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;

you tell them their will is sovereign, without adding that they have only a delegated sovereignty, and are bound to exercise it in strict accordance with and in obedience to the will of God. Here is your original sin. On your ground, no provision is made for liberty, none for resistance to tyranny, without resorting to the revolutionary principle, the pretended right to resist legitimate government, a contradiction in terms, and alike hostile to liberty and to authority. On our ground, the right to resist tyranny or oppression is secured without detriment to legitimate government; because the prince who transgresses his authority and betrays his trust forfeits his rights, and having lost his rights, he ceases to be sacred and inviolable.

But we are told, once more, that practically it can make no difference whether we say the will of God is sovereign, or the will of the people; for the will of the people is the true expression of the will of God, according to the maxim, Vox populi vox Dei. We deny it. The will of God is eternal and immutable justice, which the will of the people is not. The people may and do often actually do wrong. We have no more confidence in the assertion, "The people can do no wrong," than we have in its brother fiction, "The king can do no wrong." The people must be taken either as individuals or as the state. As individuals, they certainly are neither infallible nor impeccable. As the state, they are only the aggregate of individuals. And are we to be told, that from an aggregation of fallibles, we can obtain infallibility? Show us a promise from Almighty God, made to the people in one capacity or the other, that he will preserve them from error and injustice, before you talk to us of their infallibility. The people in their collective capacity, that is, the state popularly constituted, never surpass the general average of the wisdom and virtue of the same people taken individually; and as this falls infinitely below infallibility, let us hear no more of the infallibility of the people. For very shame's sake, after denying, as most of you do, the possibility of an infallible church immediately constituted and assisted by infinite wisdom, do not stultify yourselves by coming forward now to assert the infallibility of the people. If the people are infallible, what need of constitutions to protect minorities, and of contrivances for the security of individual liberty, which even we in our land of universal suffrage find to be indispensable?

But we return to our original position. All power is of

God. By him kings reign and princes decree just things. Government is a sacred trust from him, to be exercised according to his will, for the public good. The government which he in his providence has instituted for a people, and which confines itself to its delegated powers, for the true end of government, is legitimate government, whatever its form, and cannot be resisted without sin. But the government which is arbitrarily imposed upon a people, or which betrays its trust, or usurps powers seriously to the injury of its subjects, is illegitimate, and has no claim to our allegiance. Such a government may be lawfully resisted, and sometimes to resist it becomes an imperative duty.

But who is to decide whether the actual government has transcended its powers, and whether the case has occurred when we are permitted or bound to resist it? This is a grave question, because, if the fact of illegitimacy be not established by some competent authority, they who resist run the hazard of resisting legitimate government, and of ruining both their own souls and their country. Evidently the individual is not to decide for himself by his own private judgment; for that would leave every one free to resist the government whenever he should choose, which would be whenever it should command any thing not to his liking. If he had the right thus to resist, the government would have no right to coerce his obedience, and there would be an end of all government. Evidently, again, not the people, for we must take the people either as a state, or as ontside of the state. Outside of the state they are simple individuals, and, as we have seen, have not, and cannot have, the right to decide. As the state, they have no faculties and no organs but the government which is to be judged, and therefore can neither form nor express a judgment. Who, then? Evidently the power whose function it is to declare the law of God. Since the government derives its authority from God, and is amenable to his law, evidently it can be tried only under that law, and before a court which has authority to declare it, and to pronounce judgment accordingly.

But what shall be done in case there be no such court of competent jurisdiction? We reject the supposition. Almighty God could never give a law without instituting a court to declare it, and to judge of its infractions. We, as Catholics, know what and where that court is, and therefore cannot be embarassed by the question. If there are nations