atbottom, inductive. Its intentions may be admi-rable; but judgment cannot be made until theintention is realised in conduct. Exactly wherethe modern state is being transformed is at thepoint where the judgment upon its action hasled to new methods of political life. Since theonly justification of government is the qualityof life its policy secures, the members of themodern state are seeking new centres of power.Administrative syndicalism is an effort towardstheir realisation.

It is thus a kind of decentralisation for whichthe fonctionnaire is anxious. But it is not merelythe reconstruction of ancient territorial group-ings for which he is concerned. It has, indeed, tosome extent been tried already in France; andits connection with the ancien régime has ledthe monarchist party to lend it a somewhat ea-ger support.107 But territorial decentralisationdoes not touch the real root of the problem. Thereal question to be resolved is that of internalorganisation within the different groups them-selves. Decentralisation of a purely territorialkind is no guarantee of autonomy. Local controlmight be as difficult and static as centralisedcontrol. The desire of the syndicalist is differ-ent. He urges that the business of governmenthas now become so complex that it cannot main-tain at once unity of purpose and unity ofmethod. The explanation that the interest of thestate is single, does not, even if it be true, in-volve the need of unified administration. On thecontrary, the administration of the state cannot

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be satisfactory so long as it is so organized. Whatis desired is to confide the operation of the dif-ferent branches of the state to technical servicesacting under government control.

But that control would be a declaration of pur-pose and no more. Its actual execution would bethe business of the department concerned. Ad-ministrative autonomy would thus become realand effective. The department would execute alaw for government exactly as a contractor buildsa ship for the admiralty. It would know whatwas required and take the necessary measures.But its life would be self-determined. Its methodof response would be spontaneous and not auto-matic. It would realise the spirit Rousseau en-visaged when he made the social contract bind-ing because it was mutual.108 For the worker whohad a certain power of independent responsibil-ity would obtain, in such a system, exactly thatpsychological situation which makes. adminis-tration a human thing. He would take part indeliberation. He would have ample means ofdiscussion, of suggestion, of experiment. His taskwould become democratic even while it remainedprofessional, simply because the compulsion ofa purpose to be fulfilled would not, by its method,obscure the possibility of a free co-operation inits fulfillment.109

It is natural enough that where the evolutionthat is thus envisaged is itself but on the thresh-old of its first dumb beginnings, detailed plansshould be lacking. After all, this is not an evolu-tion that will be accomplished in a moment oftime. It is bound to proceed by stages, and to betemporarily determined by the fluctuations ofits failures and successes. Whether, for example,promotion would be self-regulating, or a matterof internal choice, or of election by the membersof the particular service, is not a matter for de-liberate prophecy. Most of the leaders of themovement have been wisely careful to abstainfrom it. That upon which they have mainly laidinsistence, from their standpoint assuredly withcommon sense, is the fact of autonomy. What theyhave emphasised is the fact that this autonomymust act as the destroyer of what is unaccept-able in the modern hierarchical system. Above

all, they have pointed out that self-regulation isthe only effective guarantee of equal opportu-nity. What has been admirably termed an inexo-rable subalternism is impossible where the ad-ministration is in fact a republic, imbued at ev-ery stage with the democratic spirit. The con-duct of the service will be better simply becausemen will obey with greater willingness a chiefwhose position is itself the proof of competencethan one of whose powers they have had no rea-sonable demonstration.

The aim is not the abolition of society. The syn-dicalist does not wish to make the administra-tion a closed system impermeable to outside in-fluence and outside control. To give the schoolsto the teachers, the postal service to the postalworkers in full ownership is a solution that onlya few of the more extreme enthusiasts haveclaimed. For they are sufficiently alive to Mr.Wallas’ grave warning110 not to desire a restora-tion of that feudal structure which sought tosolve the problem of society by the unthinkingand purposeless multiplication of groups. Theyrecognize that society has its place in every hu-man equation, and that, as a consequence, it hasa right to an indirect control over everything thatis related to a social function. The teachers, forexample, have not hesitated to ask for the assis-tance of parents in the redaction of their educa-tional programmes.111 The very method oforganisation adopted by the ConfédérationGénérale du Travail is in fact a guaranteeagainst the dangers of separatism.112 Indeed, asM. Leroy has aptly pointed out,113 the very situ-ation of the workers makes a federal structureas necessary as the bourgeois organisation ofsociety demands a centralised system. The com-plete independence of any department would bestrictly limited to those problems which do notdirectly touch the business of any other. Wherecommon problems arise, they must be settledby common decision. The state, in some form orother, must persist to protect the common inter-est, and it must retain a certain measure ofpower for that purpose. There are some, indeed,who would make wages and prices a matter forgeneral control; and M. Thomas has lent thegreat weight of his authority to the suggestion

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that the interest of the consumer must obtainadequate representation at every stage of thenew administrative process.114

The problem of the strike then remains. It isclear enough that the operation of a public ser-vice must be in the general interest of society. Ifits care is entrusted to the members of that ser-vice is the suspension of work at all capable ofjustification? If the operation of the state is putinto the hands of its servants is not that au-tonomy the correlative of a responsibility forwhich there must be adequate guarantees? It isdifficult to avoid this conclusion. “It is simplyelementary prudence,” says M. Hauriou,115 “thatthe relation with the public, above all upon thefundamental problem of responsibility, shouldnot be broken.” It is surely obvious that the privi-lege of autonomy logically implies the acceptanceof the purpose for which that responsibility isgiven. Once the professional group is given themeans of independent action, it must be fullyand stringently responsible for the causes of itsacts.116 That syndicalists are but little inclined,at present, to admit the extension of the corpo-rate responsibility of their groups does not touchthe real point at issue. For the narrowness oftheir responsibility is, for the moment, simply aweapon forged to meet a special industrial situ-ation. Once the cause for that narrowness is re-moved, there is no reason for such restriction tocontinue. The state could not confide the inter-ests of society to men who would not accept theresponsibilities of their trusteeship.

V. The Attack of the JuristsIt was inevitable that such an attitude shouldprovoke a violent hostility. The dogmas it attackare too consecrated by historic tradition to sur-render at all easily to an opposition in part, atleast, the product of an ideology. The changes itinvolves are too far-reaching to be accepted with-out criticism by the conservative forces of thestate. And, after all, such antagonism is naturalenough. For the dogmas that administrativesyndicalism has endeavored to undermine havebehind them this justification that they are thesource from which the modern state has derivedits strength. The two great theories of sover-

eignty and the unitary state are, for the mostpart, the offspring of the great controversy be-tween church and state, matured by the influ-ence of the classical jurisprudence of Rome.117

They are the weapons whereby the state at-tained its freedom from ecclesiastical trammels.And they are even more than that. For, with thegrowing independence of the civil power, it waspossible to transfer the seat of sovereignty frommonarch to people. National sovereignty thuscame to mean something akin to the vindica-tion of popular freedom. To attack it was to im-peril the progress for which the Revolution stoodas the proof and symbol.

Nor was the history of the unitary state lessstriking. The great danger from which, in itsrecent history, France has suffered is the diverseallegiance of its citizens. There were many whosemembership of the nation did not seem to in-volve them in loyalty to the Republic; and theydid not hesitate to find, sometimes in Rome,sometimes at the half-tragic court of some barelyremembered royal exile, the real dwelling-placeof their affection. There was thus a danger to beconfronted external to French society. Concen-tration of power might then, with some show ofreason, be deemed a vital thing. If a citizen didnot stand by the Republic, if the Republic didnot possess the power to make upon him thefullest demand, its survival was, to say the least,uncertain. Its sovereignty was strikingly as-serted; the fact of unity was at every point dis-played. It was not, therefore, difficult to chargeadministrative syndicalism with a purpose thatmight well destroy the state. It would rendervain the whole purpose of the nineteenth cen-tury. It was the coronation of anarchic effort; andcompromise with so sinister a movement wasthus almost logically deemed fruitless.

Such, for the most part, has been the spirit inwhich administrative syndicalism has been met.It is an opposition that is rarely constructive incharacter. It tends to take its stand less uponthe analysis of future possibilities than upon theadequacy of the present inheritance. But, in so-ber truth, that is to say no more than that it atno point fully meets the effort of the

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fonctionnaire towards the transformation of themodern state. What it has rather tried to do isto demonstrate that such purpose is illegal andunpractical. It is held illegal by the lawyer be-cause the categories of nineteenth century ju-risprudence have no place for so novel an effort.It is held unpractical by the statesman becauseit is a problem he has never before confronted.To the central principles it enunciates, they uniteto return an unqualified negative.

There are, of course, both in law and in politics,exceptions to this general rule. There are somewho have been able to see that the present con-ception of the state is in no sense permanent,and it is, for them, natural to expect that thedevelopment of its jurisprudence will be coevalwith its political evolution. There are statesmenwho have been able to realise that administra-tive conservatism is already obsolete. The crisisof the public services has gone too deeply to theroot of the body politic to be solved by an un-compromising denial. The more timid spiritshave, as is natural, suggested the wisdom of com-promise. And, in the sense that reforms will domuch to remove the bitterness that has beenmanifested on both sides during the past tenyears, reform has a merit that is undeniable. Butthe claims, both of one side and the other, aretoo divergent to admit of compromise. There isno half-way house effectively to be occupied be-tween the present administrative control andthe full independence demanded by the civil ser-vice. The criticisms, indeed, are important; forthey show, alike from the standpoints of legaland political philosophy, the defences of modernauthoritarianism. And while they are in essencedistinct, they both have the merit of an obvioussimplicity. They thus serve to throw into a clearerlight the significance of the competing claims.

The juristic attack upon administrative syndi-calism originates in the attempt to find a legalbasis for the claims of the civil service. Thereare some who have not hesitated to assert thatthe movement is in no sense opposed to the ex-isting law. On the whole, the lawyers have unitedto reject that assertion. While they are unani-mous in their agreement that the law of 1901

provides a clear path of association which thecivil servant may take, they are almost equallyunanimous that the law of 1884 applies to a typeof professional association with which the civilservice can have no connection. Their fundamen-tal criticism is based on an interpretation of thenature of the state on the one hand, and the re-lation to it of the civil servant on the other. Theyinsist that the regime of administration can atno single point, except one, be approximated tothe modern system of industrial organisation.It of course logically follows that the position ofthe civil servant is in no sense similar to that ofthe worker. The attempt is made to show thatonce we are in the domain of state-activity weare in the presence of special facts to which theordinary formulae of private law are inappli-cable. From jurisprudence, therefore, adminis-trative syndicalism has nothing to expect.

It seems legally unquestionable that so far asthe relation of the laws of 1884 and 1901 reallyaffects the fundamental issue, the legal criticsare absolutely in the right. There is not a shredof evidence that it was ever intended to applythe law of 1884 to members of the civil service;rather, on the contrary, does it seem to have beenthe express intention of the legislature to ex-clude them from it.118 The law of 1884 was sim-ply an effort to equalise the bargaining power oflabour to that of capital; and those who passedit no more dreamed of its application to the prob-lems of the state than did Mr. Justice Holmeswhen he enunciated a similar proposition.119

Indeed, the syndicalists themselves have admit-ted, on occasion, that the civil service has a privi-leged position.120 Not, indeed, that the argumentwhich denies that the state can be equated withthe private employer has been very vigorouslysupported. For, if it is true that the minister islimited by his dependence upon the legislature,that is more and more coming to be the case withthe private employer, especially in those indus-tries where the public interest is most directlyconcerned;121 and the result of a ministerial regu-lation in regard to the civil service, is not verydifferent, whatever its nature, from the collec-tive agreement that is coming to be characteris-tic of modern business. Nor does M. Briand’s

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insistence that the state does not possess theelasticity of initiative by which private indus-try is distinguished in any way destroy the va-lidity of the comparison.122

Not, indeed, that the analogy is in any sensefundamental to this issue. The main fact, afterall, is that the Penal Code still makes it a crimi-nal offence for civil servants to plan a strike;123

and this has been more than once ratified bythe courts;124 nor have they hesitated to declareillegal the formation of such trade-unions in thecivil service as they have had occasion to judge.125

Nor is parliamentary opinion less clear. The twoefforts that have been made to give teachers aright to form unions have not even been dis-cussed.126 A similar proposal in regard to themedical profession made in 1894 was expresslynegatived, at the urgent request of M. Loubet,then President of the Council, on the specificground that doctors are continually performingservices which bring them into relation withgovernment. Where permission has been given,as in the case of the state-railways, and the statetobacco monopoly, it is simply because, in thataspect, the state has definitely undertaken thefunctions usually performed by a private em-ployer.127 M. Waldeck-Rousseau, the author of thelaw of 1884, has expressly declared that he didnot have the civil service in view when he pro-posed it,128 and M. Clémenceau, one of its lead-ing advocates, has equally insisted that it hadin view only those whose wages are subject tothe variations of economic law.129

There remains the law of 1901; and, despite thecriticisms of M. Berthelémy,130 it seems clear thatit is sufficiently broad to cover the associationsformed within the civil service.131 The lawyers,moreover, have been eager to point out that thereis little or no juridical difference between thetwo systems of coalition; for the one serious ben-efit the trade-union seems to possess, the powerto receive legacies and gifts, is hardly very likelyto be exercised by the civil servants;132 and M.Saint-Leon has shown that even this difficultycan be avoided.133 Yet the invalidity of the legalargument rests here precisely on the fact that itremains merely legal. For the real question in-

volved is not legal at all, but psychological, andthe main advantage that the advocates of ad-ministrative syndicalism seem to expect wouldbe purely moral in character;134 for, as the greatstrike of 1909 made apparent, a mere matter ofwords will not prevent the use of weaponsdeemed, for any reason, desirable. For the realpurpose of this insistence on the law of 1884 isthe advantage it would give of contact with theworking-class. It is one more proof of the factthat the movement has become far wider than asimple protest against particular abuses of adefinite authority and has broadened into anattempt to dethrone a whole system from itscontrolling eminence. That is why the choice ofmethods will have more than verbal results; forto admit that the civil servant can form a trade-union is to give him increased opportunity ofemphasising the relation of his demands to thoseof the workers.

The lawyers have not, of course, failed to per-ceive the burden of this manoeuvre, and it is inthis aspect that they have erected their ablestmeans of opposition to administrative syndical-ism. For, juristically at any rate, the real prob-lem involved is that of the legal status of thecivil servant. If his relation to the state is one ofcontract, it is clear that the problem admits ofan obvious solution; for once we are dealing withcontract it is legitimate to apply the ordinaryrules of private law. If it is, on the contrary, amatter of public law, if it bears upon the natureof the sovereignty of the state, then it is clearthat the position of the civil servant is specialisedin character. Or, as has been urged, it may wellbe that the state is only in part a specialisedinstitution in that aspect, it is only those whowork within the area of its specialised activitywho are subject to a special law.135

Naturally enough, the advocates of administra-tive syndicalism have insisted that the relationbetween the civil servant and the governmentis one of contract. His position would then beanalogous to that of the worker in private in-dustry and most of our difficulties would havebeen solved. But the question is, in fact, lesssimple. A civil servant cannot resign, or, at least,

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the government need not accept his resigna-tion.136 The civil servant who throws up his postto go on strike remains a civil servant despitehimself until it should please the authorities todismiss him.137 If this is a contract, it is clearlycontract of a kind unknown in private law. Acontract ought to be the source of rights; and itis clear that against a government which canchange his position, his salary, his work, or evendismiss him at will, he is not protected in anycontractual fashion. It is, of course, true that hehas what may be called a mediately contractualposition; that is to say the ministerial regula-tions are binding upon the parties concerned.But since they can be altered at will, that is nogreat guarantee. The will of the state as ex-pressed by its ministers clearly predominatesin the situation.

Nor is the problem made easy by distinguishingbetween different kinds of civil servants, as M.Berthelémy has urged us to do. Any one can seethat the position of a judge is sufficiently differ-ent from that of a worker in a state match-fac-tory as to give each different rights and duties;but to draw a broad line between the two be-comes impossible immediately we take certaincritical instances. A prefect, for example, is a civilservant who is charged by delegation with theexercise of certain sovereign powers; but he isalso the recipient of orders which it is his dutyunquestioningly to fulfil. Mining engineers are,for the most part, technical experts who haveno connection with the semi-political problemsof the service; but where they draw up notes onthe contravention of government rules in themines, their position is immediately changed.Nor is it possible to obtain any large measure ofagreement as to where technical service endsand the detention of a part of public power be-gins. M. Hauriou does not doubt that teachersand postmen are fonctionnaires d’autorité; M.Fontaine hotly denies it.138 One government of-ficial seems to imagine that any civil servantwho reports infractions of the law is a holder ofsome delegated portion of sovereign authority.139

The distinction is thus obviously too difficult tomake its application as helpful as is suggestedby its external simplicity.

If the legal assumptions are admitted, they con-stitute, then, a complete refutation of the syndi-calist thesis. They imply the satisfactory proofthat the relation is not in any real sense con-tractual. The lawyers, however, have been, per-haps, somewhat less happy in the theories bywhich they attempt to replace the notion of con-tract. No one—at least in France140—now acceptsthe principle of Rousseau that the citizen, hav-ing surrendered all his rights to the state, mustundertake at its behest whatever functions itshould choose to ordain.141 Mr. Hauriou has sug-gested what is, in reality, a feudal notion of thisrelationship. He regards the tenure of office asa kind of fragment of the public domain, and hesuggests that the true analogy is that of the feu-dal lord, investing his vassal with a fief.142 Thatpublic office was, in medieval times, essentiallya property-right is a fact which admits of littledenial;143 but it does not fit the facts of the mod-ern situation. The hereditary butler was, afterall, a household servant of the crown, and theconcept of property is, in that aspect, intelligibleenough. But the modern civil servant owes ser-vice to the head of the state in his official “andnot his personal” capacity. The feudal lord gaveto his tenant a portion of sovereignty; and cer-tainly where, as in modern French law, the in-alienability of sovereignty has been, since theRevolution, little less than a religious dogma,such indivisibility cannot be equated with aproperty concept.144 Nor is M. Larnaude’s theorythat the situation is entirely specialised and canbe explained, like the bond created bynaturalisation, by a presumption of lexspecialis.145 For lex implies statute, and the ideaof a statute is the merest fiction. Nor is the anal-ogy of naturalisation very happy; for if ever therewas a legal relation in which contract was im-plied, it is surely the relation created by theadoption of citizenship. To explain the problemby listing that it is exceptional is, in reality tourge that it cannot be explained at all. Such amystery might well account for the advent ofadministrative syndicalism, but it would hardlymeet its problems.

M. Duguit explains the situation in a fashionwhich, while analogous, at the same time at-

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tempts to meet the difficulties involved in thehypothesis of exceptionality.146 In his view, thewhole field of administration is settled by stat-ute or by general ministerial regulations whichare akin by nature to statute. We have, in fact, apurely objective law which settles the whole re-lationship with regard to the general end thatadministration is to serve. Nomination is apower of bringing some citizen within the pur-view of this law in order that he may fulfil itspurposes. The act of nomination derives its wholeforce therefrom; and the acceptance of nomina-tion simply completes the process. Yet it mustsurely be admitted that the theory is far lesssatisfactory than appears on the surface. If thenominee may reject the preferred position it issurely therein implied that whatever takes placehas about it a contractual nature. The nomineeis agreeing to submit himself to the regulationsof the service in return for the enjoyment of aposition he desires. He may not have named theconditions of his employment. The contract, thatis to say, may be unilateral in character. But itstill remains a contract; and it is difficult to seehow this element can, in the circumstances, beexplained away.

For the simple fact is that all these legal theo-ries are, from the standpoint of administrativesyndicalism, vitiated by one grave defect. Theyare all built exactly upon that conception of thestate against which the fonctionnaire has madehis vehement protest. They do not take accountof the psychological fact that it the situation ofthe civil servant has a certain specialised char-acter, it is yet a character from which the con-ception of a contract can hardly be excluded. Thestate may say that it makes no contract; but itit fails to provide what its servants deem rea-sonable conditions of labour they will not workfor it. It may theoretically demonstrate that itswill dominates the situation, but the fact willstill remain that the will of its servants is notless relevant. For while they identity themselvesin a special sense with the state, they do not sofinally merge their personalities with its ownas to be incapable of active opposition to it. Thestate may make its laws for their governance;but it it finds that they refuse obedience to its

laws they will prove of no avail. It may proclaimits sovereignty; but a sovereignty that cannotwin the assent of those who are to be the sub-jects of its control is not impressive.

And the change in the status of the civil servantis surely indicative of an important innovation.More and more the status is coming to be settledas the result of discussion and bargaining inwhich the civil servant takes his full share. TheFrench Railways are governed by an agreementwhich is the result of joint deliberation betweenthe political and administrative personnel.147

That is the beginning of an evolution of whichthe end may well be the erection of self-govern-ment within each department. It is perfectly truethat the status so determined must receive theofficial sanction either of the minister or of Par-liament. It draws its sustenance from an en-abling statute. But that enabling statute is it-self based upon a prior agreement. It does notcreate so much as registrate. A sovereignty thatmerely accepts what has been agreed upon out-side of itself is, it may be suggested, a sover-eignty that has been deprived of its sting.148

The truth is that the character which the law-yers attempted to attach to the state dates froma time anterior to the advent of democracy. It isimpotent in the face of administrative coales-cence. It might work when the right of associa-tion had not yet so far advanced as to give thecivil servant the opportunity to organize his cor-porate interests. But immediately he had dis-covered what had been released by the law of1901, the concept of a sovereign state which de-termined his situation without reference to hiswishes and without the recognition that he hadrights it could not infringe became impossible.It was exacting from him the surrender of ex-actly that which he had combined in order toattain. The sanction of law is not its existencebut its ability to secure assent.149 The civil ser-vant refuses to admit the vast authority whichis claimed by the state simply because he hassuffered too greatly from the effects of its exer-cise. He finds himself in a position to bargainwith the government. Whether the result of theirjoint deliberation affects him only, or involves

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also the rest of the community, the relation thatis slowly being established is, clearly enough,no longer unilateral. Certain states of fact arearrived at by agreement. They are deferred inregulations. If in theory the state retains thepower to alter those regulations in practice thatpower is as valuable as the sovereignty of theEnglish king. It is a tribute to a great traditionrather than an admission of its present opera-tion.

And that, after all, is only to say that the legaltheory which rejects the notion of contract is, bythat definition, an inadequate theory. Law can-not persistently neglect the psychology of thoseit endeavours to control. So long as thefonctionnaire refuses to be at the mercy of thegovernment, it is useless for jurisprudence toevolve a theory which implies his subjection. Nordoes it matter in what kind of subtleties thatsubjection is concealed. We may talk of an objec-tive law that is removed from the clash of per-sonalities and securely grounded in the factsthemselves.150 But that, in the end, is to do nomore than transfer the discussion to the natureof the objective law. Anyone, for instance, whoreads the history of the postal strike of 1909 willnot doubt that M. Simyan’s conception of theobjective law by which the service should be gov-erned would differ very markedly from that ofM. Pouget. Whether we found our demands onthe desire or the duty that lies before us, we can-not escape the problem of rights. The civil ser-vant very clearly feels that he can make certaindemands which the state ought not to refuse. Inthe eighteenth century they were a deductiveclaim; today they are an induction from the ex-perience of a bitter illusion. But the fact stillremains that they are rights and, as such, theyevade the categories in which authority wouldenshrine them. No legal argument against theclaims of administrative syndicalism can there-fore be valid that is based upon the theory ofthe state as it presents itself in the orthodoxcurrency of today. For, in the first place, the syn-dicalist would deny its validity, and, in the sec-ond, it is clearly a theory that is passing away.The task that confronts the jurist is still thesame. He has still to reconcile administrative

autonomy with a state of which the authority ismade subject to the strictest limitations. He hasto show how law can maintain responsibilitywhile it admits a reasonable independence. Butit is with new weapons that he must come to histask.

VI. The Attack of the PoliticiansIt was hardly to be expected that so novel a phe-nomenon as administrative syndicalism couldmeet with approval from the politicians. It was,in the first place, too alien from their traditionaltheories of politics to be acceptable. The verygrievances of which it made complaint were theoutcome of the parliamentary system. Theirapproval of it would have involved self-condem-nation; it would have been the tacit admissionthat the criticisms passed upon the system ofwhich they are at once the founders and protec-tors, were firmly rooted in reality. Yet a curiousdistinction is to be noted in the political atti-tude. In principle, it has proved adamant againstthe introduction of novelty. When the resourcesof argument were exhausted, resort was had tothe copious reservoir of rhetoric; and there havebeen few more brilliant debates in the chamberthan those in which MM. Cl menceau and Briandhave vindicated the sovereign state from thepitiful assault of its anarchist detractors. Yetalongide this immovable determination intheory, there has gone a consistent pliability inpractice. The statesmen of France have neverdealt with fonctionnarisme; but they have al-ways been careful to reckon with it. They havebeen consistently gentle at election-times; andtheir earnest eagerness to find a basis for com-promise with principles they have steadfastlydeclared impossible has not been without itspathos. It is a noteworthy distinction; for it isthe expression of a genuine effort on the part ofthe state to find ways and means of admittingin practice the advent of a fundamental trans-formation in its nature even while the termi-nology of the past is preserved. How far it islikely to prove a successful effort is dubiousmatter for the most dangerous kind of proph-ecy. The war intervened exactly at the pointwhere it was beginning to be possible to catchthe first clear signs of the new evolution; and

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the clouds have not yet sufficiently drifted tomake again visible the rays of the political sun.

Yet the theory upon which this political antago-nism has been founded is, throughout its his-tory, unmistakably clear. The nation, in theirview, enjoys a sovereignty which is complete andin no degree subject to limitation. Its personal-ity is at every point superior to that of its con-stituent members. The nation, in its politicalexpression, is the state; and thus, obviouslyenough, upon the institutional organs of thestate, the majesty of the national sovereigntydescends by delegation. To threaten the state, isthus to strike at the heart of the national exist-ence. And this is even more truly the case withthe civil servant whose very powers are derivedfrom his position as a state-instrument. He nega-tives the whole purpose of his existence once herebels against that from which he derives allthat makes him different from the ordinary citi-zen. Administrative syndicalism thus becomesa particularly reprehensible variation upon ananarchic theme. To make concessions to it is toderogate from the national power. A refusal tobargain with it thus becomes the preservationof all that makes the nation a self-governinginstrument. Once concede internal autonomyand the national unity is at a stroke destroyed.

It is a simple theory, upon which every conceiv-able variation has been made. It seems to havebeen born in 1887 with M. Spuller who, in a fa-mous circular,151 insisted that it was inconceiv-able that a group of public officials could enjoy acorporate personality outside their membershipof the state. Twenty years later the argument isin nowise different. “Officials,” said M. Rouvier,152

then Prime Minister, “who exercise any portionof sovereign power, are members only of one cor-poration—the state; and the state is the nationitself.” M. Briand drew the obvious inferencefrom that attitude. “What,” he asked,153 “is thedemocratic state?... Is it the government?... Thatcannot be because government is only an agentwhich executes orders.... The civil service hasagainst it the national representatives, that isto say the nation itself.” M. Clémenceau haspointed what he regards as the moral of the ar-

gument. “Government,” he said,154 “is under thecontrol of the chamber; the chamber is controlledby universal suffrage; but neither governmentnor the chamber is under the control of the civilservice.” The great postal strike of 1909 did notsuggest any new synthesis to M. Barthou, theminister most concerned. “The postmen,” he toldthe chamber,155 “are in revolt against you, gentle-men, against the entire nation,... what we haveto determine is whether a government whichrepresents the sovereign nation can abandon thecare of general interests before a rebellious civilservice.” M. Ribot has insisted that while theordinary citizen can plan the transformation ofthe state, the duty of the public official is at allcosts to defend its present organisation.156 M.Deschanel seems to regard the civil servant asthe delegate of the nation for the performanceof certain functions; clearly, therefore, anythingthat does not involve their performance is atransgression of his powers.157 And M. Poincaréhas again and again uttered the warning that anew power, irresponsible in its nature, confrontsthe sovereign nation. He seems to consider itsadvent as nothing less than an attack on thelife of the French republic.158

All this, of course, is a purely theoretical argu-ment. It simply insists that the authority of thestate is final without at any point examiningthe basis upon which that insistence is founded.It does not, therefore, meet the argument of ad-ministrative syndicalism; what it rather does isto lay down certain counter-assumptions ofwhich the truth is still debateable. It does notseem to have realised that the fonctionnaristemovement is nothing if not a challenge to theseconceptions; and it is not, to say the least, par-ticularly helpful to have the whole discussionshelved in this facile manner. Far more impor-tant is the argument derived from the needs ofpractical administration. Here, at least, the poli-ticians have had a real case to urge and theyhave put it with no small skill. This, they pointout, is pre-eminently a period in which the func-tions of the state are undergoing continuousextension. More and more it is coming, if not totake actual charge, at least to regulate, the con-duct of great departments of public life. In that

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aspect, the main problem by which it is con-fronted is to ensure to its constituents the regu-lar and continuous operation of the servicesunder its control. Whether it purveys railway orpostal facilities, whether it sells matches or pro-cures an adequate police, obviously the one thingthe public has a right to demand is their effi-cient operation. For where these services aremanaged as public utilities by companies or in-dividuals working for gain a special system oflaw is instituted of which the cardinal point isthe guarantee of continuity.

It is at least partly in the light of this attitudethat the political opposition must be interpreted.“I am here to affirm,” said M. Sarrien,159 “thatno government, even if it were formed of the verypersons who now beg us to permit freedom ofassociation to teachers, to postal officials, andother civil servants, could possibly consent with-out committing suicide, without imperilling thevery existence not merely of the Republic, butany regular and normal political régime.” M.Clémenceau has again and again insisted thatthe first task of a minister is to compel the civilservant to accomplish his duty to the state.160

M. Briand has affirmed that the operation ofgovernment does not permit the constitution ofa privileged nation within the ranks of the na-tion itself.161 Their attitude was the more inter-esting since both they, and some of their col-leagues had, before taking office, urgently up-held the right of the fonctionnaire to enjoy thebenefit of the law of 1884.162 But it is to be as-sumed that the experience of office has dissi-pated these idle dreams.

The real difficulty in the analysis of this argu-ment is to know exactly where a beginning ofcriticism should be made. It implies that thereis a golden rule of administration which succes-sive governments have laboured earnestly tofollow; and the cardinal principle in that rulewould seem to be the refusal of any minister topermit for one moment the organisation of thecivil service within his department. Yet, in fact,no such policy has ever been followed. M. Benöisthas justifiably complained of the alternation ofstrength and weakness in the governmental at-

titude.163 It is a matter of common notoriety thatthe defiant challenge to administrative syndi-calism undergoes a sensible diminution at elec-tion time. What is legitimate in the Ministry ofPublic Works is fraught with grave danger inthe Ministry of Public Instruction.164 The minis-ters dismiss civil servants in order to emphasisetheir authority, but, sooner or later, they alwaystake the vast majority back. And it is difficult todiscover whether this high degree of control isnecessary to maintain the service as it now is;or, on the other hand, whether it is the basis of afuture improvement. If the first hypothesis bethe correct one, it is difficult to reconcile withexpert opinion that the condition of the civil ser-vice is simply lamentable.165 If the second inter-pretation be correct, it is still more difficult tosee why the government should be preparing toabandon that control in order to institute a gen-eral status which shall put the majority of theseproblems beyond the reach of the ministerialwhim;166 and it is not less hard to know why thegovernment is prepared to admit the jurispru-dence of the Council of State which is more andmore tending to give the civil servant and hisassociations protection against arbitrary treat-ment.167

But the greatest irony remains. Those who thusprofess themselves so anxious for the quality ofthe civil service are the persons most respon-sible for its corruption. Even if it be true thattheir responsibility is mainly weakness in theface of parliamentary pressure, the fact still re-mains that it was in their power to remedy thesegrievances and that they have deliberately ab-stained from so doing. No one denies that thebusiness of government must be carried on; butit is at least open to the gravest doubt whetherthe different ministers have ever tried so toorganise the civil service as to assure the ab-sence of the grievances which might, above allthings, interrupt it. It is not a solution to takerefuge in the necessity of a rigidauthoritarianism. The position of the civil ser-vant in the modern state may be a specialisedone; but he does not surrender his human im-pulses in becoming a civil servant. That thegrievances of which he complained were real the

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government tacitly admitted on the differentoccasions when it embarked upon the task ofreform; but even when the difficulty of its ac-complishment has been admitted, no impartialobserver can doubt that there has never beenany genuine intention to give effect to the re-forms proposed. For the real doubt must remainwhether, in the present situation of Frenchparliamentarism, the reforms so postulated canin fact be achieved. Any system in which theexecutive is at the mercy of the legislature is, inthe nature of things, bound to search for meanswhereby it can control its master. That is thesecret of the corruption of English politics in theeighteenth century. Sir Robert Walpole only didmore crudely what the average French ministeris compelled to attempt in a more delicate fash-ion if his government is to remain in office. Solong as no single party dominates the chamberit is necessary to buy the support of groups nu-merous enough to constitute a majority; andpatronage is the obvious means to that end. Sothat, in practice, the real implication of the vastauthority the minister tends to demand as es-sential, has, as its object, not the efficient op-eration of the public departments, but the re-tention of a convenient means to power. In thatlight, the anxiety for the regular conduct of pub-lic business appears a less noble aspiration. Aminister naturally dislikes the dislocation thatfollows upon the assertion of grievances simplybecause its consequences in the Chamber are,as a rule, inconvenient. He can be certain at leastof an interpellation; and of a French interpella-tion no one dare prophesy the outcome. But it isin the highest degree difficult to see that ananalysis, not of governmental pretensions, butof the steps actually taken by government to-wards the amelioration of the actual state ofaffairs, could lead to the conclusion that controlhas as its purpose the end that rhetoric implies.

Nor, after all, is it possible to feel that the psy-chology of administrative control is so simple asgovernmental theory would make it. It is, ofcourse, undeniable that the continuous function-ing of the civil service is fundamental to themodern state. It is as obvious as can be that in-efficiency in a government department, hardly

less than actual dislocation of service itself, hasevil consequences that reverberate throughoutthe body politic. Yet the doubt must remainwhether the way in which the civil service inFrance is organised can secure the results thatmodern government must achieve. No one whoreads the literature of the French fonctionnairescan doubt that the authority of the minister istoo overshadowing. The motives it leaves to theofficial are simply not adequate. The reports thateither no one ever sees, or that lie buried amidthe official archives, do not call forth the bestqualities of which the official is really capable.He does not come into contact with the cham-ber, or, if he does, it is only to persuade somefriendly deputy to use his influence for his pro-motion. The whole effort is towards makingthought a routine instead of an invention. Thereis too little certainty that effort will obtain itsreward. There is too little opportunity for theexercise of those creative faculties which respon-sibility alone will call into play. There is too littlechance that the official will be able, if not to de-cide, at any rate to deliberate, those great pub-lic questions which, from their very nature, mustserve to quicken the imagination. Too much en-ergy is occupied in the writing of minutes uponthe minutes of other people, and too little uponthe defence, in the verbal interchange of thought,of the ideas which those minutes contain. If thecivil servant knew that to make himself an au-thority upon some public question was bound toresult in bringing him into direct relationshipwith those who frame the answer to it, the gen-eral picture of the civil service would not be thatwhich the curious can find in the novels of Balzacand de Maupassant. He can do none of thesethings simply because they in reality make himessentially an expert who must, because of hisexpertness, be given the right to at least a mea-sure of independence. That independence, fromthe nature of his position, will tend to grow un-til it absorbs the group to which he belongs. Butwhere that is once achieved, not only is the maindemand of administrative syndicalism conceded,but at the same time, the future of parliamen-tary government in France becomes even moreproblematical than it is at the present time.

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And this, in fact, is the real crux of the govern-mental attitude. Safety and permanence are notthe distinguishing features of French ministries;but at any rate the minister knows the techniqueat present in vogue. To change it is virtually toset him out on an uncharted sea. He will haveto discover new methods of manipulation in theChamber. His relations to his department willundergo a total reconstruction. He will retainthe direction of its activities. He will still be ableto say what he wants, to determine the largeoutlines of policy. But he will suggest adminis-tration rather than actually operate it. It is abreak with tradition so large that everyone canunderstand why he should feel suspicious of thereadjustment. And he is moved by another con-sideration. At present he is responsible for hisdepartment. For whatever the humblest of hisofficials may do, he, and he only, must answer tothe chamber. That, in his view, is not the leastreason why he has the right to autocratic con-trol. For if the policy of the department may re-sult in his downfall clearly he has the right todemand that, in, principle and in detail, it shallbe his own policy. To make the civil service inde-pendent of him is to make him suffer for faultsthat will not be, even in theory, his own.

Certainly, to an Englishman who has beenbrought up to see the ample cloak of ministerialcharity cast around the erring official on everyoccasion, there is much plausibility in such anattitude. But, equally certainly, it is ameritricious plausibility simply because it ig-nores the essential factors involved. There areobviously two kinds of fault of which the civilservant may be guilty. His fault may be due tothe inherent nature of the work he is called uponto execute; or it may, on the other hand, be duesimply to some blunder of his own. In the firstcase, it is clear that the minister is responsible.If a minister should order the police to tear downa Roman Catholic Church, the resultant notingis surely to be ascribed to the stupidity of theminister. But it is not less clear that no one couldhold the minister responsible for a personalblunder of an official. If, for instance, a teacherin a school should deliberately go out of his wayto break the regulations which deal with educa-

tional neutrality upon religious questions, thatwould in no way affect the minister’s position.It would, perhaps,168 be his business to see thatdiscussion of the teacher’s act was made by theproper authorities concerned. But there his func-tions would end. Personal fault, that is to say,would involve on the part of a minister nothingmore than the duty of seeing that the regulardisciplinary procedure was at every point ob-served. Faults that are derived directly from apolicy which the minister has conceived mustbe laid no less directly at his door. Now it is truethat, again and again, difficulties will arise ininterpretation, no classification can pretend evento be perfect. But, in such a division of responsi-bility as this, it is surely evident that an ad-equate safeguard exists for protecting ministe-rial interests. It is not difficult to imagine thatthe average statesman would even feel relievedif he did not bear the burden of every depart-mental care. Undeniably, the result of such achange upon parliamentary life would be far-reaching. Not less clearly, if ministerial respon-sibility is divided, means must be created forthe adequate protection of the public against thefaults of the official. That, however, is in no sensean impossible task.

In such an interpretation the political answerto administrative syndicalism is at no point ananswer at all. What, undoubtedly, it has effec-tively done is to show the determination withwhich the upholders of the present system willmaintain their defences. But there is an impli-cation in the argument that is put forward thatcannot be too strongly denied. “The state,” writesM. Fernand Faure,169 “cannot,.... in the measureof its functions, be too strong.” It must act, thatis to say, at every instant as a sovereign author-ity whose demands can brook no question. “Thestate alone,” says M. Larnaude170 “can remainmaster of the event,” and M. Berthel my seems171

to regard the whole movement as nothing morethan an unworthy effort, clearly deserving onlyof suppression, to exploit the state for privatepurposes. But, surely, in criticism such as this itis not really the state that is in question. Whatthe civil servant attacks is the group of men who,at the moment, possess the fused power the state

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possesses. It is a revolt against government ofwhich they are complaining. The transition fromstate to government, is, of course, a fatally easyone; but it is a transition of which each step de-mands the closest investigation. No one wouldobject to a strong state if guarantees could behad that its strength would be used for thefulfilment of its theoretic purposes. The realproblem involved is the suspicion of those whowatch the actual operation of its instrumentsthat they have been, in fact, diverted from theends they were intended to serve. To admit thesovereignty of the state, in the sense in whichstatesmen understand that concept, is simplyto give added power to the government. It is,that is to say, to mistake the private will of aconstantly changing group whose interests areat no point identical with those of the nation,for the interests of the state as a whole. A strongstate does not mean a state in which no one re-sists the declared will of government; or, if it does,we need new political terms. For, in that event,change would never be justified except insofaras it met with the approval of those who heldthe reins of power; and it is historically obviousthat any general acceptance of such an attitudeis entirely subversive of progress.

A state, after all, is no mysterious entity. It isonly a territorial society into which, from a va-riety of historical causes, a distinction betweenrulers and subjects has been introduced.172 Theonly justification for a claim by government ofits obedience is the clear proof that it satisfiesthe material and moral claims of those overwhom it exercises control. We cannot wander onblindly with self-shut eyes, merely because or-der is convenient and rebellion attended by thegravest dangers. The whole case for administra-tive syndicalism goes most clearly to show thatgovernment has not been able to give proofs ofthat satisfaction. So widespread a movementmust have had causes more profound than theantagonism of its opponents would suggest. Itis, above all, a problem in organisation. What itsuggests is inherent error in the mechanism ofthe modern state. It suggests a redistribution ofpower. It indicates a conviction that certain ofthe demands now made by government are in

fact unnecessary to the fulfilment of its purposes.Cannot, further, be made if the purposes of gov-ernment are to be fulfilled. It is in the highestdegree difficult to understand what exactly isgained by the empty insistence that the statemust be strong without giving the valid demon-stration of the purpose for which that strengthis to be used. Government is only a conventionwhich men, on the whole, accept because of ageneral conviction that its effort is for good.Where the machine breaks down, where thepurpose of those who drive it becomes to an im-portant class sinister, it is humanly inevitablethat an effort towards change should be made.

To those who hold the reins of power it was per-haps inevitable that such an effort should beregarded as the coronation of anarchy. To opposethe government is, for them, to destroy the state.But it is, in fact, anarchy only in the sense inwhich the replacement of the nobility as thegoverning power at the Revolution was anarchy.The seat of authority therein passed to themiddle classes. But government remained atonce a narrow and irresponsible power. It hasbeen attacked at two points since that time. Eco-nomically, the workers show increasing sign ofdissatisfaction with the fulfilment of its pur-poses; administratively, the civil service rejectsthe notion of its authority. The change that isimplied in this impatience is not less profoundthan that of a century and a half ago. Whetherthe change that accompanies every great trans-formation in the seat of authority can be accom-plished without violence is a problem to whichthe answer has still to be discovered. Certainlythere is no need to becloud the question by rep-resenting revolution as a rare exception in his-torical procedure. Aristotle realised that wellenough when he devoted a book of the “Politics”to its discussion. If we endeavour to stand out-side the historic process it is not difficult to seethat this, like so many of his general maxims,remains not the less true two thousand threehundred years after his time.173

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VII. The Movement Towards ReformObviously enough, a movement so widespreadas this must have swept some effort at reforminto the eddies of its current, and both in poli-tics and in jurisprudence it is possible to findsigns of a changing temper towards the civil ser-vice. A serious attempt was in process, at leastbefore the outbreak of war, of which the generalpurport was to limit the arbitrary character ofministerial discretion. That, after all, is the fun-damental point; for ministerial discretion wasessentially an inheritance of the ancien r gimewhich stamped the whole system with its pecu-liar and vicious character. It was an assertionthat the minister, as an agent of the state, par-took of its sovereign nature; assault upon hispowers was therefore a priori fruitless.

That attitude is already dying. The courts haveshown signs of an important eagerness to insiston regarding as ultra vires any infraction of thedepartmental regulations. The minister mightmake his own rules, but, until he changed themhe was at every point bound by the clear pur-pose they had in view. The government itself wasproposing perhaps, indeed, with a heart lessdetermined than the situation made desirable,to bring the position of the civil servant withinthe scope of statute within the civil service it-self. The faint and fitful development of a newautonomy has not as yet been sufficiently clearto be suggestive. It was, it is true, an auto-limi-tation. It did not involve derogation from thesovereign power of the state. No one was boundby the action that has been taken. The effort thathas been made is in every event indicative ofthe advent of a new epoch rather than the ac-tual inauguration of it. But auto-limitation hasan historical habit of giving way to an objectivelaw. Administrative admission becomes admin-istrative practice; sooner or later the conventionbecomes strong enough to resist the force of pres-sure. Those who have witnessed the substitu-tion of rule for discretion will not easily go backto the chaos of an earlier time.

Parliament has discussed proposals which haveendeavoured to give a definite status to thefonctionnaire. None, as yet, has reached the stat-

ute-book; but the mere fact of their proposal, andthe wealth of superlative discussion they haveevoked, are in themselves indicative of much.The two projects derived from governmentsources had not, indeed, high value. They werenot based on adequate consultation with thefonctionnaires themselves; and the attempt tomake the Council of State an advisory, but not acompulsive body, was a clearly hopeless one.174

The denial of the right of federation meant theretention of the hierarchical system and of de-partmental separatism.175 Defects like thesestruck at the root of any possible concord; and,in fact, they only produced the famous OpenLetter to M. Clémenceau which brought clearlyinto the light the inability of his ministry to ap-preciate the real facts at issue. The governmentproposals aggravated a schism rather thanhealed it. They made clear the certainty thatsooner or later the movement must be dealt with;but they made it also not less evident that itwas already too strong to be deceived.

Far more serious in character, because far morecomprehensive, have been the efforts of thechamber itself. The commission of which M.Jeanneney was the reporter has, at any rate,understood the significance of the movement. Ifits report was, on the whole, a somewhat un-satisfactory compromise,176 that was less fromthe spirit it displayed than from the fact thatbetween the aim of the government and the idealof the fonctionnaire there is no possible compro-mise. No solution can be satisfactory which doesnot take account of the unity of the civil service;and from the fact of that unity alone, any at-tempt to insist on departmental separatism isdoomed to failure.177 No prohibition of the strikecan be effective which does not envisage thecause of recourse to such a weapon. It is trueenough, as M. Jeanneney reminds us,178 that theobject of the civil servant is to ensure the opera-tion of the service with which he is charged; butequally fundamental is the condition underwhich he is to perform his duty. The Commis-sion seems to have grasped this fact; and it wasyet prevented from dealing firmly with the ob-vious implications of its admission by the fearof government opposition. The chamber, in any

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case, has not been able to take up the project,and later discussion, while it has clarified theproblem, has not advanced the answer to it.

But it has served to make two things clear. It isobvious, in the first place, that the problem ofthe civil service is only part of the far wider prob-lem of governmental reform. In every aspect, theinstruments of the state are in need of recon-struction. Some of its mechanisms are expen-sive and outworn. Others demand autonomy ordecentralisation for their adequate operation.The sovereign state, as M. Duguit has repeat-edly emphasised, is becoming a great public ser-vice corporation; and its organs demand read-justment to the new purposes it is to serve. It is,moreover, clear, that, in such a perspective, thefirst demand to be made of government by itssubjects will be the continuous and undisturbedperformance of its functions. That, it can hardlybe doubted, involves something in the nature ofa status for those who are employed by govern-ment. They may see the element of contract intheir situation; but the element of duty will benot less sharply defined.179

The problem, in such an aspect, becomes verylargely a psychological one. It is the problem oftranslating a psychological satisfaction into defi-nite legal terms. It will be useless to prohibitstrikes by statute180 so long as the mass of thecivil service feels itself sufficiently oppressed byits grievances to refuse obedience to the law. Thehistory of the last few years has notably demon-strated the powerlessness of statute in the faceof great popular movements.181 That is not be-cause of any inherent or growing disrespect forlaw.182 It is simply that we are living in an age ofchange so vast that administration can not keeppace with its demands. Law follows popular sen-timent rather than creates it; and the moderndisparity has been notably widened simply be-cause our jurists have been working with theinstruments of an earlier time. A theory of lawwhich endeavours, in such a synthesis as this,to frame its solution in the pragmatic terms ofthe conflicting interests involved has alone theopportunity to make a convenient unity out ofthis multiplicity of principles.183 It will start from

the acceptance of what is, in theory at least, per-haps a fundamental novelty—the notion that theinterests of government are in no instance para-mount. It will not deceive itself by the too-facilebelief that the primary interest of law is in thepreservation of order. There are times when thebusiness of law is not the maintenance of an oldequilibrium but the creation of a new one. It isto that task that our efforts must today be di-rected.

And what is here significant is the perceptionby the supreme administrative tribunal ofFrance of the implications of this new orienta-tion. The time has already passed when admin-istrative jurisdiction could be regarded as dis-tinct from the ordinary judicial power, when itcould be regarded as simply executive justice byact of grace. It is coming to be nothing so muchas an organ of protection for such non-govern-mental interests as are affected by ultra viresacts. It is coming to insist on the responsibilityof the state for its acts as a dogma not less nec-essary to our own time than state-irresponsibil-ity could be regarded as essential by the nine-teenth century. It is modifying, gradually, it istrue, but also with a steady and almost marvel-lous persistency, the relations of the state withits officials on the one hand and private citizenson the other. It is no longer possible for the stateto defend its acts on the ground that they areclothed with the mystic power of sovereignty. Notonly the form, but the contents also, of an actmay be impugned, The state, in short, has be-come a private corporation which must act inaccordance with its fundamental and generalpurpose on the one hand, and its special instruc-tions for each immediate situation on the other.Its law, that is to say, is no longer the subjectivecommand that issues from its sovereign will; itis an objective interpretation of necessity drawnfrom the study of the facts of each issue thatmay arise.184

This evolution is likely, within certain well-de-fined limits, completely to revise the time-honoured relation between the state and thefonctionnaire. It is not in any sense a final revi-sion. So long as the power of regulating civil ser-

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vice conditions belongs to the minister as thehead of his department it is a revision at eachstage liable to reversal. The time, of course, willcome when this auto-limitation will no longerbe deemed adequate, and the minister will then,no less than his humblest official be subject tothe rule of law. But, for temporary purposes, itis an advance; and it points the way to a timewhen the scope of sovereignty will be limited bya system less liable to interruption than the re-gime of whim and caprice. Since 1903, at anyrate, it has been impossible to uphold an irregu-lar nomination. So long as there are rules theCouncil of State will enforce them. It has beenadmitted that those who are technically quali-fied to fulfill certain functions have sufficientinterest in appointment to them as to preventmen who are not qualified from nomination.185

It was no more than a natural deduction fromthat advance to prevent irregular promotion anddismissal.186 It was clearly wise to insist uponthe observance of the rule that a civil servantmust be informed of the grounds upon whichany disciplinary measure is taken against him.187

Before 1907, it was by individual action thatthese rights were guaranteed. Since that time agreat step forward has been taken by the per-mission given to civil service associations toappear as parties in actions where they canprove that they are directly interested.188 Nor isit without significance that one court at leastshould have been willing to receive the plea of afederation of teachers against an alleged libel ofthe Archbishop of Rheims;189 and even whereother courts have hesitated to admit such a pleathe existence of corporate prejudice has beenrecognised.190 English experience suggests thatthe further step is inevitable;191 and it is hardlytoo much to say that these decisions mark anepoch in the history of administrative law.

Nor is the organisation of private citizens lessimportant in its ultimate consequences. Along-side the growth of these producers’ organisationswe have an evolution of consumers’ control. Itseffort is directed towards almost every conceiv-able object of governmental activity. The sub-scribers to the national telephone system haveorganised a society which not only protects its

members in their complaints against inadequateoperation, but also insists that the governmentpay regard to the most modern scientific im-provements. The Catholic church has welded intoa formidable organisation the fathers of fami-lies who belong to that religion to insist uponthe due observance of scholastic neutrality. Thetaxpayers have grouped themselves togetherwith the object, among others, of insisting upondue economy in the performance of governmen-tal functions. The League of the Rights of Manundertakes the most laborious inquiries intoalleged miscarriages of justice. Nor is this all.On every hand the government is beginning,tentatively, indeed, and without evident under-standing of its ultimate significance, to associ-ate the private citizen with the business of ad-ministration.192 The Superior Council of Agricul-ture is a board of expert council. The Consulta-tive Committee on Railways, instituted by theminister of public works, comprises within itsmembership representatives of most of the greatindustries by which the railways profit. It is acommittee with genuine functions and a grow-ing power. It speaks with a representative sug-gestiveness that is far too powerful to be ignored.Nor is this less true of commerce or of charity.On all hands there are growing up associationsof every kind which aim directly at supplement-ing the work of parties on the one hand, anddirectly controlling the business of administra-tion on the other.193 They in nowise supplant theordinary mechanisms of party; but they are of-ten enough important in the direction they cangive to the forces of public opinion. They are thebeginning of what will eventually be the defi-nite organisation of every interest that is af-fected by the action of the state. They are theadmission of elements within the national lifethat refuse to find their ordinary satisfaction inthe accepted methods of politics. They representthe growing emphasis upon the diverse elementsthat go to make up citizenship, and, in particu-lar, the insistence upon the importance of func-tion. They are at the beginning of their evolu-tion and not at the end of it; for the definiteorganisation of the consumer’s interest in thestate has a significance scarcely capable of ex-aggeration.194

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Ultimately, indeed, what such a movement im-plies is the advent of a consumers’ syndicalism—the organisation of the consumer’s interest inthe product of an industry exactly as there istoday the organisation of the producers’ inter-est. It is unquestionable that a public opinion socreated would tend to assist the claims of thecivil service. It would, in the first place, be obvi-ous that the abuses of which the fonctionnairecomplains are productive of waste and ineffi-ciency. It is hardly less clear that the whole ba-sis of good administration is the possession of acontented civil service. It is difficult to saywhether a public opinion would today admitfonctionnariste autonomy; the probability is thata long process of education would be needed be-fore that end could be achieved. But it is hardlypossible to doubt that the organisation of opin-ion upon the problems of the civil service wouldlead to strong reform. Certainly this has beenthe lesson of English experience in this regard.195

No large step could be taken which would notinvolve its freedom from the control of politicalinterests; and that is likely to prove a first stepon the road to the autonomous decentralisationthat is claimed.

It is impossible to prophesy in the face of a cata-clysm. What alone emerges as immediately cer-tain is the growing importance of the adminis-trative function. It is certain that for long to comethe state must burden itself with a far fullercontrol of the social life than it has ever beforeassumed. Obviously enough, in such an analy-sis, the position of the civil service becomes oneof the greatest significance. It will be fundamen-tally impossible to go back to the epoch beforethe outbreak of war; the only question will ratherbe what measure of satisfaction thefonctionnaire will obtain. Never before will theneed of efficient administration have been sogreat; never before will the penalty of discon-tent have been so heavy. The evolution of ad-ministrative syndicalism in modern France con-nects itself logically with this outlook. For thetask of government is likely to prove far too vastto make possible an efficient and centralisedcontrol. In administration, not less than in eco-nomics, a law of diminishing returns is appli-

cable. There comes a point in the business ofgovernment when the further burdening of thecentral authority does not produce an adequatereturn for the outlay it involves. Decentralisationbecomes at that point essential. It is the onlyway in which the congestion by which all uni-tary governments are oppressed can be relieved.It provides the only method by which the neces-sary attention can be given to special and localneeds.196 That is true not less of special occupa-tions than of special areas. No one, for instance,can study the problem involved in the fixationof railroad rates without feeling at once the im-mense difficulties that are involved in the as-sumption of any necessary desirability in a uni-form system.197 We are on all hands faced by thequestions of diversity and delimitation. The erec-tion of distinct and autonomous authorities isthe logical outcome of that recognition.

The mistake we have made in the past is to thinkof federal government in terms simply of areaand of distance. Federations in the past havebeen so naturally the outcome either of vast sizeon the one hand or of the coalescence of histori-cally separate communities on the other, that ithas been difficult not to translate our federalthought immediately into spatial terms. We mustlearn to think differently. Even in America, theclassic ground of federal experiment, it is a newfederalism that is everywhere developing.198 If,as with the districts of the Federal Reserve Sys-tem, and of the Rural Credits Board, it is at leastpartly a matter of area, it is not less obviousthat a federalism of functions is at hand—thatis to say that exactly as in the past we attempteddelimitation by area, so, today, we are attempt-ing the delimitation of purposes. There is a cleartendency upon the part of industrial and pro-fessional groups to become self-governing. Leg-islation consecrates the solutions they evolve.They become sovereign in the sense—which, af-ter all, is the only sense that matters—that therules they draw up are recognized as the an-swer to the problems they have to meet. Theyare obtaining compulsory power over their mem-bers; they demand their taxes; they exercise theirdiscipline; they enforce their penal sanctions.They raise every question that the modern fed-

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eral state has to meet and their experience is,governmentally, a valuable basis for nationalenterprise.199

But their assumption of sovereign powers isimportant in another aspect. To make the stateomnicompetent is to leave it at the mercy of anygroup that is powerful enough to exploit it. Thathas been, indeed, one of the main historicalcauses of social unrest. It transforms every po-litical struggle into an economic conflict. It in-evitably introduces the bitterness of a fight be-tween interests which, in such an aspect, darenot offer compromise with their antagonists. Theonly way out of such an impasse is theneutralisation of the state; and it cannot beneutralised saved by the division of the powerthat is today concentrated in its hands. For toproclaim, to take a single example, the supremeinterest of the state in preserving order in timesof strikes, is already to make it take sides. Thesupreme interest of the state is in justice, and itdoes not necessarily follow that justice and or-der are in perfect correlation. No one who hasstudied the relation between the state’s inter-est in the preservation of order and the exploi-tation of that interest in Colorado will find roomfor serious doubt in this regard. To make thestate universal and paramount is to make it thecreature of those who can possess themselves ofits instruments. What obviously must be doneis to secure the limitation of its activities, onthe one hand, and the independence of its in-struments on the other. But the functions sodelimited demand, in their turn, theirorganisation and we are thus driven back to fed-eral government.200

It is in such an aspect as this that the move-ment towards administrative syndicalism mustbe interpreted. It is not a revolt against societybut against the state. It is not a revolt againstauthority but against a theory of it which is, infact, equivalent to servitude. For the obvious factis that men will not peacefully endure a situa-tion they deem intolerable; and any theory ofpolitics which denounces their action out of handat once stamps itself as inadequate. The truthobviously is that the state must organize itself

on lines which admit to the full the opportunityfor the realisation of personal and corporate ini-tiative; and it is simply an induction from theexperience of the last century that a sovereignstate can be driven so to organize itself only bycompulsion. That is the real importance of thetheory of this movement. The federalism and thedecentralisation it implies201 are, in fact, thebasis upon which the state of the future can beerected. They are the sign-posts of its new ori-entation. They take account of the obvious factthat the sovereignty of the state is a power towill; but they insist upon the limitations of thatpower. For a study of the processes of the stateconvincingly demonstrates that without suchlimitation there is no real security for liberty.The purpose of the state may be good; but moreimportant than the doctrine that it inculcatesis the actual life that it leads. It is the experi-ence of its life, the contact with its personality,that has made the fonctionnaire refuse absorp-tion by it. He is unwilling, even in theory, to leaveit as Leviathan. For sovereignty, it cannot toooften be emphasised, implies the possession oflegal rights; and by its legal rights—in theorylimitless—the state will define its moral pow-ers.202 The individual gets caught in a complexweb of rights and duties where morality is con-founded by the ambiguity of terms. To limit state-power is to suggest at once that its action is ca-pable of judgment. It is to exalt the importanceof individual personality and thus to give to citi-zenship a profounder value. It is to make theuse of power at every moment a moral questionby demanding enquiry into the end it is to serve.It is, in Mr. Figgis’ phrase, to replace the studyof rights by the study of right; and if that atti-tude is frankly medieval, it is none the worsefor that.203 For authority, after all, must dependupon internal roots if it is to be of any avail. Wetoo rarely consider how difficult is the decisionto combat the state. The presumption in gen-eral opinion is, for the most part, on its side.Order is the accustomed mode of life, and to be-tray it seems like enough to social treason. Thereis probably no epoch in social history whereorganised resistance to state-decision has notits root in some deep grievance honestly con-ceived. It was so in 1381; it was so in 1642; in

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1688 and in 1789. “Reform that you may pre-serve” is, as Macaulay said,204 “the voice of greatevents.” The state has barely heeded that con-stant warning; and the beatification of the sta-tus quo is ever its main source of danger. Ad-ministrative syndicalism is simply a step to-wards translating into effective terms theprogramme of democratic government. It is itsstatement as a process instead of as a claim.Above all, it has realised that to preserve theplay of mind, whether in the government of thestate or of more private enterprise, its activeexercise is the one sure path of safety. The realdanger in any society is lest decision on greatevents secure only the passive concurrence ofthe mass of men. It is only by intensifying theactive participation of men in the business ofgovernment that liberty can be made secure. Forthere is a poison in power against which eventhe greatest of nations must be upon its guard.The temptation demands resistances; and thesolution is to deprive the state of any prioritynot fully won by performance. That is what isimplied in the fonctionnaire’s demand. He can,as he thinks, make the state a fuller and richerthing by the dispersion of its sovereignty. He canpreserve his own respect by securing an effec-tive voice in the determination of events. He canprevent the exploitation of the administrativeservices by making their processes objective incharacter. It is a movement that is as yet but atits beginning; and it is as dangerous as it is fas-cinating to depict its end. Of this only we maybe certain, that there is no phase of social life inwhich its motives are not, however dimly mani-festly penetrating; and it will one day mean,perhaps for the first time, a state wherein thebasis of citizenship will be the active intelligenceof enlightened men.

Appendix: Note on the Bibliography ofLamennaisAny full list of the books on Lamennais woulditself make a small volume. All I propose to dohere is to suggest the most valuable sources forthe period covered by the preceding essay (A).For his actual works I have used the quarto edi-tion in two volumes published just after his ex-communication. This contains everything of im-

portance up to that time, including his articlesin L’Avenir. Hardly less important is the corre-spondence of which there are several volumes.(I) Those edited by M. Forgues. (II) Those editedby his nephew, A. Blaize. (III) The “Letters tothe Baron de Vitrolles” ed. Forgues. (IV) The“Letters to Montalembert” ed. Forgues. (V) “UnLamennais inconnu” ed. Laveille; (the letters toBenoit d’Azy.) (VI) “Lamennais d’après des docu-ments in dits” ed. Roussel, contains many un-published letters, but the commentary by theircollector is ignorant and prejudiced. (VII)“Lettres à la baronne Cottu” ed. d’Haussonville.Those volumes edited by M. Forgues are by farthe most valuable, though the correspondenceedited by Blaize has much significance for theearly years; the rest of what has been publishedhas, except for odd letters, mostly a library orpsychological interest (B). The most complete lifeof Lamennais is that by the Abbé CharlesBoutard in three volumes (1913). It is, however,severely hampered, as a critical study by thenecessary theological limitations. The life byEugene Spuller (1892) errs almost as much onthe side of anti-clericalism, but it is the best briefstudy we have. On the early years the full studyby M. Charles Maréchal is admirable. On theconflict with Rome I have used the essay by PèreDudon, “Lamennais et la Sainte Siège,” as it col-lects all the relevant documents, but its polemi-cal object is obvious throughout. The best philo-sophic criticism is still that of Janet, “LaPhilosophie de Lamennais” (1890), but there aregood studies by M. Faguet in the second volumeof his “Politiques et Moralistes,” and by M. Ferrazin the second volume of his “Histoire de laPhilosophie en France.” That by Renan, in his“Essais de Morale et de Critique” is by far themost sympathetic psychological analysis; thoughthe more famous essay of Sainte-Beuve in theRevue des Deux Mondes for May 1834 was oneof the first to seize the real significance of hislife; see also the essay reprinted in PortraitsContemporains. I have seen no adequate studyin English, though there exists a book by theHon. W. Gibson on “Lamennais and Liberal Ca-tholicism” which I have been unable to procure.

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Notes:1. For a very complete bibliography cf. P. Harmignie

“L’Etat et Ses Agents” (1911) and M. Leroy.“Syndicats et Serviees Publics” (1909) to both ofwhich I am greatly indebted.

2. For a history of the right of association in Francefrom 1789-1901, see the very able doctor’s thesisof M. Faget de Casteljau (1908).

3. “Contrat Social,” Bk., II, Ch. III. Faget de Casteljau,op. cit., III f.

4. Cf. Debidour, “L’Eglise et L’Etat de 1879 1870,” p.329 f.

5. Cf. M. H. E. Barrault’s very able thesis, “Le Droitd’association en Angleterre.”

6. “Democracy in America,” Part II, Bk. II, Ch. V.7. Cf. Duguit, “Les Transformations du Droit Public,”

Ch. i.8. Constitution of 1848, Art. 8.9. Flach, “Origines de l’ancienne France,” III, 504.10. Quoted from G. Demartial, “Le Statut des

Fonctionnaires” The remark is from a royal edictof 1356.

11. Cf. Leroy, “Les Transformations de la PuissancePublique,” p. 143 f.

12. Lefas, “L’Etat et les Fonctionnaires,” introduction.13. Cf. the first chapter of this work.14. Sc nes de la Vie Parisienne, “Les Employ s” (1836).15. For two very different demonstrations of the dif-

ficulty of obtaining a really public opinion cf.Lowell. “Public Opinion and Popular Government”with Mr. Wallas’ “Human Nature in Politics.”

16. Cf. my “Basis of Vicarious Liability” in the YaleLaw Journal for Nov. 1916, for a discussion of thenature of this change.

17. As was very strikingly evinced in America in therailway crisis which resulted in the Adamson Law.

18. Cf. the very able essay of M. Berth, “Marchands,Intellectuels, et Politiciens” in the MouvementSocialiste for 1907–8.

19. Cf. Leroy, “Syndicates et Services Publics,” Ch. III.20. F. Faure in Revue Politique et Parlementaire 1907,

“Les Syndicats des Fonctionnaires et le projet duGovernement.” I have discussed these various at-titudes below.

21. Cf. Book IX of M. Leroy’s really noble book, “LaCoutume Ouvri re” (1913).

22. On the numbers and salaries of the Civil Servicecf. Lefas, “L’Etat et les Fonctionnaires,” Chap. II.

23. For the number of associations and their growthsee the official report to the Chamber of M.Jeanneney (Hachette, 1908), p. 230 f. But he doesnot count the societies formed prior to 1901 andsuppressed by authority.

24. See the famous Toulouse speech of Oct. 28, 1900.For an almost exactly similar American utteranceof the speech cf. Mr. Johnson, a congressman forKentucky, in the Congressional Record for Oct. 10,1913.

25. Leyret, “La R publique et Les Politiciens,” p. 29 f.26. On this last evil of the very able speech cf. M.

Louis Martin inthe Chamber, Journal Officiel, Nov.10, 1905.

27. Cf. “Le Livre d’or Des Fils Papa.”28. M. Thibault, “Les Syndicats de Fonctionnaires”

(1909).29. Journal Officiel, May 9, 1907.30. P. Leroy-Beaulieu, “L’Etat Moderne et Ses

Fonctions,” p. 81.31. Journal Officiel, Nov. 20, 1905.32. Journal Officiel, Jan. 31, 1909.33. P. Harmignie, “L’Etat et Ses Agents,” p. 31.34. R forme Social, April 1, 1909, p. 417.35. Ibid.36. Journal Officiel, Feb. 8, 1905.37. On this problem in England cf. the Report of the

Royal Commission. Parl. Papers, 1914, Vol. XVI, p.95.

38. Guiraud, “L’Ecole et La Famille,” p. 103.39. Revue-Socialiste, 1909, p. 388.40. Except at England where they have largely been

met. But for a recrudescence of the evils of patron-age see an article in the Civilian for Nov. 23, ‘12.

41. Cf. the Report to the Chamber on the Budget desPostes of M. Noulens, in 1908.

42. Bulletin de Statistique du Minist re des Finances,July, 1905.

43. Journal Officiel, May 15, 1907.44. For a brilliant analysis cf. Duguit, “L’Etat,” Vol. I,

p. 475 f, and the eaustic analysis of M. Leroy in thethird chapter of his “Transformations de la Puis-sance Publique.”

45. Cf. Bonnard, “De la Repression des Fautes.”46. “Libres Entretiens,” 4th series (1907-8), p. 230 f.47. Cf. Demartial “Les Statuts des Fonctionnaires”

(1909) and Georgin. “Les Statuts desFonctionnaires.” (1911). I have discussed below thesignificance of these claims.

48. Cf. below.49. Paul-Boncour, “Les Syndicats de Fonctionnaires,”

p. 15.50. Alibert, “Les Syndicats de Fonctionnaires,” p. 84.51. Cf. the prohibitive decree of August 11, 1905.52. Cf. the Open Letter to M. Cl menceau reprinted

by Leroy in “Syndicats et Services Publics.”53. Cf. Journal Officiel, July 11, 1906, March 10, 1908,

June 22, 1909.54. Beaubois, Mouvement Socialiste, April, 1909, p.

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291.55. Bougl , “Syndicats de Fonctionnaires,” Revue

Metaphysique et Morale. 1907, p. 671.56. Fourni re “Les Fonctions de L’Etat,” Revue

Socialiste, 1907, p. 40.57. “Droit Social, Droit Individuel,” pp. 134-7.58. Cf. Berth, “Marchands, Intellectuels, Politiciens,”

in Mouvement Socialiste, 1907-8.59. As Rousseau and T. H. Green clearly perceived. I

have discussed the problem in the first chapter ofthis book.

60. Pouget, “Les Bases du Syndicalisme,” p. 21.61. Cf. Harmignie, op. cit., p. 145, Journal Officiel,

May 14, 1907 (M. Briand).62. Cf. Fourni re, Revue Socialiste, 1907, p. 40.63. Cf. Economiste Fran ais, Nov. 18, 1905, p. 737 (a

civil-servant’s letter).64. Leroy, “Transformations de La Puissance

Publique,” p. 222.65. “Syndicats et Services Publics,” p. 187.66. See Le Temps, Feb. 25, 1906.67. Revue Hebdomadaire, August 3, 1907, p. 13.68. Harmignie, op. cit., 91.69. Cf. Beaubois, Mouvement Socialiste, Jan. 1909.70. Decree of August 11, 1905.71. Harmignie, op. cit., p. 105.72. Beaubois, Mouvement Socialiste, 1905, p. 505.73. Mouvement Socialiste, 1903, p. 147.74. Though it has discussed.75. Journal Officiel, May 23, 1905. cf. the London po-

lice strike of 1918.76. Cf. M. Jaur s in L’Humanit , May 1, 1908.77. Cf. citations in “Harmignie,” op. cit., p. 126.78. Ibid., p. 128.79. And cf. Ch. Dupuy in Le Soleil, April 5, 1909.80. Journal Officiel, June 27, 1908, Guiraud, “L’Ecole

et La Famille,” p. 111.81. Journal Officiel, May 15, 1907.82. Salaun, Revue Politique et Parliamentaire, Jan.

10, 1908, p. 148 seq.83. “R gime Moderne,” Bk. II, Ch. I.84. See Tarne’s impressive remarks, “R gime

Moderne,” Vol. I, p. 170.85. Ibid., I, 168.86. “L’Administration de la France,” p. 2.87. This was very strikingly evinced in the food crisis

of 1917 which led to Mr. Hoover’s appointment asadministrator.

88. “R gime Moderne,” Vol. II, p. 240 f.89. “L’ Administration de la France,” p. 9.90. “R gime Moderne,” Vol. I, p. 213.91. Cf. the admirable remarks of M. Seignobos, “Hist.

of Cont. Europe,” p. 222 f.92. They have been brilliantly analysed, psychologi-

cally, for England by Mr. Graham Wallas in his“Human Nature in Politics” and for American So-ciety by Mr. Lippmann in his “Preface to Politics.”In institutional terms of the magistral analysis ofOstrogorski,”Democracy and the Organisation ofPolitical Parties.” I do not know of any similarFrench work, but the syndicalist criticisms of themodern state, as M. Lagardelle’s “SocialismeOuvrier” esp., Part I, are very valuable on thispoint.

93. Duguit, Droit Social, Droit Individuel, p. 129.94. Journal Officiel, M. Cl menceau, Speech of March

13, 1908.95. Mr. Wallas’ admirable remarks, “The Great Soci-

ety,” pp. 285-8, 290 f.96. For interesting evidence of a similar suspicion in

England cf. Bulletin of U. S. Bureau of Labor, Vol.5, p. 36.

97. Cf. Duguit, “Le Droit Social, Le Droit Individuel,”p. 72.

98. Cf. Duguit, “Les Transformations du Droit Pub-lic,” pp. 65-73.

99. Cf. the speech of M. Sembat at the Congress ofthe Agents des Postes, June 5, 1905; and his paperin Documents du Progr s, May, 1909, p. 408.

100. This dissatisfaction with the merely numericalsolution is admirably expressed by a publicist whocannot be accused of syndicalist ideas, M. Ch.Benoist; cf. his “crise de l’Etat Moderne.”

101. Cf. the very important remarks of M. MaximeLeroy, “Libres Entretiens,” 4me series, p. 385 f.

102. Cf. M. Leroy, “La Loi,” p. 346 f.103. This is not less true of America than of France.

Cf. Leroy, “La Loi,” p. 212 f, with the fact that menlike Professors Williston and Brannan of theHarvard Law School have been charged with thedrafting of statutes which political bodies pass intolaw. The influence of such professional autonomyas that of doctors and lawyers is, of course, analo-gous.

104. Cruet, “La Vie du Droit,” pp. 289, 332.105. Cf. Chapter I, supra, on this point.106. M. Duguit has denied this; but, as I have else-

where tried to show, on insufficient grounds.107. Cf. above all J. Paul Boncour and Charles Ma-

mas, “Un Nouveau D bat sur la D centralisation”passim. A curious book by H. Cellerier, “La PolitiqueF d raliste” has much of interest on this point. Theshort remark of M. Duguit, Droit Social, DroitIndividuel, p. 144 f, give the pith of the matter;and M. Charles Brun. “Le R gionalisme” is a use-ful summary of the whole attitude.

108. “Contrat Social,” II, IV.109. Cf. Berthod, Revue Politique et Parlementaire,

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Harold Laski

March 1906, p. 428.110. “The Great Society,” p. 324 f. On the place of the

state in the most recent system of social reconstruc-tion cf. Orage (ed.) “National Guilds,” 150, 263, andCole, “Self-government in Industry,” esp., Ch. III.

111. Resolution of the Lyons Congress, 1908. Cf.Laurier, “Les Instituteurs et Le Syndicalisme”(1908).

112. The best account of its structure is in Leroy, “LaCoutume Ouvri re,” pp. 481-575. Cf. also A.Pawlowski, “La Conf d ration G n rale du Travail.”The real secret of the difference between Ameri-can trade-unionism and that of France will be ap-parent to anyone who examines the structure andpurpose of the kindred groups in either country.

113. “Les Transformations de la Puissance Publique,”pp. 272, 278.

114. Revue Socialiste, Oct. 1905, cf. the very able ar-ticle by M. Bourget, Revue Politique etParlementaire, 1908, p. 365.

115. Cf. his note in Sirey, 1908, Vol. III, p. 83.116. Cf. Rolland, Revue de Droit Public 1909, p. 301.

Duguit, “Droit Social, Droit Individuel,” p. 147. M.Hauriou’s remarks are very striking, “Principes deDroit Public” (ed. of 1916), p. 745f. For the theo-retic basis of vicarious liability see my papers in29, Harv. L. Rev. 404 f, and 26, Yale Law Journal,105 ff.

117. Cf. my Problem of Sovereignty, pp. 27–9.118. Cf. Mermeix, “Le Syndicalisme contre le

Socialisme,” p. 83.119. Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U. S. I, 26.120. Cf. Beaubois, Mouvement Socialiste, 1905, p. 430,

and Montbruneaud in ibid., p. 295.121. The action of Congress in the passage of the

Adamson Law is, of course, a very striking exampleof this. On the theoretic issues involved cf. forAnglo-Saxon countries, the remarkable paper ofMr. E. A. Adler in 28 and 29, Harv. L. Rev.

122. Journal Officiel, May 14, 1907.123. Code P nale. art, 126.124. Duguit, “Trait de Droit Constitutionel,” I, 519 f.125. Cf. Gazette des Tribunaux, July 9, 1903, Revue

des Grands Proc s Contemporains, 1909, no. II, con-tains a full report of the leading case.

126. Journal Officiel, March 24, 1886, Ibid, 1890, p.1533.

127. Cf. M. Ramel in Journal Officiel, May 23, 1894.128. Cf. Mouvement Socialiste, March, 1905, p. 320.129. Cf. his reply to the teachers’ manifesto cited

above.130. Revue de Paris, Feb. 15, 1906, p. 883.131. Cf. M. Hauriou’s admirable note, Sirey, 1909, 3,

17.

132. Cf. Revue G n rale de l’Administration, 1906, I,203.

133. Cf. his interesting comparison in “Annales duMus e Social,” 1906 p. 61, and the paper of M.Perrinjaquet in Annales de Facult droit d’Aix 1910,p. 133.

134. Cf. Bougle, “Syndicalism et D mocratie,” p. 27 f.135. This is the well-known distinction of M. Berthel

my. “Droit Administratif ” (5 ed.), p. 78, betweenfonctionnaires d’autorit and fonctionnaires degestion. Cf. Nezard, “Th orie juridique de la fonctionpublique,” p. 461; and for criticism of it seeDuguit,”Trait de Droit Constitutionnel,” I, 429 f,where, as I think, its impossibility is effectivelydemonstrated.

136. Rolland, “Revue de Droit Public,” 1907, p. 722.The analogous position of a member of the Houseof Commons is, of course, suggestive.

137. Cf. the note of M. Hauriou in Sirey, 1909, 3. 145.138. Sirey, 1907, 3, 49.139. Cf. the report of M. Malepeyre, D.P., 1905, I, 259

“(L’Affaire Belloche).”140. But it is aceepted by many very reputable Ger-

man authorities, cf. Perthes, “Die Staatsdienst inPreussen,” p. 55, and the authorities there cited.

141. “Contrat Social,” Bk. II, Ch. IV.142. Sirey, 1899, 3, 6.143. My friend Prof. McIlwain will shortly publish a

paper in which this fact is demonstrated for thewhole of medieval English history. He has alreadyhinted at it in his paper on judicial tenure in theAmerican Pol. Sci. Rev. for May, 1913.

144. Cf. Duguit, “L’Etat, les Gouvernants et lesAgents,” p. 392, for a very complete criticism.

145. Revue P nitentaire, 1906, p. 830.146. Duguit, “L’Etat, les Gouvernants et les Agents,”

p. 4, 13 ff. Cf. “Berthel my, Revue de Droit Public,”1904, p. 20 f, and J ze, ibid., p. 517, esp. the latterfor a very clear exposition of this attitude.

147. Cf. Duguit, “Les Transformations du Droit Pub-lic,” p. 114. The system of self-government insti-tuted in 1806 for the French universities is full offascinating suggestion in this regard. Cf. Hauriou,“Principes de Droit Public” (ed. of 1916), p. 745 f.

148. The similar relation of Congress to the railwaysituation of 1916 is of interest.

149. Cf. my “ Problem of Sovereignty,” p. 12 f.150. Cf. my note on M. Duguit in the Harvard Law

Review for Nov., 1917.151. Cf. Cahen, “Les Fonctionnaires,” p. 59., M. Spuller

was then Minister of Public instruction.152. Journal Officiel, May 23, 1905.153. Journal Officiel, May 12, 1907.154. Ibid., March 13, 1908.

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155. Ibid., March 19, 1909.156. Ibid., May 14, 1907.157. Ibid., May 12, 1907.158. Speech of April 27, 1907.159. Journal Officiel, Nov. 8, 1905.160. Ibid., March 14, 1906.161. Ibid., July 12, 1906.162. Cf. the speech of M. Willm, in Ibid. May 11, 1909,

and of M. Sembat, May 14, 1909.163. Ibid., March 26, 1909.164. Cf. Paul-Boncour, “Syndicats de Fonctionnaires,”

p. 20 f.165. Cf. Cahen, “Les Fonctionnaires,” Ch. IV.166. The government has several times introduced

proposals towards this end and the whole prob-lem, seemingly with ministerial approval, has beendiscussed often in the Chamber.

167. Cf. Cahen, p. 317 f.168. “Perhaps,” became it is possible to envisage an

organisation of the civil service in which even thisintervention is unnecessary.

169. Cf. his long attack in the Revue Politique etParlementaire, March, 1906.

170. Revue Penitentiare, 1906.171. Revue de Paris, Feb. 15, 1906.172. I owe this conception to M. Duguit, but I think

that he has never emphasised sufficiently the ter-ritorial character of the state as opposed to othersocieties. I have tried to suggest the implicationsof this distinction in the first chapter of this book.It is impliedly present in the first chapter of myProblem of Sovereignty.

173. “Politics,” Bk. V. 1301 a. “All these forms of gov-ernment have a kind of justice, but tried by anabsolute standard, they are faulty and thereforeboth parties, whenever their share in the govern-ment, does not accord with their preconceivedideas, stir up revolution.” The plea of administra-tive syndicalism would seem to be that the abso-lute standard of justice cannot even be approachedwithout a radical change in the distribution of theshare in government.

174. Cf. Leroy, “Syndicats et Services Publics,” p. 267.175. Cf. M. Leroy’s acute comment, Ibid, p. 269.176. It has been published separately by Hachette.177. Rapport, p. 98.178. Ibid, p. 109.179. Cf. Duguit, “Transf. du Droit Public,” p. 156 f.180. Or by injunction as, impliedly, in the Adamson

decision.181. Cf. my “Problem of Sovereignty,” p. 27.182. As Professor Dicey seems to think, Law of the

Constitution (8th ed.), p. xxxvii.183. Cf. Pound, Address to the New Hampshire Bar

Association, June 30, 1917, p. 14 f.184. On this general evolution cf. Duguit “Les Trans-

formations du Droit Public,” Chaps. V and VII, andfor details, G. Teisser “La Responsabilit de la Puis-sance Publique.” I have dealt with its implicationsin the first chapter of this book.

185. Arr t Lot et Molinier, II, Dec., 1903, cf. Duguit,“Trait de Droit Constitutionnel,” I, 474.

186. Arr t Warier, July 7, 1905, (promotion); Arr tFortin (Aug. 6, 1908) dismissal.

187. Arr t Vilar, Aug. 6, 1909.188. Arr t of Dec. 11, 1908. “Association

Professionnelle des Employ s Civiles du minist redes colonies,” Sirey, 1909, III, 17, with note of M.Haurion.

189. Cf. Cahen, op. cit., p. 325.190. Ibid., p. 326.191. Brown v. Thomson & Co. (1912) S. C. 359. Cf. my

article in Harvard Law Review Vol. xxix p. 242f.192. It is, of course, profoundly suggestive to com-

pare this tendency with the organisation of theCouncil of National Defence instituted by Congressafter the outbreak of war.

193. On all this cf. Cahen, op. cit., pp. 266–95.194. Its beginnings in England and the United States

in such organisations as the Navy League, theHousewives’ League, etc., are of course, well-known.

195. Cf. the report of the Royal Commission on theCivil Service (1915).

196. Cf. my Problem of Sovereignty, Appendix B.197. Cf. the remarkable evidence of Mr. Justice

Brandeis before the Interstate Commerce Commis-sion of the U. S. Senate, Sixty-Second Congress,1911–12, pp. 1267–72.

198. Cf. Mr. Croly’s article in The New Republic, Vol.IX, p. 170.

199. Not the least powerful argument against directgovernment, for example, is the experience fromearly trade-union history, cf. Webb, Industrial De-mocracy, pp. 1–71.

200. On all this M. Paul-Boncour’s “F d ralismeEconomique” is an admirable mine of information.

201. Though related they are different things, cf.Duguit, Manuel de Droit Constitutionnel, p. 77 ff.

202. Cf. my Problem of Sovereignty, p. 20.203. Figgis, From Gerson to Grotius, p. 153.204. “Trevelyan’s Life,” I, 149 n.

Authority in the Modern State Harold J. Laski

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