which asserts the divine origin and right of government, but it is because they misapprehend the doctrine, and because they identify liberty with democracy. The doctrine, undoubtedly, does assert the sacredness, inviolability, and legitimacy of every actual political constitution, whatever its form, and that the monarchical or aristocratic order, where it is the established order, is as legitimate as the democratic. But, if liberty and democracy are one and the same thing, since the monarchical order is that which is actually the established order in most states, liberty in most states is precluded, and the people are and must be slaves. Yet is it true that liberty and democracy are identical or convertible. terms? Democracy, whose expression is universal suffrage, intrusts every citizen with a share in the administration of the government, which is and can be done by no other political order. But the elective franchise is a trust, not a right, and therefore to withhold it is not to withhold freedom. Liberty is in the possession and exercise of our natural rights. We have none of us any natural right to govern; for under the law of nature all men are equals, and no one has the right to exercise authority over others. The franchise is a municipal grant, and depends on the will of the political sovereign. Liberty, unless the question be between nation and nation, is not a predicate of the government, but of the subject, and of the subject not in his quality of a constituent element of the sovereignty, but in his quality of subject. As subject he may be free, without being intrusted with authority to govern, and therefore may be free under other forms of government than the democratic.

In fact, democratic politicians never attain to the conception of liberty. The basis of their theory of government is despotism. They make the right to govern a natural right, and differ from the confessedly despotic politicians. only in claiming for every man what these claim for only one. They make government a personal right, incident to manhood, inalienable, and inamissible,-not a solemn trust which the trustee is bound to hold and exercise according to law, and for which he is accountable. Hence it is that democracy always sooner or later terminates in despotism or autocracy. We deny that government is ever a personal right, whether of the one, the few, or the many, and therefore deny that a man has a natural right to a share in the administration. He only has the right to whom the power is delegated by the competent authority, and he holds

it, not as a personal right, but as a trust. Consequently, we do not concede that the establishment of the democratic régime is at all essential to the establishment or maintenance of liberty. He is free, enjoys his liberty, who is secured in the possession and enjoyment of all his natural rights; and this is done wherever the legitimate authority governs, and governs according to the principles of justice. We are aware of no form of government that cannot so govern, or which cannot also govern otherwise, if it choose.

We are republicans, because republicanism is here the established order, but we confess that we do not embrace, and never have embraced, as essential to liberty, or even as compatible with liberty, the popular democratic doctrine of the country. We beg leave to refer here to our remarks on Democracy which we wrote in 1837, and published in the first number of The Boston Quarterly Review, January, 1838.* When we wrote them, we had the reputation of being one of the stanchest friends of liberty and the most ultra radicals in the country, a fact which we commend to those of our former friends who are now so ready to represent us as having gone over to the side of despotism. We should not now call the doctrine democracy, as we did when we wrote it, nor should we use certain locutions, to be detected here and there, dictated by an erroneous theology; but the doctrine itself is our present doctrine, as clearly and as energetically expressed as we could now express it. It seems to us to contain an unanswerable refutation of the popular democratic principle and a triumphant vindication of the sovereignty of justice,-therefore, of the divine origin and right of government; for justice, in the sense the writer uses it, is identical with God, who alone is absolute, immutable, eternal, and sovereign Justice.

The purpose of the writer was evidently to obtain a solid foundation for individual freedom. If he, in order to do this, found and proved it necessary to assert the divine origin and right of government, to rise above the sovereignty of kings, of nobles, and even of the people, to the eternal and underived sovereignty of God, King of kings, and Lord of lords, how should we suspect ourselves of being hostile to liberty, when asserting the same doctrine in defence of the rights of government? Having for years proved

*Brownson's Works, Vol. XV., pp. 4-11.

the doctrine to be favorable to liberty, how could we believe the public would be so unjust to us as to accuse us of favoring despotism, because we undertook to prove it equally favorable to civil government? Why are we to be classed as hostile to freedom, because we defend in the interests of authority the doctrine which we have uniformly asserted as the only solid foundation of freedom? Whether we are right or wrong in the doctrine itself, or in its application, would it be any remarkable stretch of charity to give us credit for believing ourselves no less favorable to liberty in bringing the doctrine out in defence of authority, than we were in bringing it out in defence of the rights of the subject? Are liberty and authority necessarily incompatible one with the other? Or is it a blunder to derive both from the same source, and to suppose that what establishes the legitimacy of authority must needs establish also the legiti macy of liberty?

But is the doctrine of the divine origin and right of government hostile to liberty? If government derives its existence and its right from God, it can have no power but such as God delegates to it. But God is just, justice itself, and therefore can delegate to the government no power to do what is not just. Consequently, whenever a government exercises an unjust power or its powers unjustly, it exceeds its delegated powers, and is an usurper, a tyrant, and as such forfeits its right to command. Its acts are lawless, because contrary to justice, and do not bind the subject, because he can be bound only by the law. If they do not bind, they are null, and the attempt to enforce obedience to them may be resisted. Is it difficult, then, to understand, that, while the doctrine asserts the obligation in conscience of obedience to legitimate authority, to the government as long as it does not command any thing unjust, it condemns all illegal authority, and deprives the government of its right to exact obedience the moment it ceases to be just? What is there in this hostile to liberty? Is my liberty abridged when I am required to obey justice? If so, be good enough to tell me whence I obtain the right to do wrong?

Modern politicians assert, in opposition to the sovereignty of God, the sovereignty of the people. The will of the people is with them the ultimate authority. Is it they or we who are the truest friends of liberty? Liberty cannot be conceived without justice, and wherever there is justice there is liberty. Liberty, then, must be secured just in pro

VOL. XVI-5

portion as we secure the reign of justice. This is done in proportion to the guaranties we have that the will which rules shall be a just will. Is there any one who will venture to institute a comparison between the will of the people and the will of God? No one? Then who can pretend that the doctrine which makes the will of the people the sovereign is as favorable to liberty as the doctrine which makes the will of God the sovereign? The will of God is always just, because the divine will is never separable from the divine reason; but the will of the people may be, and often is, unjust, for it is separable from that reason, the only fountain of justice. We make the government a government of law, because we found it on will and reason; these modern politicians make it one of mere will, for they have no assurance that the will of the people will always be informed by reason. By what right, then, do they who maintain the very essence of despotism charge us with being hostile to liberty? Wherefore should we not, as we do, denounce them as the enemies, nay, the assassins of liberty,-men who salute her, and at the same instant smite her under the fifth rib?

But, it is gravely argued, if you deny the popular origin and right of government, you are a monarchist or an aristocrat. We deny the conclusion. If people would pay a little attention to what we actually say, before conjuring up their objections, they would, perhaps, reason less illogically. We raise no question between the sovereignty of kings and nobles and that of the people. What we deny is the human origin and right of government. We deny all undelegated sovereignty on earth, whether predicated of the king, the nobility, or the people. The question we are discussing lies a little deeper and a little further back than our modern politicians are aware. They are political atheists, and recognize for the state no power above the people; we are Christians, and hold that all power, that is, all legal authority, is from God; therefore we deny that kings, nobilities, or the people have any authority in their own right, and maintain that the state itself, however constituted, has only a delegated authority, and no underived sovereignty. They place the people back of the state, and maintain that it derives all its powers from the people, and is therefore bound to do their will; we tell them that the people themselves are not ultimate-have no power to delegate, except the power which Almighty God delegates to them, and this power

they, as trustees, are bound to exercise according to his will, and are, therefore, not free to exercise it according to their own. They are desirous mainly of getting rid of kings and nobles, and, to do so, they assert the sovereignty of the popular will; we wish to get rid of despotism and to guard against all unjust government, and we assert the sovereignty of God over kings, nobles, and people, as well as over simple private consciences. Is this intelligible? Who, then, is the party hostile to liberty?

But, reply these same politicians, we do not mean to deny the sovereignty of God; we only mean that the authority he delegates is delegated to the people, and not to the king or the nobility. If by people you understand the people as the nation with its political faculties and organs, and not the people as mere isolated individuals, who disputes you? Who denies that kings and nobilities hold their powers, if not from, at least for, the people, and forfeit them the moment they refuse to exercise them for the common good of the people? What are you dreaming of? Do you suppose all men have lost their senses because you have lost yours? Who born and brought up under a republic, who acquainted with and embracing the teachings of Catholic theologians, is likely to hold the slavish doctrine, that the people are for the government, not the government for the people? Do you suppose that the republican and Catholic advocates the divine right of kings, and passive obedience, -the invention of Protestant divines, set forth and defended by that pedantic Scotchman, the so-called English Solomon? Who that has meditated on the saying of our blessed Lord, "Let him that would be greatest among you be your servant," can hold that a prince receives power, or has any right to power, but for the public good? We do not deny the responsibility of kings and nobles to the nation, or that the nation may, under certain circumstances, and observing certain forms, call them to an account of their stewardship. But if this removes your objections to our doctrine, it by no means removes ours to yours. We complain of you, not because you make princes responsible to the people, that is, to the nation, but because you leave the people irresponsible, and make them subject to no law but their own will. You simply transfer the despotism from the one or the few to the many, and deny liberty by resting in the arbitrary will of the people. You stop with the people, and, if you do not deny, you at least fail to assert, the sovereignty of God;