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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924016879631 
 
AUTHORITY IN 
 THE MODERN STATE 
 
PUBLISHED ON THE FOUNDATION 
 
 ESTABLISHED IN MEMORY OF 
 
 THEODORE L. GLASGOW 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE 
 MODERN STATE 
 
 BY 
 HAROLD J. LASKI 
 
 2 1 
 
 SOMETIME EXHIBITIONEB OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD: 
 
 OP THE DEPAKTMENT OF HISTORY IN 
 
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
 
 rtr""""""'!v, 
 
 NEW HAVEN •■ m \^- 
 
 YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS ^' 
 
 LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 MDCCCCXIX s 
 
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 V.^/*^^ 
 
 COPYBIGHT, 1919, BY 
 
 YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 , Jsr 
 
 { - 
 
 "Av . f' 
 
 
THE 
 
 THEODORE L. .GLASGOW 
 
 MEMORIAL PUBLICATION 
 
 FUND 
 
 The present volume is the first 
 work published by the Yale 
 University Press on the Theodore 
 L. Glasgow Memorial Publica- 
 tion Fund. This Foundation was 
 estabUshed September 17, 1918 
 by an anonymous gift to Yale 
 University in memory of Fhght 
 Sub-Lieut. Theodore L. Glasgow, 
 R. N. He was born in Montreal, 
 Canada, May 25, 1898, the 
 eldest son of Robert and Louise 
 C. Glasgow, and was educated 
 at the University of Toronto 
 Schools and at the Royal Mili- 
 tary College, Kingston. In 
 August, 1916, he entered the 
 Royal Naval Air Service and 
 in July, 1917, went to France 
 with the Tenth Squadron at- 
 tached to the Twenty-Second 
 Wing of the Royal Flying Corps. 
 A month later, August 19, 1917, 
 he was killed in action on the 
 Ypres front. 
 
TO 
 MR. JUSTICE HOLMES 
 
 AND 
 FELIX FRANKFURTER 
 
 THE TWO YOUNGEST OF MY FRIENDS 
 
I AM tempted to believe that what we call necessary in- 
 stitutions are often no more than institutions to which we 
 have grown accustomed, and that in matters of social 
 constitution the field of possibilities is much more exten- 
 sive than men Uving in their various societies are ready 
 
 to imagine. 
 
 Recollections of de Tocqueville, 
 Page 101. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THIS volume is in some sort the sequel to a book on the 
 problem of sovereignty which I pubHshed in March, 
 1917. It covers rather broader ground, since its main 
 object is to insist that the problem of sovereignty is only a 
 special case of the problem of authority, and to indicate what I 
 should regard as the main path of approach to its solution. 
 Where, therefore, the previous studies were, in the main, nega- 
 tive and critical, this book is positive and constructive. In the 
 main, the evidence upon which its conclusions are based is 
 French. That is because an earlier study of de Maistre con- 
 vinced me that it is in France, above all, that the ideals I have 
 tried to depict are set in the clearest and most suggestive Ught. 
 I had originally intended to follow this volume by a third 
 essay on the political theory of the Conciliar_ Movemejit. But 
 it now seems to me more useful to attempt a definitely con- 
 structive analysis of. politics in the perspective set by the first 
 chapter of this present volume. Accordingly I have planned 
 a full book on the theory of the state which I hope to have 
 ready within a reasonable time. 
 
 For so modest a volume this book, Uke its predecessors, has 
 debts too immense to go without acknowledgement. Among 
 the dead, I would like to emphasise how very much I have 
 learned from Acton and Maitland; their writings have been 
 to me a veritable store-house of inspiration. Among living 
 men, I owe much to Professor Duguit of Bordeaux, to Dr. 
 Figgis, and, in spite of, and perhaps because of, our differences, 
 to Professor Dicey. My old tutor, Mr. Ernest Barker of New 
 College, is the unconscious sponsor of this, as of my earlier 
 book. Indeed, if it has merit of any kind, it is to the teaching 
 of politics in the Modern History School at Oxford that I would 
 ascribe it. 
 
 Friends have been generous in their counsel. My colleagues. 
 Dean Pound and Professor Mcllwain, have been untiring in 
 their coastant encouragement; and from Dean Pound's own 
 
PREFACE 
 
 writings, soon, one may hope, to be collected in some more 
 permanent form, I learned the value of ,3. pragmatic theory of 
 state-function. My friends of the New Republic, particularly 
 Mr. Francis Hackett, and Mr. Herbert Croly, have given me 
 generous assistance. Mr. Graham Wallas has lent me great 
 aid by friendly and suggestive counsel; and I found his Great 
 Society" an invaluable guide to many difficult paths. To an 
 unknown critic in the London Times I owe the debt that keen 
 comment must always create. 
 
 But the great obhgation of the book is to Mr. Justice Holmes. 
 It goes too deep for words; and I can only emphasise my con- 
 sciousness that I shall never know how much I have in these 
 years learned from the talks we have had and the letters he has 
 written. They are things that come but once or twice in a 
 Hfetime. 
 
 One more personal word the reader will perhaps allow me. 
 I began my other book with a sense that it might give pleasure 
 to my friend A. R. Herron. He was killed before I could finish 
 it. This book would have gone to my friend Frank Haldinstein, 
 scholar of Christ Church and captain in the Royal Engineers. 
 But his name, too, has been added to the Ust on which the 
 Oxford of my generation will, with undying pride, write those 
 of Arthur Heath, of NoweH Sievers, and of A. D. Gillespie — 
 all of them of New College. When I look back on certain magic 
 nights at Oxford and re-read these pages in the light of their 
 memory, I realise how halting they are compared to the things 
 they would have said. But I take it that for them the one 
 justification of this conflict would have been the thought that 
 we who are left • are trying in some sort to understand the 
 problems of the state they died to make free. To have known 
 them was an education in Uberty. 
 
 Lastly, as also firstly, every page of this book has in it the 
 help my wife has given me. But to do more than mention that 
 is unnecessary for either of us. 
 
 HAROLD J. LASKI. 
 
 April 21, 1918. 
 
 Harvard University. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter One: AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 I. The Origins of the Modern State 
 
 II. State and Government 
 
 III. The Nature of Obedience 
 
 IV. The Limitations of Power 
 
 V. The Attack on the Secular State 
 
 VI. The Division of Power 
 
 VII. The Organisation of Power 
 VIII. The Significance of Freedom 
 
 IX. The Direction of Events 
 
 X. Conclusion "^ 
 
 Chapter Two: BONALD 
 
 I. The ImpUcation of Theocracy 
 
 II. The Basis of TraditionaUsm 
 
 III. The PoUtical Theory of Bonald . 
 
 IV. The Attack on the Individual 
 V. Implications of the Attack . 
 
 VI. The ReUgious Aspect of the State 
 
 VII. Criticisms .... 
 
 VIII. The Revival of TraditionaUsm 
 
 IX. The TraditionaUsm of M. Brunetifere 
 
 X. The Traditionalism of M. Bourget 
 
 XI. The Significance of Variety 
 
 Chapter Three: LAMENNAIS 
 
 I. The Problem of Lamennais 
 
 II. The Church in the Napoleonic Age 
 
 III. Early Ultramontanism 
 
 IV. The Glorification of Rome . 
 V. The Attack on the Secular State 
 
 VI. The Transition to LiberaUsm 
 
 VII. The Foundation of L'Avenir 
 
 VIII. The Appeal to Rome . 
 
 IX. The Condemnation 
 
 X. The Red Cap on the Cross . 
 
 19 
 26 
 32 
 
 42 
 52 
 69 
 81 
 89 
 109 
 119 
 
 123 
 127 
 131 
 136 
 143 
 157 
 161 
 166 
 171 
 177 
 187 
 
 189 
 191 
 199 
 205 
 217 
 225 
 232 
 241 
 247 
 255 
 
16 CONTENTS 
 
 XI. Implications 259 
 
 XII. The Inheritance • 267 
 
 XIII. Conclusion . 280 
 
 Chapter Four: ROYER-COLLARD 
 
 I. The Significance of the Restoration 281 
 
 II. The Theory of the Charter . 287 
 
 III. Necessary Freedoms «. 293 
 
 IV. Implications . . 301 
 V. Ethics and Politics 310 
 
 Chapter Five: ADMINISTRATIVE SYNDICALISM IN 
 FRANCE 
 
 I The Right of Association 321 
 
 II. The Complaints of the Civil Service 326 
 
 III. The Claims of the Civil Service 336 
 
 IV. ImpKcations . 342 
 V. The Attack of the Jurists 353 
 
 VI. The Attack of the Politicians . 365 
 
 VII. The Movement Towards Reform . 376 
 
 Appendix: NOTE ON THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF LA- 
 
 MENNAIS . . 388 
 
 Index 
 
 391 
 
AUTHORITY IN 
 THE MODERN STATE 
 
CHAPTER ONE 
 
 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 I. THE ORIGINS OF THE MODERN STATE 
 
 MAN is a community-building animal: it is by reverent 
 contact with Aristotle's fundamental observation that 
 every political discussion must now begiii. We start 
 with the one compulsory form of human association— the state — 
 as the centre of analysis. Yet there are few subjects upon 
 which enquiry is so greatly needed as upon the mechanisms 
 by which it hves. Outside our state-context we are, after all, 
 largely unintelhgible, must be, as Aristotle so scornfully pro- 
 claimed, beasts or gods who defy interpretation. Even in 
 birth we inherit the qualities of unnumbered generations so 
 that a bias is present before ever it has obtained expression. 
 This emphasis upon state-life has become more vital as the 
 scale of existence has become progressively greater. To the 
 unity of interdependence, at least, the world has been reduced, 
 so that, today, the whim of a New York millionaire may well 
 affect the lives of thousands in the cotton-mills of Bombay.^ 
 Not that state-history can in any adequate sense be made 
 the biography of great men. We can even less today accept- 
 the epic-theory of Carlyle than that so characteristically con- 
 tributed by Bolingbroke to Voltaire when he found in the 
 interplay of personal fantasy the true source of events. Not, 
 of course, that history will ever be an exact science in the 
 sense that exactness belongs to mathematical enquiry. It is 
 only magnificent scioUsts like Machiavelli who dare to look 
 upon history as an endless cycle. For most it will mainly 
 be what Thucydides strove to make of it — the great store- 
 house of political wisdom. For all history that is not merely 
 annalistic must lead to the formulation of conclusions. It has 
 in it the full materials for a state-philosophy simply because 
 
 ' G. Wallas, "The Great Society," p. 3 f. 
 
20 
 
 AUTHORITY INTHE MODERN STATE 
 
 the evidence we possess so largely relates to political Me. 
 From Aristotle down to our own time the one constant effort 
 has been the determination of the conditions upon which that 
 life should be lived. And, where the effort has been most 
 ] fruitful, it has been induction from experience. Systenas have 
 helped us httle enough. The vague ideal of a revolution, the 
 chance phrase of an orator, the incisive induction of some 
 thinker more deeply-seeing than the rest — ^it is upon these 
 that, for the most part, our creeds have been builded. The 
 sources of our principles are as varied as human experience 
 simply because there has, from the outset, been no large tract 
 of human life with which the state has not concerned itself. 
 
 Certainly the state has about it the majesty of history; and 
 it is old enough to make its present substance seem permanent 
 to the mass of men. It has become so integral a part of our 
 Kves that the fact of its evolution is no longer easy to re- 
 member.2 It has almost passed beyond the region where 
 criticism may enter by reason of the very greatness of its 
 mission. Aristotle's formula for the expression of its purpose 
 \ has lent it a great, if specious aid. The realisation of indi- 
 vidual virtue in the common good' is a conception fine enough, 
 in all conscience, to suffuse with a glamour of which the treach- 
 ery is too late discovered the processes by which it moves along 
 its way. The conception is yet inadequate because it fails to 
 particularise those upon whom it is intended that benefit shall 
 be conferred. Aristotle himself had certainly what the modern 
 age would regard as an impossibly narrow conception of citizen- 
 ship;^ and Plato's virtue is so confined to the special experiences 
 to which it is annexed as to limit to but few the full enjojTnent 
 ^f capacities.^ The nature of the state, moreover, has become 
 
 '' A book that would do on the grand scale what Mr. Edward Jenks so 
 Jbrilliantly attempted in his "Short History of Politics" is badly needed; 
 but it would need the learning of Lord Acton combined with the large 
 vision of Mr. Graham Wallas to write it. 
 * * » Cf. T. H. Green, " Collected Works," Vol. II, pp. 650-1. 
 
 ■"'Politics";" 11, 5. 1264 b. 
 
 * Cf. the admirable remarks of Mr. Barker in his "Political Thought 
 of Plato and Aristotle," p. 113. I think his argument is even more strongly 
 reinforced when the attempt of the Meno to specialise dpo-^ into a purely 
 functional quality is remembered. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 21 
 
 so intimately involved with that of society that we tend, like 
 Hegel, to speak of it'less in terms of logic than of rhapsody.^ 
 
 Yet the very fact that it has a history should surely make 
 us cautious. The state is no unchanging organisation. It id 
 hardly today eitiier in purpose or in method what it was to the 
 Greek philosophers, or to the theologians of the medieval time. 
 Themedieval state i s a church ; and the differentiation of civil 
 from religiousTunction is a matter of no slight difficulty.' In 
 the form in which it becomes immediately recognisable to our- 
 selves^ themodern state is, clearly enoughj the offspring of the 
 ReformatiofiT^nd it bears upon its body the tragic scars of 
 that mighty conflict. What it is, it has essentially become by 
 virtue of the experience it has encountered. Upon its face is 
 written large the effort of great thinkers to account for the 
 unique claims it has made upon the loyalties of men. Nor is 
 their thought less clearly present, even if it be but by impli- 
 cation, in the poUcy of those who have directed political 
 destinies. 
 
 The modern state, we urge, is the outcome of the religious 
 struggle of the sixteenth century; or, at least, it is from that 
 crisis that it derive s the qua Uties today most especially its own. 
 The notion of grsingle_and~unrveigaLajjthorg^_coinmensiira.t,e 
 
 with the bounds o f social hfe^was ut terly destroyed when Luth er 
 appealed to the'princes" in the interests of rehgiou s reform. 
 T^tSrnaruiiity^was destroyed to be replaced by a system of 
 <|eparateliiii{ie^aiidT;he^ weapoh of diyine^HgELwas the instru- 
 ment he'fbrgea toThat end.* What, virtually, he did was to 
 aesnnae the sacredness of power, and thus, by implication, the 
 eternaljrightness of it s purpo ses. He builded better than he 
 "feew. T^l-eliglous disruption sync hronised with the iull 
 
 « Cf. "Philosophy of Right" (trans. Dyde), p. 278. The very_brilh;^arit 
 paper of Mr. Bosanquet printed in the International Crisis, p. 132 f., 
 hardly speaks a different language. Cf. also the amaizing citation from 
 Sir Henry Jones in J. A. Hobson, "Democracy after the War," p. 118. 
 
 ' As Dr. Figgis has .very brilliantly shown, "Churches i'lM'he ModeraT 
 State," Appendix B. 
 
 8 Or perhaps rediscovered. The political theory of the early fathers 
 never, of course, dissented from the sacredness of secular power. It is only 
 in the excitement of the investure controversy that its indirect derivation 
 began to be seriously urged. 
 
22 
 
 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 realisation gl national consciousness in Western Europe, and 
 tlie modern state is clearly visible as a territorial society divided 
 into government and subjects. The great preamble to the 
 Statute of Appeals^— the one statutory example of English 
 Byzantinism — is no more than official announcement that the 
 English state permits no question of Henry's complete sover- 
 eignty. Government, for the most part, was royal; for over the 
 free towns of Germany, and the ItaHan cities, was cast the du- 
 bious cloak of in^jerialjuzerainty. Holland had not yet arisen 
 to suggest the problems of a sovereign republic. 
 
 But state and society are not yet equated. That is the work 
 of the thinkers of the Counter-Reformation. The church might, ' 
 as in England, assume a national form; but religious difference 
 went deep enough to Hmit state-absorptiveness. France learned 
 a partial toleration from the misery of civil war; and almost a 
 century of social and economic confusion was necessary before 
 Germany took a similar road. Not that this early toleration is 
 at all complete; it is born too painfully for that. It is, at most, 
 the sense of the French poUtiques that the state must not perish 
 for religion's sake. It admits the impossibihty of making men 
 sacrifice their consciences upon a single altar. The task of con- 
 viction was no easy one, and the lesson was only partially learned. 
 Europe, in what at least the medieval thinkers deemed most 
 fundamental, had become accustomed to unity of outlook. 
 Unity of outlook was secured by reference of power to a single 
 centre. The partition of Western civihsation into a medley of 
 reUgious systems developed problems of the first importance. 
 A man might owe allegiance to Rome in one set of opinions and 
 to London in another. He might think as Pius V bade him in 
 matter of.transubstantiation, and in those great political ques- 
 tions of 1588 take the fleet into the EngUsh channel against the 
 papally-approved might of Spain. Your Cathohc might be a 
 member of the English state, but there was always, for him a 
 power outside. For some, it might preside over aU indirectly;" 
 for other|||t might only in its own sphere be supreme. But, 
 where conflict came, men hke Parsons would show that to 
 
 » 25 H. VIII, c. 19. 
 
 " As the Jesuits argued. Cf. Figgis, "From Gerson to Grotius" (2d ed.). 
 p. 203 f . ' 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 23 
 
 attack the state was not an onslaught on the fabric of society.'^ 
 Thus, from the outset of its modern history, the problem is 
 raised as to the authority to be possessed by the state. Not 
 Romanists alone doubt its absoluteness. Archbishop Whitgift 
 set the keynote to the temper that is turned into theory. He 
 was by nature inapt to grasp the niceties of poUtical meta- 
 physics, and a Presbyterian theory which, like that of Cart- 
 wright, struck at the root of state-omnipotence aroused him to 
 fierce anger." From the threshold of the seventeenth century 
 what the state demands is the whole of man's allegiance lest, 
 in seeking less, it should obtain nothing. James I had at least 
 a logician's mind. Aiming at supreme power for the state he 
 deemed himself to personify, he could not doubt that Presby- 
 terian structure was subversive of his whole position. If the 
 ultimate seat of authority were not with himself, he seemed 
 already on the threshold of anarchy. The only difference be- 
 tween Parliament and the Stuarts was as to the place in which 
 that supreme power resided; and ParUament made the Civil 
 War the proof of its hypothesis. Hobbes only got his volume 
 printed under the Commonwealth because it conveniently 
 applied to any form of despotism. 
 LThe medieval worship of unity," in fact, is inherited by the 
 modern state; and what changes in the four centuries of its 
 modern history is simply the place in which the controlling 
 factor of unity is to be foundZZJo the Papacy it seemed clear 
 in medieval times that the power to bind and loose had given 
 it an authority without hmit or question. j?he_ modern stat e 
 inherit s the papal prerogative . It must, then, govern all; and 
 to^overn all there must be no Umit to the power of those instru- 
 ments by which it acts. Catholic and Nonconfarrnist^are_alike 
 excluded fromcitizenshig_simgIy^^^^^^^_t^^ it 
 
 deeined^jhElS^sg^Qrii^^a^hxyity. They refuse absorption 
 by its mstruments, and the penalty^fef usal is exclusion." The 
 
 " Cf . Prof. McHwain's brilliant introduction to his edition jf the "Political 
 Works of James I" (Harvard University Press, 1918). 
 
 « Strype, "Life of Whitgift," II, 22 ff. 
 
 " Cf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," p. 2. 
 
 " This is what Mr. Seaton, in his admirable book, calls the second stage 
 of religious persecution. "Toleration under the Later Stuarts," p. 6 f. 
 
24 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 representatives of the state must be sovereign, and if the Stuart 
 abuse their prerogative, the result is, not its limitation but it 
 transference to Parliament. Always the stern logic of theon 
 seems to imply that the dominating institution is absolute 
 Locke, indeed, saw deeper, and argued to a state that though 
 it had already won its freedom that power must be limited bj 
 
 -' its service to the purposes it is intended to accomplish.'^ Bui 
 the accident of foreign riile gave that poKer_a basis in ^iii 
 
 I could, relatively ^t least to- contuiental faat,_bB:iermed populai 
 
 ^-^onsent. Jlienceforth the sovereignty of ParHamentiecame 
 the fundamental" dogroa of English^ constitutionalism. With- 
 
 . out, there might be the half articulate control of public opinion 
 but that, as Rousseau said,'^ was free only at election time. Itj 
 control was essentially a reserve-power, driven to action only a1 
 moments of decisive crisis. "A supreme, irresistible, uncontrol- 
 la'^le authority, in which the jura summa imperii or rights ol 
 sovereignty reside"" is, as Blackstone says, the legal theory 
 which lies at the root of the EngHsh State. For practical pur- 
 poses, that is to say, the sovereignty of the English state means 
 the sovereignty of the King in Parhament.** 
 
 France travelled more slowly, but, always, it was in the same 
 direction she was travelUng. Her earUest poHtical speculatioD 
 was, as Bodin bears witness, already of a sovereign state; and 
 it is, as he emphasises, a state which boasts a royal organ to 
 declare its sovereign purposes. Bossuet makes it clear that the 
 centraUsing efforts of her three great ministers had not been 
 vain; and it was not merely Voltaire's acid humor that made 
 him equate the sovereignty of France with the will of Louis XIV. 
 But, sooner or later, abuse involves disruption. The atmos- 
 phere of the eighteenth century was not favourable to the 
 retention of a belief in divinities. The profound speculation oi 
 Montesquieu, the unanswerable questions of Rousseau, .herald 
 a transference of power similar to that of England. The people 
 becomes master in its own house, and the dogma of national 
 
 '* Second treatise, Ch. XI, Sec. 14 f . 
 i« "Ctontrat Social," Bk. Ill, Ch. XV. 
 " Comm. I, 48. 
 
 ■» I think this would express, somewhat differently, the point made bj 
 Professor Dioe^ in the famous first chapter of his "Law of the Constitution.' 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 25 
 
 sovereignty becomes the corner stone of the reconstructed 
 edifice." But as in England, the sovereign people is too large 
 for continuous action. Its powers become delegated to the 
 complex of institutions we call government. Thenceforth, for 
 general purposes, it is through this channel that the state-will^ 
 is expressed. Parliament is the nation, and its sovereignty is 
 there given adequate fulfilment.^" Only on rare occasions, as 
 in 1830 and in 1848, is there sign of clear dissent from govern- 
 mental purposes. Only then, that is to say, can we argue a 
 revocation of powers. 
 
 Nor is American evolution at all different, though here there 
 are more checks upon the exercise of the governmental power.^^ 
 The people is ultimately sovereign in the sense that, sooner or 
 later, it may, through proper reforms, or, in the last resort,'^ 
 through revolution, get itself obeyed. There is no immediately 
 sovereign body, as in England or in France. Certain hmitations 
 upon state and federal government are taken as fundamental 
 and continuous expressions of popular desire; and the rights 
 thus enshrined in the constitution it is the business of the' 
 Supreme Court to maintain. Yet, even here, it is, for most 
 purposes, a govern mental will that we at each moment en- 
 counter. ' The problem of authority may ultimately resolved 
 itself into a question of what a section of the American people, 
 strong enough to get its will enforced, may desire.^'' But such 
 continuous resolve as the business of state daily requires one 
 hundred milUon people cannot directly undertake. What here 
 becomes essential is the device of representation. Sovereignty, 
 therefore, in America, as elsewhere, is the acts of government 
 as the people and the Supreme Court acquiesce in their enforce-* 
 ment. The multiphcity of governmental powers demanded by 
 the federal system makes no difference; it is merely a question 
 
 " Cf. the suggestive brochure of Hauriou, "Du Souverainet^ Nationale." 
 
 *» The reader can get a clear idea of this article by comparing the speeches 
 of M. Barthou, March 19, 1909; of M. Ribot, May 14, 1907; of M. 
 Deschonel, May 2d, 1907; and of M. CMmenceau, March 13, 1908— all 
 in the Chamber of Deputies. I have discussed them below in the chapter 
 on administrative syndicalism. 
 
 '' Cf. the interesting remarks of Boutmy, "Studies in Constitutional 
 Law" (trans. Dicey), p. 159 f. 
 
 22 As in the Civil War. 
 
26 
 
 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 of administrative convenience. The fundamental fact is thai 
 when we speak of acts done by America the actor is a govern- 
 ment of which the subjects are more or less inert instnunents, 
 In that sense American evolution, though superficially differeni 
 in form is, in substantial character, similar to the development 
 of the European system. 
 
 II. STATE AND GOVERNMENT 
 
 It is, then, with a sovereign state that we are today confronted. 
 For its fundamental agents, that is to say, there is claimed a 
 power from which no appeal is to be made. The attributes of 
 sovereignty have been admirably described by Palsy. Its 
 power, he says,^ "may be termed atfeolute, omnipotent, uncon- 
 trollable, arbitrary, despotic, and is aUke so in all countries." 
 Limitation of any kind it jdoes not therefore admit; it acts as 
 it deems adequate to its purposes. But the state, of course, 
 may assume a variety of forms. It may, as in the France of the 
 ancien regime, be an absolute monarchy. It may, as in the 
 England of the eighteenth century, be a narrow oligarchy, or, 
 as in modern America, its form may be democratic. The sub- 
 stance-o£-the^ate, however, does not so vary. It is always a 
 teiaatiQngl^oc^y in which there is a distinction between gov- 
 ernment aSdTsubjects. The question of form must, of course, 
 affect the question of substance; but its re3,l reference is, in 
 fact, to the prevaihng type of government. That is, in part, a 
 question of those who share in power; in part, also, a question 
 of the basis upon which responsibihty is" to rest. 
 "^^ Suchji_definition_excludes the equation of state with society. 
 TEe^xclusion^isinade because. there_ are obviously social rela- 
 tionships which can not be expressed through the state. It may 
 be true that man's nature is determined by the environment 
 in which he lives", but that environment is not merely a state- 
 creation. No one would claim in England, for example, that 
 the Roman Catholic church is a part of the state; but it is yet 
 obvious that it acts upon its members as a social determinant. 
 The family is an institution of society, and no one will doubt 
 that the state may affect it; but it is not merely a part of the 
 state. The state is concerned only with those social relations 
 ^ "Moral and Political Philosophy," Bk. VI, Ch. VI. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 27 
 
 ligt^YprpgB thorngplypp hy njpajip of govprnr ngnt." That is not 
 Q say that the province of the government may not be wide; 
 nd, indeed, as at Geneva under Calvin, there may be almost 
 lO element in life with which it may not attempt to concern 
 tself . But inmiediately it is perceived that there are relation- 
 hips that in fact espap©\its purview, ii^becomes obvious that 
 he state is only a ^^cie^f a larger gem^and the nature of 
 ts especial problemsBegins to emerge. For churches, trade-"" 
 inions, and a thousand other associations are all societies. They < 
 efuse absorption by the 5tate and thereby raise, sometimes in 
 icute form, the definition of their connexion with it. Churches, 
 iertainly, have denied to the state any absolute sovereignty; 
 )y which they mean that the canons of their life are not subject 
 ,0 the control of its instruments.^^ Trade-unions have been 
 lardly less defiant. The state, indeed, has rarely hesitated to 
 ilaim paramount authority, even if, on the occasions of conflict, 
 t has not been overwhelmingly successful.''* The claim is 
 laturally important; but, manifestly, if it has not, in the event, 
 Deen able to prove itself, it demands more rigid enquiry. 
 
 It makes clear, however, the point upon which insistence, 
 nust be laid. Whatever power the state may assume, , we have 
 ilways its division into a small number who exert active power, 
 md a larger number who, for the most part, acquiesce in 'the 
 decisions that are made.^ Obviously, of cours/i^ the fact of 
 acquiescence is vital; for Hume long ago made it a common- 
 place that ultimate power is always on the sideof the governed.^ 
 The fact of power may be most variously justified. Divine 
 
 " Mr. Cole, indeed, actually defines the state in terms of government 
 3nly ("Self-Government in Industry," p. 70 f.), but though this is a result 
 .argely true it seems to me, for reasons explained below, the second and 
 lot the first state of the process. 
 
 25 Cf. Hansard, 4th Series, Vol. 115, Sep. 2d, 1902, p. 1014. Mr. Perks, 
 "The question whether a Nonconformist will be justified or not in resisting 
 the rate is a matter for each individual conscience, and having settled 
 that question for himself, we will not be likely to be influenced in the 
 slightest degree by the fact that he may lose his right as a citizen." 
 
 " Cf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," Chs. II-V for some instances. 
 
 " Cf. Duguit, "L'Etat: Le Droit Objectif," pp. 242-54. 
 
 " "Essays: of the First Principles of Government" (World's Classics ed., 
 p. 29). 
 
28 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 right, utility, or social contract are all methods that have oi 
 occasion been used to demonstrate legitimacy. What, in gen 
 eral, we assume is an identity of interest between governmen 
 and subjects. We lend tn f rnvernment the authority of the stati 
 npnnjjie basis nfa"7^r>nvjf- t"ion that its will is a. will efFectingr ^ .}^, 
 purpose fo r which the state was founded. The state, -m 
 b roadly say, exists to promote the good life, however variousi} 
 definedj and we gi.ve government th ^ powp.r tn aM. iny t lj^Q^ pr g 
 m'o tion oTthat Ufp .^ Its a.cts. then, in onr view^ are coloured by 
 the motives that lie behind it. It wins our loyalty by the con- 
 tribution it can piake to the achievement of the state-purpose. 
 We can, then, distinguish between state and government. 
 Rousseau quite clearly grasped this difference. The state, for 
 him, was the collective moral person formed by the whole body 
 of citizens; the government was merely an executive organ by 
 which the state-will pould be carried into effect.^' He realised 
 the clear possibility of disparity of effort. A government that 
 sough t to usurp power for selfish ends has not_been unknown; 
 and Rousseau therernrp resprvpr| govereignty^fpr him tS e 
 ulti mate right to do anything— for the ^ state sdom .^" Power 
 wasjjjthority tha.t ha.d not yet h een diamfifig:^^5ofaraTOFi= 
 butes; and that alone the government possessed until judgment 
 of its motives had been made." Where he went wrong was in 
 his effort to ascribe a necessarily beneficent will to the state 
 itself— a \dew that, largely dependent as it was upon his i^nti- 
 ficatioii_of state and society — was in reahty no more than an 
 a^nwTassumpHon.'^ There is no will that is good merely by 
 self -definition; it is actual substantiation in terms of the event 
 that alone can be accepted as valid. To introduce, as he did, 
 a distinction between the "general" will and the "will )f all," 
 IS, in reahty, simply to take refuge in mysticism. A will that 
 fulfils the purpose_rf the state is, of course, good where the end 
 °!^^®- staters, Eydifinition, good also; but that is a question 
 of fact upon whicE opinions may differ. What Herbert Spencer 
 thought for the good of the state Professor Huxley dismissed as 
 " "Contrat Social," Bk. Ill, Ch 1 
 »° Ibid., Bk. Ill, Ch. X. 
 " Cf. Ibid., Bk. Ill, Chs. XVI and XVIII 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 29 
 
 Iministrative nihilism. Numbers, certainly, even to the point 
 
 unanimity, make no difference. They may justify political , 
 tion; but they will provide no guaranty of its rightness. ' 
 nee Rousseau wrote, moreover, a new complication has been 
 troduced in the problem of size. In the Greek city-state, in 
 eneva, in the republic of Andorra, it was comparatively easy 
 discover an effective popular opinion; today, as John 
 hipman Gray so admirably said, the real rulers of a society 
 e undiscoverable. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 ay be dependent upon a permanent official whose very namfe 
 
 unknown to the vast majority whose destinies he may so 
 rgely sha'pe,"~-aad, indeed, the position of the EngUsh civil- 
 rvant has been defined as that of a man who has exchanged- 
 gnity for power. Public opinion may be the ultimate con- 
 oUing factor; but not the least complex of our problems is, 
 ; Mr. Lowell has said,'' to discover when it is public and when 
 
 is opinion. 
 
 Accepted theory tells us that the sta.te is snvp.rpign . It is, 
 lat is to say, the supreme embodiment of power . What its 
 ill has determined it has the right to enforce. Yet in the only 
 snse in which this is an acceptable theory, it in reality tells us 
 jthing. The state exists as the most adequate means we have ' 
 it invented for the promotion of an end we deem good. If by : 
 le emphas is of its sovereignty we mean that it must be obeyed, 
 ie the sis ib still-evideul when iL& atl ib iii acc ordance witn that 
 id; but no one, surely, would urge that the stat©-inust~b^ 
 jeyed it the iiiethods it followed were those of/ Mac hiavg 
 rince. How are we, save by individual judgment, to tell if the 
 ate-act is in truth the a dequate expression of right purpos e? 
 ousseaiTTesolvedT'the difficulty by making his state call fre- 
 uent meetings of its citizens and assuming rightness where 
 loral unanimity was secured.'* Yet there are few who have 
 ved through this age of blood and iron who will be willing to 
 ^tribute infallibility even to an unanimous people. Nor does 
 ousseau meet the difficulty that, in sober fact, t he moder n 
 .ate cannot function save b y selecting certain of its member s 
 ir the l uiniment oi its task; and that sele ft'nr mpans tliat nnr 
 
 ^ "Public Opinion and Popular Government," Part One. 
 M "Contrat Social," Bk. Ill, Ch. XVIII. 
 
30 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 obedience, in reaMy^^go es to a government of which we accept, 
 f or the most parbTthedecisions- B ut few who accept on tHe 
 g round of high purpose the sovereignty of the sta te will urge" 
 that gorerrmTPntjlsilQ^'^'^^y ^f^imrpign TVip HifFerenc e of funda -^ 
 m entaTmorai empn agis rr^ay wp.ll he vital — 
 
 (To postulate the sovereignty of the state, therefore, is hardly 
 helpful unless we know two things. We need, in the first place, 
 to enquire by what criteria the consent of the state to some 
 course of governmental action is to be inferred.^ We need also to 
 have information as to the coincidence of the action with what 
 is termed right conduct. 7 But it is surely obvious that these 
 criteria and this information are, in fact, established by each 
 one of us. No matter what the influence which constrains us 
 to refusal or acceptance it is, at bottom, an individual act of 
 _ will. The real basis of law, therefore, is somehow in the indi- 
 vidual mind. Our attitude to it may be most variously deter- 
 mined. An Irish peasant of the seventies may have gone moon- 
 UgHting less from an opinion that violence alone would teach 
 the British government its lesson than from a fear of local dis- 
 approval. But, politically, we can be concerned iiot with the 
 hidden motives but with the overt acts of men. /in that sense 
 the basis of the state is clearly a reservoir of inqi^a3.^aIisIn~be- 
 cMise'eaclrTviilTs sometbing''ffiat ultimately is^elf-determined. 
 What determines it to act is a different and f armore complex 
 question; but there is never in the state an a priori certainty 
 that a government act will be obeyed/ The possibility of an- 
 archy is theoretically at every moment present. Why it is 
 rarely operative demands more detailed investigation. 
 
 \A. realistic analysis of the modern state thus suggests that 
 what wa term state-action is, in actual fact, action by govem- 
 ment.y^t is a poUcy offered to the people for its acceptance^ 
 It becomes state-action when that acceptance is predominantly 
 operative. The passive resistance of the Nonconformists to 
 Mr. Balfour's Education Act, for example, was not sufficient to 
 make the Act void. It was able to be put into operation and 
 was therefore accepted by the EngUsh state. There have, of 
 course, been periods when this twofold stage of political action 
 was only partially necessary. The Greek city-state acted not 
 by means of representative gpvernment but, at least in certain 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 31 
 
 ids of its history, by the voice of its whole citizen-body, 
 lus fulfilled Rousseau's ideal of a continuous exercise of 
 reign power. But that can no longer be the case. The 
 ern state, for good or ill, has outgrown the possibility of 
 mment by pubhc meeting, and it is upon some system 
 3presentatio)i that reliance must be placed.'' The repre- 
 Jti^^-organ is, directly or indirectly, government. State- 
 m^in s uch analysis, is simply^ an act of governmwitjwhich 
 mands general acc^tagce. This M. Esmein has clearly 
 eived. (\A.ltEoiu^h", he says,'^ "the legislative power is the 
 regulator of sovereignty, it is above all by the executive 
 er, that its action is felt by the citizen body."ySuch a theory 
 at least the merit of fitting the actual facts. It makes no 
 al presumptions. It takes account of the fact that the state 
 whole may repudiate, as in 1688, the acts of its representa- 
 3 for reasons that it deems good, (it admits, what the situ- 
 n itself compels us to admit, that ihe exercise of authority, 
 ther we call it power or sovereignty or what we will, is, in the 
 ; majority of cases, in the hands of government^ 
 I such an aspect, several results are immediately obvious, 
 adequate theory of the state mustjexajnine not so muchth^ 
 US of authority but their actuafyalidatighjuxifirms of prac- 
 ^ Its assumptions are naturally 1inp§ftant; but it is rathef 
 ^&^ priori index to achievement than as a definitive measure 
 ; that they must be regarded. It is, that is to say, helpful to 
 old that the object of the state is to secure the good life. But 
 'ever important may be the knowledge of purpose, much 
 e important is the knowledge of function. The state, for 
 ance, to its members is essentially a great pubhc service 
 )oration; and it is; to put it bluntly, upon dividends that the 
 d of the pubhc is concentrated. Thg^qu^tionjrejnust jisk 
 Dt what the state set out to do, bu t what;ffrEiistoricfact. has 
 r done mltsTiameT'In'ter^ oT prediction, we do not ask 
 moral programme of a state: the more fruitful method is 
 
 On the comparative value of large and small states of the remarks of 
 man. "Hist, of Federal Government in Greece and Italy" (ed. of 1893), 
 
 )ff. 
 
 "Elements du Droit Constitutionnel" (ed. of 1906), p. 22, and cf. 
 aek, "System der Oeftentlichen subjektiven Rechte," p. 28. 
 
32 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 by the patient analysis of its practices, to discover their probable* 
 result. The problem of authority then becomes clear. We 
 
 i. w^nt^to^know3hyjnep.,Qbex^ovem We want the causes 
 
 that explain the surely striking fact of aT voluntary servitude of 
 a l9,rge mass of men to a small portion of their number. We 
 j^ant to know also the way in which authority should be organ-i 
 fsed if the results of the state-purpose are best to be attained, ' 
 Do we need, for instance, one authority, or many? Is it, as 
 Rousseau conceived, dangerous to divide our power? Must 
 
 -the force at the command of authority be, as the timid Hobbes 
 assumed, without limit of any kind? Is the individual, in other 
 words, absorbed in the state? Does his freedom mean, as 
 Hegel makes it mean, to live the Ufe that authority ordains? 
 Or does freedom mean the recognition that there are certain 
 reserves within the individual mind about which ultimate re- 
 sistances must be organised? Has man, that is to say, rights 
 against the state? If he belongs to a church, where must his 
 obedience go if there is conflict of authority? Is he interstitial 
 no less than social, and must we protect his denial of complete 
 submergence in his fellowships? To none of these questions can 
 we yet obtain in any sense an adequate response. Yet it is 
 these questions we must answer if we are one day to have a 
 working philosophy of the state. 
 
 III. THE NATURE OF OBEDIENCE 
 
 Any political speculation thus involves an enquiry into the 
 nature of obedience to government. It is an enquiry which no 
 poHtical philosopher may yet dare to answer. One day, we 
 may hope, the social psychologist will give us insight enough' 
 into the factors of human association to enable us to emphasise 
 the main elements involved; and we as yet can say little more 
 than Hume when he insisted that obedience is necessary to 
 the existence of society. Some things, indeed, we can already 
 vaguely see. Imitation must count for much.'' The tendency 
 in men— which Mr. Graham Wallas has even dignified into an 
 instinct — to accept leadership is vitaL^^ We can hardly ap- 
 
 " But see an important Warning as to its influence in G. Wallas. "The 
 Great Society," Ch. VIII. ^ 
 
 '« Cf. the admirable chapter of Dr. MacDougall, "Social PsychologJ 
 Ch. VII, esp. p. 194 f. * 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 33 
 
 ive the account of Sir Henry Maine which makes of it a 
 )it ured into the tissue of the race by countless ages of 
 iservience to the state; though it is no doubt true that to an 
 ent which greatly needs analysis the state is built upon the 
 rtia of men.'' Macaulay, in an interesting passage,^" has 
 i us how naturally the Duke of WelUngton took for granted 
 ! courageous discipline of the soldiers on the ill-fated Birken- 
 'd; and, in a less degree, this sense of discipline that results 
 m training must play a large part in ordering life. But it 
 lot the whole answer to the problem.*^ 
 Political thinkers are, for the most part, divided in their 
 3wer (at best provisional) into two schools. The most funda- 
 :ntal, because it is that which has most subtly influenced the 
 ults of juridical enquiry, is perhaps the school of Hobbes. 
 that view, obedience is founded upon fear. Gfovernment is 
 [e to exert the authority it possesses because it has behind 
 the ultimate sanction of force. Men obey its dictates be- 
 ise the pain of disobedience makes them cowards. Law is 
 IS the command of government, ahd we obey the law because 
 3 penalties of disobedience are, for most of us, too serious to 
 endured. The theory does not, perhaps, take the highest 
 ;w of hmnan nature; but the fear-psychologists, from Thras- 
 lachus to Hobbes, are rarely generous in their outlook. _ 
 lat the theory has an element of truth is, of course, indubi- 
 Dle. But thaj; it is obviously only a partial explanation 
 mediately the history of coercion is studied is surely not less 
 !ar. No one can watch the slow rise of toleration into ac- 
 ptance, can see how dubiously it was proposed, and how 
 spiciously it was put into operation, without realising that 
 ultimately, acceptance came, it can only have been because 
 e attempt to use fear as a method of compulsion proved, in 
 e event, to be worthless. If fear was the real ground of obedi- 
 ce, the early Christians could hardly have survived; auJ 
 rtainly the failure of the Penal Laws against CathoUcism in 
 igland becomes inexpUcable. The fact is that a unity pro- 
 ced by terror is at best but artificial; and where the deepest 
 
 " H. Maine, "Popular Government," p. 63. 
 
 " "Life," by Sir G. Trevelyan (Nelson's ed.), 11. 293. 
 
 " Cf. Mr. Wallas' remarks, "The Great Society," Ch. V. 
 
34 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 convictions of men are attacked terror must prove ultimately :| 
 worthless.^'' ' ' 
 
 The school of which the name of Rm^seaujs deservedly the 
 most famous adopted an entirely different attitude. For it, 
 the basis of obe dience^is consent. Men obey government be- 
 cause the return for their obedience is the "real" freedom it 
 is the object of the state-life to secure. Unless that obedience 
 be general, anarchy is inevitable; acceptance of the govern- 
 ment's command is therefore essential that its purposes may 
 be made secure. For Rousseau himself, perhaps, it is the mil 
 of the citizen-body alone that must be binding; but it is difficult 
 to see how that will can be directly known in the modern state. 
 And for poUtical purposes it is probable that this is the most' 
 fruitful avenue of approach. It needs, indeed, a singularly 
 careful statement. The idea of a social contract itself we have 
 to reject as fiction; and it is perhaps safer not to make use of , 
 the term contractual in the determination of state relations. 
 For contract, after all, is -a definite legal term to which precise 
 meaning is attached; and to apply it to the vague expecta- 
 tions raised by the acts of government is to shroud ourselves 
 in illusion;^' But the emphasis of consent is unconnected with 
 such difficulties. It emphasises, what needs continukt iteration, 
 that the end of the state is fundamental. It throws into relief 
 the striking fact that while the government of the state must 
 endure, if its own existence is to be possible, its purpose is at 
 each stage subject to examination. Me mbers of the state we 
 a ll may be, but it must, exist not less for our welfare 'than its 
 owK. It is here, perhaps, that we have been led astray by the . 
 dangerous analogies of the nineteenth century. When we 
 accept the idea of the state as an organism, what is emphasised 
 As subjection of its parts to the welfare of the whole. But, in 
 'sober fact, the welfare of the state means nothing if it does 
 not mean the concrete happiness of its hving members. In 
 
 « Cf . Sir F. Pollock's interesting essay on the Theory of Persecution, 
 "Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics," esp. p. 175. 
 
 *' This, I think, would equally apply to the school of M. Leon Bourgeois 
 which explains the state as founded upon quasi-contract. Every lawyer 
 knows what quasi-contract is, but in the realm of politics it only serves to 
 give a specious exactness to inexact notions. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 35 
 
 re-r~v 
 ite;j 
 
 rofi 
 
 lat aspect, the concept of an organism is, as Dr. McTaggart 
 as brilliantly insisted," inapplicable. For the individual re- 
 irds himse lf as an end rifttr ''^°° t.^on ho an rggf^jfi s the state ; 
 ad we are here again confounded by the important fact 
 refusal of absorption into the whole that is greater than our- 
 jlves. If we are fimdamentally Catholics, for instance, we do 
 ot the more truly reaUse ourselves by obeying the Clarendon 
 lode; what we do is to make ourselves different, to destroy 
 urselves for the state by making for it meaningless the per- 
 jnality that is our contribution to its well-being. And that 
 m only mean that acts which touch us nearly must be de- £^ 
 endent for their vaUdity upon the consent they can secure, 
 regally valid they may well be in the sense that they emanate 
 •om the authority that is empowered to enact them. But no 
 tudent of poUtics can stop there. A pohtical judgment is not 
 
 pronunciation of legal right alone. The law of the British 
 onstitution may not give to Englishmen the right of free 
 peech; bu,t that does not mean that an EngUsh Prime Min- 
 it^r will not encounter difficulties if he fails to regard that 
 ight as real.** We must, indeed, discuss the grounds upon 
 '^hich ceB^ent may be given or withheld; but that does not 
 isturb the fact that the element of consent is essential to any 
 dequate analysis. 
 
 In the theory of obedience, then, the element of consent to 
 oUcy, however indirect, is of the first importance. We «re, 
 1 some degree sufficient to prevent rebelhon, satisfied with the 
 rovision made by government to fulfil the purposes of the 
 bate. But the fact of broadening demand is here sufficiently 
 jmarkable to merit attention. The state, we have said, exis ts i, 
 T prppiote the good life of it s members: g overnment is the /I 
 lechanism by which that purpose has been translated into tha ' 
 vent. But the question of actual translation is always a) 
 uestion of fact. The motive of statesmen, the objective merit 
 f their acts, demand continuous enquiry. No one can survey 
 
 " See his fine essay on the Conception of Society as an Organism in 
 is "Studies in Hegelian Cosmology." 
 
 • For a refusal to obey the Defence xit the Realm Act on this ground 
 le an interesting note upon the action of the executive council of the 
 uakers in the London Nation for December 8, 1917, and see the report 
 ■ the trial in New York Evening Post, June 24, 1918. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 he history of the EngUsh state without being impressed with 
 he way in which the basis of its government in consent has 
 )een progressively extended. Government, under William the 
 'forman, is the king; the purpose it has in view in his reign 
 3 to achieve the thing he wills. The good life of its members,, 
 a any abstract ethical sense, the. full realisation, for example, 
 if the personality of the conquered Saxon churl, is here in all 
 onscience meaningless enough. Magna Charta limits royal 
 lespotism by the cbntrolUng factor of baronial interest; yet, 
 lere again, to introduce a concept of general welfare is a dan- 
 ;erous anachronism. When the country gentlemen, begin to 
 ule, the state is a bigger and finer thing than when its law was 
 i variation upon the selfish aims of Wilham Rufus; but no one, 
 o take a single instance, can read the record of its game laws 
 md enclosure acts, and mistake its devotion to the interests 
 )f ,the squire. With the Industrial Revolution, power passes 
 ,0 the middle classes; but the long record of Combination 
 ^cts and of antagonism to such measures as would have given 
 in unpropertied labourer an interest in the state, have a mean- 
 ng which no honest observer can misunderstand. When 
 3annah More can tell the women of Shipham in 1801 that the 
 iharity dispensed to them is to show them their depfendence 
 ipon the rich, and comes "of favour and not of right "^^ it is 
 'Imr that the attitude she represents does not visualise a state 
 n * hich the concept of the good life has or obtains any general 
 Lpphcation. The acutest of political observers in nineteenth 
 sentury England, Walter Bagehot, regarded a "permanent 
 iombination" of the working classes as an "evil of the first 
 nagnitude," and he did not hesitate to say that the way in 
 v^hich "the electors only selected one or two wealthy men to 
 sarry out the schemes of one or two wealthy associations" 
 vas "the only way in which our own system could be main- 
 ained."^' No one, indeed, can read Mr. Bagehot's gloomy 
 jrophecies of the probable effects of the Reform Act of 1867 
 
 *8 Hammond, "The Town Labourer," p. 229. I know no more vivid illus- 
 ration of the way in which the state-purpose changes than this brilliant 
 )Ook. — ~ ~ 
 
 " "Collected Works," Vol. V, p. 120. The quotation is from his 
 'English Constitution." 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 37 
 
 ithout feeling that for him Government is something that 
 arries out the will of the "higher classes." When a distin- 
 uished connection of the English royal family can explain the 
 dvent of compulsory military service as "necessary at this 
 ime when the people were getting out of hand"^' it becomes 
 lear that scrutiny must be made of the way in which the pur- 
 ose of the state gets translated into acts of government. 
 In such a scrutiny certain obvious facts clearly emerge. No 
 ne claims that in the modern state the good life, in any reason- 
 ble definition, is realised by any but a small minority of its 
 lembers. Liberty in the sense of the positive and equal oppor- 
 anity of seffrealisation we have hardly in any genuine sense 
 stablished. That is not a cause for repining but a simple fact; 
 nd it is to be set in the perspective of t'le remembrance that 
 IT larger numbers share in what of good the modern state can 
 3cure than at any previous period of history.'*' But whether 
 re consider the patent inequalities in the distribution of wealth, 
 he results of the competitive struggle in industry, the hopeless, 
 ladequacies of our educational systems, the one thing by which 
 re must be impressed is the absence of proportion between 
 olitical purpose and its achievement. We nd longer believe 
 hat a simple individualism is the panacea for our ills. " The 
 lere conflict of private interests", said Ingram thirty years 
 go,^" " will never produce a well-ordered commonwealth of 
 ibour " ; and on the other hand it is not less clear that the sim- 
 le formulae of a rigid collectivism offer no real prospect of 
 jlief." The truth is that in the processes of politics what',\ 
 roadly speaking, gets registered is not a will that is at each^ 
 loment in accord with the state-purpose, but the will of those | 
 '^ho in fact operate the machine o,f government. They are, it is 
 rue, selected for that purpose by the electoral body of the state; 
 nd it is increasingly obvious that universal adult suffrage, or 
 
 " Quoted in J. A. Hobson, "Democracy after the W*," p. 67. 
 
 " Even in a gloomy period of English history Francis Place could in 
 is " Improvement of the Working People" record the great change for 
 3od that he had observed in his own lifetime. 
 
 " " History of PoUtieal Economy," p. 298. 
 
 " I mean in the simple sense that would transfer all industrial activ- 
 ies to government. 
 
i AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 )me close approximation to it, will be the electoral system of 
 i^ery country that shares in the ideals of Western civilisation. 
 
 Theoretically, doubtless, the conference of universal suffrage 
 laces political power in the hands of that part of the state which 
 as not enjoyed, or at least only partially enjoyed, the benefit of 
 s purposes. Nor is the r-eason for this hidden from us. It is 
 lore than three centuries since Harrington enunciated the law 
 lat power goes with the ownership of land;*'' and if we extend 
 lat concept, in the light of the Industrial Revolution, to capi- 
 il in its broadest sense, it is now a commonplace that poUtical 
 ower is the handmaid of economic power. In that aspect, it 
 
 not difficult to understand why the easy optimism of the re- 
 amers of the first half of the nineteenth century has been so 
 .rgely disappointed.^^ They were not, iu fact, attacking the 
 ;al root of the problem. No political democracy can be real 
 lat is not as well the reflection of an economic democracy; for 
 le business of government is so largely industrial in nature as 
 levitably to be profoundly affected by the views and purposes 
 f those who hold the keys of economic power. That does not 
 ecessarily mean that government is consciously perverted to 
 le ends of any'class within the state. So to argue is to project 
 ito history a mahgnant teleology from which it is, in no small 
 egree, free. But when power is actually exerted by any section 
 f the community, it is only natural that it should look upon its 
 laracteristic views as the equivalent of social good. It is, for 
 iample, difiicult to believe that John Bright opposed the Fac- 
 )ry Acts with a view to his own pocket. It is not.less impossible 
 ) assert that Dr. Arnold opposes the emancipation of the Jews 
 at of a selfish desire to benefit his own church. But it was then 
 atural even for a humane factory-owner to beheve that good 
 Dnduct consists in maintaining the prosperity of the manu- 
 icturing classes, and that whatever, in his judgment, is fatal to 
 lat prosperity is mischievous. Dr. Arnold behaved the English 
 ation to be by definition Christian; and to admit the Jews to 
 arliament would thus, in his views, have been a contradiction in 
 
 52 "Works" (ed. cf. 1747),p.39, cf.Bonav's remarks, "Philosophy of Politi- 
 1 Economy," p. 90. 
 
 =3 Cf . Mr. Graham Wallas' superb analysis, "Human Nature in Politics," 
 issim. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 39 
 
 terms." It has been necessary for Mr. Justice Holmes to remind 
 the Supreme Court of the United States that the Fourteenth 
 Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social 
 Statics.** The fellow-servant doctrine could never have won 
 acceptance in an industrial democracy.*' The Osborne decision 
 is naturally to be expected from a group of men whose circum- 
 stances and training would have obviously tended to make 
 suspect the methods and purposes of trade-unionism." 
 
 This is a truth perhaps somewhat difficult to perceive in our 
 own day because it tends to be obscured by the mechanisms of 
 the democratic powers. But the examination of past history 
 makes it more than clear. No one can analyse the social and 
 political conditions of the ancien regime in France without 
 perceiving that the whole effort of its structure was towards the 
 maintenance of aristocratic -interests. Whether we regard the 
 form of the States General, the composition of the Parhaments, 
 the privileges of the nobility, it is, as Acton said, "class gov- 
 ernment" that they imply, "the negation of the very idea of 
 state and nation.i"*' The episcopal opposition to Catholic 
 Emancipation is a similar phenomenon; it is grounded upon 
 the conviction that it was detrimental to the interests of the 
 Estabhshed Church.*' The same problem confronted the au- 
 thors of the American Constitution. " The most common and 
 durable source of Factions, " said Madison,'" " has been the , 
 various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold 
 and those who are without property have ever formed distinct 
 interests in society. . . . The regulation of these various and 
 interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legis- 
 lation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the 
 necessary and ordinary operations of government." It does 
 not, generally speaking, seem inaccurate to say that the proc- 
 
 " Cf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," p. 89. 
 
 " Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45, 75-6. The whole opinion throws 
 a flood of light upon this question. 
 
 '« Cf. A. Birrell, "Law of Employers' Liability," p. 20. 
 
 " Cf. Webb, "History of Trade Unionism," Introd. to the 1911 edition, 
 esp. p. XXV. 
 
 " " Lectures on the French Revolution," p. 41. 
 
 »» Cf. my " Problem of Sovereignty," p. 123 f . 
 
 «o The Federalist, No. 10. 
 
to AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 3sses of politics are a struggle between the possessors of a cer- 
 tain power, and those who desire to shf -'^ in its exercise. The 
 grounds of exclusion have been very various. Often we meet 
 with suspicion of those unpossessed of property. Sometimes 
 membership of a religious creed is held as a disquahfication. 
 The general fact is that, whatever the grounds of exclusion, 
 those who have possession of power are not lightly persuaded 
 to part with it, or- to co-operate in its exercise. Admission to 
 rights is the gate most difficult of entrance in the political 
 citadel. 
 
 It is yet obvious that if the democratic synthesis be perma- 
 aent — and it is upon that assumption alone that this analysis 
 is vahd — in the matter of rights there can be no differentiation. 
 Government exercises power not in the interests of any party or 
 class within the state but in the interest of the state as a whole. 
 But that is undisguised ideahsm. In sober fact, government is 
 exerted in the interests of those who control its exercise. That 
 is, indeed, progressively less true. A modern parliament would 
 not dare to debate a Factory Act in the style ^f 1802. Few mod-, 
 em statesmen would venture to analyse a Reform Bill in the 
 caustic fashion of Bagehot or Robert Lowe. No responsible 
 statesman would how speak of atheists in the style of Edmund 
 Burke.^' But once the fact is clear that the result of govern- 
 ment is in practice different from what theory makes it, the 
 necessary inference is a suspicion of power. What use is the 
 sovereignty of the state if it means the aristocratic privileges of 
 the^ ancien regime? What use is the sovereignty of the state if 
 if it permits the maintenance of the slums of the modern city? 
 The conclusion, surely, is forced upon us that the state permits 
 a sinister manipulation of its power. It is the habit of govern- 
 ment to translate the thoughts and feelings and passions with 
 which it is charged into terms of the event and deem them the 
 achievement of the state-purpose. But so specialised a welfare, 
 as that which is achieved is obviously different from the ideal 
 end so vigorously emphasised by philosophy. 
 
 Not, indeed, that the record of government is an unreUeved 
 catalogue of perversions. Few would be so maUcious or so 
 
 " Cf. for instance, the second " Letter upon a Regicide Peace." "Works" 
 (World's Classics ed.). Vol. VI, esp. p. 192 f. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 41 
 
 ;tupid as not to believe that there are numerous instances of 
 statesmen who have pursued a general good wider than their 
 private desire because they beUeved the times demanded it. 
 That, surely, was the case of Sir Robert Peel in 1846. He de- 
 stroyed, almost consciously, his party in order to achieve an 
 ;nd he thought more splendid than its own fortune; and he 
 iid not falter even when his pohcy involved his political down- 
 'all. It would have been simple, to take a different problem, 
 'or John Hus at Constance, or for Luther at Worms, to have 
 recanted. In either case the desertion would have been easy — 
 IS easy, for example, as Luther's desertion of the peasants 
 some five years later. But the individual action does not 
 iestroy, even if it may mitigate, the general tendency. There \ 
 das been yet no state in history in which the consistent effort | 
 tias been towards the unique realisation of the common good. | 
 I If the state is sovereign, what, in such an aspect, does its 
 rovereignty imply? It is, we are told, an absolute thing; and 
 the most generous of modern German theorists has allowed it 
 only the limitation of its personal grace. But this theory of 
 auto-limitation is in reaUty meaningless;^^ for to be bound 
 only by one's will is not, in any real sense, to be bound at all. 
 Now sovereignty, we are told,^' "is that power which is neither 
 temporary, nor delegated nor subject to particular rules which 
 it cannot alter, nor answerable to any other power on earth/" 
 What this really means is less formidable than the appe". Tjice 
 seems to warrant. It imphes only that for the courts the will 
 of a sovereign body, the king in Parliament for example, is 
 beyond discussion. Every judge must accept unquestioningly 
 what fulfils the requirements of the forms of law. But, for the 
 purposes of political philosophy, it is not so abstract and a priori 
 a definition we require, i^hat we desire to know is not what \ 
 has the legal right to prevail, but what does in actual fact pre- j 
 vail and the reasons that explain its dominance. Here, it is ' 
 clear enough, the legal theory of sovereignty is worthless. / 
 Once we are in the realm of actual hfe it is upon the Umitations 
 
 •2 The best defense of this theory is in Jellinek, "Recht des mod. Staates," 
 p. 421 f. 
 
 " Pollock, "History of the Science of PoUtics," p. 52. I ought to add that 
 Sir F. Pollock is here stating a view in which he does not himself share. _ Sf 
 
12 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 )f sovereignty that attention must be concentrated. What 
 hen impresses us is the wide divergence between legal right 
 md moral right. Legally, an autocratic Czar may shoot down 
 lis subjects before the winter palace at Petrograd; but, morally, 
 t is condemnation that we utter. Legally, Parliament could 
 lOmorrow re-enact the Clarendon Code; but what stirs us now 
 s the injustice of its pohcy. There is, that is to say, a vast 
 lifference between what Dean Pound has admirably called 
 'Law in books" and "Law in action."^ It is with the latter 
 Jone that a realistic theory of the state can be concerned. 
 
 IV. THE LIMITATIONS OF POWER 
 
 N actual life, then/the sovereignty of the state is subject to 
 imitation.J Th& pdwer it can exert, either directly, or through 
 ts instruments, is never at any moment absolutej Attention 
 nust be ceaselessly paid to the thousand varied influences th^ 
 )lay upon the declaration of its will. Power, that is to say, is 
 leld upon conditions. The members of the state look to it for 
 lertain conduct as alone capable of justification. They think, 
 n brief, that there are certain principles by which its life must 
 )e regulated. Few would urge that those principles can at any 
 noment be regarded as unchanging. It is a matter of the 
 jmplest demonstration that moral ideals cannot escape the 
 iategories of evolution. Conduct that would distress one gen- 
 iration is regarded with equanimity by its predecessor. But 
 hat does not alter the vital fact that for authority a way of 
 ife is prescribed. It is not, indeed, laid down in a written 
 !ode, though it only lies the more profoundly in our nature 
 )ecause it is inarticulate. For every statesman knows well 
 snough that there are certain things he dare not do because the 
 ense of the pubhc will be against him. That system of con- 
 tentions is important. It emphasises the conditionality of 
 )ower. It means, in other words, that so deep is the expecta- 
 ion of what, broadly speaking, may be termed the right con- 
 luct of authority that its antithesis ensures the provocation 
 )f penalties. 
 
 . This can, perhaps, be more usefully expressed in another 
 vay. Whatever the requirements of legal theory, in actual 
 " 44 American Law Review, p. 12. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 43 
 
 t no man surrenders his whole being to the state. He has 
 ense of right and wrong. If the state, or its instruments, 
 !S too consistently against that sense, he is pricked into an- 
 ;onism. CChe state, that is to say, is for him sovereign only 
 ere his conscience is not stirred against its performance 
 ir is this all. He expects from the state the fulfilment of its 
 rposes. He expects it to make possible for him the attain- 
 nt of certain goods. Again, the degree of expectation is 
 )ject to serious change; an Anglo-Saxon churl will have hopes 
 Ferent from those of an EngUsh workman of the twentieth 
 itury; Mrs. Proudie will exert a different power in the 
 rchester of one age than will the wife of her husband's suc- 
 isor. When the realisation of these hopes is keenly enough 
 b to be essential to the realisation of the purpose of the state 
 have a political right. It is a right natur al in the sense that 
 ;_gi ven condit ions of jociety at the particular time reqiure 
 re cognitio n. It is not justified on grounds of history. _It 
 aot justified on gro unds of any ab stract or absolute ethic. It 
 simply msisted that 11, in a given condition of society, power 
 30 exerted as to refuse the recognition of that right, resistance 
 bound to be encountered. By right, that is to say, we mean 
 iemand that has behind it the burden of the general experi- " 
 ce of the state. It is, as T. H. Green said," a power of which 
 3 exercise by the individual or by some body of men is recog- 
 ;ed by a society either as itself directly essential to the com- 
 )n good, or as conferred by an authority of which the main- 
 lance is recognised as so essential."^* 
 
 But this, it may be argued, is a claim hardly less theoretic 
 m sovereignty itself. It may not be able to get itself recog- 
 sed The government may, through mahce, or in honesty, 
 ubt its wisdom and oppose it. But a right admits of en- 
 ■cement. There are, in the first place, the ordinary channels 
 representative government; in a democratic state, for in- 
 tnce, periodic reference is made to the people for the refresh- 
 int of power. At an English general election, for example, 
 nisters are returned to or rejected from ofiice either to per- 
 ■m certain things, or because it is beUeved that the opposing 
 rty will better represent the purpose of the state. The 
 » T. H. Green, "CoUected Works," 11, 419. 
 
44 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Labour party in England today is demanding for " every member 
 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 the requisites of healthy life and worthy citi- 
 zenship."«8 A large portion of the British state is thus striving 
 to achieve certain things as rights because without them Ufe 
 is not deemed worth the Uving. By rights it means the recog- 
 nition that every member of the state must without distinction 
 possess certain goods, and that the situation imphed in that 
 possession is too fundamental to be subject to the whims of 
 authority. These rights are to be written into the fabric of 
 TEe state. They limit what authority can do by making them 
 a. minimum below which no member of the state must fall. 
 They are, normally, written into the fabric of the state by the 
 constitutional processes provided by law; and it is perhaps 
 well, as Green has suggested,^' to emphasise the desirability 
 of achievement by this means. But the reserve power of revo-| 
 lution always exists. The American War of Independence! 
 is the vindication of a claim to a certain right of self-govern- 
 ment; and in that case territorial conditions made possible!, 
 the foundation of a new state separate from the old. The French 
 Revolution is the assertion of a lack of confidence in the holders 
 of power, and the change in the form of the state that the claim 
 to certain rights might be fulfilled. 
 
 In the case both of the American and the French Revolution 
 we have the programme upon which the new order was founded: ? 
 in neither case can it be said that it was in any full sense 
 achieved. But this does not lessen the significance of the moral 
 that is to be drawn from the study of the problem of rights. 
 Whenever in a state a group of persons large enough to make its 
 presence felt demands the recognition of certain claims,. it will 
 not recognise a law which attempts defiance of them; nor will it 
 accept the authority by which that law is enforced. Recent 
 events have thrown this attitude into striking rehef . The atti- 
 tude of Ulster befdre 1914 was a refusal to accept the sovereignty 
 
 «« "Labour and the New Social Order, Report on Reconstruction by the 
 Subcommittee of the British Labour Party" (Reprinted in The New Republic, 
 Vol. XIV, No. 172, Part II, p. 4). ■ ' ; 
 
 «' "Works," II, 417 f, cf. Barker, "Political Thought from Spencer," p. 60. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 45 
 
 f an Act of Parliament which granted self-government to 
 reland. The refusal was made in the name of conscience; and 
 whatever be thought of the penumbra of passions and personal- 
 les by which it was surrounded the fundamental fact has to be 
 jcorded that Parliament and the ministry found themselves 
 >intly powerless in the face of an illegally organised opposi- 
 ion. The women suffragists were able, over a period of eight 
 ears, to set at defiance the ordinary rules of law; and few 
 leople today seriously doubt that the reason why that defiance 
 :as so successfully maintained was the fact of its moral conteiji, 
 !'hose who refused obedience to the Military Service Act of- 
 916 were able to prove the powerlessness of the state to force 
 hem into subjection. Convinced of the iniquity of war, they 
 laimed the right to be absolved from direct contact with it; 
 ,nd it is highly significant that in America the Quakers should 
 lave received express exemption from that contact. That is 
 he tacit' admission that where the means taken by the state 
 
 achieve its purposes conflicts with the ideals of another 
 ;roup there are occasions when the state will find it wise to 
 orego the claim of , paramountcy. And, here again, the real 
 act involved is that of consent. No state can act in the face 
 if the active opposition of any considerable portion of itself, 
 ^o state will venture in practice to claim control over certain 
 treas within the competence of other groups. Acts of authority 
 ,re thus hmited by the consciences that purposes different from 
 hat of the state can command. ^ 
 
 1 That is to affirm that government dare not range over the 
 vhole area of human life. ") No govermnent, for instance, dare 
 describe the life of the Roman Catholic Church. Bismarck 
 Qade the attempt, and it is doubtful if it will be repeated.^' 
 ^Tiere alone the state can attempt interference with groups 
 ither than itself is where the action of the group touches terri- 
 ory over which the state claims jurisdiction. There is no 
 ertainty that the state will be successful. There is even no 
 ertainty that it merits success. It may, indeed, crush an 
 ipponent by brute force. That does not, however, establish 
 ight; it is merely the emphasis of physical superiority. The 
 inly ground for state-success is where the purpose of the state 
 
 «8 Cf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," Ch. V. 
 
46 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 lis morally superior to that of its opponent. The only ground 
 
 'upon which the individual can give or be asked his support 
 
 for the state is from the conviction that what it is aiming at is, 
 
 I in each particular action, good. We deny, that is to say, that 
 
 ' the general end of the ideal state colours the; policy of a given 
 
 act of a special state. And that denial involves from each 
 
 member of the state continuous scrutiny of its purpose and its 
 
 method. 
 
 I**' It deserves his allegiance, it should receive it, only where it 
 j;gjnmands his conscience. Bismarck failed in the Kulturkampf 
 precisely because he could not convince the German Catholics 
 of the moral superiority of his position to that of Rome. It 
 was right that he should have so failed; for the basis of his 
 position was virtually the assertion that the duty of the indi- 
 vidual conscience is a blind and impulsive obedience to govern- 
 ment. He did not understand that to put a minister in office 
 does not permit the citizen body to cease all interest in affairs 
 of state. On the contrary, because it is in the name of that 
 citizen-body that power is exerted, it is essential that they 
 should have convictions about the goodness or badness of the 
 particular end that power is intended to serve. We can make 
 no distinction, except in possible aspiration, between govern- 
 ment and subjects, so long as there is acquiescence by the one 
 in the pohcy of the other.^' An act of government becomes ^ 
 state-act whenever the members of the state do not attempt at 
 least its repudiation.'" For power is held not for evil but for 
 good, and deflection from the path of right purpose ought to 
 involve the withdrawal of authority for its exercise. ■' 
 
 This, clearly enough, must make an important difference to 
 the emphasis we place upon rights. Once we insist upon con- 
 sent as the most fruitful source of the claim to obedience, there 
 
 "This amends somewhat the argument of my first book (Ch. I, p. 11). 
 I there argued that we have no right to identify the citizen with the state; 
 but I now think it is better to emphasise the possibility of distinction and 
 to argue for the identity of moral responsibility where there is passive 
 acquiescence. Liebknecht, in such a view, does not share in the responsi- 
 bility of the German state for the destruction of Belgiimi. 
 , "> I say "attempt"; for it is conceivable that the members of a state 
 might desire and aim at, repudiation, but fail because the government 
 was too powerful to be immediately resisted with success. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 47 
 
 cast upon the individual member of the state the duty of 
 rutinising its poHcy; for if he ought ultimately at least t6 
 otest, and perhaps to disobey, where his conscience is in- 
 )lved, an active interest in politics is the most indispensable 
 indition of citizenship. Nor is that active interest an easy 
 atter. It is scarcely difi&cult for the son of a pohtical family, 
 •ought up, like the younger Pitt, to regard pohtics as the one 
 lequate pursuit of the mind, to catch the vision of its devious 
 i^e-ways. But, for the average voter, there is scarcely the 
 ime infallible source of understanding in questions of state, 
 id the opportunity of training is essential. Few would now 
 iterpret training to mean the weekly discussions of Harring- 
 m's Oceana; but it is undeniable that some satisfa,ctory sub- 
 itute has still to be found. An ilhterate man has no real 
 Leans of performing the functions of citizenship. A man who 
 
 exhausted by excessive physical labour is similarly debarred 
 •om the opportunity of adequate understanding. If the nern 
 ous and mental energies of men are exhausted in the sheer 
 fifort of existence, as they so largely are exhausted, it is plaini 
 bat the most efficacious well-spring of pohtical improvement^ 
 i poisoned at its source. One of the main evils of the history of 
 overnment, indeed, has been the tragic fact that over a great 
 eriod politics has been the concern of a leisured class simply 
 ecause no other portion of the conmiunity has had the time 
 r the strength to devote itself in any full measure to these 
 uestions. That is not in any sense to suggest misgovernment; 
 ut it is to suggest the impossible narrowness of the source from 
 rhich the dominating ideas of government have been drawn, 
 t is to suggest that if the state is to be in any real sense repre- 
 entative of the wills and desires of its members, their wills 
 nd desires must have some minimum physical basis of materiaL 
 nd intellectual adequacy upon which fb function." That in 
 urn impUes that means must be taken to safeguard the expres- 
 ion of their hopes. Rights are no more than the expression of 
 his minimum and its safeguards in broad terms. The righfe, 
 f free expression, for example, is obviously essential if desires 
 re to be made known. If governments can suppress whatever 
 
 " Cf. Webb, "Industrial Democracy" (ed. of 1911), pp. 766-84 and the 
 t«port of the Subcommittee of the British Labour Party cited above. 
 
i8 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 they may dislike, as in the lean period of English radicalism,'^ 
 bhe result is obviously to put a premium upon the maintenance 
 of the status quo. The right to freedom of association is simply 
 the recognition that community of purpose involves community 
 of action. The right to education is simply the registration 
 Df a claim to understand in civihsed terms the ways and means 
 of social life. " A power that fails to achieve these things, much 
 more, a power that aims at thwarting them, has abused the 
 trust that has been placed in its hands. Power has thus to be 
 limited by rights because otherwise there is no- means, save 
 jontinual revolution, of achieving the purpose of the state. 
 
 And it is important to recognise in full measure the curious 
 imitations of power. Even if we grant, for the purpose of 
 irgument, its general disposition te good will, there are two 
 ^reat means by which it may suffer perversion. It may, in 
 ;he first place, be deliberately misused for selfish ends. There 
 lave been periods, for instance, in the history of American 
 states when it is matter of common knowledge that the machine 
 )f government was disgracefully exploited. The histories of 
 Tammany Hall, of Mr. Kearney in California, of the Phila- 
 ielphia gas ring, are all of them infamous enough to need no 
 jomment.'^ "Some states," Lord Bryce has written,'* ". 
 lave so bad a name that people are surprised when a good 
 ict passes." No observer of American politics, indeed, can 
 'ail to emphasise as a fundamental fact in the life of the com- 
 nonwealth the general suspicion of all who are interested 
 jy profession in the business of government. A justice of 
 ;he Supreme Court of the United States has written a vehe- 
 nent denunciation of the influence of high finance upon Ameri- 
 :an poUtical life." Nor is such perversion confined to America 
 done. The connection of great financial concerns with foreign 
 Dohcy is a problem old enough to have its importance recog- 
 lised by every fair-minded observer. If a German firm can 
 
 "Cf. Veitch, "The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform," Chs. IX-XIV— 
 in invaluable book. 
 
 " Of. Bryce, "Am. Commonwealth," II, 406-448. 
 
 ■•'Ibid. II, 163. 
 
 '5 L. D. Brandeis, "Other People's Money." Mr. Justice Brandeis was 
 lot, of course, a member of the Supreme Court when this was written. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 49 
 
 ise the force of its government in order to coerce- a foreign 
 lower into granting it a share, dishonestly gained, in spoils 
 if doubtful moral validity,^' obviously the considerations which 
 ,ffect the foreign policy of a state demand an exact scrutiny, 
 f the Russo-Japanese war can even partially arise from the 
 )rivate ambitions of interested courtiers," measures have 
 ibviously to be taken to hmit the scope of abuse to which the 
 )ower of government is subject. Phenomena like Mr. Cecil 
 ilhodes, who dehberately set aside the consideration of nice 
 noral issues," raise problems of the first importance. 
 
 But deUberate perversion of power brings with it, in the 
 ong run, its own downfall. What ismore~difficult of eitqmsy 
 s the devotion of governmental authority to narrow purposea 
 vhich are deemed good by an irresponsible controlling minority/ v^ 
 The Combination Acts are a notable instance of this kmn. 
 They reflect, of course, the general tendency of the French 
 Elevolution to regard all associations as evil;" but they rep- 
 :esent also, in more sinister fashion^, an entire failure on the 
 part of government to understand the problems of the work- 
 ng-class. The House of Commons refused, both in 1824 and 
 n 1826, to allow the abuse of man-traps and spring-guns to 
 36 remedied; and it was only after a long struggle that, in 
 L836, a prisoner on trial for felony was at last allowed to have 
 the beniefit of counsel. "The existence of unjust and foolish 
 aws," says Professor Dicey,*" "is less remarkable than the 
 grounds upon which these laws were defended. Better, it 
 was argued, that honest men, who had never fired a gun, 
 should be exposed to death by spring-guns or man-traps than 
 that a country gentleman should fail in preserving his game. 
 k prisoner, it was suggested, though he might occasionally, 
 through inabihty to employ counsel, be convicted of a murder 
 ar a theft which he had never committed, had no reason to 
 3omplain, for the very absence of an advocate turned the 
 
 '« Brailsford," The War of Steel and Gold," p. 38. 
 " Ibid., p. 52. 
 
 " As in the Glen-Grey Act for example, Cf . Hobson, "Imperialism" (ed. of 
 1905), p. 236. 
 " Cf . chapter V. below. 
 "> "Law and PubUc Opinion" (2d edition), p. 88. 
 
50 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 judge into a counsel for the prisoner. The plea was notoriously 
 untrue; but had it been founded on fact, it would have im- 
 plied that injustice to a prisoner could be remedied by neglect 
 of duty on the part of a judge." 
 
 The process of administration has been beset by similar 
 difficulties. Everyone knows of the Circumlocution OflEice 
 immortahsed in"Little Dorrit;" and the remarkable experiences 
 of Mr. Edmund Yates in the Post Office are not without their 
 suggestiveness.*^ Sir Henry Taylor explained the evils of the 
 irresponsibility that .existed in his day. "By evading decisions 
 wherever they can be evaded," he wrote,'^ "by shifting them 
 on other departments and authorities whenever they can be 
 shifted; by giving decisions on superficial examination,. . . 
 by deferring questions till, as Lord Bacon said, they resolve of 
 themselves; by undertaking nothing for the public good which 
 the public voice does not call for; by concihating loud and 
 energetic individuals at the expense of such public interest 
 as are dumb and do not attract attention; by sacrificing 
 everywhere what is feeble and obscure to what is influential 
 and cognizable . . .the single functionary may . .reduce 
 his business within his powers, and perhaps obtain for himself 
 the most valuable of all reputations in this line of life, that of 
 a safe man." The complaint of Charlfs Buller is similar,*' 
 and the final consequence of the bureaucratic process was 
 given its permanent expression by Carlyle.*^ i^The mode of 
 making the service efficient," said a distinguished civil servant 
 of the fifties,^^ "seems never to have entered their minds." 
 The routine of habit, in fact, is impermeable to the normal 
 channels of change; and so important a critic as Sir Charles 
 Trevelyan actually thought that it was the spirit of 1848 
 which induced England to put its house in order.*^ There 
 
 «' See his amusing "Recollections," Vol. I, pp. 96 f, 106. 
 
 «= "The Statesman," p. 155. 
 
 ^ Cf . his character of Mr. Mothercountry in his "Responsible Govern- 
 ment in the Colonies." 
 
 «* "Latter Day Pamphlets" (ed. of 1885), p. 47. 
 
 ^ "Civil Service Papers," 1854-5, p. 272. He is speaking of the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 *« "Second Report of Commission on Civil Service." Pari. Papers, 1875, 
 Vol. XXIII, p. 100. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 51 
 
 has, of course, been vast improvement since that time; but 
 the tendency to which administration is liable is a constant 
 factor in the exercise of authority. 
 
 In all this, the argument of deUberate malevolence is as 
 inaccurate as it is obvious and certain that the result is the 
 perversion of the end the state should serve. It is perhaps 
 dangerous, as Burke suggested, to go back too often to the 
 foundations of the state; but it is at least no abstract question 
 upon which we are engaged. If we find that, in the event, 
 authority has certain habits, and that they result in evil, we 
 have to seek means of their effective change, or at least some 
 safeguard against the evil. And it is in events alone that we 
 must search for our truths. It is useless, as Burke rightly 
 saw,*^ to discuss "the abstract right of a man to food or medi- 
 cine. The question is upon the method of procuring and ad- 
 ministering them." If we find that, however good the intention 
 of those who hold the reins of power, that intention is somehow, 
 if not frustrated, at least inadequately realised in the event, 
 we have to examine the elements involved in such translation 
 into practice. All kinds of factors may comphcate the problem. 
 If the member of Parliament, for instance, be Sir Pitt Crawley, 
 it is hardly useful to force upon his attention the rights of 
 man. If the memb'er of the House of Lords be a promoted 
 Archdeacon Grantley assuredly he will not grasp the social 
 problem in' an adequate perspective.'* The fact here is that 
 to many of those who are engaged in the task of government, 
 the problem of authority is either unknown, or is uncon- 
 sciously set in terms of the status quo. That Duke of Newcastle 
 who desired to do what he would with his own, was probably 
 completely unaware that there was a theory of the state in- 
 volved in his attitude. Queen Victoria's refusal, in 1859, to 
 make Mr. Bright a Privy Councillor on the ground that "it 
 would be impossible to allege any service Mr. Bright has ren- 
 dered, and if the honour were looked upon as a reward for his 
 systematic attacks upon the institutions of the country, a 
 very erroneous impression might be produced as to the feeling 
 
 " "Reflections on the French Revolution." "Works" (World's Classics, 
 ed.). Vol. IV, p. 66. 
 
 «8 Cf. Mr. Wallas' comment, "The Great Society," p. 332. 
 
52 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 which the Queen or her government entertain towards those 
 institutions"*' is, in reality, an expression of the conviction 
 that the middle class had better know its place, and not meddle 
 ivith the business of its superiors. The implication surely is 
 ;hat Bright's long attack on institutions only partially democ- 
 ratised was, in the royal opinion, no contribution to social 
 mprovement. 
 
 In every phase of the general social question the real assump- 
 ;ion is the beUef for which Burke so strenuously argued. "Prop- 
 jrty," he said,'" ". . .never can be safe from the invasions 
 )f abiUty unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in 
 he representation." It is, as he said, a simple truth that 
 'the same quantity of property which is, by the natural course 
 )f things, divided among many, has not the same operation." 
 But that is, in reahty, to argue that power goes with the dis- 
 iribution of property, and it supposes power to be rightly 
 ised only where it is exerted in the interest of property. In 
 I period of revolution it was perhaps natural for him seriously 
 ;o over-estimate the dangers to which property is subject. 
 VEr. . Gladstone, at least, was less fearful. "There is a saying 
 )f Burke's," he told Lord Morley,"' "from which I must utterly 
 lissent. ' Property is sluggish and inert. ' Quite the contrary. 
 J'roperty is vigilant, active, sleepless; and if it ever seems to 
 lumber, be sure that one eye is open." That surely is the 
 esson of history; for every class which possesses property 
 vill claim that it has an abstract right to power. Yet Burke, 
 nore than any man of his time, would have thought little 
 mough of so abstract a claim; and he would have insisted that 
 he real test of property, as, therefore, of the power which it 
 iontrols, is the way in which it functions. 
 
 V. THE ATTACK ON THE SECULAR STATE 
 
 N our own time it is in general felt that the result of the demo- 
 ratic process is unsatisfactory. The authority that is exerted 
 n the name of the state fails to result in accompUshing that 
 
 »» Trevelyan, "Life of Bright," p. 283. 
 
 «» "Reflection on the French Revolution." "Works" (World's Classics 
 d.). Vol. IV., p. 55. 
 
 " Morley, "Life of Gladstone," III, 352. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 53 
 
 r which the state exists. It is into the cause of this discrep- 
 .cy that we are examining. Virtually, the answer that we 
 ike is an insistence upon the humanity of men. "A nation 
 
 a state," Professor Dicey has written,'^ "means, conceal it 
 iw you will, a lot of individual selves with unequal talents 
 d in reality unequal conditions, and each of these selves 
 les — or rather must — think not exclusively hut primarily 
 his own self. The old doctrine of original sin may be totally 
 sconnected from the tale of Eve and her apple, or any other 
 iigious tradition or theological dogma, but it represents an 
 ideniable fact which neither a statesman nor a preacher can 
 nture to ignore." Certainly even if we make no assumptions 
 
 to the psychological factors involved, it is true enough thus 
 urge that the system, social, economic, political, under which 
 i Uye, emphasises drastically the principle of self-interest. 
 
 such perspective, the object at which the state aims must be 
 ide superior to the private ideals of its constituent parts, 
 cept insofar as they coincide with that larger object. And 
 authority is thus subject to exploitation, it must be subject 
 
 limitation also. It can act without restraint only where 
 i end is in fact coincident with its ideal object. Its poUcy, 
 at is to say, is only sovereign where it is serving the sover- 
 ;n purpose. x'^ 
 
 That raises an immediate difficulty. Upon the rightness of 
 
 pohcy it is clear that doubt may exist. On the theory of 
 sation, for example, there is a clear hne of distinction in 
 igland between the Liberal and Conservative parties. Broadly 
 Baking, Liberahsm stands for direct, Conservatism for in- 
 ject taxation.^' In such a difference there is no ground for 
 judiation of government action in terms of revolution. The 
 scial tax involved might, indeed, well have such consequence; 
 iistance to a head-tax on Roman Catholics, for example, is 
 
 argument not difficult to justify. The point at which re- 
 tance becomes an expedient factor is not a matter for defi- 
 ion or prophecy; it will vary with the circumstances of 
 3h age. All we can say is that at times in the history of a 
 ite there may well come a point where the maintenance of 
 
 •^ "Law and PubUc Opinion" (2d ed.), p. LXXX. 
 
 3 Cf. J6ze, etc., "Problemes de Politique et Finances de Guerre," p. 27. 
 
54 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 [order seems to some group of men worthless as an end compared 
 to achieving, by other than constitutional means, some good 
 'deemed greater than peace. That is the reservoir of anarchy 
 of which resistance to oppression is the most fertile source of 
 supply. It is not in any sense a denial that the large purpose 
 of the state is supreme. It rather insists on its supremacy 
 and denies that character to governmental acts on the ground 
 that they do not achieve that end in any adequate fashion. 
 "^^ is it necessarily an arid persistence on behalf of some ab- 
 stract theorem remotely capable of reaUsation. It is not for 
 such things that revolutions have been made. Most men who 
 have taken part in practical politics will admit that a theoretic 
 preference for an abstract system does not involve their imme- 
 diate effort after the destruction of an existing government 
 which, on all reasonable showing, suits the conditions of its 
 age.'* 
 
 It is this perhaps that best sets the background for the 
 constructive answer to our questions. What, in actual fact, 
 are the social forces over which the power of the state ought 
 not to be extended? What are the hmits to its authority? 
 In what way ought its power to be organised? There are two 
 obvious kinds of hmitation to be discussed. Both are connected, 
 with the fundamental problem of liberty. Its definition is 
 perhaps the subtlest question the pohtical philosopher has to 
 confront. The truth, of course, is that the meaning of Uberty 
 will vary with every age. Each generation will have certain 
 things it prizes as supremely good and will demand that these, 
 above all, should be free. The permanent elements of hberty 
 we shall hardly know untjl some inspired investigator gives 
 us that history of which Acton dreamed. To our own genersr 
 tion it seems almost certain that the insistence upon absence 
 of restraint is in no sense adequate. A liberty to enslave one's 
 self becomes immediately self-contradictory; and Mr. Justice 
 Holmes has finely insisted, in one of the most significant of 
 his opinions, upon the intimate connection of liberty with 
 equality,'^ Nor does Mill really aid us much in his distinction 
 
 "* Cf. Gwynne and TuckweU, "Life of Sir C. DHke," I, 177. 
 
 "' See his dissent in Coppage v Kansas, 236 U. S., I, 26-7. The best 
 defence I know of the idea of hberty as absence of restraint is in Seeley's 
 "Introduction to Pohtical Science," 101 f. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 65 
 
 stween self -regarding and other-regarding qualities; for the 
 ct is that we can have no information as to the social rele- 
 mce of any act until we consider its consequences.'' "When 
 s speak of freedom as something to be highly prized," said 
 , H. Green,'' "we mean a positive power of doing or enjoying 
 mething worth doing or enjoying, and that, too, something 
 lat we do or enjoy in common with others." That is more 
 iluable than the negative conception because it insists on 
 hat, in this age, we feel to be fundamental in Uberty — ^the 
 )wer of adding something to the quality of the common Ufe. 
 ut it does not, of course — though Green had elsewhere an- 
 rered that question'* — tell us what it is worth while to do 
 • to enjoy; and here again, acute difference of opinion is 
 jssible. It was as a historian that Acton approached the 
 roblem, and his answer had a connotation not to be mis- 
 tiderstood. "By hberty," he said," "I mean the assurance 
 lat every man shall be protected in doing what he believes 
 is duty against the influence of authority and majority, cus- 
 )m and opinion." To a practical statesman that will seem 
 2rhaps a counsel of perfection; and, certainly, it is a counsel 
 lat, at every stage, will encounter acute difficulties of practical 
 aeration. 
 
 It yet sets, in the background of Green's conception, the 
 [ea we need of the internal hmitatio n upon the action of the 
 ;ate.^It insists upon the greatest truth to which history bears 
 itness that the only real security for social well-being is the 
 ee exercis e of men's mind s./ Otherwise, assuredly, we have 
 jllU'atiLed ourselves to slSVery^ The only permanent safe- 
 jard of democratic governmefit is that the unchanging and 
 itimate sanction of intellectual decision should be the con- 
 iience. We have here, that is to say, a realm within which 
 le state can have no rights and where it is well that it should 
 ive none. No state, in truth, is ever firmly grounded that 
 IS not in such fashion won the consent of its members to 
 
 '« Cf. Prof. Dicey's comment. "Law and Public Opinion," p. XXVIII. 
 
 " "Works," III, 371. 
 
 " In the "Prolegomena to Ethics." 
 
 " "History of Freedom," p. 3. 
 
56 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 action. The greatest contribution that a citizen can make to 
 the state is certainly this, that he should allow his mind freely 
 to exercise itself upon its problems. /Where the conscience of 
 the individual is concerned the state must abate its demands; i 
 for no mind is in truth free once a penalty is attached to thjjiig^i/ 
 Nor will consent so won be real consent. It is patent to the 
 world that the inexhaustible well-spring of democratic resource, 
 as against any other form of government, is that no other 
 system can be certain of itself. The methods by which an 
 autocracy must secure consent are today, or should be, tolerably 
 well-known; and while they may seem at times to have the 
 efficacy of poison, they result always in death or violent remedy. 
 Freedom of thought, then, the modern state must regard 
 as absolute; and that means freedom of thought whether on 
 the part of the individual or of a social group. Nothing is 
 
 / more stupid than for the state to regard the individual and it- 
 self as the only entities of which account must be taken, or 
 to suggest that other groups live by its good pleasure. That 
 is to make the easy mistake of thinking that the activities of 
 man in his relation to government exhaust his nature. It is 
 
 ^a fatal error. The societies of men are spontaneous. They 
 may well conffict with the state; but they wiU only ultimately 
 
 .suffer suppression if the need they supply is, in some equally 
 adequate form, answered by the state itself. And it is tojerably 
 clear that there are many such interests the state cannot serve. 
 The growth of religious difference, for example, makes the 
 state-adoption of any religious system a matter of doubtful 
 expediency; and that means, as has been before insisted, that 
 the internal relations of churches will in fact deny state-inter- 
 ference. A society hke tha Presbyterian Church, which recog- 
 nises only the headship of Christ, wUl resist to the uttermost 
 any external attempt at the definition of its hfe; and experience 
 seems to suggest that the state will lose far more than it can 
 gain by the effort. Where the fellowship is economic in nature 
 the problem is, indeed, far more complex; for the modem 
 state is at every turn an economic organisation. But, even 
 here, the impossibility of absorption is shown by the tragic 
 history of such things as the Combination Acts. The state 
 may well exact responsibility for the thought such fellowships 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 57 
 
 lay have where it seeks translation into action; but it will 
 gtablish its exaction only where the individual, himself judg- 
 ag between conflicting claims, is driven to feel that the effort 
 f the state is more vaUd than the other. * 
 
 That is to say that for the state there are^found subjects of 
 ocial rights and duties. They are not the creation of the state; 
 he state is simply an organisation existing for the reahsation 
 if an end. The subjects of those rights are sometimes individual 
 luman beings; sometimes they take the form of fellowships 
 if men. Those fellowships possess a personality into the nature 
 )f which.it is not here necessary to examine.""* The fund a- 
 nental fact for the state is that they present an activity that 
 s 1ini5 ed~ahcl must be treated as involving the possession Of 
 ■ightsl But the individual stands above and outside them. 
 The only way the state can truly prosper is by sweeping ijjto 
 tself the active assistance of his mind and conscience; and it 
 vill succeed in that effort only insofar as it respects them. 
 iVhatever, therefore, concerns the conscience of man, what- 
 ever brings its activity into operation, must, for the state, be 
 iacred ground. That this involves difSculties in practice is 
 inquestionable.' But if the action of the vital agency of gov- 
 jrnment arouses such conscientious opposition as to be incapa- 
 Dle of apphcation, it seems, to say the least, possible that it 
 leeds re-examination in terms of its moral character^ If a 
 measure has so wrought upon the natural political inertia of 
 men as to prick them into insurgency, it has probably inter- 
 preted with maleficent purpose the end of the state. /^ven 
 n^here the opposition is small, it is probable that more is gained 
 3y the possession of that energy of character which is willing 
 to offer challenge than by destroying it.'"' A state which op- 
 presses those who are antagonised by the way in which govern-' 
 
 ""• The bibliography of the subject is enormous. Its most fruitful treat- 
 nent seems to me the two volumes of L6on Michoud, "Theorie de la Per- 
 ionnalit^ Morale," with which I am largely in agreement. I have tried to 
 adicate the nature of the problem in an article in the Harvard Law 
 Review for February, 1916. 
 
 •'" I should like to refer to Prof. G. Murray's really noble introduction 
 ;o Mrs. Hobhouse's "I appeal to Caesar," with which I am in glad 
 igreement. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 nent interprets its purposes is bound to drift slowly into 
 lespotism. 
 
 ' It is asserted that such an attitude is impractical. A man 
 nay think as he pleases; but opposition to government is 
 ,he coronation of anarchy. It is, to say the least, uncertain 
 vhether the assertion is so formidable as it appears. Disorder 
 nay be better than injustice.^ It was assuredly better for 
 j]ngland that the Civil WaPasserted the impossibility of the 
 Stuart claims than that humble obedience should be offered 
 ,0 them, '^very government is a de facto government except 
 nsofar as the rightness of its effort makes it de jure^ A man 
 las, above all, to be true to himself; for, once the fatal step 
 s taken of humbling himself, against his inner promptings, 
 )efore the demands of authority the way to acquiescence is 
 sasv. Nor must we be misled by the effort at confusion that 
 s implied in the division of the state into minority and ma- 
 ority. The lever of pubUc opinion is a weapon too easily 
 )rought into use. We rarely analyse it into its constituent 
 )arts. We rarely estimate how far a majority-opinion is in 
 act active consent, and how far it is in reahty no more than 
 -he inert acquiescence that prefers slimiber to challenge. In 
 I problem like religious education, for example, the amount of 
 ionscientious and instructed opinion on either side is small; 
 md the real truth is that a bill Like Mr. Balfour's measure of 
 .903 wins acceptance rather because the mass of men is unin- 
 lerested in the technical problems involved than because the 
 )articular solution of the church of England makes. to them 
 lome transcendent appeal. When Sir Frederick Smith can 
 itigmatise the Welsh Disestablishmeni? Act as "a ftill which 
 las shocked the conscience of every Christian community 
 n Europe,"'''^ he must be aware that the phrase is no more 
 .han vulgar rhetoric, and that in fact any estimate of the 
 ^ct's popularity it is^ impossible in that fashion to make. In 
 ,he process of government the importance of this inert factor 
 !an hardly be too greatly emphasised. It needs some vivid 
 tction to stimulate to resistance a body of men large enough 
 ,0 make its presence felt in the state. We probably tend 
 leriously to underrate the effort that is needed to embark upon 
 i»iiCf. Mr. Chesterton's "Poems" (1914) for the comment on this remark. 
 
AUTHOJRITY IN THE MODERN STATE 59 
 
 ih resistance. Certainly the remark may be hazarded that 
 is never aroused without deep causes to which attention 
 1st be paid. 
 The assumption here made is that every individual is above 
 
 a moral being and that the greatest contribution he can 
 ike to the state is the effort of his moral faculties. That is 
 reahty an assistance to society. A state in which the con- 
 ences of men are alert and energetic will hardly embark 
 on the path that may lead, for example, to the invasion of 
 ilgium. A government which knows the existence of those 
 Qsciences will hardly allow its mind to wander in the direction 
 such wrong. It is when there has been systematic training 
 effortless acquiescence, that there is the easiest opportunity 
 : injustice. It is in such case that the state, perhaps even 
 dlisation, may feel the nemesis of that dociUty. I n tha t 
 ose ^ by j BrgEeQtingjthe_seBses-Qfja£BrJfOTn being.aQ,^dd^ 
 
 to mistake legaHtoLJo r moral right r-»e-hayejthes urest safe-: , 
 ard against_disa£ter. The active conscienceoTtEe' members 
 
 a state acts as a self-operating check against perversion 
 Dm its purposes. 
 
 But conscience is not a thing which reacts instinctively to 
 ly set of circumstances. It needs instruction. It has to be 
 ained into the fine perception of the complex issues by which 
 will be confronted. The mind with which it interacts needs 
 lurishment to be energetieii^ Here, indeed, is the significance \ 
 r the state of Socrates' great plea that virtue is knowledge. > 
 
 I untutored people can never be great in any save the rudest 
 ts of civiUsation. Here, again, we have the elements upon 
 iich to base 'a hmitation of state-power. No state can through 
 i instruments deny education to its members. It must pro- 
 de them, that is to say, with means at least adequate to a 
 
 II perception of fife; for, otherwise, the purpose of the state 
 at one stroke negatived for them. Even Adam Smith put 
 ^ucation among those activities it was well for the state to 
 idertake;"' and Mr. Graham Wallas has wisely insisted 
 at the growing interest of the workers in the fruits of learning 
 one of the surest tests we have of progress.^"^ That does 
 
 1™ "Wealth of Nations" (Everyman's ed.), II, 269. 
 '« "The Great Society," p. 302. 
 
60 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 not condemn the state to any particular system. It does not 
 even suggest that there is a radical wrong in giving one man 
 the advantage of a classical training while his brother is sent 
 to a technical institute. It merely suggests that the provision 
 of some agreed minimum of what is adequate to the purpose 
 of citizenship is essential and that no state is satisfactorily 
 organised where this condition does not obtain. It is the more 
 urgent because political problems are so vast that no state, 
 least of all a democracy, can hope to deal with them unless 
 each member is sufficiently articulate to transfer the judgment 
 of his experience to the increase of the common store. "An 
 autocratic sultan," it has been happily remarked,^"* "may gov- 
 ern without science if his whim is law. A plutocratic party 
 may choose to ignore science if it is heedless whether its pre- 
 , tended solutions of social problems . . ultimately succeed or 
 I fail. But a democratic society must base its solutions upon the 
 j widest possible induction open to its members.*^ That is not 
 ' less American experience.'"^ Indeed, it may be claimed that 
 /the recent experience of the whole world has very strikingly 
 /demonstrated the need of associating the active assistance of 
 f men with the policy of the state; and it has been found that 
 such assistance is more active the more highly it is trained. 
 That is, in fact, to emphasise that by neglect of its resources 
 the state has wasted the opportunity of their richest increase; 
 and that, surely, must involve the erection of safeguards against 
 the continuance of such neglect. 
 
 We are indicating avenues of possible approach rather than 
 detailing the exact use to which they shall be put; and it is 
 perhaps better to analyse the general bearing of this attitude 
 than to catalogue its constituent f actors. i"' It is an attitude 
 \which primarily suggests that the study of social life will in, 
 any scientific perspective, suggest some minimum rule of social 
 conduct.'"^ Immediately the interdependence of men is real- 
 
 "' ' 'Report of the Sub-Committee of the British Labour Party," last 
 paragraph. 
 
 106 cf. "The Report of the President's Mediation Committee to the Presi- 
 dent of the United States" (1918), p. 21. 
 
 "' This will be attempted in a later work on the principles of politics. 
 
 i°8 Cf. Duguit, "L'Etat Le Droit Objeotif," Ch. II. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 61 
 
 ised there is ethically involved the notion of a minimum equal- 
 ity. That is not to say that all men are born equal. It is 
 simply to say that the unity involved in the mere concept 
 of social purpose must prevent the unnecessary degradation 
 of any individual. Nor is it for one moment to suggest that 
 this rule of conduct is an unchangeable thing. The needs of 
 each age, no less than its potentialities, are, of necessity, differ- 
 ent; and with every age our rule of conduct will therefore vary. 
 Nor are we, like Adam Smith, suggesting the existence of 
 "natural laws of justice independent of all positive institu- 
 tion;""' for that, in truth, is to put ourselves outside the realm 
 of scientific speculation. The body of principles which can ad- 
 mit of an immutable and inflexible application to politics would 
 be so generalised in character as to be of little practical worth."" 
 The Ufe of politics, as of the law, lies in its functioning. Theft 
 may be bad and punishable by law; but we cannot apply the 
 criminal code until we near the penumbra which surrounds the 
 case. And that penumbra may well make the principle inappli- 
 cable. What we do is to deposit hypotheses that have come to 
 us from the facts of life; we declare that their application will 
 enrich the content of the social life. These hypotheses are not 
 the mere whims of chance opinion. We cannot, at least in poli- 
 tics, where decision is necessary, take refuge in a scepticism 
 which, logically followed, makes conduct impossible. We urge 
 that the argument for one principle can in fact be better than 
 another. It is today, for example, broadly believed that the 
 case for factory acts is stronger than the case for industrial 
 laissez-faire. The governmental regulation of factory-condi- 
 tions has by now become a part of our rule of political conduct. 
 That has not been universally the case. But our experience has 
 grown with time and we today think in other terms than the 
 early nineteenth century. When the hypothesis that sums up 
 such a general experience becomes generally enough accepted 
 
 >»9 "Theory of Moral Sentiments" (ed. of 1759), p. 549. A theory of natu- 
 ral law independent of change is defended by one of the most brilhaB t of 
 the younger school of philosophical jurists, Professor M. R. Cohen, in an 
 article, "Jus Naturale Redivivum," in the Philosophical Review Vol. XXV, 
 p. 761. 
 
 "» Cf. Mr. Justice Holmes in Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45, 76. 
 
62 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 it gets written into the code of principles that we in general 
 regard as beyond the realm of ordinary discussion. The prob- 
 lem here is not very different from the growth in the law of torts 
 of hability without fault. We have penal statutes which directly 
 conflict with the older concept of that categpry. The statutes 
 aim, for social reasons, at securing the mass of men against cer- 
 tain dangers. Workmen's Compensation, for example, throws 
 the burden on the employer in the beUef that it is more socially 
 advantageous for the burden so to fall. What is here done is to 
 withdraw an area of social action from the ordinary concepts of 
 law by making it statutory. It places a statutory clause — ^the 
 provision, in certain cases, for accident — ^as one of the conditions 
 a master must observe if he wishes to engage in business.'" 
 Workmen's compensation is thus simply a regulation of exper- 
 ience. It is a principle withdrawn for the general good from the 
 operation of industrial competition. The general rule of conduct 
 is in nowise different save that its substance is perhaps more 
 fundamental. 
 
 That is the sense, for example, in which a real value may be 
 attached to the Bill of Rights in an American constitution. 
 Misinterpreted as it often may be,"^ perverted as it certainly 
 has been, it yet testifies to the vital character of a solid body of 
 social rules. To write into the body of a constitution not imme- 
 diately accessible to amendment principles which are the result 
 of social experience is to put them beyond the reach of ordinary 
 mischance. Nobody who has at all examined the character of 
 American political Ufe can doubt that this vague well-spring 
 of ideahsm has not only had, but still potentially possesses, a 
 profound influence. The constitutional provisions against an 
 established church, for instance, are of course derived from a 
 bitter experience of Anghcan persecution. They have undoubt- 
 edly prevented the growth of the social status connected in Eng- 
 land with the official rehgion, which still leaves a deep mark 
 
 '" Cf. my paper on the "Basis of Vicarious Liability'' in 26 Yale Law 
 Journal 105 and Cf. Pound, 25 International Journal of Ethics, p. 1. 
 
 ''2 For the way in which the Fourteenth Amendment has been misinter- 
 preted, for example Cf. Collins, "The Fourteenth Amendment and the 
 States." 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 63 
 
 on English life."' The way in which every state constitution- 
 y insists upon the subordination of the miUtary to the civil 
 wer is the safeguard against the aggression involved breeding 
 ;o the mind of a people the thought that the army is a thing 
 art, not subject to the rules of justice. No one can doubt that 
 agna Charta means to an Enghshman something that is not 
 sily to be over-emphasised; sufficient, indeed, to make it 
 ssible for a distinguished judge to insist that only the specific 
 claration of ParUament can secure its annullment."^ The 
 ychologic background of provisions such as these is an im- 
 3nse preventive against the abuse of authority. They give 
 doctrines the arms which make possible resistance to oppres- 
 )n. They sanction the effort of legisative ideahsm. They 
 present, however vaguely, the moral desperation of a people. 
 ^ poetical adage" may not, as Bentham sneeringly said,"^ 
 )e a reason;" but it is likely, if it have root in experience to 
 ovide one; and he himself goes on to explain to what vast 
 3ults a simple phrase like "mother-country" may give 
 le. 
 
 Obviously, of course, such an attitude as this is in the closest 
 iation to the modern revival of natural law."* We are well 
 ough able now to see the main source of the discredit into 
 lich it fell during the nineteenth century. It had tended, in 
 e previous age, to regard the problems of law as far too simple 
 id their solutions as accordingly at hand. It shared the dis- 
 edit which the dissatisfaction with the French Revolution 
 flicted upon an optimistic outlook. It was too highly abstract 
 id too little careful of the forms of law. It over-emphasised 
 e degree to which reason is finally operative in the determina- 
 )n of an adequate ideal. In the result, as Dean Pound has 
 
 "' For the remains of its influence in Oxford Cf . Dicey, "Law and Pub- 
 Opinion," 479-83. 
 
 "<Rex V. HalUday (1917). A. C. 261, 294. Cf. my comment in 31 
 irvard Law Review, 296. 
 
 "5 "Theory of Legislation" (translated by C. M. Atkinson), Vol. I, p. 92. 
 "« On this cf. the great essay of Saleilles, "Ecole historique et droit 
 fcurel" in lUimeTrimestriellede droit civil 1Q02, 1. 80-112. Chaxmont "La 
 naissance du Droit Naturel." 
 
34 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 shown/" the pessimism of the historical school triumphed over 
 ivhat seemed as more than a metaphysical miasma. But, in 
 'act, the effort made by the theorists of natural law enshrined 
 I truth of which too great neglect is possible. 
 
 That truth consists in the reah sation that one of the great 
 mainsp nngs of human effort is tne reaUsatiOK ( '>f ^. iJ,iini]-pynf^ 
 -.Vr nn-tKal which ^isjactuallv existent. The eighteenth-century 
 theorists made the error of regarding that good as unchangeable. 
 The facts, of course, proved too strong for so rigid an outlook. 
 But this insistence upon idealism in law is not open to the same 
 difficulty if, with Stammler, we regard the ideal of natural law 
 IS continually changing in content."^ We have, as he has 
 pointed out,"' a twofold problem. We must know the relation 
 jf law and morals. That is, of course, the ordinary problem in- 
 irestigated by the legal philosophers. It is not, however, the 
 3rux of the question. We need to understand how a legal rule 
 s to be made just in the special conditions it is to confront. 
 That is a purely functional problem. It is clear, for instance, 
 bhat into the idea of justice arbitrary control cannot enter j^^" 
 but it is not less clear that opinion may differ as to what is arbi- 
 trary control. Professor Dicey, for example, has attacked the 
 French system of administrative law as fatal in practice to the 
 triumph of objective principles ;^2i and Maxime Leroy has ex- 
 pressed his discontent with the English rule of law.^^^ What 
 surely, we can alone admit as dogmatic is the fact that justice 
 is somehow to be attained yet, granted the fact of institutional 
 svolution it is clear that the content of justice is bound to vary. 
 The balance of forces in a community is subject to sufficient 
 
 117 "The End of Law," 30 Harvard Law Review, p. 221. I owe my whole' 
 understanding of the background of this problem to the really noble edifice 
 Dean Pound has erected in these papers. 
 
 "' See above all his "Lehre von dem richtigen Rechte'' and his "Wirth- 
 schafts und Recht" (2nd ed.), 119. "Lehre von ■flem richtigen Rechte," pp. 
 13 ff. 120 Ibid pp. 208-9. 
 
 "» "Lehre von dem richtigen Rechte." pp. 13ff. 
 
 I''" Ibid pp. 208-9. 
 
 1" "Law of the Constitution," Chap. XII. 
 • '" Libres Entretiens 4me series, p. 368. I have tried to deal with this 
 question in some detail below. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 65 
 
 •iation to make the conflict of ideals inevitable. A process 
 internecine selection secures the triumph of some attitude. 
 This theory of internal Umitation upon the action of authority 
 essentially a pracmntin nnr It admits that any system 
 ich failed in practice to secure what is largely termed the 
 i of social life would be inadequate. It is sufficiently alive 
 the importance of stability to seek to place the fundamental 
 aons of each age beyond the temptation of ma,licious enter- 
 se. It is such notions that we have termed rights. It is 
 ih notions we have denied the power, at least in theoTy^f 
 .rernment to traverse. For we say that their realisation is 
 ential to the end of the state; and government is itself 
 y a means to that end. The state, in fact, must limit its 
 truments by the law of its own being. Spvereigntv. in such 
 aspect, can never belong to the government if we term i t 
 ! su preme power to do what is thought necessary. Govern- 
 int, it IS clear, will have a power to will. ±5ut that will may 
 ne into conflict with other wills; and the test of the alle- 
 ,nce it should win is the degree in which it is thought to be 
 ire in harmony than its antagonists with the end of social 
 
 !^nd this, it is clear also, envisages a pluraUstic conception 
 society. It denies the oneness of society and the state. It 
 ists that nothing is known of the state-purpose until it is 
 3lared; and it refuses, for obvious reasons, to make a priori 
 servations about its content. It sees man as a being who 
 shes to realise himself as a member of society. It refers 
 ck each action upon which judgment is to be passed to the 
 iscience of the individual. It insists that the supreme ar- 
 er of the event is the totaUty of such consciences. It does 
 t deny that the individual is influenced by the thousand 
 lociations with which he is in contact; but it is unable to 
 -ceive that he is absorbed by them. It sees society as one 
 iy in purpose; but it urges that this purpose has in fact 
 in differently interpreted and is capable of realisation by 
 ire than a single method. In such an analysis 'the state is 
 y one among many forms of human association. It is not 
 ;essarily any more in harmony with the end of society than a ■ 
 irch or a trade-union, or a freemasons' lodge. They have, 
 
66 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 it is true, relations which the state controls; but that does not 
 make them inferior to the state. The assumption of inferi- 
 ority, indeed, is a fallacy that comes from comparing different 
 immediate purposes. Moral inferiority in purpose as between 
 a church and state there can hardly be; legal inferiority is 
 either an illegitimate postulation of Austinian sovereignty, or 
 else the result of a false identification of state and society. 
 The confusion becomes apparent when we emphasise the con- 
 tent of the state. When we insist that the state is a society 
 of governors and governed, it is obvious that its superiority 
 can have logical reference only to the sphere that it has marked 
 out for its own and then only to the extent to which that 
 sphere is not successfully challenged.^''' 
 
 Here, indeed, is the source of a serious confusion in the 
 recent developments of the neo-Hegelian theory of the state.^^ 
 ■V'WilL,not force," said Green,!^^ "is the basis of the state." 
 That, in a sense, is true enough; but it obscures the real prob- 
 lem of discovering upon what will, in actual fact, the poHcy 
 of the state is based. The search is perhaps an endless one. 
 Certainly we must, in its course, bear in mind Green's own 
 caution that "the idea of a common good which the state 
 fulfils has never been the sole influence actuating those who 
 have been agents" in its life.™ They can never reaUse it, 
 as he thinks, except in some imperfect form. Here, surely, 
 is a fundamental point. For even if it be true that we are 
 watching in the state the slow process of a growing good which, 
 despite error and wrong, will somehow be realised, the growing 
 good cannot, by sheer assumption, necessarily be said to be 
 situate in one set of men rather than another. That, surely, 
 is a matter for examination. Few would now be found to urge 
 
 •** For an interesting suggestion that the state has the right to insist 
 upon fair deahng in the internal life of other societies cf. Professor Sa- 
 bine's review of my book in the Philosophical Review for January, 1918. 
 
 '2* Particularly in Prof. Bosanquet's yery brilhant volume on the "Philo- 
 sophical Theory of the State." I may perhaps be allowed to say that 
 criticism does not preclude the recognition that this book is, with the single 
 exception of Green's "Principles of Pohtical Obligation," the greatest con- 
 tribution made by an Englishman to political philosophy since Mill. 
 
 12' "Works" II, 426 f. 
 
 126 /hid. 434. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 67 
 
 ,hat the administration which ruled England after the peace 
 )f 1815 had a conception of good denied, for instance, to Fran- 
 sis Place and the radicals. 
 
 The state is based upon will; but the wills from which its 
 vill is eventually formed struggle amongst each other for sur- 
 irival. The idea of a "general" will that is necessarily good 
 emerging from that struggle seems, on the whole, to contribute 
 3ut little to our understanding of the even/.' A will is "good" 
 f it is a good will; but it is difficult to see why any character 
 should be aflBxed to it until we have had time to watch it in 
 actual operation^ That was the merit of Green's attitude. He 
 iid not for one moment deny that in the transition from theo- 
 retic purpose to practical realisation a significant transforma- 
 tion may occur. The lofty splendour of Mr. Bradley's "My 
 Station and its Duties" may well suffer translation into the 
 station of the Anglican catechism. It is, indeed, the inherent 
 defect of idealism that it never enables us to come to grips 
 with facts. It incurably tends to blur them over. It thinks 
 30 largely in terms of a beneficent teleology as to soften the 
 distinction between pohtical opposites. It beatifies the status 
 quo by regarding each element as an integral part of a process 
 which it insists on viewing as a totaUty. But, in the heat and 
 stress of social Ufe, we cannot afford such long-period value. 
 We may well enough regard the lean years after 1815 as the 
 necessary prelude to the great reforms of the thirties. But 
 that does not make them the less lean. We may urge that 
 society is in fact one and indivisible; but the dweller in a city- 
 slum cannot, in the nature of things, transgress the unseen 
 barrier which, for him, is far more real than the philosophic 
 bonds perceived by the abstract observer. He is surely to be 
 pardoned if, for example, he regards classj^ distinctions as real 
 when he sees the tenacity Avith which privileges he does not 
 share are defended. He may well insist that if they are rela- 
 tively necessary to the construction of the whole, it is against 
 that whole that he is then in open revolt. 
 
 The method of reaUsm has at least the merit of a greater 
 simplicity. It would not regard the South African war as 
 necessarily good because the Union of South Africa Act has 
 been a superb triumph. It is interested in judgments upon 
 
68 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 the links of a chain not less than in the chain itself. Theoret- 
 ically, it can perceive how every act may move in unity down 
 the endless stream of time. Practically, it insists .that the fact 
 of discontinuity is vital. It perceives at least two such basic 
 centres of discontinuous action. There is the individual mind. 
 There is the mind, that is to say, of man considered in refer- 
 ence to personal self-realisation without involving in that 
 process the self-realisation of others. There is the group- 
 mind also. There is the mind, that is to say, of a number of 
 men who, actuated by some common purpose, are capable of 
 a unified activity. From both of these, in their myriad forms 
 there of course proceed acts of will. If a "general will" meant 
 anything, it would only mean the totality of those wills inso- 
 far as they realised the general social purpose. But no one 
 knows immediately where that purpose is, by some individual 
 act, about to be realised. The assumption that it is so realised 
 must be a generaUsation not from purposes but from results. 
 An Act of Parliament may differently affect different men. 
 Because it means well to them all, because it achieves good as 
 a majority of legislators conceive it, does not mean that in 
 fact it is therefore good. The realist interpretation of politics 
 does not, for one moment, insist upon a divergent interest 
 between the desires that have secured historic fulfilment and the 
 desires that would have secured the social good. But it does 
 deny the ideahst ' contention that there is any necessary rele- 
 vance between them. 
 
 From that twiUght world it is surely better to emerge. Let 
 us judge an institution not by its purposes but by its achieve- 
 ment in the terms of those purposes. Let us judge, for ex- 
 ample, the Roman CathoUc Church not as the earthly embodi- 
 ment of the body of Christ but by what it has made of that 
 body in the history of its earthly form. If we remember St. 
 Francis we must not forget the Inquisition; if we insist upon the 
 wrong of Hus' condemnation, we must not neglect the splendid 
 ideals of the Cardinal of Cusa. We have to remember, in brief, 
 that the realisation of the Kingdom of God involves the holding 
 of property, the making of contracts, the appointment of offi- 
 cers, the determination of dogma. The fact that the Pope is the 
 vicar of Christ does not exclude scrutiny into the details of his 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 69 
 
 election. And our judgment upon the state must be in similar 
 terms. The step is easy from talk of state to talk of community, 
 but it is an illegitimate step. The state may have the noblestx 
 purpose. The objective at which its power aims may be un- 
 questionable. But it, too, at every moment, is acting by agents 
 who are also mortal men. The basis of scrutiny becomes at once 
 pragmatic. / The test of allegiance to estabhshed institutions 
 becomes immediately the achievement for which they are 
 responsible. The foundation of our judgment must incessantly 
 be sought in the interpretation of historic experience/ We know, 
 at least in general terms, the aim of the state. We can measure, i 
 again at least in general terms, the degree of its divergence! 
 from the ideal end. That is why no method is at all adequate; 
 which seeks the equation of the ideal and the real. That is whyj 
 the first lesson of our experience of power is the need of its! 
 limitation by the instructed judgment of free minds. 
 
 VI. THE DIVISION OF POWER 
 
 But, after all, this is an internal limitation. It seeks its root 
 less in any formal constitution than in the effort to secure in 
 the state the expression of a certain spirit. It is in no sense 
 a full safeguard against the dangers by which the state is 
 consistently confronted. We have also to erect a more positive 
 and external limitation upon authority. Not, indeed, that 
 such machinery alone would be in any sense an adequate^ 
 thing. No system of government has been yet devised not 
 capable of perversion by maleficent men. It cannot be too 
 emphatically insisted that. important as may be the policy of 
 any government, the c haracter of those who operate it is hardlv 
 less fundamental. A single instance will perhaps suffice in 
 demonstration. No one denies that the massive ability of 
 Bismarck puts him in the first rank of statesmen during the 
 nineteenth century. But it is not less obvious that he con- 
 sciously acted upon a system of pohtical principles in which 
 the ordinary canons of ethics played no part. When he em- 
 barked upon his campaign against socialisij^ the method of 
 which he availed himself was the deliberate application of 
 principles in which he did not believe and to which he had 
 formerly announced his opposition; and it is clear that those 
 
70 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 principles became different by reason of the spirit he infused 
 into their application. Half the difficulty of democratic govern- 
 ment consists in the choice of leaders; and in a quasi-democ- 
 racy where, as in Germany, leadership is imposed from above, 
 ideas that may in one context be admirable, will, in their new 
 atmosphere, serve only as a dangerous soporific. Few things 
 have been more easy than for an able and energetic govern- 
 ment, which was willing to pay the price, to bribe a whole 
 - people into slavery. HCTg js a matter where rules of any ki nd 
 ar e simplv inapplicable. There are a thousand elements in 
 the problem; and no student of political psychology can avoid 
 the admission that we have, hardly approached even the be- 
 ginnings of a satisfactory solution.'^^ 
 
 When the choice of governors has been made, the question 
 yet remains of confining them to the business for which they 
 have been chosen. We have so to arrange the machinery of 
 the state as to secure not merely the most efficient safeguard 
 against its perversion from theoretic purpose, but also to ob- 
 tain the fullest promotion of that end. Here is the real hinter- 
 land of political enquiry ; for the one obvious method by which 
 the past sought refuge from the dangers of authority has proved 
 in fact delusive. That method was the separation of powers. 
 It was from the time of Aristotle conceived that the elements 
 of public business admit of a natural classification into legis- 
 lative, executive, and judicial. ^^ The danger of combining 
 the two latter was forcibly insisted upon by Bodin;'''' and 
 Locke seems to have been the first to point out the value of 
 their active and general separation. i'" But it was Montesquieu 
 who, basing his attitude upon a mistaken interpretation of the 
 Enghsh constitution, first urged that the separation of powers 
 is the secret of liberty.'" Supported by his immense authority, 
 the idea was everywhere propagated with eagerness; and in 
 France and America especially its truth was accepted with 
 
 '" I have, of course, to deal with this problem in a later volume on the 
 theory of politics. 
 
 '2* "Politics," IV,*14,.1297b. 
 
 '." "De la Republique," I. X. 
 
 "" "Second treatise," Sees. 143-6. 
 
 's' "Esprit des Lois," Bk XI, Chap. 6. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 71 
 
 enthusiasm. The constitutions of the Revolutionary assem- 
 bUes wrote the principle into the fabric of the French state. ''^ 
 In America the constitutions both of the federation and its 
 constituent parts unhesitatingly adopted it. Madison in-* 
 sisted that the "accumulation of all powers . . . in 
 
 the same hands . may justly be pronounced the 
 
 very definition of tyranny,""' and the Supreme Court of the 
 United States asserted such separation to be "one of the chief 
 merits of the American system.""'' 
 
 It is in fact a paper merit for the simple reason that in prac- 
 tice it is largely unworkable. Cromwell discovered that to 
 his cost;"* and there has been no state in which methods have 
 not been used to break down the theoretic barriers. In France 
 the judiciary has largely been regarded as a delegate of the 
 sovereign governmental power. In Ainerica the development 
 of the standing-committee in Congress provided a simple sys- 
 tem of communication between the cabinet and the legislature. 
 In Massachusetts, even before the war of independence, the 
 powerful "Junto" of Boston practically made itself an execu- 
 tive committee."' The truth is that the business of govern- 
 ment does not admit any exact division into categories. It 
 has been found increasingly necessary to bestow judicial powers 
 upon English government departments."' The system of pro- 
 visional orders may depend upon a genial fiction of generous 
 delegation; but if the work of the Local Government Board 
 is not, in this particular, legislation, there is nothing that is 
 worthy of that name. "The work of a taxing department 
 today," the chairman of the Board of Customs told a recent 
 Royal Commission,"* "is an absolutely different thing from 
 
 "2 Cf. Duguit, "La Separation des Pouvoirs" and Esmein's classic 
 discussion. "Elements du Droit Constitutionnel" (3rd ed.). pp. 358 f. The 
 most general treatment is that of Saint-Girans, "Essai sur la separation des 
 pouvoirs" (1884). 
 
 •^ The Federalist, No. 46. 
 
 »* Kilbourne v. Thompson, 103 U. S., 188. 
 
 "* Cf. Esmein's analysis, Revue de Droit Public, 1899, p. 8 f. 
 
 "= Harlow. "Legislative Methods in the Period before 1825," p. 25 f. 
 
 1" Cf. Prof. Dicey's "Comment," 31 Law Quarterly Review, p. 150. 
 
 "' "Fourth Report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service," 1914, 
 Cd. 7338, p. 28. 
 
72 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 what it was twenty or even ten years ago. In those days Par- 
 liament, when it fixed a tax, settled every detail, leaving to the 
 department only the administration of the tax on the lines 
 laid down by Parhament. The tendency of ParUament now- 
 adays . is to lay down only principles, leaving 
 matters of difficulty to the discretion of the department. I 
 think it fair to say that a department like mine nowadays exer- 
 cises powers which are often judicial and which sometimes get 
 very near being legislative." Nor must Professor Dicey's 
 insistence on the value of judicial legislation be forgotten.''^ 
 
 No one, moreover, who has watched at all carefully the 
 development of the English cabinet in recent years can mis- 
 take the evident tendency of the executive — a tendency of 
 course strengthened by the fact of war — to escape from Par- 
 liamentary control."" It is not less significant that both In- 
 surance and Development Acts have given quasi-legislative 
 and fully judicial powers to commissions who are expressly 
 excepted from the ordinary rules of law."^ This evolution, 
 whether or no it be well-advised, surely bears testimony to 
 the breakdown of traditional theory. The business of govern- 
 ment cannot in fact be hampered by the search after the exact 
 branch into which any particular act should fall. And it may 
 even be urged that recent America;n history bears testimony 
 to the further conclusion that the breakdown of the doctrine 
 has nowhere proved unpopular. Certainly an external observer 
 sees no sign of lament over the Presidential control of Con- 
 gress;"^ and there has been, in recent years, a clear tendency 
 in England to look for the active sovereignty of the state out- 
 side of Parhament. We have in fact come to believe that the 
 loss in formal independence may well be compensated by a 
 gain in the efiiciency of government. 
 
 The theory yet contains an important truth of which per- 
 haps too little notice has been taken in our time. We have 
 
 '" "Law and Public Opinion" (2d ed.), pp. 483 f. 
 
 ""See the very interesting debate in Hansard, Fifth Series, Vol. 92, 
 p. 1363 f. 
 
 "' Cf. Dicey, "Law and Public Opinion" (2d ed.), pp. XXXIX-XLIV, 
 
 "^ Cf. my note in The New Republic on the "Future of the Presidency" 
 in the issue of September 29, 1917. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 73 
 
 come so accustomed to representative government as to 
 ilise only with difficulty the real basis of its successful opera- 
 m. It presupposes an educated and alert electorate which 
 continually anxious for the results of that system. It ought 
 t to involve, as it has within recent years so largely involved, 
 divorce between the business of government and the knowl- 
 ge of its processes. Aristotle's definition of citizenship as 
 e "sharing in the administration of justice and offices""' 
 iplies the understanding of some sense now lost — that active 
 -rticipation in affairs of state will alone cause adequate per- 
 rmance even of the humblest civic function. Power, that is 
 
 say, which is largely concentrated at a single political centre 
 11 produce a race of men who do not display interest in its 
 nsequences. In some sort that is a fact that lies at the root 
 
 our problems. And it is important simply because the lib- 
 ty of a state depends so largely upon the situation of power, 
 e reaUse this, for example, in our awareness of the danger of 
 ir-chamber methods; we look with suspicion upon executive 
 stice.'" We insist that the independence of the judiciary 
 fundamental to liberty. It is only within recent years that 
 e French courts have been able to free themselves from a 
 irrow worship of governmental power. The supposed devia- 
 )n of its activities from a theoretic sovereignty made govern- 
 ent intolerably careless of its ways and means."* The simple 
 le that no man shall be judge in his own cause stands as one 
 
 the few really fundamental truths of political science. And 
 e emphasis upon division of powers leads to the perception 
 
 what is becoming more and more obvious as the facts of 
 cial life become more widely known. We are beginning to see 
 
 at authority should g n wVlPrP it "Sn b° rr^r^<!i wJ RRly RYPTcised 
 
 r so cial purposes. That is to say that there is no natural 
 ritrol inherent in tlie state. It is to suggest, for example, 
 at it may be wise to put certain avenues of social effort out- 
 
 i« "Politics," III, 1, 1275 a. 
 
 "^ Cf. Pound, "Address to the New Hampshire Bar Association," June 
 
 , 1917. 
 
 "' Cf. Duguit, "Les Transformation du Droit Public," Ch. VII. In this 
 
 pect at least Professor Dicey's strictures upon administrative law seem 
 
 me unanswerable. 
 
74 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 side the control of the state legislature. It is to argue that, 
 conceivably, industrial enterprise is better settled by those 
 who are engaged in it, than by the representatives of certain 
 geographical areas with no necessarily expert knowledge of the 
 problems involved. 
 
 It is thus no rigid classification of power upon which insist- 
 ence is laid. Power is regarded simply as the right to will acts 
 of general reference, and the suggestion is made that it should 
 be conferred where it is probable that it can be most usefully 
 exerted. In this aspect it becomes not unUkely that we have 
 in the past, over-emphasised the necessity for its concentra- 
 tion at a single point in the social structure. We have been so 
 concerned, particularly as lawyers, in demonstrating the para- 
 mountcy of the state, that we have taken too little regard of 
 the life lived outside its categories. We ought rather to seek 
 a different perspective. What is alone essential is the fullest 
 achievement of the general social purpose. What is at once 
 then evident is the necessity of organising authority with a 
 jiew solely to that end. 
 
 Such an organisation implies a conception of society as basic- 
 ally federal in nature. In that sense the paramount character 
 of the state is ipso facto denied. For if it is once clear that 
 there are regions into which the state cannot usefully enter, it 
 is obvious that there are realms over which its authority ought 
 not to be exerted. That is to foreshadow a division, not of 
 powers, but of power upon the basis of functions: It is to pic- 
 ture a society, in which authority is not hierarchical but co- 
 ordinate. iSTor is the basis of its definition in any sense matter 
 of a priori definition. It must change as social necessity may 
 demand. It must have in constant view the possibihty of inno- 
 vation not less vast, for example, than that produced by the 
 Industrial Revolution, or that which seems involved in the 
 more recent experience of war. 
 
 To insist upon the federal nature of society is less paradoxical 
 than may at first sight appear. Thirty years ago, indeed, 
 5eeley pointed out that the difference between federal and 
 iinitary states was valuable only "as marking conveniently 
 a, great difference which may exist in respect 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 75 
 
 of the importance of local government;""' and, indeed, the 
 difference here between England and the United States is 
 hardly greater than the difference between England and France. 
 What is true here of the state is, of course, even more accurate 
 of society as a whole; and once we regard the state merely as 
 one of its constituent parts, however fundamental, what be- 
 comes obvious is the fact that its dominion must be strictly 
 relevant to the problem of what purposes it can best fulfil. 
 Indeed, much of the problem has been greatly obscured by 
 thinking of federaUsm not in terms of a division of functions 
 upon some rough basis of useful performance but in terms of 
 territorial contiguity. Such a reference is, of course, intelli- 
 gible enough. Everyone understands why so vast an area as 
 the United States involves some system of decentralisation. 
 The attempt to govern territories so diverse as Arizona and 
 New York by uniform methods would be fraught with disaster. 
 The facts geographically refuse such reduction to unity. The 
 problems of government are in each case so diverse that their 
 local study and solution alone proves efficacious. 
 
 The same necessity has been increasingly apparent in the 
 relations between Great Britain and her daughter-nations. It 
 has become obvious that the complex of interests we call Canada 
 and Aiistralia can be better governed from Ottawa or from Mel- 
 bourne than where, as in the first part of the nineteenth century, 
 commands radiated outwards from a single centre at Whitehall. 
 "Government from Downing Street" came to have a sinister 
 import simply because the interests involved were not less real 
 and self-sufficing than the interests of the empire to which they 
 belonged. The conference of self-government was bound to 
 follow immediately the truth became apparent that the pos- 
 session of kindred interests by a group of men will sooner or 
 later involve the self-management of those interests. The 
 reasons are manifold enough. Downing Street was, in the first 
 sixty years of the nineteenth century, literally unable to cope 
 with the complex problems that confronted it; and the attempt 
 to construct, as notably in the colonial administration of Lord 
 
 "« "Introduction t(r Political Science," p. 95. The whole lecture is most 
 instructive. 
 
76 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Grey,"' an uniform and equal policy for things that were 
 neither equal nor uniform was bound to result only in constant 
 and dangerous irritation. Nor was it for long conceivable that 
 community like Australia would be coptent to leave the centre 
 of its ultimate political power, in any sense save that of legal 
 dignity, outside the chief residence of its economic interests. 
 
 It is, indeed, argued that within these territories unity is 
 bound in soi^ie sort to develop."* In the United States, at 
 least, this has in no sense been the case. What, in truth, may 
 be urged is that the original distribution of power has not fitted 
 the development of nearly a hundred and fifty years. But it is 
 surely true in America that what is developing is less complete 
 unity, as in France, as the emergence of new administrative 
 areas. It is probable that the historic system of state-govern^ 
 ment has, in many cases, broken down; but that has not in- 
 ..volved the disappearance of the fundamental idea. It would be 
 clearly impossible to force such conflicting interests as those of 
 agriculture and industry into a kind of Hegelian harmony by 
 the over-simple device of legislating from Washington."' Nor 
 is this less true of Canada. No observer of its conditions can 
 fail to note the way in which, commercially, the wheat-produc- 
 ing territory of the West is developing a system antithetic to 
 that of the industrial East; and it is at least not injprobable 
 that the West is destined to swing over the balance of political 
 ■power exactly as in the United States.'^" But in both countries 
 the real need is not for less local government, but for more. In 
 both countries one of the real sources of danger has been to 
 develop a kind of local stagnation by regarding Ottawa and 
 Washington as reserve powers which could be brought to bear 
 upon a recalcitrant community. What is at least as evident is 
 the failure of recent centraUsation to solve the administrative 
 problems involved. It is continually found that they are in 
 fact not simple and general, but specialised and local; and the 
 
 '" Cf . his two curious volumes, the "Colonial Policy of Lord John Rus- 
 sell's administration'' (London, 1853). 
 
 "8 As Prof. Dicey argues, '"Law of the Constitution" (8th ed.— ), p. 
 LXXVI. 
 
 "' Cf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," Appendix B. 
 
 '*" Cf. F. J. Turner, American Historical Review, Vol. XVI, p. 217. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 77 
 
 jectacle of a harassed official at Washington trying to adjust 
 le thousand varying strands the size of America involves, is 
 ot more exhilarating than to see how the Congress permits of 
 angerous manipulation in the interests of locaUty."' 
 
 There is, in fact, a fundamental principle involved in such an 
 ttitude upon which too much insistence can hardly be laid. It ' 
 ; the truth that in administration there is a point at which, for 
 very increased attribute, an obvious diminution of efficiency 
 asults. Where a government department is overloaded with 
 rork what.it will tend to do is to pay attention not to the par- 
 icular circumstances of the special problem involved, but to its 
 eneral ruhng in broad cases of the kind. There is bound to be 
 .elay and the price of delay in such matters it is difficult to over- 
 stimate. Groups, in fact, must be treated as independent units 
 ving, however minutely, a corporate life that gives birth to 
 pecial considerations. The official at London can hardly enter 
 closely into the unique penumbra of a Manchester enquiry 
 ,s fully to satisfy it. What he will do is to look up the records 
 if his department and apply some rule laid down for similar 
 onditions at Liverpool. This has been strikingly illustrated in 
 lur own day by the reports of the British Commissions on in- 
 lustrial unrest. The attempt, as the commissioners for the 
 '^orth West discovered,^^^ "to regulate every petty detail of the 
 ndustrial machinery of the area from offices at Whitehall im- 
 )oses upon the men who are asked to work it an impossible 
 ask. The trenches of industrial warfare are in Lancashire 
 
 ... it is not a business proposition to try and command the 
 ;reat industrial army of these areas with a staff 200 miles from 
 he base .... there is overcentralisation and .... this is a 
 
 lause of unrest It should be considered whether it 
 
 TOuld be possible not only to leave employers and workmen to 
 ettle more matters themselves, but to arrange that high offi- 
 iials .... should Hve in the area and be within close touch 
 
 ... at the earUest possible moment." Hardly less suggestive 
 vas the conclusion of the American Commission which had the 
 lame problem in view. Here, indeed, the industrial control was 
 
 "' Cf. Beard, "American Government and Politics," p. 269 f. 
 152 Report ("Bulletin 237 of the U. S. Bureau of Labour"), p. 49. Cf. 
 ). 77, 110, 118, 185, 214. 
 
78 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 private and not public in nature; but it was again insisted that 
 "distant ownership .... creates barriers against the oppor- 
 tunity of understanding the labour aspects, the human problems 
 of the industry, and solidarity of interest among the various 
 owners checks the views of any one liberal Owner from prevail- 
 ing against the autocratic policy of the majority. "^^^ In a still 
 larger industry the same difficulty is noted. "The element of 
 distance, creating managerial aloofness, thus played a very 
 important part. For the employees^- the labour policy of 'the 
 company' was what local officials in towns distant from the 
 executive offices made it, and not what the general officers in 
 San Francisco might have wished it to be; distance insulated 
 the general offices from intimate knowledge of industrial rela- 
 tions of the Company. The bonds of confidence and co-opera- 
 tion between company and employees were therefore tenuous. 
 Moreover, the fact that the company, despite its bigness, was 
 part of a national system, qualified all solutions of labour difii- 
 culties by consideration, on the part of the company, of the 
 bearing of such solution however intrinsically irrevelant, upon 
 other parts of the country. ""* 
 
 This, is, in fact, the inherent vice of centraHsed authority. 
 It is so baffled by the very vastness of its business as necessarily 
 to be narrow and despotic and over-formal in character. It 
 tends to substitute for a real effort to grapple with special 
 problems an attempt to apply wide generalisations that are 
 in fact irrelevant. It involves the decay of local energy by 
 taking real power from its hands. It puts real responsibility 
 in a situation where, from its very flavour of generality, an un- 
 real responsibility is postulated. It prevents the saving grace of 
 experiment. It invites the congestion of business. And all 
 this is the more inevitable where, as in the modern democratic 
 state, the responsibihty for administration Hes not in the hands 
 of the civil service but in the statesmen who hold office. WTiat 
 is thereby engendered is an attempt not so much to provide solu- 
 tions as to evade them. In a great strike, for example, govern- 
 ment arbitration will not mean so much a genuine effort after 
 justice as the purchase of a solution on any terms. That is in 
 
 1*' Report of the President's Commission, p. 4. 
 15^ IWd., p. 10. — 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 79 
 
 le nature of things inevitable. Where basic industries are con- 
 irned the government knows full well the unpopularity that 
 ill attend it if there is any interference with the normal 
 rocess of consumption. In industry as a whole, the govern- 
 lent is, from the nature of things, interested in the main- 
 inance of order and it knows well enough that the main- 
 inance of order is in inverse ratio to the duration of the strike. 
 iTiat it is driven thus to do is to seek the manipulation of 
 isharmony that its credit may be thereby least injured. And, 
 t the worst, it may suffer itself to be used for the purpose of 
 ne of the contending parties. Where picketing, for instance, 
 concerned, the knowledge that government stands for a 
 jrtain theory of order, necessarily operates to minimise the 
 irength of the men."* — ■ 
 
 It is noteworthy in this connection that the most highly 
 3ntralised of modern states should have realised the inade- 
 uacy of its system. The most striking development of France 
 1 recent years is towards an increase of administrative decen- 
 ■alisation. The causes . of this change are profound. Very 
 trgely, it is due to the increasing dissatisfaction of the civil 
 jrvice with Parlianientary control;"^ and that has heralded 
 ae commencement of an effort at the conference of respon- 
 bility outside the traditional categories. The decentralisa- 
 on of higher education is particularly ' interesting in view of 
 is success.'" The erection of certain public services into auton- 
 mous estabUshments with separate budgets has not excluded 
 overnmental control; but it has, by the association in their 
 peration of non-governmental interests, involved a real change 
 1 the atmosphere of their functioning.'*^ Nor is it at all doubt- 
 il that the revivification of local life after the war is one of the 
 rst problems by which the new France will seek the renewal of 
 s former richness. "''■ 
 
 ™'Cf. the remarks of Mr. Cole, "World of Labour," Ch. IX. 
 
 iM Cf . Chapter V below. 
 
 >" Hauriou, "Principes de Droit PubUc" (1916), pp. 745 f. 
 
 "» Cf. Hauriou, "Precis de Droit Administratif," p. 342 f (ed. Cf. 1914), 
 id Michoud, "Th^orie de la Personnalite Morale," Vol. II, Ch. VII, esp. 
 ecs. 247-54. 
 
 ^^Ct. the interesting essay of Lachapelle, "L'Oeuvre de Demain" (1917). 
 
80 ■ AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Such decentralisation is fundamental enough; for it can 
 hardly be too earnestly insisted that to place the real centre of 
 political responsibility outside the sphere in which its conse- 
 quences are to operate is to breed not only ineffidency but 
 indifference. The only way to make municipal life, for example, 
 an adequate thing is to set city striving against city in a con- 
 sistent conflict of progressive improvement. A man's pride 
 in being a citizen of London or New York can only be made 
 real by giving to London and New York the full responsibility 
 of self-government. The only way in which a new and needed 
 interest in the problems of such areas can be achieved is by 
 giving to those who handle them the full power of effective 
 achievement. What, in despite of trammels, an able man can 
 in this particular accomplish Mr. Chamberlain demonstrated 
 in the case of Birmingham. And it is surely evident that by 
 such a process we do much to relieve the congestion of public 
 business which today stifles the pubUc departments. Nor need 
 we fear parochialism. That, in truth, is the offspring of a 
 time when distance had not been annihilated by the improve- 
 ment of transportation. It is possible today to go from Man- 
 chester to Liverpool in less than the time in which London 
 itself can be traversed. When neighbouring example is thus 
 contiguous a narrowly local sense is but a figment of pessi- 
 mistic imagination. And with such a change what we open 
 up is one of the fundamental sources of training in the busi- 
 ness of government. When the last word has been said about 
 "vestry-narrowness," or the pettiness of local affairs, it is 
 surely evident that, in truth, the real guarantee of adequacy 
 in national affairs is the proper performance of public func- 
 tions in a smaller sphere. That has been one of the great 
 advantages of the federal system in the United States. Mr. 
 Roosevelt and Mr. Hughes in New York, Mr. Wilson in New' 
 Jersey, proved their fitness for high national office by service 
 of a kind that demonstrated their abihty to handle public 
 issues. And it is at least not impossible that one day a similar 
 quaUfication will be demanded as the basis of membership in 
 the House of Commons. It seems, to say the least, not un- 
 Ukely that the trained servant of a municipality will prove a 
 fitter member of that Chamber than a young and freshly inno- 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 81 
 
 at peer whose triumphs have before been confined to the 
 bating societies of Oxford and Cambridge. 
 
 VII. THE ORGANISATION OF POWER 
 
 lis at least indicates, even while it does not touch, the real 
 art of the problem. Its crux is the position of the state 
 Native to that of other groups within society.^ What we have 
 us far denied is the claim of the state to represent in any 
 iminant and exclusive fashion the will of society as a whole/ 
 
 is true that it does in fact absorb the vital part of social 
 wer; but it is yet in no way obvious that it ought to do so. 
 is in no way obvious immediately it is admitted that each 
 dividual himself is in fact a centre of diverse and possibly 
 nflicting loyalties, and that in any sane pohtical ethic, the real 
 rection of his allegiance ought to point to where, as he thinks 
 e social end is most likely to be achieved. Clearly there are 
 any forms of association competing for his allegiance. Clearly, 
 30, the vast part of them express the effort of men to achieve 
 e broad aim of social existence. Labour associations aim 
 
 the control of production because they believe that with 
 1 passage into their hands the life of the masses will be richer 
 d more full. Religious associations are the expression of a 
 nviction that to accept certain dogmas is to secure induction 
 to the Kingdom of Heaven. The state, as we have seen^f 
 in reality the reflexion of what a dominant group or class in at 
 mmunity believes to be pohtical good. And, in the main,' 
 is reasonably clear that pohtical good is today for the most 
 ,rt defined in economic terms. It mirrors within itself, that 
 to say, the economic structure of society. It is relatively 
 [important in what fashion we organise the institutions of 
 e state. Practically they will reflect the prevaihng economic 
 stem; practically also, they will protect it. The opinion of 
 e state, at least in its legislative expression, will largely re- 
 oduce the opinion of those who hold the keys of economic 
 iwer. There is, indeed, no part of the community of which 
 onomic power is unable to influence the opinions. Not that 
 will be an absolute control that is exerted by it. The EngUsh 
 itute-book bears striking testimony to the results of the 
 nflict between the holders of economic power and those who 
 
82 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 desire its possession; and, often enough, there has been gen- 
 erous co-operation behind the effected change. But the funda- 
 mental truth remains that the simple weapons of politics are 
 alone powerless to effect any basic redistribution of economic 
 strength. 
 
 That is to say that the political organisation of a state may 
 well disguise its true character. The liberal and conservative 
 parties in England, the republican and democratic parties 
 in the United States, do not the less represent a capitalist 
 control of politics because they are national parties. Mr. 
 Osborne's dislike of a labour party with a political programme 
 did not prove a general truth that the historic lines of party- 
 division in England represent a satisfactory ahgnment of eco- 
 nomic power to the working-man. It did not prove that 
 there was in fact a possible harmony of interest between trade- 
 unions of which the dominant purpose was the control of in- 
 dustry in the interests of democratization and employers who 
 deny the utility of such control. It is true that the labour 
 party has entered politics; and it has been argued with some 
 plausibility"' that it ought by the slow conversion of the elec- 
 torate to its creed to arrive by a slow evolution at the control 
 of the processes of the state. But that analysis is, in fact, 
 entirely unreal. It mistakes the important truth that the 
 interests to which the House of Commons attends is, in reality, 
 the interests of consumers as those are capable of being har- 
 monised with the demands of the prevalent economic system. 
 The interest of the constituencies of the House of Commons 
 is predominantly in the regular functioning of economic proc- 
 esses. They want a proper postal service, or railway system, 
 exactly as the citizens of a municipality will look to the town- 
 council for gas and tramways and electricity. With the internal 
 organisation of industrial affairs they will not concern them- 
 selves save as disharmony will force them to the recognition 
 af their importance. Sometimes, indeed, a sudden fit of hu- 
 manitarianism, as in the Trade-Boards Act, will result in legis- 
 
 "» By Mr. A. E. Zimmern in The New Republic, September 15, 1917. 
 2i. Mr. Croly's article in the same issue, and the editorial comment on 
 Sir. Zimmern's letter. Mr. Zinmaern's rejoinder is to be found in an arti- 
 ile on "Freedom and Unity" in the Round Table for December, 1917. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 83 
 
 ative control. But, primarily, it is in regularity of industrial 
 lervice that the House of Commons and government are above 
 ill interested. And, as a careful observer has pointed out, this 
 s predominantly true of local government.^^" 
 
 When, therefore, the functions of the state undergo close 
 icrutiny, it is found that the aspect upon which they concen- 
 trate their work is the use by the community of industrial 
 •esources. It is not interested in the processes of production 
 IS such; it concerns itself in securing due provision from in- 
 lustry for the needs of society. It deals with men in the capac- 
 ty that is common to them all. It regards them as the users 
 )f certain goods. It is uninterested in men as engaged in any* 
 "unction save that of consumption except, of course, insofar 
 IS the performance of their duties hinders the achievement of 
 ts own basic effort. Clearly, for instance, the state, through 
 ts government, would be vitally interested in a railway strike; 
 'or it is vitally interested in securing to the members of the 
 state the uninterrupted use of railway facilities. But an anal- 
 >rsis of the part played by the government in settlements of 
 ndustrial disputes can hardly fail to suggest that the primary 
 concern of the state is not in the cause of the dislocation, but 
 n the dislocation itself.'"" Causes are important only insofar 
 is they seem to imply a renewal of disturbance. In that aspect 
 ;he relation of the state to a member of the railway unions is 
 /ery different from its relation to the ordinary member of the 
 Dublic. For its main concern with the trade unionist is to get 
 lim back to work; whereas that at which he aims is some re- 
 listribution of economic power within a group only the results 
 )f whose functionings concern the state as a whole. 
 
 That is why it is impossible to regard the state as capable, 
 n any general view, of absorbing the whole loyalty of an in- 
 lividual. It can only secure his loyalty insofar as he does not 
 ;hink that, in the given situation, the railway union has in 
 "act a superior claim. It is just as possible, for instance, for 
 
 '«" Cole, "Self-Government|in Industry," p. 77. With much of Mr. Cole's 
 ihapter on the state I should find myself in admiring agreement, though 
 vith certain changes of fundamental emphasis. 
 
 '•»" This is avowedly the motive underlying the Canadian Industrial 
 Disputes Investigation Act. 
 
i AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 man to make the decision that, balanced against the industrial 
 islocation, the end of a railway strike is worth the cost, as 
 ' is to conclude that the sacrifices of a great war are worth 
 16 great price they involve if the result safeguards the liberty 
 f nations. At a stroke, in brief, the hierarchical structure of 
 )ciety is demolished. We have, instead, a series of co-ordinate 
 roups the purposes of which may well be antithetic. What 
 as happened in the history of the state is, on the contrary, 
 le assertion that it enjoys a unique position for its power. It 
 aims the right to judge between conflicting associations and 
 ) interpose its will between them. It claims that the rights 
 '. societies other than itself are, in fact, within its gift; and 
 leir existence is conditioned by its graciousness. The fear 
 ' group-persons in English-history is at least as old as Richard 
 ' Devizes;"' and Blackstone only put into legal form the con- 
 impt that Hobbes had poured upon them.i'*^ "With us in 
 ngland," he said,"' "the king's consent is absolutely necessary 
 I the creation of any corporation"; and the Combination 
 cts are the proud vindication of the state's claim to exclusive- 
 !ss. But here, as elsewhere, life in fact overflows the narrow 
 .tegories in which the dogmas of state-sovereignty would 
 ishrine it. The truth is more and more apparent that these 
 oups live a life of their own, and exist to support purposes 
 at the state itself fails to fulfil. From this it was that Mait- 
 ad drew the obvious conclusion. "Some would warn us," 
 : wrote in a famous sentence,"* "that in the future, the less 
 ; say about a supralegal, suprajural plenitude of power con- 
 ntrated in a single point at Westminster — concentrated in 
 e single organ of an increasingly complex commonwealth— 
 e better for that vision may be the days that are coming." 
 
 1" Richard of Devizes' "Chronicle 416." Cf. Stubbs' "Const. Hist." (6th 
 
 ), I, 455. 
 
 '"2 On the early history of the English corporation of my paper in the 
 
 ■ward Law Review, Vol. XXX, p. 561. 
 
 ^'»Com. I, 472. 
 
 ™ Introduction to his translation of Gierke's "Political Theories of the 
 
 ddle Age," p. XLIII. On some of the difficulties that the "Concession" 
 
 ory must encounter cf. my paper on the "Personality of Associations," 
 
 ;he Harvard Law Review, Vol. XXX, p. 404. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 85 
 
 t is no more than that vision we are seeking to translate into 
 tie event. 
 
 If, then, we view the state as primarily a body of consumers 
 ^hose will, over the course of history, has been largely controlled 
 y groups within itself, it clearly follows that the producer 
 ^ho does not share in the ownership of means of production 
 lust safeguard his special interest in his personal function in 
 iich fashion as will prevent its subordination to the purposes 
 f government. So, too, and in another sphere, a Roman 
 Catholic must arm himself lest his interest in his church be 
 n justly attacked by a state that has made with some alien 
 3ligious body an alliance for reciprocal assistance.''^ The 
 lain value of his church, indeed, must for him consist in the 
 ict that because it is a church it gives him a guarantee he 
 ould not otherwise possess against the invasion of a religious 
 iterest. For the individual is lost in a big world unless there' 
 re fellowships to guard him; and even those associations may 
 rell prove powerless unless they deny that their rights are 
 tate-derived. Excommunication, for example, would not seem 
 him a sentence open to the revision of a state-court.'*' This 
 i in no sense a denial of membership of the state. It is merely 
 n insistence that the aspect in which he is related to his church 
 i an aspect different from his relation to the state. The spheres 
 f each are, in his own mind, distinct; the powers of each are 
 hen divided in the light of that separation. In the Presby- 
 erian Church, again, no denial is made of the supremacy of 
 he state in civil matters; but, said Chalmers^^'in things eccle- 
 iastical we decide all.''' '^Here, again, the emphasis is upon 
 o-ordinate function. What is essentially denied is the deriva- 
 Lon of church rights from the grace of the state. ~ 
 
 The position of trade-unionism is in the closest relation to 
 bis attitude. It is held that the purpose of that movement 
 mphasises an aspect of the worker's life which is different 
 
 "* Or, as in France, the non-Catholics may have to aim to prevent the 
 tate from becoming a branch of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 "" Cf . the very interesting opinions in St. Vincent's Parish v. Murphy, 
 3 Nebraska 630, and Parish of the Immaculate Conception v. Murphy, 
 9 Nebraska, 524. 
 
 '" Cf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," p. 39. 
 
56 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Tom the aspect emphasised by the state. The trade-union is 
 joncerned with the business of production; the state is, above 
 ill, concerned with the general regularity of the supply for 
 3onsumption. What, then, the trade-union is compelled to 
 ieny is the -subordination of the function he fulfils as a producer 
 [O his interest in the supply of his needs. It is, in any case, 
 oainfully clear that the state does not in any full sense secure 
 ;hat supply. It ensures production; but the distribution of 
 she product is weighted in the interest of those who wield eco- 
 nomic power. That is the main reason why the worker sees in 
 bhe productive process a lever that will react upon the state 
 .tseli. True political democracy is, as he realises, the offspring 
 jf true industrial democracy. If he were to admit the para- 
 mount character of the consumptive process no strike would 
 3ver occur. But, obviously, the judgment is constantly made, 
 md that in industries of basic importance, that the attainment 
 Df a new equilibrium in industrial relations is worth the heavy 
 price invariably paid for it. The worker, that is to say, is no 
 more inchned than the Roman Catholic to admit the supremacy 
 af the context in which the state is placed. He refuses to regard 
 X as in any permanently valid sense the sovereign representa- 
 tive of the community. He bases his refusal upon the belief that 
 the results of its functioning bear witness to a grave malad- 
 justment. It is used to support a status quo with which he is 
 dissatisfied. He might even urge that the new equilibrium 
 at which he is aiming is worth more to the conununity than 
 the fulfilment of what the state at present regards as its duties in 
 the consumptive process. 
 
 Here, immediately, a division of power is implied. The 
 business of consumption, it is suggested, is proper material 
 for the authority of the state. It is immediately a matter 
 inhere the interests of men in their capacity of consumers may 
 be taken as substantially equal; at least in the sense that 
 there are certain goods a minimum supply of which is, for each 
 individual, essential to social existence. But somewhere be- 
 tween production and consumption a line must be drawn. The 
 interests of men in production are rarely equal because the 
 share of its results suffers widely varying distribution. There 
 is a broad distinction, for example, between the interest of the 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 87 
 
 owner of capital and the interest of the unpropertied worker. 
 There is at present, also, a distinction, which the sectionahsm 
 of trade-unions makes unfortunately manifest, between skilled 
 and unskilled labour.^^* There is a clash of interest, at least 
 in certain trades, between the male and female labour em- 
 ployed."' It is probable, indeed, that sectional antagonism 
 within the labour movement is capable of removal by wise 
 activity; and certainly the great EngUsh amalgamations of 
 recent years, most notably that of the transport workers, 
 point increasingly in this direction. 
 
 But between the interest of capital and that of labour it is 
 difficult to see any permanent basis of reconciUation. They 
 want antithetic things. When the utmost that a capitaUsmf 
 can concede is measured, it still falls short of what labour de- 
 mands; for the ultimate object of labour activity is democratic | 
 self-government in industry, the determination, that is to| 
 say, of the methods to be employed at each stage of the produc- 
 tive process, the settlement of tasks and hours and wages by 
 the men themselves. It involves, therefore, the disappearance l^ 
 of a super-imposed hierarchical control. It takes the trade- | 
 union as the single cell from which an entirely new industrial i 
 order is to be evolved. In such an aspect, the suspicion of 
 labour towards a state that is predominantly capitahst in 
 character is inevitable. For whether the state, through its 
 instruments, seeks, by maintaining order, to prevent the possi- 
 bility of redistribution; whether it attempts to discover some 
 possible basis of temporary reconciliation; what always emerges 
 from either synthesis is the determination of labour to use the 
 equiUbrium so created as the foundation of a new effort towards 
 its ultimate objective. The method of which use is made may 
 vary but the purpose is unchanging. 
 
 Labour, therefore, could admit the complete sovereignty of i 
 the state only if it could be assumed that the state were on 
 its side. The only thing of which it can in this context be cer- 
 tain is that the power of the state will be predominantly exerted 
 
 '«»Cf. Cole, "World of Labour," Chs. VII and VIII. What is said here 
 of over-lapping is even more true of the United States than of England. 
 
 "9 On the general problem cf. Webb, "The Restoration of Trade Union 
 Conditions" (1917). 
 
88 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 against its interest. For the social order of the modern state 
 is not a labour order but a capitalist, and upon the broad truth 
 of Harrington's hypothesis it must follow that the main power 
 is capitalist also. That will imply a refusal on labour's part to 
 accept the authority of the state as final save where it is satis- 
 fied with its purposes. It means that it will endeavor so to 
 organise the process of production as to hand over the chief 
 authority therein to the trade-unions which express its inter- 
 ests. It means, in short, the conquest of productive control 
 by labour; and when that control has been conquered it is 
 not hkely that it will be easily surrendered."" 
 
 What, on the contrary, is possible is that some adjustment 
 will be slowly made between the groups which represent the 
 interests of producers 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 who denies, like William 
 Godwin, the need for authority at all,"/or the attitude of the 
 syndicahst who emphasises only the producer's interest. The 
 case against syndicahsm Mr. Graham Wallas has fehcitously 
 expressed in a single sentence. "It proved to be more import- 
 ant", he has written,"^ "that under syndicahsm men loved 
 each other less as citizens than that they loved each other more 
 as gild-brothers." We cannot, in fact, risk the possibihty of 
 disorganisation upon the basis of narrow selfishness. However 
 the productive process is in the future arranged within itseK 
 provision mdst be made for gome central authoritv not less, 
 representative of production as a whole than the state would 
 represent consumption. There is postulated therein two bodies 
 similar in character to a national legislature. Over-great pres- 
 sure of consumer on producer is avoided by giving to the pro- 
 ducers as a whole a legislature where the laws of production 
 (vould be considered. The legislature of the consumers would 
 decide upon the problems of supply. Joint questions, in such 
 
 "» I am not here, of course, concerned to point out the steps by which this 
 jontrol is to be achieved; but I have indicated in the next section some of 
 ;he more obvious directions along which it is moving. 
 
 "1 A reprint of his "Political Justice" is an urgent need. 
 
 '" "The Great Society," p. 328. See the whole passage from p. 324 
 inwards. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE RODERN STATE "89 
 
 1 synthesis, are obviously matter for joint adjustment. Nor 
 is the central authority within either division to be envisaged 
 is uniquely sovereign. Certain functional delimitations, the 
 cotton-trade, the mining-industry, the railways, shipping, 
 immediately suggest themselves. From the consumer's stand- 
 point, municipaUties, counties, even whole areas like the North 
 of England, may have group-demands to be settled by group- 
 action. A balance of internal powers would functionally be 
 sought. Arrangements would require a system of collective 
 contracts upon the basis of collective bargaining. Law, as 
 now; would be matter for the courts. The judiciary could settle 
 a dispute between a bootmakers' gild and the authorities of 
 an orphan asylum in Manchester as well in one system as 
 another. Probably, indeed, a special system of industrial 
 courts would be developed. Probably, also, just as in the 
 United States a court of special and pre-eminent dignity de- 
 cides controversies between the separate states, disputes be- 
 tween a producers' authority and a consumers' would need a 
 special tribunal. That is why, as M. Duguit has pointed 
 out,"' jurisprudence will occupy an important place in the 
 federalist society towards which we are moving."^ 
 
 Vm. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FREEDOM 
 
 So complex a division of powers as this seems at first sight con- 
 fusing to one accustomed to the ordinary theory of state-sov^ 
 ereignty. It is not difiicult to urge that co-ordination implies 
 the possibiUty of conflict and to insist that only by an hierachi- 
 cal structure of authority can the danger of disturbance be mini- 
 mised. Yet it is, to say the least, tolerably clear that disturb- 
 ance is not avoided by the conference of supreme power on the 
 state. The rejection of that claim to sovereignty, moreover, 
 involves an attitude to politics which has at least some merit. 
 There is a sense in which the vastest problem by which we are 
 faced is the very scale of the life we are attempting to hve. Its 
 bigness tends to obscure the merits of real freedom. And, indeed, 
 
 1" "Le Droit Social, le Droit Individuel," p. 157. 
 1" On the whole of this Cf. Cole, "Self-Govemment m Industry," 
 Ch. Ill, and Paul-Boncour, "Le F6d^raUsme Economique," pp. 372-423. 
 
)0 AUTHORITY IN' . HE MODERN STATE 
 
 ;here is industrially abroad a certain suspicion of liberty against 
 vhich safeguards must be erected. The individual suffers 
 tbsorption by the immensity of the forces with which he is in 
 ;ontact. That is true not less of the House of Commons, of 
 :!ongress, of the French chamber, than it is of an industry which 
 las largely suffered depersonalisation. There are few signs of 
 hat energy of the soul which Aristotle thought the secret of 
 lappiness. There is Uttle work that offers the opportunity of 
 :onscious and systematic thought. Responsibility tends to 
 oagulate at a few centres of social life; so that the work of 
 Qost is the simple commission of orders it is rarely their busi- 
 less to reflect upon. We are clearly tending to be overawed by 
 lur institutions; and we can perceive, in a way different from 
 he perspective set by Lecky and Sir Henry Maine, a genuine 
 [anger lest we lose hold of that chiefest source of happiness, 
 clerks and teachers and tenders of machines, for each of whom 
 here is prescribed a routine that fills the most eager hours of 
 ife, dare not be asked for the effort upon which new thought is 
 ounded. An expert in the science of factory management has 
 ven assumed that for the purpose of productivity a man "who 
 aore nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any 
 ther type""* is desirable. Happiness in work, which can alone 
 le fruitful of advance in thought, is, as Mr. Wallas has noted,"' a 
 hrase for most practically without meaning. The problem to- 
 ay, as the problem at the time of the French Revolution, is/ 
 fcie restoration of man to his place at the centre of social life. / 
 That is, indeed, the real significance" of freedom. It alone 
 nables the individuality of men to become manifest. But 
 idividuality is bound to suffer echpse if power is unduly cen- 
 red at some single point within the body politic. To divide it 
 pon the basis of the functions it is to perform is the only guar- 
 nty for the preservation of freedom. We too little remember 
 iiat the appearances of poUtics have obscured the emergence in 
 ur time of new and sinister forces of compulsion. The pursuit 
 
 »" Taylor, "Principles of Scientific Management," p. 59. Mr. Hoxie has 
 Dted this authoritarian tendency throughout the "efficiency" school. 
 Scientific Management and Labour" passim. 
 
 '™ "The Great Society," pp. 345, 363 ff. A very thorough collection of 
 ita upon this subject would be invaluable. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 91 
 
 an ideal of efRciency, for which, in part at least the New 
 orld is responsible, has led men to make a fetish of centralis- 
 ion. They have not seen that the essence of free government 
 the democratization of responsibility. They have not realised 
 at no man can make his life a thing worthy of himself without 
 3 possession of responsibility. It is useless to respond that 
 ;n are uninterested in politics. They are interested in any- 
 ing which nearly touches their lives, provided only that they 
 ve a share in its application. 
 
 They can develop that control only by preventing the con- 
 ntration of power. In a society so great as ours, some system 
 representation is inevitable; and it is only by dividing func- 
 )ns that we can prevent those representatives from absorbing 
 e life-blood of the body-politic; exactly as in France decen- 
 ilisation alone can cure the dangerous overprominence of 
 iris. To divide industrial power from political control is to 
 event the use of the latter influence against the forces of 
 ange. It removes the main lever by which the worker is 
 evented from the attainment of self-expression. It makes the 
 ief well-spring of progress not the chance humanitarianism 
 e spectacle of an under-paid employment may create, but the 
 rnest and continuous effort of the worker. It thereby gives 
 him a training in the business of government which other-' ^ 
 Lse is painfully lacking. For, after all, the one sphere in which 
 e worker is genuinely articulate is the sphere of production. — - 
 3 admit the trade-union to an effective place in government, ) 
 insist that it is fundamental in the direction of production, \ 
 to make the worker count in the world. He may be then also 
 tender of machines; but where his trade-union is making 
 icisions in which his own will is a part he is something more 
 an a tender of machines. His very experience on this side -^. I 
 ivernment will make him more valuable in his quality as citi- / 
 n. He will see the consumptive process more realistically/ 
 (cause its details have been illuminated for him in trade-union 
 itivity. The very divisions of society will hinge upon the 
 fferent aspects of his own life. It is upon him that the basis 
 the state must then be founded. 
 
 It has been urged that no society could endure in such a syn- 
 esis. Unless, so we are told, there is within it some unique 
 
92 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 centre of power, a conflict of authorities may well prove its de- 
 struction. A state cannot live unless it possess the absolute and 
 undivided allegiance of its members. To depict, therefore, a 
 community in which allegiance is co-operative seems, in such 
 perspective, to destroy its efficient hfe. But we have already 
 in fact discussed this question. We have already shown that 
 no man's allegiance is, in fact, unique. He is a point towards, 
 which a thousand associations converge; what, then, we askj 
 is that where conffict comes, we have assurance that he follow 
 the path of his instructed conscience. Once grant the individual 
 rights against the state, and it follows that the state must win 
 his loyalty by the splendor of its effort. What, mainly, is needed 
 is some source of guarantee against perversion of the state-power. 
 Partly, that is needed in the relation of churches to the state; 
 partly, also, and today, primarily, it is needed if the certainty of 
 industrial progress is to be secured. For we have seen that the 
 state-will tends inevitably to become confused with that of gov- 
 ernment. Government is in the hands, for the most part, of 
 those who wield economic power. The dangers of authority 
 become intensified if the supreme power be collected and con-' 
 centrated in an institution which cannot be rehed upon uniquely 
 to fulfil its theoretic purposes. That is why the main safeguard 
 against economic oppression is to prevent the state from throw- 
 ing the balance of its weight into the side of established order. 
 It is to prevent it from crying peace where in fact the true issue 
 is war. For, important as may be the process of consumption, 
 it is in nowise clear that the state treaty equally those who are , 
 'benefited by the process. It is by no means certain that the 
 standard of hfe of the worker is not better safeguarded by his 
 trade-union than by the state. 
 
 Yet of one thing we must beware. It is not difficult to pro- 
 ject a wanton idealism into our view of the trade-unions. It is 
 not difficult, when they are contrasted with the pohcy, for ex- 
 ample, of the National Manufacturers' Association of the 
 United States, to regard them as little short of perfect. We have 
 ceaselessly to remember that the retention of economic anti- 
 quarianism by the trade-unions is at least as possible as its reten- 
 tions by th,c manufacturer. The attitude of the Lancashire 
 cotton-operatives to child labour, the attitude of the Pearl but- 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 93 
 
 1 makers to apprenticeship/" are instances of this kind. It 
 it least possible that we shall have more and more to evolve 
 Is of rights in which the fundamental nations of social justice 
 ! put beyond the reach of peradventure. The Lancashire 
 tton-operatives, indeed, might be voted down in a gild-parha- 
 'nt on a question of child-labour; but it is important that 
 ;y should be a priori prevented from getting into the frame of 
 nd where the interest of the citizen in education can be sacri- 
 ed to a demand for cheap labour. 
 
 From one difficulty, indeed, we may at the outset free our 
 nds. "A state," writes Mr. Zimmern,"' "in which the ma- 
 -ity of the citizens, or even a substantial minority, doubted 
 which external authority their supreme allegiance was due 
 •uld soon cease to be a state at all." This, surely, evades the 
 int at issue. A state in which a "substantial minority" of 
 3 citizens did not feel, in a crisis, the call of allegiance would 
 Dbably be embarking upon a policy at least open to the grav- 
 ; doubt. It cannot be too emphatically insisted that the real 
 !rit of democratic government as opposed to any other form 
 exactly this dependence upon consent. The very difficulty 
 dch caused the breakdown of the pohcy of international 
 sialism in 1914 was its failure to give to its recognised reprc- 
 itatives in. the belligerent countries the authority needed to 
 ike the German state halt before its poHcy of aggression, 
 was precisely because the authority of the German state is 
 ramount that those who manipulate its destinies can without 
 ■ious question pervert it from the path of right conduct. The 
 Feguard of the EngUsh state is the knowledge that there is 
 thout its instruments a critical opinion capable of organised 
 pression. Nor is there reason to fear that a state where dis- 
 it may organise itself is less capable of unified defence than 
 autocratically-controlled regime. For a democratic com- 
 mity has its heart in the business that it undertakes. It 
 hts, not with mechanical obstinacy, but the intensity of a 
 aviction derived from the process of free thought. Its a^c- 
 ■y may be delayed; but unless the odds are overwhelmingly 
 
 '" Cf. Webb, "Industrial Democracy," Ch. X. 
 
 "8 Letter to The New Republic, September 15, 1917. 
 
94 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 against it, the spirit it cam infuse into its purpose is bound, in 
 the end, to give it victory."' 
 
 There are at least two directions in which the danger of 
 over-concentrating the power of the state has received a strik- 
 ing emphasis in the last few years. The necessities of war have 
 immensely increased the area of state-control. Social needs 
 broke down the quasi-anarchy of a competitive industrial 
 system, and its place has been taken by two separate forms of 
 management. On the one hand we have the continued man- 
 agement of industry by private enterprise, with, however, a 
 rigid supervision exerted by the state. The danger here is 
 obviously immense. The need of the state in war-time has 
 been increasing productivity and the whole orientation of con- 
 trol has been towards that end. So, even if rules have been 
 laid down, profits taxed, priority of supply enforced, still the 
 situation has in reality involved a state-guarantee of the con- 
 tinuance of the present industrial regime. That has meant 
 an immense increase of centralisation. It has changed at a 
 stroke the whole and elaborate system of safeguards by which 
 labour had sought protection against the dehumanising forces 
 of capitalism. '^'*'' It does not seem doubtful that this chalige 
 has been in a high degree beneficial. But it has had two grave 
 results. On the one hand there is the problem of giving to the 
 trade-unions safeguards that shall, in the new synthesis, be 
 equal to the power of the old. On the other there has taken 
 place an immense concentration of capital not merely in in- 
 dustry itself, but in finance also. Nothing will be easier in the 
 years that lie ahead either for the owners of capital to demand 
 the continuance of government control, or to insist that natur- 
 alisation upon the basis of adequate compensation is alone a 
 fair return for its services. In either case we have a guarantee 
 of interest made a fundamental charge upon the resources of 
 the state. That burden, without a time-limit, may well prove 
 a fundamental obstacle to the democratisation of control. 
 
 Nor is the alternative of complete state-management more 
 inviting. Indeed, it may without exaggeration be suggested 
 
 "' As is forcibly pointed out by my critic in the London Times of May 
 17, 1917. 
 
 i8» Cf. Webb, "The Restoration of Trade Union Conditions," passim. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 95 
 
 that the evils such a regime would imply are hardly less great 
 than those of the present system. For to surrender to govern- 
 ment officials not merely pohtical but also industrial adminis- 
 tration is to create a bureaucracy more powerful than the world 
 has ever seen. It is to apotheosise the potent vices of a govern- 
 ment department. It is to make certain a kind of paternalism 
 which, perhaps above all other systems, would prevent the 
 advent of the kind of individual freedom we desire. After all, 
 we have had no light experience of the state. Municipally it 
 certainly is no less efficient than private industry; but, humanly 
 speaking, there is httle or no evidence that its administration 
 is more democratic. The attitude of the London County 
 Council to its carmen is hardly encouraging. '*' The Holt 
 Report on the postal service must give pause to every observer 
 who occupies himself with the consideration of these prob- 
 lems. ^'^ The long story of grievances in the French civil service 
 is a record that no beUever in state-absorptiveness can con- 
 template with equanimity.'*' The permanent official is no 
 more blessed with an immediate appreciation of that hunger to 
 determine the rule of his own life which is the source of demo- 
 cratic aspiration than the private employer. Nor can anyone 
 examine his record in the present war and feel confident that 
 he has any real contribution to offer. On the contrary, the one 
 complaint of which we on all hands hear is lack of confidence 
 in him from those whose confidence is essential to the right 
 conduct of industry.'** The centrahsation state-management 
 would imply would mean the transference of all power to a 
 class of guardians within the state whose main object, even 
 more than today would, at all costs, be the maintenance of 
 regularity of supply. There would, inevitably, be an effort to 
 play off group against group, to purchase office by favour, to 
 
 "1 Cf. Cole, "Labour in Wartime," p. 160 ff. 
 
 "" So far as France is concerned cf . Beaubois, "La Crise Postale et les 
 Monopoles L'Etat," and the note on the American post-ofBce in The 
 New Republic, VoL XIII, p. 167. 
 
 '» Cf . Chap. V below. 
 
 '" Cf. the Reports of Mr. Lloyd-George's "Commissions on Industrial 
 Unrest" (American Bureau of Labour edition), pp. 77-8, 88-9,110-12, 25, 
 119, 162, 217. 
 
96 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 lack inventiveness, by which in every age a bureaucracy is dis- 
 tinguished. Then, as now, the trade-unions would be com- 
 pelled to fight against an estabhshed order for the opportunity 
 of industrial self-expression; and the fight against a state is 
 notoriously more difficult than the fight against private capi- 
 tal. Inevitably, moreover, the public character of the state 
 as employer lends it a factitious popular support against which 
 it is difficult to make headway. And, indeed, government, even 
 less than private enterprise, is hardly prepared to tolerate 
 democratisation of control. 
 
 Nor is it prepared to tolerate a democratic judgment. We 
 here touch a vital element in modern government. Our state 
 is a sovereign state, and about the acts of its agents the cloak 
 of its supremacy is cast. In nothing, indeed, has the falsity 
 of such an outlook been more strikingly manifest than in the 
 doctrine of its irresponsibihty. We place governmental acts 
 in a different category from private acts. If A harms B the 
 courts always lie open for remedy; but if A be government, it 
 is with problems of a different kind that we become immediately 
 concerned. 
 
 The explanation is probably simple. To sue the king in his 
 own courts has about it an air of unreason; for, at least in 
 theory, he is present there, and to sue him is to ask him to be 
 judge in his own cause. When the doctrine of his legal infalli- 
 bility becomes added thereto we have all the materials for an 
 evasion of justice. For, to the courts, there is no such thing 
 as the Enghsh state. There is a king, and the state can shrink 
 behind the personality he will lend for its protection. It does 
 not matter that since the eighteenth century he has been no 
 more than the shadow of a great name. The old form is pre- 
 served, and it lends its content to the government by which he 
 has been replaced. An action for breach of contract, indeed, 
 can, by the disagreeable formality of a Petition of Right 
 be instituted; but into the category of tort the concept of 
 habihty has not yet entered. Miss Bainbridge may be run 
 over by the mail-van of the Postmaster-General; but the irre- 
 sponsibility of the state prevents an action against anyone but 
 the humble driver of the van.^^s The Lords of Admiralty may 
 
 '»« Bainbridge v. Postmaster-General (1906), I, K. B. 178. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 97 
 
 infringe a patent but they remain inaccessible to justice.^'' 
 Sir Claude Maedonald may dismiss an official whom he has, as 
 Her Majesty's Commissioner for the Niger Protectorate en- 
 gaged for a definite period of years before its expiration; but 
 the ample cloak of state authority is cast about him.'^ "The 
 maxim that 'the king can do no wrong'," said a strong court, ^** 
 "apphes to personal as well as political wrongs, and not only 
 to wrongs done personally by the sovereign (if such a thing 
 could be supposed possible), but to injuries done by one sub- 
 ject to another by authority of the sovereign. For from the 
 maxim that the king can do no wrong it follows, as a necessary 
 consequence, that the king cannot allow wrong to be done; 
 for to authorize a wrong to be done is to do a wrong; and as the 
 wrongful act done becomes in law the act of those who author- 
 ize it to be done, it follows that the petition of right which 
 complains of a tortious or wrongful act done by the Crown or 
 by servants of the Crown discloses no right to redress, for as 
 in law no such wrong can be done no such right can arise . . . ." 
 So when the Sultan of Johore puts off his sultanship and makes 
 an offer of marriage to Miss Mighell in the guise of an Albert 
 Baker, his sovereignty prevents recovery of damages for breach 
 of promise.^" The whole thing is a positive stumbling block 
 in the path of administrative moralisation. 
 
 Nor is this irresponsibility confined to England. Many of 
 the local jurisdictions of the United States expressly limit them- 
 selves from being sued in their own courts even though, as the 
 Supreme Court has said,"" "it is difficult to see on what solid 
 foundation of principle the exemption from habihty to suit 
 rests." In France it is only painfully, and after long hesita- 
 tion, that a category of state-responsibility is being evolved."^ 
 We have not taken to heart the great words of Maitland that 
 "it is a wholesome sight to see the 'Crown' sued and answer- 
 
 "« Feather v. Regina, 6 B & S, 257. 
 
 1" Dunn V. the Queen (1896), I, Q. B. C. A., 116. 
 
 '«8 Feather v. Regina, 6, B. & S., 257. 
 
 '«" Mighell V. Sultan of Johore (1894), I, Q. B., 149. 
 
 '"".U. S. V. Lee, 106 U. S., 196, 206. 
 
 "' Cf . Duguit, "Transformations du Droit PubUc," Ch. VII. 
 
98 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 ing for its torts.""^ It is true that an incr&^sing tendency is 
 apparent to provide statutory remedy for wrongful acts."' 
 Where government dissolves into a dock company the cloak 
 of sovereignty may well suffer withdrawal."* But the essen- 
 tial thesis that a state act — which in practice means a govern- 
 mental act — gives rise to no liabiHty remains untouched. It 
 is the price we pay for refusing to look facts in the face. The 
 state in this context is a group of officials who may act not less 
 harmfully than a private individual. It is difficult to see why 
 their acts should be excused where harm is caused. And that 
 the more in an age that has witnessed the immense growth of 
 administrative law.'^^^ 
 
 Upon its dangers, indeed, too much insistence can hardly 
 be laid. The most striking change in the pohtical organisation 
 of the last half-century is the rapidity with which, by the sheer 
 pressure of events, the state has been driven to assume a posi- 
 tive character. We talk less and less in the restrained terms 
 of Benthamite individuahsm. The absence of governmental 
 interference has ceased to seem an ultimate ideal. There is 
 everj^vhere almost anxiety for the extension of governmental 
 functions. It is probably inevitable that such an evolution 
 should involve a change in the judicial process. The admin- 
 istrative departments, in the conduct of pubhc business, find 
 it essential to assume duties of a judici&,l character. Where, 
 for example, great problems hke those involved in govermnent 
 insurance are concerned, there is undoubtedly a great conven- 
 ience in leaving their interpretation to the officials who are to 
 administer the act. They have gained in its apphcation an 
 expert character to which no purely judicial body can pretend; 
 and their opinion has a weight which no community can afford 
 to neglect. The business of the state, in fact, is so much like, 
 private business that, as Professor Dicey has emphasised,"^ 
 
 "' "Collected Papers," III, 263. 
 
 "' Cf . Mr. Maguire's very able paper in Harvard Law Review, Vol. 30, 
 pp. 20 ff., and. see especially Canadian Revised Statutes (1906), C. 140, 
 Sec. 20, for an interesting example of legal remedy for injury by negligence 
 on public works. 
 
 "< Mersey Docks v. Gibbs, 11, H. C. L. C, 686. 
 
 "5 Cf . E. Barker in the Political Quarterly for May, 1914, esp. pp. 125 f. 
 
 1™ Law Quarterly Review, Vol. 31, p. 150. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 99 
 
 its officials need "that freedom of action necessarily possessed 
 by every private person in the management of his own per- 
 sonal concerns." So much is at least tolerably clear. But 
 history suggests that the Telation of such executive justice to 
 the slow infiltration of a bureaucratic regime is perilously close; 
 and the development of such administrative law needs at each 
 step to be closely scrutinised in the interests of public Uberty."^ 
 
 The famous Arhdge case in England"^ is a striking example 
 of what the severiteenth century would have termed Star- 
 chamber methods. It was there decided by the highest Eng- 
 lish tribunal that when a government department assumes 
 quasi-judicial functions the absence of express enactment in 
 the enabling statute means that the department is free to em- 
 bark upon what procedural practice may seem best to it; nor 
 will the courts enquire if such practice results, or can by its 
 nature result, in justice. In such an attitude it is clear that 
 what Professor Dicey has taught us to understand as the rule 
 of law "' becomes largely obsolete. If, as in the Zadig case,™" 
 the Secretary of State for Home Affairs may make regulations 
 of any kind without any judicial tests of fairness or reasonable- 
 ness being involved, it is clear that a fundamental safeguard 
 upon English liberties has disappeared. Immediately admin- 
 istrative action can escape the review of the Courts it is clear 
 that the position of a public official has become privileged in 
 a sense from which the administrative law of France and Ger- 
 many is only beginning to escape. 
 
 Nor is it hkely that these issues have become significant 
 merely in relation to abnormal conditions. American administra- 
 tive law, in the sense of a law different in content from a mere law 
 of public offices, goes back to the Ju Toy case,'"'^ where a ma- 
 jority of the Supreme Court, perhaps somewhat doubtfully, 
 
 1" Cf. Pound, "Address to the New Hampshire Bar Association,'" June 
 30, 1917. 
 
 "' (1915) A. C. 120, and see Dean Pound's comment in the address 
 cited above. 
 
 "9 "The Law of the Constitution" (8th ed.), p. 179 f. 
 
 ""' R. V. HalUday (1917). A. C. 226. Cf. especially the dissenting opinion 
 of Lord Shaw and the comment in 31 Harvard Law Review, 296. 
 
 2»i U. S. V. Ju Toy, 198 U. S. 253. 
 
100 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 held the courts powerless, in view of the Chinese exclusion Ac 
 of 1894, to review a decision of the Secretary of Commerce an 
 Labour. But no one would object to action by a governmer 
 department so long as assurance could be had of absolute fail 
 ness in the methods by which a decision was reached; it was ex 
 actly the absence of that fairness which constituted the sourc 
 of grievance and disquiet in the Arlidge case. A recent decisio) 
 of the Supreme Court,^"^ very strikingly comparable with thi 
 issue in the English case, suggests that the Supreme Court wil 
 be careful of those safeguards as, indeed, the due process claus 
 obviously demands it must be careful. The Public Servici 
 Commission of New York ordered a gas company, after a hear 
 ing in which witnesses were cross-examined, testimonyintroducec 
 and the case argued, to provide gas service for a certain district 
 The company believed that, relative to the expenditure re 
 quired, a sufficient return would not be had. It therefore ap 
 pealed oh the ground that the order of the commission "wai 
 illegal and void in that it deprived the Gas Company of its prop 
 erty without due process of law and denied to it the equal pro 
 tection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendmeni 
 to the Constitution of the United States . . . "and, aftei 
 the requisite intermediate stages, the issue came before the 
 Supreme Court on this single ground of error. Mr. Justice 
 Clarke upheld the action of the Public Service Commission 
 He admitted, for the Court, that the finding of an expert com- 
 mission is final and will not be discussed again by. the courts 
 Such, of course, has been the general practice of the Supreme 
 Court;2'" and, so far, the decision in no sense differs from the 
 bearing of the opinion rendered in the Arlidge case by the House 
 of Lords. 
 
 But there is, at this point, a significant departure. "This 
 court," says Clarke J.^"* "will nevertheless enter upon such an 
 examination of the record as may be necessary to determine 
 whether the federal constitutional right claimed has been denied, 
 as, in this case, whether there was such a want of hearing, oi 
 
 202 New York v. McCall et al, 38 Sup. Ct. Rep. 122. 
 ™ Baltimore & Ohio R.R. Co. w. Pitcairn Coal Co., 215 U. S. 481; Inter- 
 state Commerce Commission v. Union Pacific R.R. Co., 222 U. S. 541. 
 "" New York v. McCall et al, 38 Sup. Ct. Rep. 122, 124. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 101 
 
 such arbitrary or capricious action on the part of the Com- 
 mission as to violate the due process clause of the consti- 
 tution." No one, it may be suggested, who studies the history 
 of the due-process clause can deny that, on occasion, it has been 
 sadly perverted from its orginal purposes. But here at least, 
 and in the perspective here outlined, its value must be obvious 
 even to those who are suspicious of the rigidity of a written 
 constitution. The Supreme Court, as the learned judge points 
 out, does not purpose to go into issues probably better settled 
 by the administrative tribunal; but it does, and rightly, purpose 
 to examine into the fundamental question of whether the means 
 taken by that tribunal to attain its end were such as were, on 
 the plain face of things, adequate to the securing of justice. 
 That, of a certainty, is a safeguard to which the courts will 
 more and more be driven with the expansion of administrative 
 law. Under the Defence of the Realm Considation Act, for in- 
 stance, the Home Secretary may issue a regulation which pro- 
 hibits publication of any book or pamphlet relating to the con- 
 duct of the war on the terms of peace without its previous sub- 
 mission to the censor who may prohibit such publication with- 
 out the assignment of^"* cause. That is to say that the merest 
 and irresponsible caprice of a junior clerk of determined 
 nature might be actually the occasion of suppressing a vital 
 contribution to the understanding of the war. So ridiculous 
 a proceeding is at least prevented by the system of the Supreme 
 Court. In the first place, and above all, a due publicity is se- 
 cured. It would have to be shown to the Supreme Court that 
 the methods taken to secure the decision were such as to war- 
 rant it; and in so vital a thing as freedom of speech one may feel 
 tolerably certain that the methods would be subject to closest 
 scrutiny. It has been the habit of past years to sneer rather 
 elaborately at Bills of Rights.^"' It may yet be suggested that 
 with the great increase of state activity that is clearly fore- 
 shadowed there was never a time when they wei:e_so_greaily_ 
 needed. Here , as elsewhere, the human needs the satisfaction 
 
 ^ns Regulation 51. Cf. London Nation, December 8, 1917. 
 
 2<« A habit unfortunately intensified by Professor Ritchie's "Natural 
 Rights," which, dismissing them historically, was held to dismiss them 
 politically also. 
 
102 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 of which history has demonstrated to be essential must be put 
 beyond the control of any organ of the state; that, and no more 
 than that, is what we mean today by natural rights.^"^ Govern- 
 mental power is a thing which needs at every stage the most 
 careful regard; and it is only by judicial control in terms of 
 those rights that the path of administration will become also 
 the path of justice . The problem of responsibiUty can be ap- 
 proached with profit from another angle. The purpose and 
 the character of government as a trust leads us to regard it as 
 in reality an institution for translating purposes into the event 
 without regard to the fact that the men who operate those pur- 
 poses give to them a personality of their own. The belief in 
 the reality of corporate persons, indeed, only slowly makes its 
 way into the general body of Anglo- American law. Its progress 
 is at every stage impeded by the general refusal of the courts 
 to recognize the corporate character of the trust. It is nearly 
 thirteen years since Maitland demonstrated with all his pro- 
 found scholarship, and even more than his wonted charm, that 
 the trust has, above all things, served historically as a, screen 
 to promote the growth of institutions which, for a variety of 
 reasons, have found inadvisable the path of corporate adven- 
 ture.^"^ Especially true of the state, this may perhaps receive 
 its simplest illustration in the case of charitable trusts. "A 
 trust," said Bacon there centuries ago,^"' "is the binding of the 
 conscience of one to the purpose of another" — a fit enough des- 
 cription of the process of government. But we have failed to 
 see how that purpose must take account of the categories of 
 time and space. In its legal perspective, the doctrine is most 
 largely a supposed deference to the rights of propriety; and it 
 has paid but little attention to the admirable remark of John 
 Stuart MilP^" that no man ought to exercise the rights of pro- 
 perty long after his death. 
 
 This tendency to regard as adequa,te and all-excusing the 
 purpose enshrined in the trust without at the safne time em- 
 
 2»' W. Wallace, "Lectures & Essays," 213 ff. 
 ^o' "Collected Papers," III, 321 f. 
 2™ "Reading on the Statute of Uses," p. 9. 
 
 "" Essay on "Corporations and Church Property" in Vol. I of his "Dis- 
 sertations and Discussions." 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 103 
 
 phasising the life that trust engenders has received an interest- 
 ing illustration in a recent American decision.^" A fireman 
 who was engaged in extinguishing a hospital fire was injured 
 through the defective condition of the hospital fire escape. 
 He sued the hospital for damages, and rehef was denied on the 
 ground that the doctrine of respondeat superior does not apply 
 to charitable institutions. The basis of the decision seems to 
 be the opinion^'^ that the funds of a charity are not provided 
 to liquidate the damages caused in its defective administration; 
 and the funds are therefore not applicable to the redemption 
 of the torts committed by the agents or servants of the char- 
 ity .^i' This doctrine, indeed, is not worked out with entire 
 consistency in other parts of the law, since a charitable insti- 
 tution, like the state, is hable in an action for breach of contract. 
 Nor is it an universal doctrine, since it is not appUed by the 
 English courts.''" It in reality involves a whole series of as- 
 sumptions. It starts out from the behef that a charitable 
 institution is in a different position from other institutions in 
 the fact that its purpose is not one of profit. But this is en- 
 tirely to ignore the administrative aspect of the problem. To 
 fulfil the purpose of a charity involves all the usual features 
 of an ordinary corporate enterprise. It acts by agents and 
 servants. It harms and benefits third parties exactly as they 
 are harmed or benefited by other institutions. Where fault 
 is involved it is difficult to see why the exception should be 
 maintained. It is small comfort to an injured fireman to know 
 that even if he has to compensate himself for his injuries, he is 
 maintaining the strict purpose of the founder of the charity. 
 
 "' Loeffler v. Trustees of Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital (1917) 
 100 Abl. 301. 
 
 ^'* The result of the case could be justified on the ground that there is 
 no liability for an injury sustained by a licensee when the injury is brought 
 about by a condition of the premises. 
 
 "' Overholser v. National Home for Disabled Soldiers, 68 Ohio St. 236; 
 McDonald v. Mass. General Hospital, 120 Mass. 432; Jensen v. Maine 
 Eye and Ear Infirmary, 107 Me. 408; Downes v. Harper Hospital, 101 
 Mich. 555. 
 
 "* Duncan v. Findlater (1839) 6 CI. & Fin. 894 was decided in American 
 fashion, but since Mersey Docks Trustees v. Gibbs, (1866) I H. L. 93 the 
 rule has happily been the other way. 
 
104 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 To him the case appears simply one of injiiry and he suffer 
 not less, but, in the present state of the law, actually more 
 from the sheerly fortuitous fact that his accident has occurrec 
 not at a factory but at a hospital. The thing of which the laM 
 ought to take account is surely the balance of interests in- 
 volved; and the hospital is far more likely to look to the con- 
 dition of its ladders if it pays the penalty of its negligence than 
 if it saves a certain percentage oi its income. 
 
 It would, in fact, be an intolerable situation if the only pro- 
 tection afforded the public against the torts of charities were 
 that of the pockets of agents and servants.^^^ Those who 
 founded the charity intended it to be operated; and they, or 
 their representatives must, logically enough, pay the cost of 
 its operation from the funds provided for that purpose. There 
 are, indeed, some signs that the courts are beginning to appre- 
 ciate this. Relief has been granted to a claimant against the 
 Salvation Army which negligently allowed one of its vans to 
 run wild.^^' The inadequate protection of dangerous machin- 
 ery has suffered its due and necessary penalty.^'' The injury 
 which resulted from the employment of an unskilful nurse has 
 not gone unrequited.^'^ 
 
 Not, indeed, that any of these decisions really touch the 
 central issue that is raised. We have, in fact, a twofold prob- 
 lem. We have, in the first place, to inquire whether the crea- 
 tion of a charitable trust does not involve the creation of a 
 corporate person exactly in the manner of a business enter- 
 prise; in the second place the question is raised as to whether 
 there is any ground for the exclusion of a charity from the 
 ordinary rules of vicarious hability. The answer to the first 
 question is clearly an affirmative one. The Salvation Army, 
 an orphan asylum, a great hospital, are just as much persons 
 to those who have deahngs with them as a private individual 
 or a railway company. Differentiation, if it is to be made, 
 ca,nnot be made on the ground of character. If it is, the courts 
 will go as fatally wrong in the results of litigation as did the 
 
 2'« Cf. Yale Law Journal Vol. 26, p. 124 ff. 
 
 218 Hordern v. Salvation Army, 199 N. Y. 233. 
 
 "' MoMerney v. St. Luke's Hospital, 122 Minn. 10. 
 
 '^^ St. Paul's Sanitarium v. Williamson, 164 S. W. 36. 
 
AUTHORITY IX THE MODERN STATE 105 
 
 House of Lords in the great Free Church of Scotland case.^'^ 
 It was the insistence of the Lords upon the nature of the church 
 as a pendant to a set of doctrines which made them fail to see 
 that more important was the life those doctrines called into 
 being.^-" The life of the Salvation Army is, in precisely similar 
 fashion, more important than the doctrines that it teaches; 
 and we must legally judge its life by what in fact it is, and not 
 by the theories it proclaims. 
 
 Herein is found the answer to our second inquiry. The only 
 reason why a charity should not be hable for fault is its public 
 character. But that, surely, is no adequate reason at all. It 
 is probably a simple analogy from the irresponsibility of that 
 greatest of modern charities the state. It is the merest justice 
 that if the pubhc seeks benefit, if men seek to benefit the pub- 
 lic, due care should be taken not to harm those interests, not 
 directly public, which are met in the process. A charity's 
 personaUty will suffer no less detriment if it is allowed to be 
 irresponsible than a private enterprise. A hospital, for instance, 
 ought to be forced to take as much care in the selection of its 
 nurses as a banker in the choice of his cashiers. We have found 
 that the enforcement of liabihty is the only adequate means to 
 this latter end, and it is difficult to see why the same is not 
 true of every other sphere. French law has not hesitated to 
 hold a county asylum liable for the arson of an escaped lunatic; 
 and we may thence be sure that the prefect of the department 
 concerned is not a second time guilty of negligence.^^^ The 
 whole problem is another illustration of the vital need of in- 
 sisting as much on the processes of institutions as on their 
 purposes. A negligently administered charity may aim at 
 inducting us all into the kingdom of heaven, but it is socially es- 
 sential to make it adequately careful of the means employed.^^ 
 The argument, surely, is applicable to the state; for upon 
 "* See the report of Mr. (now Lord) Haldane's speech in the special 
 report by Orr and the comment of Dr. Figgis, "Churches in the Modem 
 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 practically reproductions of 
 some notes of mine in the Harvard Law Reiiew for January and February, 
 1918, and I am indebted to its editors for leave to make use of them. 
 
106 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 a vaster theatre it is yet similar functions that its agents per- 
 form. For what, after all, is here contended is the not unrea- 
 sonable thesis that service in governmental functions does not 
 make men cease to be human. Public enterprise is not less 
 Uable to error than private; and its responsibiUty should on 
 that account be not the less strictly enforced. Nor do we 
 perhaps sufficiently reahse the possible ramifications of ao 
 exclusion of the state from due responsibility. It begins as a 
 legal exclusion; but, sooner or later, that legal category will 
 pass over into the moral sphere. The fact of achievement will 
 become more important than the method by which attainment 
 is reached. Once an end is set up as in itself great enough to 
 set its exponents beyond the reach of law the real safeguards 
 of liberty are overthrown. Irresponsibility becomes equated 
 with the dangerous ej^planation of public policy; and that, 
 as is historically clear, is the first step towards an acceptance 
 of raison d'etat. The forms of protection the law has slowly 
 evolved may be inadequate as the realisation of ideal morality; 
 but they are none the less forms of protection. They repre- 
 sent rules of conduct which have behind them the sanction of 
 social experience; and in that sense it is in a high degree dan- 
 gerous to exclude any category of men from subjection to 
 them. For the release of the state from the trammels of law 
 means in practice the release of its officials from the obliga- 
 tions to which other men are usefully subject. Sooner or later 
 that release operates as an excuse for despotism. It breeds 
 the worst evils of bureaucracy. It makes those so released 
 impatient of criticism and resentful of inquiry. It is fatal to 
 the real essence of democratic government which involves the 
 conversion of the mass of men to the reahsation that some 
 special programme is coincident with right. It neglects, as 
 Dr. Figgis has so well said,^^^ "that care for the gradual edu- 
 cation of character, which is more important than any given 
 measures, is always so easy to ignore or thrust aside in the en- 
 thusiasm of a great cause, and is yet at the basis of all true 
 liberty, whether reUgious or civU." 
 
 For the assumption of an unique concern in government foi 
 ideal good is as easy as it is certainly fatal. Nothing is more 
 
 223 "From Gerson to Grotius," p. 95. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 107 
 
 simple in the heat and stress of political life than to assume the 
 equation of one's desire with what ought to be the ultimate 
 object of state-endeavour; yet nothing is at the same time 
 more certain than that the equation is a false one. We need 
 not accept Lord Acton's dictimi that great statesmen have been 
 almost always bad men to admit that the conference of un- 
 limited authority is at every point attended with danger. The 
 real guarantee of freedom is pubhcity; and publicity, to be 
 adequate, involves subjection to the control of general rules 
 of right and wrong. That is why the action of the state cannot 
 be put upon a different footing from individual action. The- 
 controlUng factors of good conduct are thereby loosed. Men 
 who in the ordinary processes of everyday life are gentle and 
 tender and kindly, become in their corporate aspect different 
 beings. But the inference therefrom is not that we should 
 judge that aspect differently; rather does it involve the in- 
 ference that it is our business the more sternly to apply what 
 standards time has painfully evolved. 
 
 Herein, also, we may discover another reason for the division 
 of power. The only way in which men can become accustomed 
 to the meaning and content of political processes is by acquain- 
 tance with them. Mr. Graham Wallas has noted^^^ the dis- 
 appearance with the advent of machinery of the "essentially 
 poUtical trades," like tailoring and shoemaking, where pro- 
 duction went on under conditions that made possible the 
 organisation of thought. The modern factory has destroyed — 
 for good or ill — that possibility; and that distinction clearly 
 must transfer the centre of social importance outside the fac- 
 tory in each man's daily life. • But that, in turn involves 
 making the groups to which he belongs politically real in tlJ^ 
 only sense of the word that today has meaning. His groups, 
 that is to say, must become responsible groups; yet responsi- 
 bility can only come where some social function is definitely 
 entrusted to the group for fulfilment. It is in the performance 
 of such tasks that the personaUty of men obtains its realisa- 
 tion. It is in such tasks that their leisure can be made in a full 
 sense rich and creative. That is not the case today. Everyone 
 who has engaged in pubhc work is sooner or later driven to 
 
 2« "The Great Society," p. 299. 
 
108 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 admit that the great barrier to which he finds himself oppose 
 is indifference. To the comfortable classes he is liable to seei 
 an "agitator"; to the mass of toiling men he commits the lai 
 sin of interference. Here, perhaps, there is a sense in whic 
 Rousseau's paradox becomes pregnant with new meaning an 
 it may in the end be true that men must be forced to be frei 
 Certain at least it is that the temptations to leave alone ti: 
 real problems by which we are confronted is almost insuperabl 
 We make every provision to maintain the status quo. Nothir 
 is more simple in the great society than to be lost amongst one 
 neighbours; nothing is more dangerous to the attainment ( 
 the social end. For if the good life is one day to be achieve 
 by the majority of men and women it is only by the preservi 
 tion of individuality that it can be done; and individuality 
 in any generous perspective, does not mean the rich and ii 
 tense life of a few able men. 
 
 That is why, at every stage in the social process, we ai 
 concerned to throw the business of judgment upon the ind 
 vidual mind. That does not, it ought to be insisted, mea 
 inefficient government. It does not mean that we shall nc 
 trust the expert; but it does mean the clear conviction that 
 judgment upon the expert is to be a democratic judgment. W 
 have had too much experience of the gospel of efficiency to pla( 
 any reliance that is final upon what promise it may contaii 
 The great danger to which it is ceaselessly exposed is the eag( 
 desire of achievement and a resultant carelessness about tl 
 methods of its programme. It sacrifices independence to tl 
 machine much in the way that party disciphne aiming, abo^ 
 all, at victory at the polls, sacrifices conviction, with its poss 
 bihty of discoyeries, to uniformity of outlook. It becomes i 
 once impatient of the exceptional man who cannot be reduce 
 within its categories; but, sooner or later, it becomes in 
 patient also of the average man. For it cannot respect, ov( 
 any length of time, the slowness with which his mind move 
 the curiously intricate avenues along which he travels. It ma 
 be true that in any group of men oligarchical govermnent 
 bound, in the end, and in some degree, to develop ;^^^ or, i 
 
 ^" This is the thesis of Professor Michel's well-known book on politic 
 parties; but I feel that he has only discussed half the problem. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 109 
 
 least, we need not deny the patent virtues of a man who can 
 guide his fellows. But that is not to say that the leaders are 
 shepherds whom the flock is inthinkingly to follow. It means 
 that safeguards must be erected lest the mass of men become 
 mere units in a sheepfold. It means the insistence that liberty 
 consists above all in the full opportunity for active citizenship 
 wherever there are men with the will to think upon politica^ 
 problems. It means that a democratic society must reject the 
 [sovereign state as by definition inconsistent with democracy. 
 
 IX. THE DIRECTION OF EVENTS 
 
 Such, at least, seems the direction in which the modern state 
 is moving. We stand on the threshold of one of those c ritica l 
 periods in the history of mankind when the most fundainen^l 
 notions present themselves for analysis. In England, in France, 
 and in America, it is already possible vaguely to discern the 
 character of that dissatisfaction from which a new synthesis 
 is ultimately born. The period when a sovereign state was a 
 necessary article of faith seems, on the whole, to be passing 
 away. Society is freed from the control of any special religious 
 organisation; and the birth of scientific theology in the nine- 
 teenth century seems destined to complete ' that process of 
 disintegration which began with the advent of Luther. It is 
 in social and not in religious theory, that is to say, that we shall 
 search for the sources of new insight. The moral dogmas we 
 shall adopt seem likely to remain unconnected with any special 
 church or school of religious doctrine. It was primarily to 
 prevent such danger that the sovereign state came into being. 
 With the general acceptance of Darwinism the success of its 
 mission seems achieved. For the state itself, not less than the 
 church is subject to the laws of evolution. It survives in any 
 given form only so long as that form with adequacy summarises 
 a general social experience. It has here been urged that it 
 is no longer adequate. The form of organisation it involves is 
 neither politically useful nor morally sufficient. The time has 
 come for new discoveries. 
 
 No one who has observed the course of English pohtics 
 since the triumph of socialised liberalism in 1906 can have any 
 
110 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 doubts upon this head. It was an epoch which began wii 
 immense promise; and, at its close, it seemed Ukely to end 
 something but little short of disaster. It began with a gigant 
 effort to make the categories of stateJife more socially incli 
 sive than at any previous period. It ended in a drift towan 
 bureaucratic control from which thinkers of the most diveri 
 schools drew back in distressed scepticism. The state had a 
 ready begun to overload its instruments with business. Tl 
 exigencies of government had so strengthened party-control i 
 virtually to destroy the independence of the private membe 
 or, at least, to leave him a pitiful Friday afternoon in which 1 
 spread his curtailed wings. No one could doubt that the stai 
 would long retain its positive character without some systei 
 of decentralisation being devised. For the pressure on Whi 
 hall had involved the growth of a new bureaucracy which ga'\ 
 rise to a doubt whether the regime it involved was compatib 
 with individual freedom.^^^ Parliamentary democracy hs 
 broken down; sovereignty had patently suffered transfereni 
 from the House of Commons. With both women and trad 
 unionists alike sources of new loyalty other than the stai 
 could be detected; and in Ulster there was a striking dete 
 mination to deny the finahty of a government decision. Mor 
 and economic dissatisfactions were on all hands evident, 
 was to the foundations of the state that men were going bad 
 They looked upon their handiwork and did not pronounce 
 good. The great demand of the time was for reUgious and si 
 cial innovation; and the benevolent feudahsm of the Insuranc 
 Act proved, in the event, in no sense due response to the ne 
 i,desires that sought expression. Labour was declaring that tl 
 state was essentially a middle-class institution — a differem 
 indeed from the optimistic days when Macaulay could clai: 
 that the middle classes were "the natural representatives 
 the human race." The state-regulation of Germany seemt 
 less and less applicable to the sturdy individualism of tl 
 English mind. The one great object of enquiry was from whi 
 sources new discoveries in govermnent were to be had. ¥ 
 
 226 Cf. Prof. Ramsay Muir's "Peers and Bureaucrats," and the mt( 
 esting but grossly exaggerated volume of E. S. P. Haynes: "The Decli 
 of Liberty in England." 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 111 
 
 had evolved the great society, as Mr. Wallas has pointed out,^" ^ 
 without planning institutions at all adequate to its scale of life. 
 
 That sonae real progress lay concealed beneath the appear- 
 ance of this chaos it would be difficult to deny. Yet what 
 emerges, in a perspective that the events of the last four years 
 seem now to have made final, is essentially a bankruptcy in 
 liberal ideas. Nor is it possible to make a claim of greater 
 profit for Conservatism. It was doubtless overburdened by 
 the weight it had to carry in the support of an obsolete second 
 chamber; but on every essential political problem it had noth- 
 ing acceptable to contribute. Lord Hugh Cecil, indeed, had 
 reaUsed that laissez-faire was not without its merits; but its 
 scope was limited by him to fields too narrow and specialised 
 in character to be attractive to the mass of men. The state, 
 in fact, had come to the parting of the ways; but to none of 
 its fundamental difficulties could it offer any comprehensive 
 solution. Ireland, the second chamber, education, poverty, 
 agriculture, the position of women — about all of these there 
 was a plethora of debate; but about all of them the policy of 
 statesmen was to prevent a half-response in the hope that, 
 despite them, a new equiUbrium would emerge. And, behind 
 all and beyond all, there loomed the gigantic problem of a 
 labouring class growing ever more self-conscious and ever more 
 determined to control its own destinies. It repudiated the 
 solution of social welfare implied in such a measure as the In- 
 surance Act. Its strikes revealed a more fierce .hostihty to the 
 forces of capital than had been manifest since the early years 
 of the Holy Alhance. In the famous Dublin Transport Work- 
 ers' strike it showed a soUdarity unique in labour history. The 
 Labour Party seemed to it hardly more instinct with hope 
 than the traditional political forces of the country. It was in 
 workshop and factory that the new ideas were being forged. 
 They showed a striking renaissance of that attitude which, as 
 in Owen and Thompson and Hodgskin,^^ believed that the di- 
 version of labour power into political rather than into economic 
 
 ^" "The Great Society," Chap. I. In a paper published in the Smith 
 College studies on the "Problem of Administrative Areas," I have tried to 
 note the significance of this. 
 
 ^ Cf. Prof. Foxwell's classic introduction to Menger's "Right to the 
 Whole Produce of Labour." 
 
112 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 fields was mistaken. Its influence was securing the reconstruc 
 tion of social history .^^s It was insisting upon the need of nei 
 and wider educational ideals. It was demanding a complet 
 revision of the distribution of wealth.^ It was thinking out ne\ 
 categories in the productive process. It rejected state-arbi 
 tration of its difficulties with capital. It looked with gray 
 suspicion on the use of the army in the maintenance of socia 
 order. It emphatically underlined such differentiation of treat 
 ment as that meted out to Sir Edward Carson, on the one hand 
 and to that significant portent Mt. Larkin, on the other. I 
 was, of course, Hke all renaissances, the work of a minority 
 But it was a minority that had caught the vision of a life tha 
 might be made more splendid and more spiritual than the old 
 It had reaUsed that the basis of its ideal must be the conques 
 of economic power. It was upon that mission it had embarked 
 Professor Dicey, whose interpretation is the more valuabli 
 from his hostility to these ideas, has suggested that the tw( 
 outstanding characteristics of the time are irreverence for lav 
 and a new belief in natural rights. The reason of this sureh 
 lies in the general truth that parliamentary government ha< 
 reached the zenith of its achievement. The complexity of socia 
 problems had made them too vast for discussion by debate ii 
 the House of Commons to be a sufficient test of legislation. N( 
 single legislative assembly in the world had stood the test o 
 the nineteenth century well enough to make men hopeful 
 Everywhere the tendency had been more and more toward 
 the development of an invisible bureaucracy, until the stati 
 itself had seemed, ip the last analysis, no more than what thi 
 French, in an intranslatable phrase, call a syndicat des fonction 
 naires — a syndicat, moreover, which, as John Stuart Mil 
 saw,^^° is largely controlled by men without understanding o 
 working class ideals. And in this context it is of the first im 
 portance to realise that the movement for social reform wa 
 less perhaps a genuine effort towards the reconstruction tha 
 had become essential than towards a discovery of the minimur 
 conditions of change necessary to the maintenance of th 
 present society. 
 
 ^^' As in Mr. Tawney's ^Agrarian Revolution in the. Sixteenth Century, 
 and Mr. and Mrs. Hammond's studies of town and village labour. 
 ^" "Representative Government, "Ch. Ill (Everyman's edition), p.209-l( 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 113 
 
 ( 
 
 But the fact has been that the theoretic purpose of -the state 
 did not find adequate fulfilment either in governments or legis- 
 latures. We were simply forced to the reahsation that majority- 
 rule could not be the last word on our problems. So long as 
 political power was divorced from economic power the jury of 
 the nation was in reality packed. Wherein representative gov- 
 ernment had been supremely successful was in the securing 
 of general political rights in which rich and poor alike have 
 been interested. But once the transference has been made 
 from political rights to economic interests the basic sectionalism 
 of society has been apparent to anyone with the patience to 
 observe the facts. Wherever economic freedom is to be se- 
 cured, certainly legislative experience does not give us the right 
 to expect it from that quarter. Men and women resented a 
 state of which the law neither expressed nor fully attempted 
 to express the need for translating their desires into effective 
 poUtical terms. They resented and resisted it; that is the real 
 root of lawlessness. The Osborne decision of the House of 
 Lords,^^^ for example, destroyed at a stroke the confidence of 
 labour in that judicial tribunal. Everyone knew that the polit- 
 ical activity of the trade-unions was an integral part of their 
 functions; everyone knew also that manufacturers' associa- 
 tions did virtually the same thing in virtually the same way. 
 Yet the House of Lords tried politically to strangle the unions 
 within the four corners of an outworn doctrine. The under- 
 standing of obvious trade-union implications was at every 
 point alDsent from its enquiry. But if the highest tribunal of 
 the state can so misinterpret the challenge of its age, lawless- 
 ness and the revival of natural rights are not difficult to under- 
 stand. They are, historically, the perennial symptoms of 
 discontent. They make their appearance at every transitional ^ 
 epoch. They are the invariable heralds of a new time. < 
 
 England shows her temper only in vague hints and chaotic 
 practical demands; the more logical structure of the French 
 mind makes possible a sharper contrast between opposing at- 
 titudes. The one certain thing in the France that came into 
 being with the close of the Dreyfus controversy was a revolt 
 against the centralised state.'^^ That revolt was evident in at 
 
 «' (1910) A. C. 87. 
 
 ^2 This is worked out in detail in Chapter V below. 
 
114 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 least three general aspects. The contempt for poHtics was i 
 France more widely spread than in any other European cour 
 try. Distrust of the chamber, suspicion of statesmen, a doub 
 if the struggle was more than the exchange of one faction fo 
 another, are everywhere presented to us. There is no mon 
 creative literature in the last generation than that in whicl 
 men Uke Duguit, Leroy and Paul-Boncour have depicted fo: 
 I us the fall of the sovereign state through parliamentary in 
 i competence. Nor does the trade-union movement emphasis* 
 any dissimilar lesson. It lacks the sober and practical cautioi 
 of EngHsh labour. It is frankly idealist and, on the whole, as 
 frankly revolutionary.. Those who have most clearly outhnec 
 its aims, men like Pelloutier and Griffuelhes, those who have 
 analysed its rules and customs hke Leroy,^^ point always tc 
 the capture of economic power by the proletariat and the 
 emergence of a new society created in federahst terms. Ever 
 more striking is the revolt of the civil service. Here the state 
 is attacked at the very root of its sovereignty; and where the 
 bureaucracy joins hands with the worker the path lies open 
 for a new synthesis. Proudhon has displaced Marx as the 
 guiding genius of French labour; and it is above all his feder- 
 alism that is the source of the new inspiration.^^* 
 
 Even those who reject this attitude are largely sceptical of 
 the future of the older ideals. Some have frankly taken refuge 
 in a royalist and aristocratic solution ;2S5 some, like M. Brune- 
 tiere, have urged that only a religious revival can restore France 
 to a satisfactory' condition. The coahtion of the Left dissolved 
 when the separation of church and state had been effected; 
 and it cannot be said that M. Jaures' presence in the Chamber 
 concealed his frank sympathy with a proletarian revolution. 
 M. Esm^in stood out as the soHtary poHtical thinker of dis- 
 tinction in France who had not renounced the ancient ways. 
 The strikes before which the state was largely powerless; the 
 endless proposals for decentraUsation and proportional repre- 
 
 =^'His "La Coutume Ouvrifere" is one of the fundamental books of 
 our time. 
 
 ="* For the revival of interest in Proudhon Cf . Pirou in the "Revue d'His- 
 toire des Doctrines Sociales et Economiques," 1912, p. 161, and the books 
 there cited. 
 
 «« Cf . Chapter II below. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 115 
 
 sentation; the growing tendency of the Council of State to 
 deny in practice the theory of national sovereignty promul- 
 gated by the Revolution; the attempt of sociologists like 
 Durkheim to penetrate through the artificial classification of 
 rights by the state to rights derived from a solidarity based 
 on group-needs and group-services ;^'° all these, surely, herald, 
 as in England, the transition to a new equilibrium. France, 
 like England, has had her period of lawlessness and a revival 
 of natural rights. But she has wisely rejected the over-simple 
 formulae of Rousseau as an attempted analysis of social rela- 
 tionships. Rather, as in 1789, she is setting Europe the example 
 of a new perspective in political organisation. The discipline 
 of technical co-ordination, with the liberty it implies, is re- 
 placing the authoritarian hierarchy of the Napoleonic state. ^^' 
 Nor is this the idle hypothesis of theorists. On the contrary 
 it represents the sober analysis of everyday life drawn from 
 men peroccupied with the practice of law and industry. That 
 is the real basis of its promise and importance. 
 
 Generalisations about America are notoriously dangerous; 
 for it is tempting to deny that, in the European sense, there is 
 yet any such thing in America as the state. Rather is the ob- 
 server confronted by a series of systems of economic interests 
 so varied in character and, at times, so baffling, as to make 
 inquiry almost impossible.^^' It is only within the last genera- 
 tion that America has emerged from the uncritical individual- 
 ism of a pioneer civilisation. It is little more than a decade 
 since she began directly to influence the course of world-poU- 
 tics. Yet even in a civiUsation so new and rich in promise it 
 is difficult not to feel that a critical era is approaching; The 
 old party-divisions have become largely meaningless. The 
 attempt to project a new political synthesis athwart the old 
 formulae failed to command support enough to be successful. 
 Yet, even in America, that point of economic organisation has 
 been reached where the emergence of a proletariat presents the 
 
 "" See especially the second edition of his "Division du travail Social." 
 
 It badly needs translation into English. 
 
 2" Cf. Leroy, "Les Transformation de la Puissance Publique," p. 286. < 
 "' Mr. Herbert Croly's "Progressive Democracy" is by far the best recent 
 
 analysis. 
 
116 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 basic social problems. A political democracy confronts th 
 most powerful economic autocracy the world has ever seen. Tb 
 separation of powers has broken down. The relation betweei 
 executive and legislature cries to heaven for readjustment 
 The decHne of Congress has become a commonplace. The con 
 stituent states of the republic have largely lost their ancien 
 meaning. New administrative areas are being evolved. I 
 patent unrest everywhere demands enquiry. Labour is becom 
 ing organised and demanding recognition. The men who, lib 
 Mark Hanna and Mr. Root, could stand on a platform of sim 
 pie conservatism are already obsolete. The political literatun 
 of America in the last fifteen years is almost entirely a literatun 
 of protest. Political experimentation, particularly in the West 
 is almost feverishly pursued. Discontent with old ideas wa; 
 never more bitter. The economic background of the decision 
 of the Supreme Court was never more critically examined 
 and, indeed, anyone who analyses the change from the narrov 
 individuaUsm of Brewer and Peckham to the Hberalising seep 
 iticism of Mr. Justice Holmes and the passionate rejection o 
 ithe present order which underlies the attitude of Mr. Justio 
 jBrandeis, can hardly doubt the advent of a new time. 
 
 What, in a sense, is being born is a realisation of the state 
 -but it is a reahsation that is fundamentally different from any 
 thing that Europe has thus far known. For it starts out fron 
 an unqualified acceptance of political democracy and the basi' 
 European struggle of the last hundred years is thus omitted 
 So that it is bound to make a difference to the United State 
 that its critical epoch should have arrived when Europe* alsi 
 confronts a new development. American economic histor; 
 will doubtless repeat on a vaster scale the labour tragedies o 
 the old world and think out new expedients for their intensi 
 fication. But there are certain elements in the American proh 
 lem which at once complicate and simplify the issue. Grante( 
 its corrupt politics, the withdrawal of much of its ability fron 
 governmental life, its exuberant optimism, and a traditions 
 faith in the efficacy of its orthodox political mechanisms tha 
 may well prove disastrous; there are yet two aspects in whicl 
 the basis of its life provides opportunities instinct with prof oum 
 and hopeful significance. It can never be forgotten that Americ 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 117 
 
 was born in revolution. In the midst of its gravest material- 
 ism that origin has preserved an idealist faith. It has made the 
 thought of equality of opportunity and the behef in natural 
 rights conceptions that in all their vagueness are yet living 
 entities no man may dare to neglect. When the dissatisfaction 
 with economic organisation becomes, as it is rapidly becoming, 
 acute enough to take political form, it is upon these elements 
 that it will fasten. Americans, in the last analysis, believe in 
 democratic government with a fierce intensity that cannot be 
 denied. They may often deceive themselves about its forms. 
 They may often, and very obviously, suffer an almost ludicrous 
 perversion of its expression. The effort of their workers may 
 be baffled by the countless nationaUties which have yet to 
 complete the process of Americanisation. Their trade-unions 
 may be as yet for the most part in a commercial stage. Yet, 
 from the confused chaos of it aU, one clear thread may be 
 seized. 
 
 It is towards a new orientation of ideals that America is mov- 
 ing Exactly as in England and France challenge has been 
 issued to theories of organisation that have outlived their use- 
 fulness. That was the real meaning of the Progressive Move- 
 ment. It symbolised a dissatisfaction with the attitude that 
 interpreted happiness in terms of the volume of trade. The 
 things upon which interest become concentrated are the fund- 
 amental elements. It is the perversion of pohtical power to 
 economic ends that above all receives analysis. The economists 
 demand a re-valuation of motives.^' " Why should the masses," 
 asks an able recent inquirer,^^" "seemingly endowed with the 
 power to determine the future, have permitted the development 
 of a system which has stripped them of ownership, initiative 
 and power?" and his answer is virtually a sober indictment 
 of capitalism. "The fundamental division of powers in thei 
 United States," says President Hadley,''*^ "is between voters | 
 
 ^' This is the work that has been performed by Mr. Veblen with some- 
 thing like genius in his "Theory of the Leisure Class;" the "Instinct of Work- 
 manship;" the "Theory of Business Enterprise;" and the great book on 
 "Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution." 
 
 "" W. H. Hamilton, the Price-System and Social PoUcy. Journal of 
 Political Economy, VoL XXVI, p. 31. 
 
 '" Quoted in Hamilton, op. cit. p. 37. 
 
118 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 s\ on the one hand and the owners of property on the other. Tl 
 forces of democracy on the one side . . are set ov 
 against the forces of property on the other side. . . Dem 
 cracy was complete as far as it went, but constitutionally it w; 
 bound to stop short at social democracy." It is against th 
 condition that the liberal forces of American life are slow 
 aligning themselves. A law that is subservient to the inte 
 ests of the statits quo is overwhelmingly unpopular; the use 
 the injunction in labour disputes, for example, has actual' 
 been a presidential issue.^^ The Clayton Act, with all i 
 defects, is yet a wedge that organised labour can one day us 
 to good purpose."^ Things like Mr. Justice Holmes' dissei 
 in Coppage v. Kansas''^ deposit a solid sentiment of determinatic 
 that will not easily pass away. The lawlessness that is con 
 plained of in American labour is essentially the insisfcance thi 
 the Ufe of the workers has outgrown the categories in whic 
 traditional authority would have confined it. The basis of 
 new claim of rights is in America autocthonous. Nor is it pos 
 ible to doubt that only concessions large enough to amount i 
 the .admission of its substance can prevent it from being mad 
 In either case, we have the materials for a vast change in tl 
 historic outlines of American federalism. 
 
 It is thus upon the fact that ours is an age of vital transitic 
 that the evidence seems clearly to concentrate. The two cha 
 acteristic notes of change are present in the dissatisfaction wil 
 the working of law, on the one hand, and the reassertion of na 
 ural rights upon the other. The validity of the acts of the leg 
 sovereign everywhere suffers denial unless its judgement secur 
 a widespread approval; or, as with the South Wales Mines : 
 England and the Railroad Brotherhoods in the United State 
 an organised attempt may successfully be made to coerce tl 
 action of government in a particular direction. Violence, i 
 with the militant suffragists in England may well come to 1 
 regarded as a normal weapon of political controversy; nor ha^ 
 
 2" Cf . Groat, "The Attitude of American Courts in Labour Cases 
 passim. 
 
 '" Its defect is that it still leaves American trade unions at the mer 
 of the common law doctrine, Cf. conspiracy. The act is, U. S. Statuti 
 1913-4, C. 321. 
 
 «< 236 U. S. 1, 26. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 119 
 
 those who suffered imprisonment for their acts regarded the 
 penalty as other than a privilege. In such an aspect, the sover- 
 eignty of the state, in the only sense in which that sovereignty' 
 can be regarded as a working hypothesis, no longer commands, 
 anything more than a partial ajid_sgasmodic acceptance. Fo: 
 it is clearly understood that it'in_B racticefaLeans governmental 
 sovereignty; and the need for the limitation of governmenta l 
 powers is perce ived by men of every shade of opinion. . Nor is 
 the reassertion of rights less significant. It involves in its ven 
 conception a limitation upon the sovereig ntY_ofthe state. I 
 insists that there are certain things the state must secure anc 
 
 maintain for a ll its mem bers, and a state that can not securi 
 srichrip :^^T,a as are deemeci needtul bv a minority as important 
 for example, as_ or ganised la bour, ,wiU. soxifflejjor^ter suffer a ] 
 change m form and substance. The basis of law in opimon is ■ 
 mt)r e-cleaT-tfaaii'-a±-any p i e v i u u s time; and the way in which that 
 opinion is fostered outside the categories of the normal poUtical 
 life until its weight is great enough to make heedless resistance 
 impossible is a fact of which every observer must take account. 
 
 X. CONCLUSION 
 
 It is difficult to see how such potentialities at any point har- 
 monise with the traditional theory of the-state. The lawyer may^ 
 still manipulate that theory for the purposes of judicial enquiry; 
 but, beypjid that narrow usefulness, its day seems to have de- 
 parted. \We have been taught that the state is sovereign; yet 
 it is in practice obvious that its will is operated only by a portion 
 of its members and that to this portion the possession of sover- 
 eignty is denied. It is urged that the state aims at the good life ; 
 and, again in practice, it is clear that the reaUsation of its pur- 
 pose is so inadequate as to render at best dubious the value 
 of such hypotheses. It is insisted that the state can be bound 
 only by its own consent; yet, in practice also, and unless we ^ 
 wish merely to play upon words, it is clear that throughout its / 
 recent history groups other than itself have compelled its adop-/ 
 tion of a policy to which it was opposed?) The books tell us thati 
 it is irresponsible; yet, in practice also, what mainly confronts! 
 us, especially in France, is the growth of a state-responsibiUty 
 which, however reluctantly conceded, is still responsibihty. We \ 
 
120 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 are told that sovereignty is indivisible; yet, unless again we wisl 
 merely to play upon words, the fact of its broad partition is oi 
 every hand obvious. Nor is the notion of the state as funda 
 mentally representative of society in any sort more acceptable 
 It is true where it fufills the broad objects of a social life thai 
 is now conceived in ethical terms; but, more and more, men an 
 coming to doubt whether the result of the state process is, in 
 variably or even normally, the achievement of what such ai 
 ethical perspective must demand. It is rather towards anothei 
 attitude that men are turning. It is rather of other categories 
 they are beginning to make use. For the orthodox theory o; 
 the state has proved largely without basis in the event. It maj 
 be true as a dream; and it is doubtless undeniable that dreami 
 are often enough capable of reahsation. But it is for those wh( 
 cherish the dream to give proof of its relation to the facts. 
 
 The basis upon which we proceed is the simple truth tha 
 men and institutions are possessed of power. It is clearly per 
 ceived that, in itself, power is neither good nor bad; its us( 
 alone affords material for judgment upon its ethical content 
 It is held that its concentration at any special point withii 
 society increases the possibility of its perversion to dubiou; 
 purpose. That has involved the increasing insistence that ou 
 
 ' general notions of right and wrong be put beyond the reach o 
 danger. The state, in a word, is to be subject to law; and tha 
 is no more impossible in a political democracy than when, fo 
 
 I state, Bracton could use the name of King. The interdepend 
 
 f-ence of poUtical and economic structure is, moreover, not les 
 potent than in the past; and it is thus sheer anachronism t 
 regard as adequate an industrial order in which power is no 
 in democratic fashion distributed. 
 
 - (The individual, that is to say, is to become increasingly th 
 centre of social importance. Otherwise, in so vast a work 
 his claims may well suffer neglect. After all it was for hi 
 happiness that the state, at least in philosophic interpretatioi 
 existed from its origins; for if the good life does not brin 
 happiness to humble men and women it is without meanin| 
 So that it is upon the happiness he is able to attain that ov 
 judgment of its processes must be founded. It is in this cor 
 text obvious that such judgment could not in our time be a 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 121 
 
 optimistic one. The merely material conditions of happiness 
 are today achieved for too few of us to give any right to satis- 
 faction. Freedom, in the sense that it has been here maintained, 
 is alone real, is a good attained only by a small part of society. 
 Nor have we evidence that such limitation is inherent in the 
 nature of things. On the contrary, the evidence we possess 
 points so emphatically in the opposite direction as to justify 
 the assumption of its inadequacy. Yet, without that general 
 freedom, the state is a meaningless thing. The problem of 
 authority becomes, above all, the duty so to organise its char-/ 
 acter and its processes as to make it, in the widest aspect, the 
 servant of right and of freedom. But to make it the servant 
 of freedom is already to limit its powers. ,) 
 
 The emphasis upon freedom is made because it is believed 
 that only in such fashion can the ethical significance of per- 
 sonality obtain its due recognition. For the harmony we need 
 between rulers and subjects it is not upon outward law but 
 inward spirit that reliance must be placed. The social order 
 of the present time tends more and more to destroy the per- 
 sonal will of each member of the state by asking from him a 
 j passive acquiescence in its poUcy on the ground of generous 
 purpose. It is here argued that such uniformity is the negation 
 [of freedom. It is neither active nor vital. It in reaUty denies j 
 perhaps the ability and certainly the justice of the mind that ! 
 tries to fathom the motives of government. It is thus the j 
 death of spontaneity; and to destroy spontaneity is to prevent 
 the advent of liberalism. We have thus to deny that right and 
 wrong are state-created dogmas which shift with the interest 
 of those who control the state. We do not, like Lord Acton, 
 postulate an unchanging content of goodness; for the very 
 essence of this theory is the acceptance of the fact of evolu- 
 tion. But it is denied that right is what is subjectively so 
 deemed by government. A certain objectivity, to be estab- 
 lished by argument and experience, is made inherent in it. 
 The one thing in which we can have confidence as a means of 
 progress is the logic of reason, ^^e thus insist, on the contrary, / 
 that the mind of each man, in all the aspects conferred upon | 
 him by his character as,,.a-social and g ^olitary being, pass 
 judgment upon the state; and we ask forhis condemnation of I 
 
122 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Jts policy where he feels it in conflict with the right./ 
 
 (That, surely, is the only environment in which the plant 
 liberty can flourish. It implies, from the very nature of thir 
 insistence that the allegiance of man to the state is secondi 
 to his allegiance to what he may conceive his duty to socii 
 as a whole. It is, as a secondary allegiance, competing in 
 sense that the need for safeguards demands the erection of 
 ternative loyalties which may, in any given synthesis, opp^ 
 i their wills to that of the state. In the ordinary acceptance 
 the term, such an attitude denies the validity of any sovere: 
 power save that of right; and it urges that the discovery 
 right is, on all fundamental questions, a search, upon wh 
 the separate members of the state must individually enga 
 We ask, in fact, from each the best thought he can offer to 1 
 interpretation of hfe. For we have proceeded far enough 
 its uhderstanding to realise its complexity. We know that 
 solution can be permanent or adequate that is not in ea 
 detail based upon the widest possible experience. But we kn 
 also that such experience must be free and capable of infiuer 
 if it is to receive its due respect. The slavery of inertia is 
 weed that grows everywhere in wanton. luxuriance; and 
 are, above all, concerned to make provision against its intrusic 
 In the external relationships of the state it is clear that t 
 Machiavellian epoch is drawing to a close The apphcati 
 of ethical standards to the foreign policy of nations is a dema 
 that has secured the acceptance of all who are concerned 1 
 the future of civihsation. Yet it is assuredly not less clear tb 
 the internal life of the state requires a similar moralisatic 
 We reahse now the danger of a state that makes power t 
 supreme good and is careless of the purpose for which it 
 exerted. We have sacrificed the youth of half the world 
 maintain our liberty against its encroachments. Surely t 
 freedom we win must remain unmeaning unless it is' ma 
 consistently effective in every sphere of social hfe. This g( 
 eration, at least, can never forget the ghostly legions by whi 
 it is encompassed. It ought also ceaselessly to remember tl 
 it is by those legions its effort will be judged. They will mei 
 ure our achievement in terms of their supreme devotion. Th 
 will accept no recompense save the conquest of their dreams. 
 
CHAPTER TWO 
 
 BONALDi 
 
 I. THE IMPLICATION OF THEOCRACY 
 
 THE theocratic system seems to have found an eutha- 
 nasia the more tragic in that it proceeds unobserved. 
 It shares therein the fate of half a hundred poUtical 
 systems which have failed to base themselves upon the fact 
 of evolution. For no theory can now hope for survival which 
 is not based upon the changing necessities of social life. The 
 obvious generalisation that the creation of dogma carries with 
 it, in grim Hegelian fashion, its own negation, confronts the 
 observer at every stage of the historic process. And of theocracy 
 this has been the case in a peculiar degree. The claims of its 
 representatives have grown as their acceptance has become the 
 more impossible. It was at the very nadir of his fortunes that 
 Hildebrand made claim to the lordship of the world. It was 
 when Garibaldi and his redshirts were thundering at the gate 
 that Pius IX registered his infallibility. The garment has been 
 the more royally displayed that the shrunken body may be the 
 better concealed. 
 
 Yet two great truths theocracy has enshrined; and, of a 
 certainty, no estimate of its character would be just which did 
 not take account of their value. More, perhaps, than any 
 similar system of ideas theocracy has understood the worth of 
 dogma. It has seen that the secret of existence is the preserva- 
 tion of identity. It has reaUsed the chaos of instability. Nor 
 is this all. Its beUevers have grasped, perhaps more fully 
 than any thinkers save the doctrinaire liberals of the nine- 
 
 1 On Bonald the best descriptive account of that of Moulinifi (Paris 
 1916) which is, however, weak in its criticism. There are famous essays 
 by Saiute-Beuve in his "Causeries," Vol. IV, and by Faguet in his "PoUtiques 
 et Moralistes," Vol.1. See also Bourget, "Etudes et Portraits," Vol. Ill, 
 Montesquieu, "Le r^alisme de Bonald." 
 
124 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 teenth century, the difference between the essence of a poUtici 
 system and the accidental principles which arise from th 
 method of its apphcation. They have ceaselessly insisted o 
 the importance of securing beyond peradventure the funds 
 mental notions of their age. They did, indeed, go mistakenl 
 further. They did take" the fatal step of arguing that an ides 
 to be true must be unchanging. Of the relativity of ideas the 
 had no notion; or, if they dimly seized its importance, the 
 denied its philosophic rightness. For they deemed it the bus: 
 ness of speculation to search for absolutes. They had n 
 patience with anything save the eternal. If, in the result, 
 changing civilisation has been compelled to desert their stand 
 ards, that does not mean the total error of the ideals for whic: 
 they fought, On the contrary, that of which the historia 
 must take constant account is not merely the sharpness c 
 their vision, but the accuracy of their prophecy. Again an 
 again they cast a vivid light upon the conditions of their tim< 
 The fact of their failure is not proof of their ineptitude. 
 the contrary, they brought powerful support to a theory c 
 politics for which, on other grounds, strong and insistent jus 
 tification can still be made. What in brief they suggested wa 
 the apotheosis of authority. Liberty to them was error. The; 
 tried to find its falsity in the divinity of its antithesis. It i 
 rather in the emphasis of their application than its source tha 
 modern criticism tends to begin its attack. And at least on 
 powerful school of poHtical enquiry has rejected its premise 
 rather than its conclusions. In that sense it is still a Uvin 
 influence at the present time. 
 
 The source of its curious revivification in the nineteent 
 century is in no sense difficult to discover. They who returne 
 from exile in 1814 beheved that their experience was the fins 
 , condemnation of liberal principles. They had seen the tr 
 umph of anarchy in the name of freedom. They had been tl 
 victims of an egahtarianism for which history afforded no preci 
 dent even if it offered an ample justification. The institutioi 
 they had inherited had been ruthlessly overthrown. The idea 
 they had cherished were cast aside in an unpitying contemp 
 Tradition had been butchered that Reason might have i 
 Paris holiday; and to tradition they were united by every t 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 125 
 
 of kinship and of interest. Their exile had been the breeder 
 of hate rather than of understanding; and it was in a spirit 
 of revenge that they returned. The age which the twenty-five 
 full years of revolution had turned into antiquity became for 
 them the Saturnia regna of an earlier time. That for which 
 their kin had paid with blood became hallowed because it had 
 been the cause of suffering. They came not to amend but to 
 restore. As they had forgiven nothing, so they had failed to 
 learn the lesson of their banishment. They deified the past; 
 and in that vision of enchantment they discovered a little 
 easily the principles of a theocracy. 
 
 This was in a particular degree true of the Roman Church.^ 
 No institution had had a more singular history in the period 
 of revolutionary misfortune. The States-General, at the out- 
 set of its deliberations had been in no sense an anti-clerical 
 assembly. The mass of the people was passionately catholic; 
 and their confidence in the clergy is proved by the fact that the 
 cahiers of ' the Third Estate had been largely entrusted to 
 their hands. They had ample opportunity to win for them- 
 selves the urgent confidence of those in whose hands would 
 lie the destinies of the coming revolution. The idea of a sepa- 
 ration between Church and State was, in 1789, present in the 
 mind of no single practical statesman. The Church was re- 
 sponsible for its own misfortunes. To the popular disUke of 
 Ultramontanism it gave ground for action. Its support of the 
 extreme reactionists earned for it the distrust and anger of 
 moderate men; while the hatred which the upper clergy earned 
 no less than they received was thereby extended to the mass of 
 its members. From the outset the clergy seemed to threaten 
 the Revolution; and when the Revolution created a Republic 
 their Roman allegiance threatened its unity. The onset of war 
 and its early disasters gave an opportunity to the enemies of 
 the Church of which they did not fail to make good use. Sus- 
 picion turned to intolerance, and from intolerance was born 
 an implacable persecution. 
 
 ^ On the character of the Roman church at the time of the Restoration 
 see the essay on Lamennais below. Ev«i allowing for its anti-clerical 
 bias M. Debidour's "L'Eglise et L'EtaYen France de 1789-1870" is easily 
 the best treatment. 
 
 ^ 
 
/ 
 
 126 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Yet the ills of the Church under the Convention and the Asse 
 bly would have given no grounds for the ultramontane passi( 
 of the Restoration. What secured their onset was the c 
 culated policy of Napoleon. True to the principles which hi 
 made the name of Erastus the mistaken symbol of oppressii 
 he saw in the church no more than an admirable political wes 
 on. He declared himself a Gallican; and his absorptive tern] 
 made of Gallicanism a doctrine to which no self-respecting me 
 ber of the church could give adherence. It is, indeed, possi 
 that before the Napoleonic era the declaration of 1682 probal 
 represented the normal clerical attitude. But when the prir 
 pies of 1682 resulted in a papal captivity and the Organic Ai 
 cles the temper of the church was bound to change. - 
 
 It became evident to most that a trust in Rome was not 
 compatible with a faith in France; and the transition from co 
 patibility to dependence was almost fatally easy. There 
 something of poetic justice in the fact that a nominal apj 
 cation of its own principles should thus have taught the Free 
 clergy their inherent error. When Louis XVIII came back 
 Versailles the church which accompanied him had new pr 
 ciples to maintain and new standards to enforce. The tenets 
 a royalist faith they had always upheld; and of his support th 
 were from the outset assured.. But they had learned from 
 better experience that only (so they deemed) an exclusive a 
 ultramontane church was certain of security. They did i 
 perceive that Napoleon had only attempted the enforceme 
 of the very principles they were themselves to preach. Tt 
 did not know that they, like him, were encompassing the i 
 prisonment of the mind, and that they, like him, were to f 
 because their task was from the outset impossible. The mi 
 of man may demand the ease of dogma, but it so demands oi 
 that it may destroy. The church made the fatal error of th 
 persecutor and assumed that in unity alone can strength be c 
 covered. They came back to enshrine in law the uniquen 
 of their sovereignty and they only fashioned thereby the inst 
 ment of a second Revolution. 
 
 They had learned nothing in their exile save to brood up 
 their misfortune. It was patent to them that what had occui 
 was the fruit of human wickedness. That of which they 1: 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE IMODERN STATE 127 
 
 need was a political organisation whereby the errors from which 
 they had suffered might become but a hideous memory. They 
 needed a political theory which ensured the permanent satisfac- 
 tion of their demands. Their life was based upon their tradi- 
 tions. It was from their traditions that they drew their claims. 
 So it was that they erected their history into a philosophy that 
 they might destroy the category of time. 
 
 II. THE BASIS OF TRADITIONALISM 
 
 Taine has refused the title of philosophers to the Tradition- 
 alists of the Restoration; and in the sense that it was their busi- 
 ness rather to refute than to make enquiry there can be no doubt 
 that he was right. Their fate, indeed, has been in every way 
 somewhat curious. The hterary effectiveness of De Maistre, 
 the skill with which he presents his pessimism, the acuteness 
 of his reflections — all these have combined to give his work the 
 permanence that is undoubtedly its historic due.' The tragic 
 interest of Lamennais' life would of itself be sufficient to 
 arouse increasing speculation; but he becomes of even greater 
 importance from the fact that the most vital aspect of nine- 
 teenth century Catholicism is in a special sense his creation. 
 The conciliatory spirit of Ballanche gives to all his speculation 
 a singular charm that is absent from the work of his compeers. 
 
 Bonald has been less fortunate; and, in truth, it is but 
 within recent times that the value of his uncritical and unin- 
 spir^ dogmatism has been fully understood.'' The rebirth of 
 a sceptical suspicion of the worth of the Republic tended, in- 
 evitably, to send men back to him whom De Maistre signalled 
 as his master,^ and from whom, in the early days of his fame, 
 Lamennais was proud to receive high commendation.^ 
 
 Bonald, indeed, lacks all the stigmata of popularity. His 
 
 ' I have discussed the political theory of De Maistre in the last chapter 
 of my "Problem of Sovereignty." 
 
 < The real understanding of Bonald probably dates from Comte, Cf . 
 "Politique Positive" III, 605. 
 
 ' Cf. the very interesting correspondence in ^'ol. XII. of De Maistre's 
 collected works and "Principe Constitutif." p. 493. 
 
 ' Boutard, "Lamennais," I, 154. 
 
128 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 life was the ordinary career of an emigrant noble. Not even tl 
 fear of the guillotine came to give it a touch of momentary e: 
 citement. He wrote badly, even harshly^ with all the ruthles 
 pettifogging logic of the medieval scholastics.' HeTackecTeve 
 the supreme merit of brevity. He was totally out of accor 
 with the spirit of his time. All for which it came to stand h 
 branded as the utmost sin; all for which he cared was lost at th 
 barricades of 1830. The monarchy for which he cherished a 
 passionate an affection destroyed itself by acting on his prii 
 ciples. He urged nothing that history, if it did not falsify, £ 
 any rate failed to respect. He did not, Hke De Maistre, die b( 
 
 - fore the course of events had proved the impossibihty of hi 
 ideals. He did not, like Lamennais, find in the events of hi 
 age the basis of a better philosophy. He belonged always to th 
 eighteenth century, not, indeed, in the essentials of its inte 
 tectual attitude, but in its dogmatic and inflexible spirit.' One 
 he had arrived at his principles, he did no more than devot 
 himself to their elaboration. He nevCT examined ids_tim{ 
 He was satisfied to search the past and to misfeadTt that th 
 justice of his claims might be made manifest. A single event- 
 and it is impossible to understand his attitude save on the as 
 sumption that to him_theRevolution was lUMiQOTeJhBna^poiE 
 in time — served as the basis of every tEing he thought andfeltan 
 dared so greatly to hope. He is the prophet of an outwor 
 gospel, so that his very watchwords have been almost forgottei 
 That which he so solemnly preached is, for the most part, tha 
 against which a democratic society has been most solemnl 
 warned. Yet he is hardly to blame for his conclusions. He di 
 no more than sum up with remorseless logic the result of th 
 reaction of authoritarian temper with egalitarian revolution. 
 
 He represents the amazement of the aristocracy at the cha 
 lenge of a people whose existence it had forgotten. He pi 
 its case vigorously, bluntly, sincerely. He failed complete! 
 to understand that the principles of the Anden Regime coul 
 
 Vjever return. He could regard the Revolution only as a hatefi 
 episode, and he tried to explain why it was essentially a wan 
 ing and an example. It is perhaps a little difficult to explai 
 
 ' Cf. Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries," IV, 330. 
 
 ' As M. Faguet, in his brilliant study, so strikingly points out. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 129 
 
 his influence. He said only what the 6migr6s desired to hear. 
 But he wrote the epitaph of Bourbon Kingship and it was 
 assumed that between his philosophy and the creed of Rousseau 
 there was no alternative. For thirty-five years he reiterated 
 his principles under half a hundred forms. The principles of 
 philology, the marital relation, the theory of knowledge — from 
 the analysis of all these he constructed his tremendous sociology. 
 When the last criticism has been made, there remains some- 
 thing almost of splendour in the courage and the determination 
 wlEn which he applied himself to his task. If, in the light of 
 modern^ change, all that he has written reads hke a bitter de- 
 fence of special creation by one who has sadly encountered the 
 Darwinian hypothesis, much may be pardoned to one who 
 loved his ideals so greatly. And, as with De Maistre, it may 
 even be suggested that he the better served human freedom 
 when he threw the implications of his attitude into a reUef so 
 striking and so logical. 
 
 Nor is this all. The basis of his philosophy must be inter- 
 preted from the angle of its chronological significance. He 
 began to write, as Sainte-Beuve' has pointed out, on the mor- 
 row of the Terror. He had been a witness of its tragedies; 
 and because so many of its victims were of his order, it was 
 inevitable that it should have bitten deeply into his soul. It 
 was then natural for him to translate that bitterness into polit- 
 ical terms. He could see in the Revolution no more than the 
 coronation of anarchy. It had shattered the temple of poUtical 
 science and he must lay his hand to its restoration. And it 
 was no less natural that he should start from a disbelief in 
 man and in reason. It was for their redintegration that the 
 Revolution had been effected. The individualism of the eigh- 
 teenth century had been traitorous to every rational principle 
 of social order. It had dared to proclaim the rights of man, 
 and it had embodied its principles in a Declaration. It had 
 declared the sovereignty of reason and the Directory was to 
 prescribe a confidence in faith. So he came to hold that the 
 very foundations of such an attitude were conceived in sin. 
 The Rights of Man meant the execution of the King; the 
 Sovereignty of Reason meant the persecution of the Catholic 
 
 « Sainte-Beuve, op. cit., p. 324. 
 
130 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Church. Equality wrote its formulae in letters of blood, and 
 the blood was the blood of his friends. An attitude to his age 
 other than that of hate was thus impossible. That he should 
 have undertaken a polemic against the eighteenth century was 
 logically the result of his humanity. To the rights of man he 
 would oppose the rights of God." To the sovereignty of rea- 
 son he would oppose the sovereignty of faith. Since the eigh- 
 teenth century had created a new philosophy, he would go 
 back to its precursors that he might uproot its errors. Every- 
 thing for which the Revolution stood he would ceaselessly 
 denounce, so that he does not even spare the generous intelli- 
 gence of Madame de Stael.^^lle sought a universal formula 
 against Revolution and he outlined a theodicy that he might 
 apply it. He never, like De Maistre, admilted the relativity 
 of history. He never, like De Maistre, allowed an influence 
 to the God-directed exertions of great men on the one hand, 
 or to the cumulative effect of minute causes on the other.'^ 
 The diminution of universahty seemed to him the admission 
 of weakness. The eighteenth century must not be spared but 
 slain. Every dogma for which it had argued he denounced 
 with remorseless hate. He erected, in fact, the negation of its 
 principles into an alchemically mingled compound of antago- 
 nisms he chose to call a philosophy. 
 
 He deserted the eighteenth century; and that he might the 
 better refute its canons of truth he went back to that which 
 is most alien to its spirit. The seventeenth century in France 
 is the very embodiment of his temper. A centrahsation which 
 culminated in the unquestioning promulgation of divinely- 
 ordained monarchy was the very synthesis for which he was 
 contending. The theories of Bossuet were but those of a De 
 Bonald who had not yet encountefed'the Revolution. They en- 
 abled him to take firm hold of the theory of Divine Right — a 
 theory which, through Suarez and Bellarmin, took him back tc 
 the great days of scholastic authority. It is, indeed, vital tc 
 judge him in this context. For De Bonald was the last repre- 
 sentative of that great tradition. His very method tos the 
 
 i« "Legislation Primitive," p. 93. 
 " Cf. his "Considerations." 
 " "Principe G6n6rateur," p. 15. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 131 
 
 dialectic parrying of text with counter-text. He wrote, as he 
 said,^' not as an orator but as a logician. The Revolution gave 
 him his premises, and from the seventeenth century he drew 
 his conclusions. The neat geometrical arrangement of his 
 material and his pride in a sort of mathematical logic" send 
 him back to the days when men slew truth with a syllogism. 
 The writers whom he loved were to him a constant and en- 
 during influence, so that he seems sometimes almost to have 
 expected that the name of Bossuet would spring from cold 
 print to the eager confirmation of the Uving tongue. He felt 
 those dead who had thought as he thought as part of a living 
 society, and it was thus that when he went to their ideas for 
 confirmation that he felt the justification of contemporary his- 
 tory. And since the thought of the reformers and the ideo- 
 logues were absent from their pages, he could not but feel for 
 his opponents the impulsive hatred of strangeness.'^ The 
 Revolution was due to the rejection of the natural laws he had 
 discovered in his teachers." And it was simply for the restora- 
 tion of their activity that he was concerned. He did not see 
 that thus to deal with man in no more than his medieval con- 
 text was to shut himself off from a vital human experience and 
 to demean man into an abstraction. "Man," he said," "is 
 the same everywhere," and it was upon the basis of that mis- 
 taken generaUsation that he began his work. The "incontest- 
 able authority" he granted to history in political judgment 
 became the authority of medieval history, just as his religious 
 text of truth became the axioms of the medieval church.'^ But 
 no theory could hope for acceptance of which the inductions 
 were based on so factitious and arbitrary a disdain of men. 
 
 III. THE POLITICAL THEORY OF BONALD 
 
 It would be possible to reconstruct the political theory of Bo- 
 
 i» "Th^orie du Pouvoir," I, 3. 
 
 " Cf . "TWorie du Pouvoir," I, i, 3, p. 146. "Essai sur I'ordre social," 
 p. 282. 
 
 ^ "Observations sur Condorcet," p. 309. 
 16 "TWorie du Pouvoir," Bk. Ill, IV, p. 153. 
 " "TWorie du Pouvoir," I, III, p. 146. 
 " "Throne du Rouvoir," p. 289. 
 
132 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 nald by asserting the antithesis of every doctrine for which the 
 eighteenth century stood sponsor. As it asserted the individu- 
 aUty of man, and emphasised the importance of his unique 
 separatism, so Bonald urged that only in his social context 
 is man at all significant. As it had deserted the ways of 
 God, so he proclaimed that only by treading in his path could 
 salvation be attained. As it was fascinated by the theory of 
 a social contract, so did he find in that theory the head and 
 centre of poUtical disaster. The eighteenth century is essen- 
 tially an age of the sceptics; and Bonald, as a consequence, 
 constructed a philosophy that begins and ends with God. 
 There is nothing of perverseness in all this. It is the natural 
 reaction of a stern temper from the experiences of an alien 
 ideal. He asserted the primacy of God because he did, in fact, 
 believe that all science must begin in this fashion.^' God, for 
 him, was essentially the directing force of the world and he 
 has not ceased to govern his creation.^" Indeed Bonald almost 
 overwhelms us with the varied arguments which are intended 
 to demonstrate the necessity of a belief in Divinity. Power- 
 ful arguments they are not; and of them it is perhaps best to 
 say that they above all demonstrate his inability to pursue 
 metaphysical enquiry. They are frequently confused and, 
 more rarely, contradictory. But to this he would have doubt- 
 less rephed that in any case he made entire abstraction 
 of philosophy. 
 
 He made abstraction of philosophy because it was basic- 
 ally individualist.21 It spoke not in the name of God, but of 
 reason; and reason, as the Revolution had taught him, had 
 done nothing save provoke a vain and fruitless debate. 
 Reason meant the Convention and the Directory; Reason had 
 executed the fine flower of the French nation. It was clearly 
 the destruction of stabihty; and he significantly conunents 
 that in the stable theocracy of the Jews as in the unchanging 
 Spartan kingdom the philosopher had found no place. For 
 them tradition had been enough, and yet on the basis of that 
 
 " "Essai sur I'odre social," p. 282. 
 
 2» "Th^orie du Pouvoir religieux," I, i, Ch. 3. Cf. I, 1, VII, note on 
 p. 177, and I, 1, p. 132. 
 
 " "TMorie du Pouvoir," II, VI, V, 356, 357. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 133 
 
 ancestralism his age condemned they had enjoyed a prosperous 
 history. Nor was this all. There was no unity in philosophy. 
 Pythagoras, and Thales, Zeno and Epicurus, Bacon and Des- 
 cartes are all in fundamental disagreement. What message 
 does philosophy bring that philosophy does not also contradict? 
 So that therein there is no authoritative utterance. But he 
 who speaks in the name of God speaks a language that is com- 
 mon to all.^^ 
 
 He is thus without interest in individual thought. The only 
 important thought is that of society, and the thought of so- 
 ciety is the reflexion of the mind of God.^' So that when he is 
 concerned to examine man as a social being he is, in fact, oc- 
 cupied with the relation of man to his creator. If he can 
 discover the laws by which God has created the world, and by 
 which he continues to govern it, his problem is solved. All 
 he has then to do is to deduce the consequences of those laws. 
 His method of enquiry is what might have been expected from 
 one in whom the authoritarian temper had been schooled into 
 rigidity by the subtle hardness of the Oratorians. Like a good 
 medievalist, he uses his texts as cannon to provide a continuous 
 fire against the enemy. The unreaUty of his atmosphere at 
 the outset chngs throughout to his conclusions. He does, in- 
 deed, make use of history; and an admiring critic has therein 
 sought to discover an exponent of pohtical reaUsm." But the 
 history is no more than a philosophy teaching by arbitrarily 
 selected examples. He sought only for that which would 
 prove the danger of variety; and the only history for which he 
 cared was that which illustrated its misfortunes. He wanted 
 no more than a stick wherewith to beat the philosophers of 
 the Revolution. His fundamental starting-point makes clear 
 his whole direction. The dependence of the world upon God 
 makes the desertion of his laws the zenith of social treason. 
 The Revolution committed that sin; and he had thus no other 
 task than to enounce the rules which will give ground for his 
 accusing hate. 
 
 ^ "TWorie du Pouvoir religieux," I, ii, 9. 
 23 "Th^orie du Pouvoir religieux," I, ii, 9. 
 
 *" Montesquieu, "Le r^alisme deBonald;" andef. M. Bourget, "Etudes 
 et Portraits," Vol. Ill, pp. 23 ff. 
 
134 AUTHORITY IN THE MOD-ERN STATE 
 
 He has, of course, to justify the ways of God to man.^ He 
 achieves this end in his own grim fashion by preventing the 
 escape of the world from the influence of natural law.^ His 
 God has desired man's happiness, and the laws he has laid down 
 are the expression of his will to that end. But the will of God 
 is unchangeable, so that the universe is governed by an iron 
 law. Here, of course, Bonald departs in striking fashion from 
 the attitude of the eighteenth century. He has none of the 
 flexibility of Montesquieu." God may create and he may 
 destroy; but all that he accomplishes he must achieve on the 
 basis of his preliminary definitions. So that the nature of 
 man, for instance, is independent of God. He could not create 
 a soulless humanity. The logic of contradiction is an univer- 
 sal principle, in order that the authority of Bonald's deductions 
 may be maintained. Miracles, as a consequence, are outside 
 the realm of possibility; and though Bonald allowed them 
 later in his thought a grudging entrance into life, he seems 
 always to have resented their occurrence.^ It is true that 
 too-zealous Christians have based a scheme of existence upon 
 them. But the true philosopher "is freed by thought from the 
 restriction of space and time;"^' and while Bonald admits that 
 miracles are not metaphysically inconceivable, he yet denies 
 that God wiU so constantly intervene in the affairs of men as 
 to attempt the abrogation of his own ideas. It is sufficient 
 that he has organised the universe. The business of men is to 
 discover the method of its organisation that they may apply 
 its principles to their governance.^" 
 
 Bonald has, perhaps wisely, nowhere given us any consistent 
 account of these natural laws. They result, of course, in opti- 
 mism, since, as the work of God, they must be perfect. His- 
 tory then becomes a progress towards their realisation, and the 
 problem of the statesman is mainly shifted to their appKca- 
 tion. Bonald, indeed, has the simplest of formulae for that so- 
 
 2« Cf. "Essai sur IVdre social," p. 35. 
 
 25 Ibid., p. 70. 
 
 " Nor even of Bossuet. Cf . the "Politique," VII, art. VI, prop. V. and VI. 
 
 2* "Essai sur I'ordre social," p. 67. 
 
 2« Ibid. 
 
 '» "Essae sur I'ordre social," p. 110. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 135 
 
 lution. The means of enquiry are reason and tradition. The 
 study of nature will give each man the opportunity of their 
 acquaintance. He will at once observe, for example, that the 
 rights of a father over his children, of a master over his servants, 
 partake of the order of nature. They are necessary to life, 
 and what is necessary is divine. So, too, in politics, the prince's 
 search for necessary governmental relations will result in their 
 immediate discovery. And it is important to emphasise that 
 what he means by discovery is essentially a declaration. Man 
 does not make laws; he only declares them. The obvious test 
 of the lightness of his poUcy is whether the state over which 
 he presides is in revolution or at peace. If it is in revolution 
 the prince has clearly embarked upon a poUcy that is contrary 
 to natural law. The meeting of the States-General in 1789 is 
 an example of such error. It resulted in revolution. Its mem- 
 bers endeavoured to make law, instead of remaining content 
 with its promulgation. They broke, that is to say, with tra- 
 dition; and Bonald would doubtless have urged that the 
 execution of Louis was the penalty of attempted innovation. 
 
 But God has gone further.^^ He has been even more gener- 
 ous to men in his gift of the means of perception. Language 
 is a method whereby the understanding of divine law may be 
 made apparent. It was given to the first men that they might 
 communicate the truths they discovered. And the further 
 gift of writing committed to a permanence more objective 
 than memory the secrets of each age. It made possible, for 
 instance, in the Bible the positive enshrinement of moral and 
 political truth. Nor are these divine laws few in number. The 
 truths of logic and of mathematics are of this order. And 
 those of poUtics are so important as to require especial means 
 for their enforcement. They clearly involve, for instance, an 
 absolute and hereditary monarchy; yet many people, as his- 
 tory shows and as Bonald in his exile at Heidleberg can not 
 forget, have lived in a republic. Such nations, indeed, have 
 paid the penalty for their defiance. It is the habit of nature 
 to exact her compensations. Inevitably, since without such 
 appUcation society cannot exist in its normal form. A return 
 to what is good has thus the continuous assurance of victory. 
 
 "■ Cf . the "Dissertation sur la pensfie de I'homme." 
 
136 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Thus even in the midst of these gloomy dogmas, De Bonald 
 can find ground for hope. Revolution is God's medicine to 
 bring men back to his ways. That is, at any rate, one method 
 of interpreting the significance of the Restoration. 
 
 The source of this philosophy is obvious.'^ Non est potestas 
 niso a deo might well serve as its watchword; and it is under 
 the shadow of Bossuet that it has been conceived. He hardly, 
 indeed, admits the latter's influence. But from the standpoint 
 of one who hated the eighteenth century a return to the ideals 
 of Bossuet was inevitable. Nor is it difficult to understand 
 how a profound Catholic, impregnated with an hereditary loy- 
 alty to an unfortunate house, should ]iave let his fancy roam 
 to the zenith of its fortunes. Odd sentences of the New Testa- 
 ment might well serve to set the Divine seal on that retrospec- 
 tive adventure, and the pain of exile would do the rest. If it 
 was objected that in this annexation of God he was grounding 
 his system in intolerance, he might well reply that the alterna- 
 tive to intolerance is intellectual anarchy.^' The forces of 
 social cohesion cannot have fair play if men think as they will. 
 Given his God as the creator of necessary law, it was inevitable 
 that he should cease to regard the world as self-determining. 
 Nor was it less inevitable that the experience of Bonald should 
 colour his interpretation of that law. All political philosophies 
 are the reaction of temperament upon its chronological per- 
 spective. If God has made the world power must come from 
 him, and power in any legitimate form Bonald could hardly 
 concede to men for whom he had so profound a hate. So that 
 he could admit legitimacy only to the house with which he 
 had associated his fortunes, and he was then willing to identify 
 the legitimate with the divine. Per me reges regnant et legum con- 
 ditores justa decerunt received a new beauty when applied to the 
 House of Bourbon. But to have admitted its application to Na- 
 poleon would have been a self-condemnation to perpetual exile. 
 
 IV. THE ATTACK ON THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 His God is clearly one who will restore an order that he loves. 
 Bonald has been terrified at the results of individualism; and 
 
 =2 Cf. "Romans," XIII, 1, with TWorie de Pouvoir, I, n, p. 135. 
 '3 "Oeuvres," X, 258. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 137 
 
 authority is the chart by which he is to find the haven of relief 
 from its burdens. It is perhaps for this reason that the God he 
 depicts is so much more stern and far off than that of his mas- 
 ters. With both Bossuet and Aquinas God is one who continually 
 influences the course of life;, but they had not, like Bonald, 
 lived in a time of revolution.'^ Change to him has become the 
 synonym of evil and he binds his God to act but seldom that 
 the Tightness of a static organisation may be manifest. And 
 since it is individualism that he is concerned to combat he must 
 elevate the value of society. It is necessary to the existence of 
 man. It is true that a certain individualism results from the 
 relation of God with him whom he created in his own image; 
 yet that very relation leads man to contact with his fellows 
 that they may in common fulfil the principles of their origin. 
 And, indeed, man cannot Uve alone. All that he is he owes 
 to society and only as a member of it is he intelligible. His 
 theory of language is used to confirm this attitude.'^ For an 
 individual who stood without society could not inherit the 
 means of grasping the laws governing the universe by which he 
 is confronted. The only real being is the social being.'^ The 
 only man who has the opportunity to develop his powers is a 
 member of a group. Bonald is thus able, and with much force, 
 to make short shrift with Rousseau's state of nature. To picture 
 a world without organisation is, for him, to misinterpret the 
 whole meaning of creation. It is to picture a world without law, 
 and the one thing that can be posited is the existence of law. He 
 points out acutely that when Rousseau urged men to hve accord- 
 ing to nature, he did, in fact, make tacit acceptance of principles 
 inherent in its order. But it is difiicult to understand how prin- 
 ciples of this kind can be discovered and maintained in the un- 
 genial terrors of savage existence." For the attainment of the 
 life Rousseau desired a social existence is essential; and its at- 
 
 '" Cf . "De. Reg. Prin." Ill, VII, and Bossuet, "PoUtique," VII, 6, V and 
 VI. 
 
 ^ "Ldgislation Primitive." I, 156. This theory of language has been 
 effectively criticised by M. Ferraz in the first volume of his "Histoire 
 de Philosophie." 
 
 »6 "Legislation Primitive," II, 170. 
 
 " "Throne du Pouvoir," II, IV, V, p. 329-30. 
 
138 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 tainment would be undesirable unless the primary fact of societj 
 were at the outset admitted. 
 
 For Bonald, indeed, — and here he differed radically froa 
 Aquinas — society is prior to the individual. The latter derives 
 his meaning simply from his social context, where to Aquinas 
 the function of society is not to create but to perfect the life ol 
 man. But for Bonald this is too narrow a conception. His 
 society is in a real sense a person.^' It is not a mere algebraic 
 bracket, Unking men together into an artificial unity. It is 
 one, and indivisible.^' It is organic, and, Uke an organism, 
 it has a will whereby to make manifest its desires.^" Society 
 is thus rendered independent of individuals. It exists of and 
 in itself and they do no more than contribute to the richness oi 
 a Ufe from which they in turn draw nourishment." The general 
 will of this society, moreover, is the divine wUl conscious oi 
 those necessary laws upon which he lays such striking em- 
 phasis. But will must be directed that it may become manifest 
 in action; and it is to the monarch that he confines its directioi] 
 that it may take form in legislation. The social will so ex- 
 pressed, moreover, is superior in its claim to all other. It is 
 further freed from the embarrassment of superiority, since than 
 society there can be no higher being. Nor will it act unwisely. 
 "The general will of society," he wrote, "is necessarily con- 
 servative in character. "^2 That is to say it is conservative 
 'when it is freed from the dangerous influence of individual oi 
 national wills which in their search for substantive forin take 
 shape in revolutions. If it is somewhat mystical, it is none the 
 less an intelligible attitude, That it derives from Rousseau it 
 is certainly difficult to doubt; but whereas Rousseau drew from 
 it the principle of national sovereignity the whole point o: 
 Bonald 's conception is to urge cause against that principle 
 For national sovereignty is, in its essence, an individualisi 
 doctrine; and it is from the organic character of society thai 
 
 s»76id., I, 1, p. 28. 
 
 89 Ibid., II, IV, V, p. 329-30. 
 
 " Ibid., II, IV, p. 128. 
 
 ^' Ibid., I, ii, passim. 
 
 *2 "Essai sur I'ordre social," p. 33. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 139 
 
 Bonald is anxious to deduce the a priori impossibility of that 
 attitude. 
 
 He has made the individual but a Unk in a chain. Society as 
 a whole is thus the real founder of civiUsation. Great men are 
 no longer entitled to credit for their discovery since it is by 
 reason of their social gifts that they have attained to greatness. 
 They could not have worked without the instrument of lan- 
 guage that their thought might receive expression; and the ob- 
 ject of language was social enrichinent. So that for him a great 
 man is no more than the reflexion of his time, a servant of its 
 needs. It is therefrom that he should draw his inspiration. Inso- 
 far as he follows the path of his own fortune he deserts both his 
 genius and his function. 
 
 It is impossible not to feel that he has in mind those daring 
 spirits of the Revolution whose abiUty might so easily have 
 been deflected into channels less tragic in their consequence. 
 But they followed the call of their ambition and he is accord- 
 ingly tempted even further in the direction of their control. 
 He does not merely limit individuaUty, He insists upon its 
 socially dangerous character. Wherever he sees the exercise 
 of personality he urges that it is the root of crime. For, at the 
 outset, he has the material for its condemnation. He has in- 
 sisted upon the supremacy of society. He has reduced men to 
 no more than unimportant functions of its power. Thereby 
 he has the right to attack all which might in some sort detract 
 from its omnipotence. 
 
 He equates individualism with anarchy, and he makes some 
 misuse of history to demonstrate the truth of his attitude. The 
 Reformation to him is no more than the idle pride of a monk 
 engaged in the defence of his order.^ Luther called to his aid 
 all the evil passions and avid interests alike of men and princes. 
 He cast a torch into a sea of oil and the result was the ghastly 
 conflagration of the sixteenth century. Here was the influence 
 of individual talent refusing to take its stand on the firm basis 
 of tradition. Luther sought out novelty; and society paid the 
 penalty for the passion of his misinterpreted conclusions. So 
 
 " Of. Mauduit, "Les Conceptions Politiques et Sociales de Bonald," 
 p. 83. 
 
 « "TWorie du Pouvoir," II, v, vi, 283-4. 
 
140 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 with Calvin^^ and with Henry VIII. *^ In each case we have a 
 man determined to give the freest play to his self-will; and ir 
 each case a reign of terror is the consequence. For they pul 
 their trust in an opinion to which age had failed to give the 
 sanction of traditional affection. They urged a cause based 
 on no more than reason. It was inevitable that men should 
 arise to contradict their conclusions and to sacrifice the blood 
 of others in the pursuit of proof. They made a fatal error. 
 They did not attempt the preservation of what had been 
 proved by time. They attempted to examine and of this the 
 social consequence is dispersion. But of dispersion the eldest 
 child is anarchy. 
 
 This, too, is the cause of that ceaseless multiplication of 
 Protestant opinion he deemed so vast an evil.^^ For what in 
 truth Luther achieved was to make each man the sole judge 
 aUke of behef and practice. But that is to preach a mental 
 equality which can only result in the degradation of principle. 
 Little by httle each will pare away from the body of accepted 
 tradition that which he cannot accept until atheism is the 
 result.*^ Between cathoUcism and atheism he sees no haK- 
 way house.^' To reject the one is to embrace the other. To 
 reject the one is to replace divine invention by the fiendish 
 ingenuity of men.^° For those who once question the funda- 
 mental dogmas fail entirely to perceive that the principles of 
 social religion have been estabhshed for all time. Critically 
 to estimate their validity by the degree of their personal inac- 
 ceptability is to strike a fatal blow at the root of moraUty. For 
 no blow can be struck at the foundations of rehgious order which 
 does not react on the pohtical structure." Pohtical and reh- 
 gious strife always develop along parallel lines. So, for example, 
 the real source of the French Revolution is to be found in the 
 teaching of Calvin. To urge the priesthood of behevers in the 
 
 « Ibid., II, i, IV, 38. 
 
 « Ibid., 292. 
 
 " Ibid., 296. 
 
 " Ibid., 350. 
 
 " Ibid., 353 f . 
 
 '» Ibid., 177. 
 
 " Ibid., 306, 340. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 141 
 
 sixteenth century is to send Louis XVI to the scaffold in the 
 eighteenth. So closely is reUgion embedded in the framework 
 of society that he who develops religious change is bound to 
 seek poUtical change also that the structure may be altered to 
 meet his religious needs. So the supposed constitution which 
 limited Louis' power was no more, in sober truth, than an at- 
 tempt at the provision of opportunity for Calvinist growth. 
 It thus is the destruction of that unity which alone makes possi- 
 ble the continuance of social order. 
 
 Nor is this all. The grandchild of reform is philosophy and 
 from its impassioned curiosity has been born the most deadly 
 error. Philosophy — so Bonald urges — has no function save 
 that of destruction.^^ Its guides are self-interest and passion. 
 It dethrones God to replace him by nature, and each of her 
 devotees interprets differently her meaning. Religion becomes 
 unnecessary. The people dethrone power to crown law. The 
 old love of one's neighbour is removed to give place to some 
 philanthropy he can hardly bring himself to describe.^' The 
 philosopher dispenses with the Atonement; and man thus 
 being by definition good society is reduced from the necessary 
 condition of existence to no more than a business association. 
 It is asked to justify itself by the terms of its contractual insti- 
 tution. Yet the very sceptics who thus remorselessly examine 
 are refused by their own logic. A contract supposes power for 
 otherwise its enforcement is impossible." But a contract can- 
 not constitute that which would be its own negation. A con- 
 tract involves the ideal of equality between the contracting 
 parties; but that very equality is born of power.'' Those who 
 would make the possession of power dependent upon its useful 
 exercise forget its origin. Power comes from God, and he alone 
 can set conditions to its use. If men could so Umit it, it would 
 no longer be itself. Its identity would be destroyed. It would 
 be sheerly arbitrary in character — the creature of popular whim 
 and fantasy. But the power which is instituted by God is in 
 essence different. It assures man freedom for it has been insti- 
 
 «2 Ibid., 22. 
 
 " Ibid.,S35. 
 
 " "Principe Constitutif," p. 450. 
 
 s5 "Essai sur I'ordre social," p. 99. 
 
142 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 tuted upon the basis of the fundamental principles of th( 
 universe. 
 
 And a further consequence must be drawn. If the true sover- 
 eign of the universe is God then everyone, no less the sovereigr 
 than his subjects, have duties towards him.^' He has set the 
 rhythm of Life and they must make possible the fulfilment oi 
 its motif. Their right thus becomes no more than the right tc 
 fulfil their duty, the right to act in accordance with the will 
 of God. In such an aspect the folly of those who would draw 
 up a Declaration of the Rights of Man is self-evident. For while 
 they affirm the equahty of men's rights they aflSlrm no less the 
 right to property. But what becomes of property where some 
 men, equal in the theoretic possession of rights, are yet without 
 the means of subsistence? Clearly the denial of the rhythm 
 Bonald has postulated creates a deadly rhythm of its own. The 
 acceptance of individualism crushes into atoms the very basis 
 of society. By making the social question something to be 
 resolved by reason, instead of admitting that it is from the 
 outset dependent on God, and is thus justified without the 
 heed of social response, it leaves open a path for every method 
 of anarchic destruction.^^ No one, he urges, dare accept the 
 claim of science to make men better by making them intellec- 
 tually enlightened. On the contrary, the result of increasing 
 knowledge is the desire of domination. The individual seeks 
 rather for means to satisfy his faculty of self-absorption than 
 to accomplish social good. To proclaim the existence of rights 
 is to make of each man a potential tyrant. The philosopher 
 who proclaims the advent of hberty only ensures the regime of 
 anarchy. For to question is to destroy. To question is to 
 satisfy one's whim and though such caprice has not made the 
 world, it may yet destroy it. And when caprice has been iden- 
 tified with individuahty the transition to traditionalism has 
 been made. For each man then contributes his own restless- 
 ness to the disturbance of the social fabric. The logical result 
 of the eighteenth century is thus obviously the horrors of the 
 Revolution. 
 
 It is, of course, obvious that the source of this criticism is 
 
 ** "Essai analjrlique," p. 57. 
 
 " "Th^orie du Pouvoir," iv, v, 356. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 143 
 
 the famous polemic by Bossuet against the Reformation.^* 
 " Those who create revolt in the name of freedom become them- 
 selves tjTants." So it was Bossuet wrote, and his words might 
 be the text of Bonald's examination. Urging as he does the 
 unity of society, he denies the vaUdity of all enquiry, pohtical 
 no less than rehgious, on the ground that it destroys that unity. 
 He searches out each pretext of the eighteenth century for the 
 denial of the dogmas of the ancien rSgime, and erects their 
 negations into new dogmas. Fundamentally he attacks that 
 individuaUsm which Comte, in a fit of temper,^' once dismissed 
 abruptly as the disease of the Western world. Without unity 
 of opinion and behef there cannot be hope of social survival. 
 The very fact of the Revolution is the evidence of this truth. 
 To insist on the value of the individual, to erect into a system, 
 as Rousseau did, his right to self-development is to misinter- 
 pret the organic nature of society. An organism presupposes 
 nervous co-ordination, and of that co-ordination freedom of 
 beUef is the main antagonist. So there must be but one re- 
 hgion in France; for the very existence of other confessions 
 secretes the germ of social" disaster. And this is for him the 
 more true in the case of Protestant dogma, since its basis is 
 the primacy of the individual. It thus becomes the business 
 of the statesman to ward off the danger of anarchy. He must 
 insist on the necessity of uniformity. "Unless" he wrote in a 
 tremendous .sentence, " unless we have a religious and political 
 unity, man cannot discover truth, nor can society hope for 
 salvation."'" 
 
 V. IMPLICATIONS OF THE ATTACK 
 
 A CURIOUS trinitarianism pervades the whole speculation of 
 Bonald, and it is upon its basis that he erected his social philos- 
 ophy.*' For the number three he seems to have cherished a 
 pecuhar weakness, so that, like the devotees of the beast in 
 Revelations, he is everywhere able to discover the operation of 
 
 " Cf. Bossuet, "Hist, des Variations," Bk I, pp. 316, 340, 419, etc. 
 " "Politique Positive," iii, 614. 
 " "Essai sur I'ordre social," p. 33. 
 " Cf . Faguet, op. cit., i, p. 
 
144 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 a threefold cause. For some abstract reason the source o; 
 which remains strangely obscure, he believed that from a be 
 lief that the cause is to the means, as the means is to the effect 
 the mind can solve all poHtical questions. The business oj 
 society, whether domestic or political or religious, becomes ther 
 the reaUsation of that relationship. Perfection is simplifiec 
 into its permanent attainment.*^ 
 
 He had no difficulty in deciphering its details.*^* Domestic 
 society is clearly composed of three elements. The father is 
 the cause, the mother the means, the child is the effect. Since 
 the father is the cause, he must clearly have power, for, other- 
 wise, the division of it would destroy its efficacy. Nor can 
 that power be abrogated. In the eyes of its parents, for ex- 
 ample, a child is always a minor. That is why primitive society 
 gave to the head of the family the power of life and death. That 
 is why the woman taken in adultery may be slain without 
 mercy by her husband. The wife, indeed, does no more than 
 receive from her husband the power of reproduction. Her one 
 duty is to obey him. As she is mid^yay between child and man, 
 so she partakes of the nature of both. To the one she issues 
 commands, to the other she offers submission. The child itself 
 has no function save to obey. Were it otherwise the unity of 
 family power would clearly be destroyed. Nor is this unfair 
 to the child who, in receiving from his parents the gift of lan- 
 guage owes to them his most precious possession. For without 
 them thought would thus have been impossible, and his obedi- 
 ence is the price he pays for so unique a privilege.*^ 
 
 The function of domestic society he regards as simply re- 
 productive. Man may be mortal, but the society to which he 
 belongs is imperishable. He thus owes to it the duty of repro- 
 duction and it is for that purpose the family has been estab- 
 lished. Bonald has thus the greater reason for denying the 
 importance of the individual. It is only as a member of the 
 family-group that he is entitled to consideration. It is essen- 
 tially that group which is the real unit of society. Only from 
 it does social function spring. Man himself is only an incident 
 
 82 "Principe Constitutif," p. 441 f. 
 » Ibid., p. 445. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 145 
 
 in a succession of births so vast as to make him infinitesimal 
 in comparison. 
 
 If the family is thus the social unit one can clearly discern 
 therein two types. The ordinary family does no more than 
 guard its daily interests. The care of its needs exhausts its 
 time and its capacities. It has no more to do than to maintain 
 itself in existence, without being a burden upon its fellow-men. 
 It is important only from the point of view of population. It 
 is the broad base upon which a finer and more complex structure 
 may be made to rest. The noble family is different. The 
 credentials of birth demonstrate that it has passed the stage 
 of the worker's inevitable inertia. It is occupied with the 
 defence of society, the student of its problems, the resolver of 
 its doubts. It may thus rightly demand the privileges that 
 come from this self-sacrifice: It has leaped beyond the toil- 
 some and narrowing cares of daily existence. It alone is really 
 fitted to deal with the great problems of men. There is nothing 
 sordid or meagre in the subject of its contemplation. It thinks 
 on a higher plane of life. It is accustomed to that objectivity 
 of attitude which alone makes possible a social existence.^^ 
 
 The argument is a^ old as Aristotle, an^d no better than when 
 he made it. What in truth he was attempting was the discov- 
 ery of a basis for the family organisation of the ancien regime. 
 His "famille ordinaire" is no more than the peasant-family of 
 eighteenth century France and because it was then powerless 
 he strives to demonstrate that it is in fact actually unfitted for 
 political faculties. It was with a similar purpose that the 
 "famille noble" should have the typical attributes of a family 
 such as his own. The army and th e magistra cy were recruited '/ 
 ^ from its ranks; what more naturaTthan To"assume that they 
 are so recruited because their capacity fits them for that type 
 of labour? He insists on the value of an hereditary nobility 
 merely to ensure the permanence of that order and where he 
 argues for its indispensabihty he means no more than that he \ 
 could not wish it otherwise. So, too, is to be understood his 
 contempt for property and age. He rejects the latter as a 
 classification of service "because it is necessary to choose use- 
 
 " Cf. what is said below of M. Bourget's reconstruction of these 
 arguments. 
 
146 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 ful men,"^^ and utility depends on class and not on maturity 
 moreover an indiscriminate choice would result in disorder.' 
 He rejects property because it will open the path to indiscrimi 
 nate ambition. He is, in fact, looking back on the Revolutioi 
 and fearing the advent of the middle class. So, too, may b( 
 explained his insistence on the superiority of the agricultura' 
 family.^' Industry is the enemy of order. It is the captains 
 ' of industry who continuously insist on the value of independ- 
 ence. It is commerce which has been the parent of wars and 
 of the mad doctrine of hberty. From it has sprung that yearn- 
 ing for luxury which is the mother of decay. It gives rise to a 
 superabundance of population. It results in the dispersion of 
 family unity. With agriculture all is different. The soil nour- 
 ishes those t"o whom it gives birth. Almost in the manner of 
 the Physiocrats, but without their glowing discrimination, he 
 paints a picture of the serene joys of agricultural existence.*' 
 He insists on its soHdarity. It unifies by the nature of the 
 occupation it affords. It niakes no distinction between master 
 and servant. It permits of ancestraUsm and of a common toil. 
 It achieves a kinship with nature and the production of all that 
 men truly require for their satisfaction.^' He shows no small 
 contempt for the industriaUsm of Adam Smith,'" and, at least 
 by imphcation, the ideahsing reforms of Saint-Simon. The 
 division of labour is the coronation of individuaUsm and he will 
 have none of it. He loves too deeply the sohd conservatism 
 of the French peasantry to be willing to depart from their ways. 
 For, after all, it was they who supported the king and the church. 
 It was from the cities that sprang disturbing thoughts. It was 
 business men who had quarrelled with the old economic order 
 and erected their impatience into a vicious philosophy. He 
 could compare Paris with Brittany and he could hardly doubt 
 the reason for their distinction. Paris was industrial and in 
 Paris had been born the wildest theories of social organisation. 
 
 «= "Th^orie du Pouvoir," V, vii. 
 
 ^ "Principe Constitutif," Ch. IX. 
 
 " Pens6es Diverses, p. 6. 
 
 *' La famille Agricole et Industrielle." 
 
 «" Cf. "Mflanges," p. 441. 
 
 '» IbU., p. 505. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 147 
 
 But in Brittany men inherited the ideas of their fathers and 
 to question had become not less than to sin. 
 
 The union of families is the State; and it was here, perhaps 
 most vividly, that Bonald showed in his narrow traditionaUsm 
 the influence of the Revolution. "When God wished to punish 
 France," he once wrote in an amazing sentence,'^ "he with- 
 drew the Bourbons from its governance." His whole effort, 
 in fact, is simply the attempt to discover a pohtical structure 
 which should obviate the possibiUty of their expulsion. He 
 desires the construction of a static society on the principles of 
 the ancien regime. He thus makes the object of the state 
 essentially conservation. Just as the family provides society 
 with its members, so does the state aim at the preservation of 
 peace between them. But to that end it has need of an instru- 
 ment. It has to prevent the conflict of individual wills from 
 resulting in the destruction of the body politic. It has to see 
 to it that a continuous progress is made towards the reaUsation 
 of those necessary relations that are the declaration of the will 
 of God. It is not easy to mistake their nature; for all Bonald 
 has really attempted in their statement is to ideahse that which 
 the Revolution came to deny. If he has succeeded in conceal- 
 ing his particularism in a fine cloud of apparent abstractions, 
 that does not hide the fact that it is a particular problem he 
 has in mind. The "constituted" society upon which he lays 
 so much emphasis may be one in which "necessary relation- 
 ships" are observed; but what Bonald means by "necessary 
 relationship " is simply an obedience to his prejudices. A "non- 
 constituted society" is but one that has striven to work out 
 its own political salyation, and in the process has discovered 
 that there are truths of which even the great Bossuet did not 
 dream. 
 
 He is at any rate right in the assertion that society is given 
 and that since it is given it must be organised. For whatever 
 society is, an inchoate and discrete mass it is not. The funda- 
 mental question of pohtics is thus a problem in the method of 
 
 " "Pens^es Diverses," p. 172. 
 
148 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 organisation. What is the nature of sovereignty? Why shoul( 
 one man rule over another? Bonald sees clearly enough tha 
 the problem of sovereignty is not merely a question of powe 
 but also that, in some sort, it is a question where only the argu 
 ments of reason can apply. For him all theories of sovereigntj 
 reduce themselves, in the main, to two types. Men rul( 
 either by virtue of divine right or from the authority of a socia 
 contract. Bonald, oFcourse, has no choice in such an alterna- 
 tive. Society is the creation of God. Omnis potestas est a deo 
 and we may cease the vanity of argument. Power is a socia 
 institution and the divinity of social institutions is simply ob- 
 vious. He has no patience with the theory of a social contract.^' 
 It is obvious to him that the idea not merely most repugnant 
 but in truth most inconceivable to men is that of their subjec- 
 tion to equals. It is contrary to human psychology. Only 
 where some are in the position of inferiors is there a willingness 
 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 imphes the idea of organisation and to organisation 
 power is already essential. That a social contract is impossible 
 once the existence of power has been admitted is of course 
 obvious; for once it is present there is no longer that equality 
 of status which permits of its institution on valid terms.'^ 
 
 He urges the necessity of power because he is convinced of 
 its naturalness. It arises in society just as in a crowd it is 
 always the custom for some one man to take charge. .He has 
 no confidence in the disposition of a mass of men. It lacks 
 direction and wisdom. It" cries out for a leader. It can only 
 be transformed into a society when someone has given it func- 
 tions to perform, orders to obey.'^ Until then it will be found 
 always to be unhappy and in confusion. He urges that the 
 primary desire of a people is for safety and that it is their habit 
 to seek for the leader who is most hkely to secure it. The crowd 
 without a leader is like a child without its parent. It lacks the 
 mison d'etre of its existence.'^ ^ jjg^g ^^^g ^^ ^^^ elements of 
 
 " "Principe Contitutif," p. 449. 
 " IHd. p. 450. 
 
 » "Demonstr. Phil.," p. 108-9. 
 " "Pens^es Diverses," p. 12. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 149 
 
 self-preservation. Power is thus the offspring of necessity. 
 There must be some master of men in order that men may be 
 saved. 
 
 It cannot be denied that there is much of truth in such an 
 attitude. But Bonald could not, of course, fail to realise that 
 he has done no more than push his enquiry back rather than 
 solve it. If all that society required was leadership, the usurpa- 
 tion of Napoleon would be justified. The problem clearly has 
 been that of the organisation of power. The need is to discover 
 the seat of an authority which must be postulated as essential 
 to existence. 
 
 Bonald's answer to this question has in it but little original- 
 ity. His theory of political organisation is little more than a 
 restatement of Bossuet's, but of a Bossuet whom the Revolu- 
 tion has made a Uttle plaintive and almost tragically unreal. 
 He starts' out from two fundamental principles. Princes are 
 the ministers of God.''* They are the ministers of God, no 
 doubt, that their position may be unassailable by a bourgeoisie 
 which has listened to the blasphemies of Rousseau. And it is 
 because they are the ministers of God that their interests are 
 at one with those of the people. For the welfare of the state 
 is essentially an unity, which transcends the welfare of particu- 
 lar members. Here, clearly, he has the opportunity to slay the 
 obvious facts of social hfe with the amazing abstractness of 
 his passion for the trinity. Since the cause is to the means as 
 the means is to the effect that relationship must be discovered 
 in political society, and, desiring its presence, he has no diffi- 
 culty in finding it. King, minister, subject — these are the 
 obvious triad which gives supreme power to the prince." It 
 gives supreme power; and, for its maintenance, there is clearly 
 required hereditary kingship on the one hand, and hereditary 
 nobiUty on the other. They are required because they are 
 naturally good. They are naturally good because they have 
 been tested by the experience of time. They are good because 
 without them there would be anarchy. The absolutism of the , 
 crown is essential, in fact, to the unity of the state.'* Society, 
 
 " "Observations sur I'ouvrage de Madame de Stael," p. 128. 
 " "Legislation Primitive," Bk. II, Ch. iv, p. 228. 
 '8 "Throne du Pouvoir," Vol. I, Bk. i, Ch. ii. 
 
150 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 like an organism, is one, and, being one, it can have only a single 
 head. One man must therefore doniinate lest all men should 
 be destroyed. '/ " >} c -. 
 
 He can therefore reject that division of powers which Mon- 
 tesquieu had postulated as the safeguard of liberty.™ He can 
 reject it for the good reason that he does not beheve in hberty. 
 He will, indeed, accept Montesquieu's dictimi that power is 
 the general will of the state; but he argues that the wiU of the 
 state must necessarily be single, and that it can aim at no more 
 than seK-preservation. So to Umit it is to obviate the danger 
 that the fascinating questions discussed by Montesquieu 
 should fall within the purview of his thought. He reaUsed 
 clearly enough that Montesquieu was entirely out of sym- 
 pathy with the anden regime and that his speculations tended 
 to its dissolution. He beUeved that the separation of powers 
 was the dogma most hostile to the unification of sovereignty. 
 He saw that once men were prepared to parcel it out the result 
 must inevitably be an implicitly federalised state. But such 
 a political organisation tended to the republicanism which his 
 experience of the Revolution led him to identify with impiety. 
 To separate powers was to confound them. To separate pow- 
 ers was to give a handle to every dissident element in the state. 
 When Louis XVI summoned the States-General he committed 
 exactly this error; and he paid the penalty with his life. What 
 Montesquieu thus attempted was, in his eyes, the provision 
 of a permanent basis for royal execution and he was compelled 
 to reject his philosophy. 
 
 The fundamental tenet in his creed is thus the nature he 
 ascribes to sovereign power. He was a worshipper of its unity 
 because the experience of its opposite had been: fatal to the 
 ideas he most deeply cherished. It can never be too greatly 
 emphasised that the thought of Bonald was virtually completed 
 in 1796. There is nothing in his last work which is not, at 
 least imphedly, in his first. Neither the history of the_Napo- 
 leonic adventure — after all, the practical expressio n of Jiis 
 attitude — nor the tragic misapprehensions oTCharles X in any 
 wise altered his outlook. He cared for nothing save stability. 
 He naturally admired the environment of his time, and he 
 
 " "Th^orie du Pouvoir," BkVI, Ch. Ill, p. 411. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 151 
 
 sought the conditions of its permanence. He conceived that 
 an unified absolutism would achieve that end because under 
 Louis XIV his ideals had found a full expression. He beheved 
 that there is no remedy for disorder save uniformity of thought. 
 Men had to be kept in subjection because the price of their 
 freedom was too immense. It is, of course, a common enough 
 attitude. We have ourselves, for the most part, done no more 
 than transfer from king to state his erstwhile divinity. The 
 king's need has become raison d'itat and we have simply mul- 
 tiplied the basis of sovereignty.^" Bonald would have urged 
 the inherent error of such a policy on the ground that it was 
 unworkable. He saw in the free expression of opinion the 
 conditions of misfortune. Where men begin to question he 
 could not doubt that they begin also to destroy. For they 
 question essentially that they may reconstruct, and the method 
 impUes a period of disturbance. Toleration is thus the negation 
 of order.*' Sovereignty cannot be dispersed simply because it 
 cannot then be exercised. To disperse it is to make it fallible; 
 and the possibility of error is the excuse for anarchy. 
 
 This, indeed, is his generalisation from the experience of the 
 eighteenth century. When it questioned traditional institu- 
 tions it overthrew them.*^ Little by little it exacted from the 
 crown the instruments of power. The admission to poUtical 
 privilege of the Hugenots in 1788 was the destruction of reli- 
 gious uniformity. The summons of the States-General two 
 years later gave to the unreaUsed welter of accumulated griev- 
 ance the power which translated it into action. For the States- 
 General was a hmnan institution; and where its advice was 
 neglected, its pride stirred it to compulsion. Where before 
 order had been possible, the doubt Louis had cast on his right 
 to the full exercise of his sovereign power meant that jealous 
 men would usurp it. To him, in fact, every event in the Revo- 
 lution is the logical result of that single error. Once loosen the 
 strict bonds of power and there is no check to the passions of 
 
 *» Cf . the interesting little work of M. L6on de Montesquieu, "Raison 
 d'Etat." This is, of course, the whole basis of M. Duguit's theories. See 
 especially his "Transformations du Droit Public." 
 
 81 "Th6orie du P. Religieux," Bk. VI, Ch. II. 
 
 »!! Cf. "Pens^es Diverses," p. 33. 
 
152 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 men. Here, clearly, he feels like De Maistre, that the execu 
 tioner is the corner-stone of society. And he emphasises th 
 virtues of tradition exactly for this purpose. Men canno 
 venerate what is new, because where they understand they ar 
 sceptical. But veneration is the corollary of obedience. Th 
 unity of power has behind it all the overmastering sense o 
 antiquity. It is the one dogma of government which has sur 
 vived. It is the one dogma which has received the continuou, 
 respect of men. Moreover, it alone is the basis of solidarity 
 The very fact that there is only one elevation to which noni 
 save the sovereign can pretend creates a common bond o 
 interest between men. It sets outside the range of ambitioui 
 exertion the hopes which may inspire social discontent. I 
 keeps society ordered neatly in ranks and stations by urging 
 men to fulfil the duties to which their class and birth tradi- 
 _tionally call them. It suggests that necessary interdepend 
 ence of function which keeps the minds of men from strayinj 
 into dangerous paths. Its' very neatness suggests to the major 
 ity a disharmony in novelty of outlook. It is thus a guarantee 
 of social peace. The king wills; and his command is binding 
 upon every element in the body pohtic. There is thus generatec 
 a perception of equality which has all the advantages and non( 
 of the inherent dangers which a pluraUstic sovereignty possesses 
 To say that the king is absolute sovereign is not, of course 
 to postulate an arbitrary tyrant. Here, again, the origin ol 
 his thought is the speculation of Bossuet. Just as the lattei 
 was endeavouring to find a justification for the absorptivenesf 
 of Louis XIV, so was Bonald attempting to show that abso- 
 lutism is not an excuse for the accusation of arbitrary power 
 j Arbitrary power was, for him, a power exercised independent^ 
 I of the necessary laws of social organisation. It was the powej 
 I of one who, like Napoleon, sought his own good and failed tc 
 ! make it coincident with the good of France. Absolute powej 
 is exercised for the benefit of the people. It is the inst'rumenl 
 \by which laws in conformity with the will of God are promul 
 gated. Here, obviously, is a defence against their degeneratioi 
 into tyranny. For if, the object of absolute power is no men 
 than the translation into legislative terms of the will of God 
 the function of the king is not creative but declaratory. H( 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 153 
 
 is thus in no sense omnipotent. He is limited by the laws of 
 his being. And he finds the laws it is his duty to declare not 
 by any inherent revelation, but by the research of reason on 
 the one hand, and by a selection among existing institutions 
 on the oth^r.*' The king will continually exercise his mind on 
 the problem of poUtical organisation. He will search out among 
 the achievements of men those which have the better contrib- 
 uted to social improvement. Here is a source of the wisdom by 
 which such a pohtical order may find its justification. For since 
 this is an order of reason the people may themselves discover 
 the wisdom of its enactments. Nor does Bonald, on the whole, 
 have any fear that absolutism may degenerate. A wise ruler, 
 he urges, will immediately preceive the harmony of interest be- 
 tween himself and his subjects, and his policy will of necessity 
 adjust itself to the enrichment of their common purpose. He 
 insists, moreover, on the importance of realising that the uni- 
 verse is teleological. There is behind it the mighty and benefi- 
 cent purpose of its maker. To that all institutions and all men 
 are, in the end, subordinate. So that ultimately good may be 
 expected even from bad institutions. Social defect is self-cura- 
 tive by the inspiration it affords to a reaction from its errors. 
 Nor does the king stand alone. It must never be forgotten that 
 there exists the ministerial body through which the king acts. 
 He has the benefit of their advice and of their criticism. They 
 can warn him of impending dangers. They can urge him against 
 unwise courses. Society has thus given itself an admirable 
 and self-regulating check against kingly error.^* 
 
 Not that, in any case, kingly error would justify deposition.'^ 
 The good Bonald glows with passionate indignation at the 
 mere thought of its possibility. If our king is a bad king we 
 must endure him. An attitude of hopeful resignation is alone 
 possible to Christians. For to admit the rectitude of deposi- 
 tion is to admit the justice of social scepticism. It is to admit 
 a virtue to that which destroys. It is to give to jealous men the 
 
 " "Essai sur I'ordre social," p. 65. 
 " "Principe Constitutif," Ch. X, p. 465. 
 
 « "Th^orie du Pouvoir," Bk. I, Ch. IX. Cf. Bossuet, op. cit., Bk. 
 VI, 1 and 2. 
 
 »> "Principe Constitutif," Ch. XI, p. 468. 
 
154 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 hope of a share in power by enabling them to misrepresent 
 motive and achievement for their own base purposes. The in 
 stitution of kingship is divine, and to allow men to q'uestioi 
 it is to allow them to doubt the work of God. It is this whicl 
 makes him insist also on the necessity of hereditary monarchy 
 Where the succession to the throne is at the outset guaranteed, 
 we have an assurance of stability. We have that foreknowl- 
 edge of events which is a safeguard against interested schemers. 
 Not only is primogeniture natural — ^how otherwise could it be 
 of so marvellous an antiquity — but it is a vital assurance oi 
 continuity in national Hfe. To deny it is to admit the roots oi 
 division within the state. He reasonably points to Poland as 
 an instance of the paralysis which results from an elective 
 system.*^ There, power has been in fact divided and the fate 
 of Poland is the measure of its error. There, is no surety for 
 existence without integration. To estabhsh beforehand ' the 
 natural order of events is clearly to minimise the dangers of 
 transition. 
 
 The whole purpose of these elaborate safeguards is obvious 
 enough. Bonald has been impressed by the diverse aims the 
 will of man can encompass, and he searches the means to mini- 
 mise the disharmony of their interplay. That which he most 
 greatly fears is the influence of unorthodox opinion.^' He 
 regarded democracy as per se an effort after political defiance 
 which seeks to transfer power to itself. But the weapon of 
 democracy is discussion and from discussion is born intellec- 
 tual perversity. "Avec des mots," he wrote,^ "on pervertira 
 la raison des peuples;" and propaganda he thus did not hesi- 
 tate to brand as sin. He denied,*^ indeed, that the influence 
 of the press can secure the passage of great measures. For not 
 only do they consistently misinterpret a pubUc opinion that they 
 do not understand, but they serve only to darken counsel and 
 so to hinder action. A censorship of the press is thus a necessity 
 that power may have adequate protection.^" Only- in this way 
 can men of evil disposition be prevented from attacking every 
 
 *' "De la liberty de la presse," p. 3. 
 
 88 Ibid., p. 13. 
 
 89 Ibid., p. 16. 
 9» Ibid., p. 29. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 155 
 
 necessary institution of society. "Ces jeunes anonymes," he 
 wrote scornfully,'' .... exploitent a leur profit, et comme 
 une Industrie ou une propriety patrimoniale la religion, le gouv- 
 ernement, les lois, radministration." They erect their private 
 opinion into the will of the state and are thus the very harbin- 
 gers of revolution. Control of opinion is then no more than the 
 paternal regard of the Crown for the welfare of its subjects. 
 It has had brilUant results and antagonism to it he ascribes to 
 the insensate pride of mahcious spirits. Nor does he doubt''' 
 that all Uberty is in fact simply the concession of instituted 
 power which may set the terms of reason to its benevolence. 
 To him'^ the whole demand for the right of discussion under 
 the Restoration was simply the inevitable consequence of that 
 representative government instituted by the Charter of 1814. 
 For, as he urges,'* the result of that measure is to inaugurate 
 a rivalry between royalty and thB pdpulace for power. It is 
 an endeavour of the other to usurp what it has no right to re- 
 tain. It has a tragic outcome. It results in the creation of two 
 powers and hence of two societies. They cannot live in tran- 
 quiUity within the same state, and the disturbance from which 
 France suffers is the effect of their collision. He looks back 
 regretfully'^ to the times of the Grand Monarch when unity of 
 poUtical outlook was the first law of life. He mentions'^ with 
 the tenderness of affectionate agreement the custom of the 
 Roman Senate which was wont to banish those philosophers 
 whose theories threatened the harmony of the state. They 
 realised the fundamental truth he is here concerned to incul- 
 cate'^ that society perishes not by the absence of truth — that 
 is at the basis of social existence— but by the presence of error. 
 The nourishment of man is his ideas, and to allow him free 
 access to a food that has not been examined is to run the risk 
 of social poisoning.'* "Un ecrit dangereux," he declared with 
 
 " IbU., p. 44. 
 
 « Ibid.; p. 61. 
 
 »' Ibid., p. 117. 
 
 " Ibid., p. 137. 
 
 M Ibid., p. 142. 
 
 9« Ibid., p. 143. 
 
 " Ibid., p. 148. 
 
 " Ibid., p. 156. 
 
156 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 passion,'^ "est une declaration de guerre a touts I'Europe;' 
 and it was no more than an obvious duty to suppress it. 
 
 Freedom is thus a dangerous chimera and remedies againsi 
 its pursuit must be found. It is for a return to the ancient ways 
 that he is most deeply concerned. The misfortunes of France 
 have come because her king abandoned the natural path ol 
 royalty. ^'"' They bowed before the erection of a system and 
 the consequence is their submission to its continuous examina- 
 tion. Such an endeavor to reduce to written form the elements 
 of social life seems to him profoundly erroneous. Popularisa- 
 tion he always held as a grave danger for it prevented the 
 unification of opinion. To write out the basis of government 
 is to defeat the end for which it was made. Trouble is the 
 eldest child of knowledge. He puts hig" trust rather in a decent 
 mystery which alone makes possible an adequate veneration. 
 To write the constitution is to tempt the passions of men. 
 It is to suggest that there are limits to the royal power. It is 
 to tell the people that certain rights are theirs by nature and 
 they will have no sense of proportion in their demands. For 
 royalty he demands an invisibility and an omnipresence.^"^ In 
 business and pleasure ahke the ways of kings must be mysteri- 
 ous and hidden. Bonald even blames lightly the action of 
 Louis XIV in appearing publicly at the fetes, of Versailles; 
 while he is certain that the raillery of Marie- Antoinette made 
 the pleasures of the Court insupportable to the mass of men. 
 The king must try^''^ adequately to mirror the divinity of which 
 he is an image. He must be simple, severe, dignified. His 
 nobility must cease"^ that vain pursuit of titles which incites 
 jealousy without invoking respect. It must instead set itself 
 to the creation of a reverence for the solemn fact of power."* 
 Unless that is done, the destroying angel of envy will cast its 
 baneful influence over France. But to this end one means alone 
 is at all adequate and effective. 
 
 9s Ibid., p. 157. 
 
 "» "De la Justice Divine," p. 132. 
 
 "1 Ibid., p. 145.' 
 
 "2 Ibid. 
 
 1™ Ibid., p. 149. 
 
 "■> Ibid., p. 150. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 157 
 
 VI. THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE STATE 
 Religious passion was the supreme influence of Bonald's life. 
 Only in its acceptance could he see that elevation of heart and 
 loftiness of spirit which are the basic conditions of progress. ^"^ 
 The people that respects religion is a happy people, for it is 
 certain to respect authority. Rehgion he believed to be essen- 
 tial to the intellectual satisfaction of man, for otherwise its 
 universality was inexphcable."^ Only by reason of the assump- 
 tions it makes can the world be understood. Even Rousseau 
 admitted it to be essential;"' and Bonald seeks no further 
 justification. When the devil admits the worth of right, good 
 men have no more duty than its translation into action. 
 
 Religion for him was the basis of political stability. It helps 
 the statesman by its insistence on moral ideas. It gives birth 
 to a standard of conduct. It gives a definite context to the 
 vague ideas of right and wrong which results in a test of action. 
 It creates justice by its emphasis on the necessity of applying 
 its standard to the facts of life. This a priori test, indeed, he 
 deems the most valuable preservative of the social order. For 
 when one deals in a mystic absolute the time for discussion has 
 passed. We cannot waste our time in argument against the 
 decrees of God; and it is their support that Bonald brings to 
 his ideal of the state. He brings it because his order is divinely 
 ordained and he desires the sanction of God for his canons of 
 poUtical wisdom. He does not, of course, lack texts to prove 
 his point; but his scholasticism is more profound than the su- 
 perficial casuistry of quotation. He is satisfied that no good 
 man can be without religion. He looks upon rehgion as the 
 sole sanction of moral activity. Clearly, therefore, he must 
 make religion interchangeable with politics. What in society 
 man above all needs is that which will enable him to bear the 
 burden of hfe. His troubles are so vast and so manifold, that 
 consolation is essential if he is to find them supportable. Only 
 religion can assuage his cares. It softens the disharmonies of 
 social existence by directing the interests of men rather to the 
 life that is to come than to the life that is. It gives to poUtics 
 
 "5 Ibid., p. 155. 
 
 "« "Th6orie du Pouvoir," I, VI. 
 
 "' Ibid., 1, IV. 
 
158 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 the basis of a necessary mythopoiesis. It acts, in fact, as a 
 social chloroform to dull the hearts of men against the pain 
 of truth. It is the justification of the present by its reference 
 to a divine past. So is it a preventive against discontent. 
 
 Religion, of course, means the Roman Catholic religion. 
 Protestantism, by its very definition, is fatal to these mighty 
 purposes. It is out of accord with the reaUties of sovereignty. 
 Lutheran ideals beget oligarchy, and Calvinism the govern- 
 ment of Geneva. Each, iii fact, destroys the unity which is 
 the essence of a monarchic system. Such forms of faith are 
 for him comparable only to that pleasant feeUng of internal 
 satisfaction which Rousseau mistook for rehgion. Its true 
 basis is the fundamental fact of sacrifice. ^"^ Its true basis is 
 the tacit acceptance of your environment even though that 
 acceptance give pain. Religion is thus pre-eminently social, 
 for the necessity of sacrifice is born from the fact of society. 
 
 The object of religion is clearly to repress the evil and indi- 
 viduahst passions of men, to make them capable thereby of 
 social existence. Only the CathoUc faith can do this at all 
 adequately because only the Catholic faith is truly one. It 
 insists on the repression of the individual will. It has only a 
 single sovereign, since that which the pope commands is at 
 once universal law. Obedience to his command is the basis of 
 membership of his church. So that Cathohcism does not follow 
 the fatal path of Luther and of Calvin. It forbids man to 
 think for himself. It prescribes the belief he may alone ac- 
 cept. It thus secures within itself the constant exercise of that 
 general will of which the operation is the condition of social 
 permanence. Religion, for Bonald, is thus a training in social 
 conduct. It is the great defender of society. By teaching 
 men resignation, by preventing them from following the will 
 o' the wisp of their private intellectual whim, it safeguards the 
 maintenance of principle. It thus interacts with the state. 
 There is very clearly a joint relation between two institutions 
 so obviously complementary in character. Civilised society, 
 indeed, is simply rehgion in its poUtical aspect. It is rehgion 
 considered in its human emphasis. 
 
 If that is true, then Bonald cannot doubt that religion must 
 
 "8 "Th^orie du Pouvoir," II, Bk. I, Ch. II, p. 22. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 159 
 
 be the guiding factor in the state.'"' Religion has given to the 
 state the assistance which makes its Hf e possible. Religion 
 must then be restored to its erstwhile sovereignty over men. 
 The chief cause of political decay is the contempt which evil 
 men have poured upon it for their own base purposes. The 
 obvious pohcy of enhghtened government is to restore it to 
 the fullness of its power."" Such a restoration would posit as 
 axiomatic the principles of his faith. Education would minis- 
 ter to its needs. It would preach the gospel of duty and therein 
 find the sanction of tradition. It is Catholicism alone, in fact, 
 which has the sure proof of excellence which comes from anti- 
 quity. It alone has preached an unchanging social doctrine. 
 To ensure its dominance is to give to France the religion most 
 in accord with her history. Tradition associates French glory 
 with CathoUc success and its rehabihtation would give to the 
 throne the proud weight of its incomparable power. 
 
 He would go even further. He would not permit the exist- 
 ence of more than one reUgion in a country. So to do is to 
 destroy the fundamental unity which CathoUcism predicates. 
 Without identity of belief the gate is open for civil war; but 
 where men think ahke the tragedy of dissident action is im- 
 possible. Intolerance is thus essential to his outlook, and, like 
 Lamennais in the earlier phase of his thought, he saw no dis- 
 tinction between toleration and indifference. To allow the 
 preaching of other faiths was for him only to proclaim that 
 you are uncertain of the truth about your own. Men tolerate 
 only where they do not love. Those who have firm hold of 
 Cathohc truth know that its alternative is unthinkable. For 
 once Protestantism is given a foothold, it treads the primrose 
 path to anarchy. Men cease then to beUeve in the necessity 
 of sacrifice, and the vaunting pride of jealous ambition strikes 
 a fatal blow at the solidarity of the political fabric. Only in- 
 tolerance, in fact, makes possible the " philosophic de nous" 
 with which he proposed to replace the egocentric creed of Vol- 
 taire and of Rousseau."' In this aspect, of course, nothing was 
 less wise than the Edict of Nantes, nothing more poUtic than 
 
 '»» "Leg. Prim.," II, 115. 
 
 "» IWd., i, 180. 
 
 "1 "Oeuvres," XII, 65. 
 
160 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 its reversal. For the edict split the French state into two irrec- 
 oncilable halves and destroyed the unity of power. Richelieu's 
 attention was diverted from the necessities of foreign wai 
 simply because he could not depend on the support of thf 
 people. The seed of opposition had been planted and La Ro- 
 chelle was its harvesting. 
 
 He has thus a sinaple and mechanical view of the interactior 
 between religion and politics. "Quand il (le pouvoir) manque 
 d'un cote" he wrote, "^ "il en faut d'avantage d'un autre." Re- 
 lax the bonds of religious discipline and he did not doubt that 
 the result would be written in the records of crime. And 
 religion is the real basis of all because it gives the sentiment to 
 men upon which their fortitude is founded. It bids them do 
 their duty, where, otherwise, they would not hesitate to act 
 from motives of self-interest. It thus draws men's minds to the 
 great end. It insists on their social context. It points to unity 
 as the plain object of their endeavour. It is favourable to 
 monarchy by that very reason. But unity is always in dan- 
 ger of attack from mahcious ambition. That is why hberty 
 of thought, no less in politics than in rehgion, must be re- 
 strained. ^'^ The really intelligent man is he who knows that 
 what he preaches is so supremely important that he wijl per- 
 mit no divergence from his opinion. Enlightenment for him 
 is only the subjective aspect of intolerance, and Bonald did 
 not doubt that he was enlightened. And because he thought 
 government as necessary as food,^" he welcomed religion as a 
 means of stimulation where the appetite might otherwise be 
 lacking. The Catholic religion became in this aspect the more 
 vital since it alone insisted that the source of nourishment 
 must be single. So convinced was he of the virtue of the unity 
 it so rigidly prescribed that he found the sovereign safeguard 
 of civilisation in the return of Protestants to the Catholic 
 fold."' Otherwise, it was clear, the power of the world would 
 continue to be divided. But power was to be compared to a 
 seamless tunic which cannot be torn asunder."^ 
 
 112 "Pensees Diverges," p. 33. 
 
 "' "Oeuvres," X, 258. 
 
 i» "Pens6es Diverses," p. 12. 
 
 i« "Oeuvres," X, 296. 
 
 1" "Oeuvres," XI, 121. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 161 
 
 Very clearly, what he was eager to discover was the sover- 
 eign remedy against thought. He welcomed the Catholic 
 religion simply because it rendered all speculation a superfluity. 
 It asked men only to believe and it named faith the proudest 
 of the virtues. He genuinely feared the declaration of prin- 
 ciples founded upon intelligent enquiry. To give privileges 
 was to admit rights and to admit rights was to extend them. 
 So that once reason was set to work there was an end to the 
 stability of the state. The religion that made of reason an 
 unnecessary luxury was thus naturally in accord with his 
 temper. "Le seul alli^," he wrote/" "dont la France ait le 
 desir et le besoin (est) le pouvoir." But, for Bonald, to put 
 one's trust in God was to accept the existing world as necessarily 
 perfect because it was the divine handiwork. To preach Cathol- 
 icism was thus to steel men's hearts against thought and, as a 
 consequence, to turn them away from revolution. Wisdom 
 and reUgion became thus politically interchangeable terms. 
 The only charter necessary to a well-constructed state was the 
 charter of religious enthusiasm. It makes a people prosperous 
 and happy, above all, it makes them contented and peaceful.. 
 The one object of the state must then be its promotion. The 
 government which has not learned this lesson is already doomed, 
 and has become the accomplice in its own destruction."' But 
 a state that is wedded to rehgion has discovered the secret of 
 permanence. It has destroyed all doubt of itself. It has at- 
 tached to its existence the emotion of necessity. It has woven 
 itself into the stuff of other men's lives. 
 
 VII. CRITICISMS 
 
 To such an attitude the Revolution of 1830 supplied the only 
 possible answer. But it suppUed an answer which, apart from 
 its possibility, was at the same time decisive. For it showed 
 clearly enough that whatever the Revolution of 1789 had failed 
 to achieve, it had at any rate made men out of temper with 
 despotism. The monarchy of the Restoration had not con- 
 cealed its sympathy with Ronald's ideas. The spasmodic at- 
 tempts it had made after the pale ghost of an attenuated lib- 
 
 "' "La Justice Divine," p. XIII. 
 "8 Ibid., 22. 
 
162 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 eralism did not in any way destroy its essential continuitj 
 with the ancien regime. It even butchered the Charter to make 
 a theocratic holiday and the men of Paris turned once morf 
 lightly to their barricades. For it is useless to answer unreasor 
 with reason. A spiritual prejudice can only be eradicated by 
 the spectacle of passionate events. That which it attacks k 
 the veryoasis of all that cannot be harmonised with its dogma 
 and to the protests of the spirit the spirit alone can fling its 
 ringing reply. 
 
 The detailed criticism of Bonald's ideas, in fact, would be 
 an useless task. What he represents is not a system but an 
 attitude. What he represents is the intellectualism of vivid 
 emotions realised in a fashion peculiarly iiitimate and keen. 
 He could never change his principles, and, indeed, he made 
 proud boast that the world of poHtics is a changeless world 
 which knows neither spring nor autumn."^ His temperament 
 was too unyielding to permit him the understanding of politi- 
 cal philosophy. His mind was tragically inflexible. One who 
 could see the Revolution and the Restoration un mov ed was 
 
 ■ assuredly not created for the tasks of statesmanship. Sainte- 
 Beuve, in an illuminating passage,'^" has compared him to a 
 Roman of the ancient time, and the analogy explains much. 
 For what fundamentally interested Bonald was character and 
 by character he meant the strength to accept a given environ- 
 ment. His life was an unceasing protest against any effort 
 after change. The meaning of intellectual or moral aspiration 
 was unknown to him. All he could do was to postulate his 
 principles and he attained them by the hypostatisation of his 
 public passions. The man who could honestly beUeve that the 
 exile of "tEe Bourbon was God's punishmenti^^ on France for 
 its national sin was assuredly unfitted to cope with the practical 
 questions of so sensitive a time. He did not realise that the 
 Revolution had marked an epoch in the history of man. Be- 
 
 ■ cause he was able to blot it out of his thought and go back to 
 the golden days of Louis XIV he imagined that others, too 
 would forget. That they would choose to remember seems never 
 
 '" "Pens^es Diverses," p. 29. 
 ^"' "Causeries," IV, 330. 
 121 "Pensges," p. 172. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 163 
 
 to have entered his mind. That Rousseau might in fact have 
 been more than a poetic will o' the wisp who spent fine phrases 
 on inadequate thought he would not for one moment con- 
 template. The Revolution attacked the fundamental preju- 
 dices of his heart — reUgion and kingship — and all with which it 
 was connected he came to regard as tainted at its source. He 
 had, in any case, a narrow and unyielding mind. His letters 
 reveal the_ courteous pedant who goes through life like a foot- 
 man at a court function. For it must be admitted that there 
 is soinethi^ of the servitor in Bonald's nature. Honest, in- 
 corruptible, earnest — all these he may have been. No one can 
 doubt that he felt deeply and had pondered much on the 
 fundamental questions. But he was too easily content with 
 the Ufe he found to have the courage to examine its rectitude. 
 He mistook his country estate for the Garden of Eden and the 
 Revolution seemed to him Uttle less than the expulsion from 
 Paradise. He had been schooled severely by church and state. 
 The pupil of the Oratorians and the royal guard never forgot 
 the training he had received. Everything he wrote was con- 
 ceived in full dress and wears the air of having been written in 
 the ante-room of a royal lev6e. He has none of the Ught touch 
 of de Maistre so that his words, if they are sharp, are not yet 
 winged.'^'' There are few instances in the history of political 
 ideas of so able a man being so completely deceived as to the 
 character of his age. He differs from de Maistre in that the: 
 latter, as his pessimism revealed, was essentially hurhng a pro- 
 test at a thing for which he could feel nothing save hate. But 
 Bonald is optimistic, and if he does not spare the Revolution 
 he has no doubt whatever of the curative effect of his remedies. 
 His simphcity, in fact, is the sole cause of his charm. That 
 he was proposing the bitterness of despotism to a people which 
 had enjoyed the fruit of liberty he seems in nowise to have 
 reaUsed. It did not in the least move him that the men he 
 attacked should have written books which commanded the 
 profound respect of able men. He had so childUke a faith in 
 the nobiUty of his cause that he did not hesitate to ascribe 
 disagreement to malicious egoism. He did not see that his 
 king and his God could no longer exert the old fascination. 
 
 '» Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries," IV, 330. 
 
164 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 He did not see that a dynasty which had mounted the scaffi 
 lost thereon the secret of its superiority, that a Pope who 1: 
 suffered imprisonment thereby proclaimed his desertion by 1 
 God of whom he was the appointed vicar. The old watchwo: 
 had lost their magic. They had been dulled into argument a 
 they could not justify themselves by debate. Whatever 
 had failed to achieve, the Revolution had taught men 1 
 splendour of speculation. It had become an impossible tl 
 to preach that thought was disease. 
 
 It is true that Bonald had the past on his side. It is true tl 
 the experiment against which he so passionately inveighed h 
 all the danger of novelty. But because he clung so tenacioui 
 to his traditions he shut himself off from the future. Wl 
 in hard fact he was demanding was simply that the system whi 
 satisfied his emotions should be the accepted method of g( 
 erimient. What he entirely failed to perceive was the s 
 more indubitable fact that the majority of thinking men 
 France were dissatisfied with that system. It seems never 
 have entered his mind that there might have been cause : 
 the Revolution. If Taine condemned it no less wholehearted 
 he had at any rate adventured some sort of examination 
 It is not necessary to etherealise the Revolution like Miche 
 to perceive how inevitably it is the consequence of the systi 
 for which Bonald stood sponsor. He saw that system giver 
 second trial; and he did not in the least understand how trag 
 ally it repeated its old errors. The simple truth is that w. 
 the m^r(jh of mind absolute government is necessarily anach: 
 nistic. The will of man is an individual will; and it swe( 
 into the general will only to the point where the degree 
 fusion makes possible a social existence. But even while 
 accepts it questions and by its doubts it dissolves. So th 
 in any final analysis, democratic government is the only pr; 
 tical government simply because it is only in a democracy tl 
 an individual will can safeguard its reserves.'^* 
 
 ''' I say "some sort" because after M. Aulard's relentless examinat 
 in his "Taine, Historien de la Revolution Frangaise" it is impossible 
 have any confidence in Taine's authority. 
 
 ™ This has been brilliantly asserted in Lord Morley's "Notes on Poli 
 and History.'' 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 165 
 
 No man, in fact, will live a life ordered for him from without 
 unless the state of which he is part has accepted a swine-phil- 
 osophy. It has beatified order at the expense of thought. It 
 "has endeavoured to give men the minimum basis of material 
 satisfaction and dignified their acquiescence by the name of 
 citizenship. But that is not merely a stunted ideal; it is also 
 an impossible experience. A state may have every perquisite 
 of sovereign power. It is yet the clear lesson no less of history 
 than of philosophy that the basis of sovereignty is the opinion 
 of men. That was why, in the end, even the emperor of the 
 great Roman kingdom came to depend upon the chance whim 
 of his obscure soldiery. That was why, also, the word of an 
 unknown monk commanded a respect and exerted an influence 
 which shook to its foundations the proud edifice of papal power. 
 Continuous order is the expression less of peace than of death. 
 The Pax Romana was less the measure of civilisation than of 
 sterility; and there came a time when men exercised their 
 right to pick and choose among its benefits. What every 
 unique sovereignty will sooner or later attempt is the control 
 of mind. Yet it is equally certain that sooner or later it will 
 exert its effort after control by the material pacification of 
 men. But liberty has her compensations; and the result of 
 that very pacification is the stimulus to intellectual effort. The 
 men who have been fed into peace are nourished into exami- 
 nation. The offspring of food is revolution. 
 
 Bonald made the mistake which has been fatal to every 
 system of politics thus far in history: he took no account of the 
 prpgress of mind. He assumed an abstract man and confounded 
 him with men. ^''^ It is a mistake as easy as it is disastrous ; for 
 every abstract creation becomes its creator's Frankenstein. 
 Men somehow refuse to accept the categories in which philoso- 
 phers would chain them. Their world, whether for good or 
 evil, is a dynamic world; and they accept no moment in history 
 as its apogee. But the result of such kinesis is clearly to make 
 every political ideal adequate only for the moment when it is 
 formulated, insofar as it is a system which claims a practical 
 application. And because men are various they move in varied 
 
 '^* That is to say that the effort to depict him as a realist is without 
 basis in fact. , i ,, 
 
166 AUTHORITYIN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 direction. Their effort is different and their interpretations 
 life refuse reduction to a single scheme. The result is to dems 
 a system of government of which the essential condition is i 
 distribution of power. Political good refuses the swaddlii 
 clothes of finality and becomes a shifting conception. It c 
 not be hegelianise4 into -^ permanent compromise. It asks 1 
 validation of men and actions in terms of historical experien 
 For whatever history is not, the ancients were right when tl 
 insisted that- it is philosophy by example. And since each i 
 
 Jias different memories, there is no constancy of form or si 
 stance possible over, at any rate, long periods of time. Eve: 
 thing that is systematised becomes a category that is capable 
 decay. The peasant of Norman England who saw hims 
 bound to the soil assuredly did not dream that one day th( 
 would be an England wherein the law would know neither bo 
 nor sjaxe; yet we who analyse the course of those events 
 which he played a part recognise the inevitability of the proce 
 The kind's will is law only so far as men will consent to its ex 
 cise. The king's will is law in the France of the ancien rigir, 
 but those men who in the summer days of 1789 gathered in 1 
 tennis-court of Versailles knew how lightly a monistic sov 
 
 ^ignty is founded. Bonald may have been right in his conteir 
 for all who were not of his order; he may have ground for ] 
 worship of Bourbon kings. The church in which alone he 1 
 lieved salvation to be found may in fact have possessed 
 exclusive right to its conference. Yet the world beUeved nc 
 of these things, and because it disbelieved, his theory of \ 
 state was no more than the emptiest of dreams. His see 
 philosophy drew its importance from the fact that it summ 
 
 jUp a vital epoch in the history of government. It explaii 
 
 jeven if it does not justify, the effort of the Revolution, 
 makes intelligible the watchwords and the achievement of 1 
 
 ; nineteenth century. It shows why men had ceased to be sal 
 
 ! fied with the formulae of absolutism. For it is at war with ev( 
 
 i permanent reality of human life. 
 
 VIII. THE REVIVAL OF TRADITIONALISM 
 
 The dead still speak, as M. de Vogu6 has aptly reminded us 
 
 "^ His "Les Morts qui Parlent," indeed, is nothing so much as a hymi 
 
 praise of tradition. Cf . M. Bourget's essay in "Etudes et Portraits" Vol. I 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 167 
 
 and the doctrines of Bonald have found a curious revivification 
 in our time.'^ The age when it was permissible to adore the 
 Revolution passed away with the Franco-German war; and 
 with its scientific interpretation a decisive challenge was flung 
 at the pretensions of democracy. The authoritarian tradition, 
 in fact, is far from dead; and it is only within the most recent 
 times that the Third Republic has won the secure confidence of 
 the French people. Even today its claims are rejected by 
 thinkers of no light significance. To them it represents an in- 
 tellectual attitude not merely distasteful, but even out of ac- 
 cord with the facts of social life. They look upon the Revolu- 
 tion as the starting point of the democratic adventure. They 
 accept the enquiries of M. Taine as authentic history,^^' and they 
 have not hesitated to condemn the fundamental dogmas 
 for which it stands. The idea of national sovereignty appears 
 to them a flagrant mistake, and as a consequence, they have 
 been driven back to the ancien rSgime. It is in the idealisation 
 of its political formulae that they search the avenue of social 
 salvation. They deny the validity of the democratic state. For 
 them, it results in a partition of power which is wasteful. It 
 makes pretence to an egalitarianism fundamentally incapable 
 of realisation. It allies itself to a febrile nationalism which is 
 no more than the momentary confidence born of a premature 
 faith in the possibilities of science. The things they believe 
 essential to the right ordering of society-religion, unity of power 
 inequality, the mysticism of faith — all these they rightly per- 
 ceive are out of accord with the traditions of democratic re- 
 gime.''' The transformation of the modern state thus seems to 
 them fraught with the gravest dangers to its welfare. It is the 
 spirit, at any rate, of Bonald; and few things have a more 
 curious interest than this renewed enthusiasm for his dogmas. 
 
 Historically, indeed, the bond of intellectual fiUation is log- 
 ical and clear. The traditionalist and ultramontane schools 
 
 1" M. M. Bourget and Salamon have edited a selection of his works 
 with a preface by the former. Cf . also L. Dimier, "Les Matties de la Contrei- 
 R^volution" and the two laborious articles by C. Marechal in the "Annales 
 de Philosophie Chr^tienne" for 1910 and 1911. 
 
 1" Cf. M. Bourget's study, "Etude et Portraits," III, 82-11.3. 
 
 "'Cf. the very able and suggestive analysis of their attitude by D. 
 Powdi, "Traditionahsme et D^moratie." 
 
168 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 exercised upon Combe the profoundest influence; and positiv- 
 ism, accordingly, had no sympathy with democracy. He be- 
 Ueved in the value of integrated organisation; and it was fron; 
 that starting-point that he began his assault upon individualism, 
 He was impressed, hke Bonald, with the inequahties of men 
 and in the distribution of power he saw its dissolution. Libertj 
 seemed to him the most fatal of errors, and the yearning for it 
 no more than a disease of the Western mind. He equated lib- 
 erty with anarchy, and the Declaration of Rights he dismissed 
 as private metaphysics. He desired a science of experimental 
 politics amd its criteria of good were to be based upon the status 
 quo}^° When there was added to his quasi-scientific contempt 
 for individualism, his worship of order and of unity the mate- 
 rials for the modern protest were already prepared. But to his 
 analysis the illusions of the Franco-German war added the 
 pessimism of Taine and the subtle pyrrhonisms of Renan."' 
 The corner-stones of that edifice the nineteenth century had sc 
 patently erected seemed thus to be overthrown. It then seemed 
 legitimate to go back to an era untroubled by the necessity of 
 accepting democracy as axiomatic. 
 
 It is this restoration which modern traditionaUsm has effected; 
 and if the assault has been confined to a small group of thinkers 
 it is impossible to deny the ability with which it has been made. 
 Historical circumstances, moreover, have helped it much. The 
 last twenty-five years have seen a steady decline in the vitality 
 of parhamentary government."^ The struggle against the 
 church, the development of a labour party hostile to the state, 
 the patent deficiencies of the civil administration, the relation 
 between the army and the fanatic clericals have all combined 
 
 1'° Cf. the remarkable essay of M. Faguet in the third volume of hii 
 "PolitiquesetMoralistes." The historically, but not intellectually, important 
 volume of M. Maurras — "L'Avenir de 1' Intelligence" — is useful in this 
 connexion. 
 
 "' On the anti-democratic theories of Renan, M. G. Strauss' "La Politique 
 de Renan" is of great importance. 
 
 132 Wor]js ii]je Ostrogorski's "Democracy and the Organisation of Polit- 
 ical Parties," Wallas' "Human Nature in Politics," Michel's "Politioa' 
 Parties" and Walter Lippmann's "Preface to Politics" show this attitude 
 very remarkably. Cf. also M. Charles Benoist, "La Crise de I'Etat Mo 
 derne," Vol. i. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 169 
 
 to throw the most unworthy characteristics of a bourgeois 
 democracy into its ughest perspective. Even the stoutest 
 defenders of the Republic have been eager for the adoption of 
 new methods, for the discovery of a more effective synthesis. 
 In the result, it has not been difficult to construct a case against 
 the accepted axioms of democratic government. The science 
 which overthrew the antiquated theology of the ancien regime 
 erected no adequate system in its place. The political methods 
 of modern government were found to be worthless instruments 
 so long as they were not based upon the simultaneous possession 
 of economic power.''' The spread of popular education achieved 
 far less than had been predicted for it. In the consequent dis- 
 illusion protest was inevitable. Nothing was easier, and nothing 
 was more natural, than to reject the political theory of the 
 Revolution. But where the protest failed was in its inability 
 to understand — as Bonald failed to understand — that the true 
 course was rather to utilise the experience of the nineteenth 
 century and to temper it by logical innovation than to dismiss 
 the experience of a hundred years. The disillusion was less' 
 disgust than dissatisfaction; and it was not difficult to perceive 
 that to the majority of men the cure for democratic failure was 
 more democracy. However ugly might be the perversion of 
 its forms it still, for most, at any rate, wore an aspect more 
 politically acceptable than that of any other system. The dis- 
 tress which gave rise to renewed enquiry was born rather 
 from a realisation of the eventual certainties of democracy, 
 an impatience with its hesitations, than from any thorough- 
 going rejection of its postulates. But those who denied its 
 adequacy had at the least a superficial basis for their attack. 
 It is perhaps not surprising that it is from men of letters 
 rather than from students of politics that the assault has 
 mainly come; and they have therein finely maintained the 
 great French tradition of making criticism a commentary 
 upon life. What is fundamentally important in their attitude 
 has been best represented by Brunetiere and Bourget. M. 
 Brunetiere, indeed, is less a political than a moral analyst, and 
 
 "' This is really the starting-point of the syndicahst attack on the state. 
 See, above all, the very brilliant articles of M. E. Berth in the "Mouve- 
 ment Socialists" for 1907-8. 
 
170 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 less an analyst than a superb master of intellectual controversy; 
 and it is rather with the moral implications than with the polit- 
 ical structure of democracy that he has been concerned. He 
 represents essentially the reaction against the scientific move- 
 ment of the nineteenth century, and what he has brilliantly 
 performed is the relentless examination of its claims. But he 
 has never forgotten that science and democracy are twin sis- 
 ters; and his criticism of the one has been, in fact, a veiled 
 assault upon the other. M. Bourget seems almost a reincar- 
 nation of Bonald — of a Bonald, indeed, who has read his Comte 
 and his Darwin, and emulated the literary charm of Joseph 
 de Maistre. He has occupied himself with the political foun- 
 dations of the modern state, and he has attempted to undermine 
 them by means which Bonald would assuredly not have re- 
 jected. Nor has able assistance been wanting to their en- 
 quiry. With every virtue except moderation and clearsighted- 
 ness M. Maurras seems to have been endowed; and hig ruth- 
 less poleimcTias given birth to a school of thought^wMclL is 
 doing nothing so much, as the reinterpretation of the -anden 
 rSgime in. terms of modern life.^'* M. Barr^s has lent the support 
 of his delicate nationaHsm to the reaction; and what his work 
 has lacked in vigour and power has been more than compen- 
 sated by the clearness and sincerity of its expression.''^ The 
 conversion of M. Lemattre to this school is only the most 
 striking of many similar changes.''^ It is hardly too much to 
 say that the protagonists of the reaction remain unequalled 
 in France for the power with which their cause has been 
 advocated. 
 
 Complete unity of purpose, indeed, the traditionalists can- 
 not be said to possess. They are agreed rather upon what they 
 deny than upon their affirmations. The pagan eclecticism of 
 
 '" The important work of M. Maurras is scattered over "L' Action Fran- 
 gaise." But see his "Enqufite Sur La Monarchie" (1909), his "Dilemme 
 de Marc Sagnier" and his "Trois Id6es Pohtiques." An interesting crit- 
 icism is that of Descoqs, "A Travers I'Oeuvre de M. Maurras." 
 
 "* Cf. his "L'Ennemi des Lois" and his "Scenes et Doctrines du Na- 
 tionaHsm" especially the preface. There is a, brilUant critique of his 
 work in M. Parodi's volume. 
 
 «« Cf. Maurras, "Enqu6te," 427 ff. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 171 
 
 iSI. Maurras can hardly live in permanent comfort with the 
 strict religious orthodoxy of M. Bourget; nor has the rehgious 
 doctrine of either any necessary or coherent connexion with the 
 positivist Catholicism of Brunetiere. But a school of thought 
 they have been able to create, and the hypotheses for which 
 they stand are a logical and adequate whole. They derive, 
 indeed, a certain factitious interest from the political life of 
 modern France. They are so passionately in antagonism to 
 its fundamental outlines as to demand, almost of necessity, a 
 careful examination. Their ideas are the ideas of men who have 
 not hesitated to hold themselves aloof from a world with which 
 they feel no sympathy. There is a certain self-satisfaction in 
 the completeness of their paradoxes which makes them again 
 and again wilhng to make a holocaust of truth that their logic 
 may have her victories. But therein they are no more than 
 true to the traditions they represent. They elevate their de- 
 sires into principles in the approved fashion of Bonald. They 
 follow their master in making their dissatisfaction with the 
 age the foundation of their system. Every theory of the state, 
 indeed, must in some degree be the expression of private thought. 
 But it has been in a special degree true of traditionalism that 
 it has, albeit unconsciously, apotheosised the subjective atti- 
 tude. Its doctrines have been singularly more personal than 
 those of any other school. Insofar as that has been the case, 
 traditionaUsm has been, inevitably, a narrow and transient 
 expression of discontent. It has resulted in an unreality which 
 is entirely inadequate for the purpose of practical politics. 
 But a weakness for the unreal and the impractical is perhaps 
 one of the indulgences permitted to the upholders of the theo- 
 cratic system. 
 
 IX. THE TRADITIONALISM OF M. BRUNETIERE 
 
 The starting-point of Brunetiere's attitude"' seems to have 
 been his dissatisfaction with the naturalism of the later nine- 
 teenth century."^ In art and in letters ahke, he found that the 
 
 "' On Brunetidre's work generally see Parodi, op. dt. 31-71, and the 
 powerful essay by V. Guiraud, "Les Maitres de I'Heure," 59-141. 
 "' Cf. "Le Roman Naturaliste" passim. 
 
172 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 standards of authority evolved in the classical period of Frencl 
 literature were no longer accepted. This absence of tradi- 
 tional criteria seemed to him to result in dangerous consequences 
 to social life. Not only were the naturahsts pessimistic in theii 
 general philosophy, but they had surrendered all interest in, 
 and all effort after, moral judgment. They became purely 
 individualist in outlook, and they proclaimed the worth oi 
 experience for its own sake, without reference to its moral 
 character. Their aesthetic was entire'y subjective, and they 
 seemed to cla'm, at whatever cost, the right to cultivate to 
 the full their own personality. They trod, in fact, the primrose 
 path to anarchy. Nor was this all. They did not hesitate to 
 affirm that scientific progress had justified their pretensions. 
 They were doing no more than to claim for art and for litera- 
 ture their right to the fullest enquiry. In rigidly scientific 
 fashion, they were accumulating observations upon life. They 
 were largely indifferent to the consequence of their examination; 
 for it was not the business of the scientist to concern himself 
 with practice. It seemed to Brunetiere in the most dangerous 
 sense immoral and unrealistic thus to disregard the reaction 
 of enquiry upon fife. It showed an absence of social feehng, a 
 failure to understand that it is the bonds, rather than the in- 
 terstices of existence that must be emphasised. The lesson of 
 the naturalists would loose the chains of social cohesion. The 
 overthrow of this critical anarchism was the business of every 
 thinker concerned for the welfare of the state. 
 
 But an examination of the basis of naturalism led him, obvi- 
 ously, to the discussion of its historical foundations.^^' He 
 could not hope to understand its origins without going back to 
 the eighteenth century. It was here, essentially, that the root 
 of the trouble was to be found. Voltaire, Diderot, the Encyclo- 
 pedists, these were the first men who had not hesitated to peer 
 into every nook and cranny of the social fabric. For antiquity 
 they had less a sense of reverence than of distaste. They had 
 taught men to be dissatisfied with their condition, and they 
 had overthrown the traditional foundations of society. He 
 could not but compare the confusion of the eighteenth century 
 
 "' Cf. "Etudes Critiques," 4th series — the essays on Montesquieu, 
 Voltaire, Rousseau. 
 
AUTHORITY IX THE MODERN STATE 173 
 
 with the meticulous sense of order so characteristic of the 
 seventeenth century. He liked its air of neatness. He liked 
 its confidence in objective standards of conduct. He was 
 charmed by its a priori lack of discontent. The authoritari- 
 anism of Bossuet, in particular, took fast hold of his affections. i*" 
 He began to trace back to its influence all that was effective 
 for good in the moral life of France. Unity, faith, authority, 
 order — these were the watchwords he evolved from his re- 
 searches. Their absence from the creations of naturalism was 
 the cause of its maleficent influence. It was clearly his task 
 to erect an objective system of critical enquiry of which these 
 should be the essential principles. 
 
 But more than this was demanded. Some part, at any rate, 
 of scientific achievement, Brunetiere was compelled to admit, 
 and since naturalism threw around itself the cloak of scientific 
 enquiry, it was vital to set limits to the domain of science. 
 Here, indeed, he was confronted by the difficulty that while 
 he was anxious to oppose man and nature, art and science, he 
 was himself the urgent defender of the doctrine of evolution in 
 the forms of literature."^ It was clearly necessary to escape 
 that conclusion, or, at the least, to bend it to his purposes. 
 It was here, perhaps, that Brunetiere made his most brilliant 
 effort."^ The causes of variation are unknown. Change is 
 simply a fact — for which no reason can be ascribed. Aristotle, 
 Moh^re, Darwin — we can postulate no adequate cause for 
 their emergence."^ They are simply given us; and their effort 
 is the starting-point of each new direction evolution may take. 
 What Brunetiere did was to deny the apphcability of causation 
 
 ""The posthumous volume on Bossuet edited by M. Guiraud is de- 
 cisive testimony on this point. 
 
 "1 Cf. "L'Evolution de la po^sie lyrique" and "L'Evolution des genres" 
 and "La Doctrine evolutive" in the sixth series of "Etudes Critiques." 
 
 '« What follows is in reality a summary of his four volumes, the "Dis- 
 cours de Combat" and the "Sur Les Chemin de Croyance." The funda- 
 mental articles are "La Renaissance de I'id^aUsme," "L'Artet la morale, 
 Le besoin de croire" in the first, "L'ld^e de solidarity" in the second, 
 "La Renaissance du paganisme, I'action sociale du Christianisme, I'Evo- 
 lution du concept de science" in the third, volume of the "Discours." 
 See also his "Apr^is le procfes" in Revue des Deux Mondes for 1898. 
 
 i«Cf. "G^nie dans I'art" in Revue des Deux Mondes for 1884. 
 
174 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 to this field. Ignorabimus he wrote large over the entrance to 
 it. But immediately that admission is made there is room for 
 a system of ethics which, above all, has objective standards of 
 conduct. When we postulate the impossibility of knowing the 
 causes of variation, there is need of the dogmas of Christianity. 
 It seems, at least to the outsider, an amazingly scholastic 
 syllogism; but, after all, the syllogism was the invention of 
 the scholastics. For variation is caused by chance, and chance 
 is only the name the eighteenth century coined for Providence. 
 Evolution makes us a mosaic of ancestral virtue and ancestral 
 vice — and that is essentially the doctrine of original sin. Here 
 is the basis of the Christian teaching, and we accept it because 
 its main achievement is to promise salvation at the cost merely 
 of repressing the evil influence of our natural origin. We have 
 to cease, in fact, to follow the reckless will-o'-the-wisp of individ- 
 ual desire. The main need of life is discipline, and we require 
 disciphne that social life may be possible. The worth of any 
 doctrine thus consists in its social utihty which Brunetilre 
 equates with its moraHty. But the demands of disciphne are 
 clearly order and unity; and order and unity can only be 
 acquired by the recognition of the worth of tradition.!^ For 
 tradition is the soul of a nation, the deposit of those traditions 
 whereby its hfe has been guided. More, it is even a national 
 protector, for it acts as a safeguard against the revolt of in- 
 consistency. To accept tradition is to accept something which 
 gives to life an objective logic, a guarantee against divergent 
 aims and contradictory desires. Because we need discipline 
 we must have tradition. But tradition is the twin-sister of 
 rehgion and gains therefrom the adequate sanction of self- 
 sacrifice. The one religion which rightly insists upon their 
 worth is Catholicism, and it was the hberal wing of the Catholic 
 party to which, accordingly, Bruneti^re offered his support."* 
 There is not an element in this doctrine which Bonald would 
 have failed to recognise. Its insistence on disciphne as the 
 safeguard against moral anarchy is only a more pleasing form 
 
 1" "Les Ennemis de I'Ami Erangaise" in the first series of the "Dis- 
 cours." 
 
 »« Cf. "Tradition et D^veloppement" in the "Annales de Phil. Chr.' 
 for 1906. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 175 
 
 of the emphasis laid by the earlier thinker on self-sacrifice. 
 And Bruneti^re in essence rejected Protestantism for exactly 
 the same reason as Bonald — that its foundations already im- 
 ply anarchy. It was for that reason that he denied the funda- 
 mental formula of Descartes, exactly as Bonald, a century be- 
 fore, had urged the worthlessness of metaphysics. Both 
 thinkers agreed that faith was the primary need — the willing- 
 ness to leap into the dark hinterland of mental action beyond 
 the limits justified by rationalist logic. And, like Bonald, this 
 attitude led him to turn to the church as the best instrument 
 of moral unity."' It would provide, in his view, the objective 
 criterion of conduct by the enunciation of its dogmas. He even 
 beKeved that freedom of thought would thereby be assisted, 
 since the thinker, having at his disposal an infallible test of 
 good, would have the assured means of right thought. It 
 would thus bring peace to men's souls, a refuge from the tor- 
 tures of uncertainty which drove the nineteenth century into 
 an acceptance of moral indifferentism. Here lay the supreme 
 merit of orthodoxy, that it gave life the integration of doctrinal 
 consistency. That, indeed, was the virtue de Maistre and 
 Bonald had claimed for their theories. They had been con- 
 fronted by an age of disruption, and they had found in infalli- 
 ble unity the only reHef from doubt. They had urged, as Brune- 
 ti^re urged, that without the sanctions of authority, the indi- 
 vidual soul is cast chartless on an unending ocean. It was 
 because he cared so deeply for right and wrong that he was 
 wilUng to enchain the reason of man; but he made the mistake 
 of his predecessors and identified his private theory of right 
 conduct with the public needs of his age. 
 
 His whole work, indeed, is a protest against democracy 
 simply because he has so overwhelming a sense of the dangers 
 of moral error. He deems the fabric of society so fragile that 
 he offers worship to the forces which, at whatever cost, have 
 prevented its overthrow. It is a philosophy that is unwilling 
 to take risks. It refuses all experiment of which the results 
 are not merely predetermined, but are also pronounced good 
 by a tribunal which faith has accepted as infaUible. But such 
 a theory can only end by taking things as they are as the ideal; 
 
 '" Cf. "AprSs uhe visite au Vatican" in "Questions Actuelles." 
 
176 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 for anything else would be out of accord with tradition, above 
 all, out of accord with the oldest of traditions which is his 
 own tribunal of enquiry. It matters, perhaps, but httle that 
 the progress of psychological science should run directly counter 
 to Brunetiere's ideas. What is mainly of importance is the 
 realisation that the pohtical imphcations of his thought are 
 the exclusion of liberty on the one hand, and of equality on the 
 other. It involves the exclusion of hberty because it insists 
 that men shall think only in directions pronounced good by 
 external enquiry. It thus takes no account of freedom of con- 
 science. Its standard of morals has reference only to the gen- 
 eral need. It sacrifices the individual to its sense of absorp- 
 tiveness. It involves the exclusion of equality because the 
 infallibility it confers upon its tribunal must inevitably be 
 extended to the men who operate it. 
 
 We declare, in fact, the divine right of Rome, and the only 
 equality men can then enjoy is the equahty of intellectual 
 servitude. It thus does more than release men from thought. 
 It is determinist in that its fundamental principles are already 
 known, and, as with Bonald, the only business of the thinker 
 is deduction. It demands the unity of power; and, thereby, it 
 asks from each of us exactly what the modern world has pro- 
 claimed its most priceless heritage. It is basically a static 
 philosophy. It puts the mind of men into leading-strings and 
 makes of Rome their driver. But it has been the whole lesson 
 of experience that the development of Roman doctrine is, for 
 the most part, a development forced from without; and by 
 universalising the dominion of Rome Brunetiere was, in effect, 
 erecting a barrier against intellectual advance."' That the 
 price of order can be too high seems never to have "crossed his 
 mind. Nor did he occupy himself with the problem of how 
 order was to be attained. Like Bonald, he seems to have taken 
 it for granted that there would be no period of transition from 
 the anarchy of which he complained to the unity he exalted. 
 He seemed satisfied that principles are accepted by the mere 
 fact of their enunciation. 
 
 But, after all, the first fundamental truth is the existence 
 of difference, and to ignore it is to avoid the central problem. 
 
 "' As he himself reaUsed. Cf. "Discours," 3rd series, p. 229. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 177 
 
 What Bruneti^re did was to repeat the error of his predecessor 
 and so to disUke his age as to misinterpret the conditions of 
 action. He failed to understand that the problem in moral as 
 in political life is a problem of guarantees. All that men are 
 willing to sacrifice to society is the lowest and not the highest 
 common factor of their intimate beliefs. For they are not 
 simply members of a herd; they are something more. They 
 are indiroiuals who are interested passionately [in themselves! 
 as_ an end, and no social philosophy can be adequate which 
 negfects'that eccentric element. That, indeed, is merely to 
 say that no social philosophy can be other than plurahstic. 
 Ragged and disjointed as a consequence it may be; and con- 
 tinually out of accord with venerable tradition. But this, 
 after all, is a ragged and disjointed world, and it continually 
 is guilty of unhistorical innovation. Sovereignty, in fact, has 
 necessarily to be distributed in order that the purposes of men 
 may be achieved. The test of their achievement, whether 
 moral or intellectual, or political, is not an immediate reference 
 to a permanent and external canon, but the consequences of 
 action in the elucidation and enrichment of life. It is this, 
 after all, which makes the loyalties of mien so diversified; for 
 they are bundles of conflicting aims."^ It is this too, at bot- 
 tom, which gives to the loose sovereignty of the democratic 
 state its ultimate justification: that alone of all governmental 
 conceptions it admits the adequate realisation of personality. 
 A theory which would sacrifice them to its cross-section of 
 logic is at once forced and unnatural. It has value, maybe, . 
 insofar as it throws light on the tendencies of the time; but 
 it is out of harmony with its inevitable direction. 
 
 X. THE TRADITIONALISM OF M. BOURGET 
 
 The work of M. Bourget is httle else than an assault upon the 
 foundations of the nineteenth century."' It is from an analysis 
 
 "* Cf. Mr. Lippman's note in The New Republic for April 14, 1917, and 
 my "Problem of Sovereignty," passim. 
 
 "° It is very difficult to particularise. But no one who reads "L'Etape" 
 and "Un Divorce" with the three volumes of "Etudes et Portraits" can 
 mistake the direction. There is a very clever attack on M. Bourget in 
 Jules Sageret's "Les Grands Convertis." See also V. Guiraud, op. oil., 
 and Parodi op. cit. 
 
178 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 of what he beUeves to be its character that he has come to the 
 acceptance of traditionaUst doctrine. Brought up in the school 
 of Renan and Taine/^" he has all their quasi-scientific precision 
 of statement and of temper. His startiijg-point has been the 
 disillusion they suffered after the events of 1870. They came 
 to believe that democracy was a political deception, and it was 
 upon the basis of their pessimism that Bourget has erected his 
 theory of aristocratic Catholicism. Its resemblance to the 
 ideas of Bonald is little less than startling; and, indeed, it is 
 important that M. Bourget should retain for him so striking 
 and peculiar an affection.^^i For him Bonald remains one of 
 the great masters of political science, and no one hats been more 
 responsible for the resuscitation of the earlier thinker. It is 
 Bonald, alone, moreover, who has surpassed him in his con- 
 tempt for the eighteenth century. To them both the Revolution 
 is the crystallisation of moral and political error. The Declara- 
 tion of the Rights of Man they both dismiss as a puerile exercise 
 in metaphysics."^ Both are contemptuous alike of logic and the 
 attempt to deduce a theory of politics from the abstract con- 
 ceptions of individualism. For M. Bourget has no confidence 
 in reason. For him it is an instrument of destruction, and he 
 goes back to instinct, tradition, prejudice, for the real sources 
 of events. He is uninterested in the idealism of the Revolution. 
 It seems to him so contrary to the facts it encounters that he 
 can have no patience with its. trifling. When he has described 
 the facts he has seen, he believes that he has been given the 
 vision of actual society, and it is in his personal inductions that 
 he has placed his confidence. M. Bourget, indeed, differs from 
 his predecessor in that he is able to clothe his doctrines in a form 
 of singular literary charm. He has at his command the specious 
 terminology of modern science,"' so that, often enough, what is 
 in truth no more than a plea can appear in the guise of a state- 
 ment. He never wanders far from reality, even if his reaUsm is 
 essentially selective. His work is a powerful polemic against 
 the democratic state. Just as Bonald composed his attack in 
 
 "» Cf. "Lettre Autobiographique." 
 
 '" Cf. "Etudes," III, 23 ff. 
 
 "'^ Cf. "Etudes," III, the essay on Le P6ril Primaire. 
 
 "' Cf. the curious first essay in the first volume of the "Etudes." 
 
AUTHORITY IX THE MODERN STATE 179 
 
 terms of the Revolution, so does M. Bourget express his attitude 
 in terms of parhamentary government. '^^ But the real defect 
 of Bonald's teaching was its completely subjective character. 
 He built a state on the power of his own order, and deemed that 
 he had thereby rendered service to the ideal. M. Bourget, 
 indeed, is less selfish; for his satisfaction with the bourgeoisie to 
 which, by truth, he belongs, goes no further than the admission 
 that it has its place in any scheme of political construction. 
 But not less than Bonald, his argument is at the service of his 
 desires ; and he has the less excuse tjian the earlier thinker sim- 
 ply because he did not write under the shadow of 1789. 
 
 No one, in fact, can study the work of Bourget without being 
 convinced that the recognition of certain temperamental char- 
 acteristics is fundamental to the understanding of his atti- 
 tude."^ If M. Bourget is not a snob, it is at any rate upon the 
 life of a leisured and cultivated aristocracy that he lavishes his 
 affections. There is no virtue with which he is not prepared to 
 endow it. Dehcacy of taste, beauty of person, fineness of per- 
 ception, clarity of insight — into the hereditary possession of these, 
 his aristocracy comes by the simple fact of birth. It alone 
 is capable of cultivating all that is rich and delicate in hfe. 
 Nothing is more bitter than Bourget's contempt for those who 
 would seek to usurp the functions of an aristocracy. His ple- 
 beians are always devoid of the quahties which can make them 
 acceptable as other than obedient subjects. They always end 
 miserably when they seek to raise themselves above their class. 
 For, by the mere fact of birth they are excluded from the full 
 understanding of elegance and refinement. The ordinary affairs 
 of commerce and agriculture — for these they are hereditarily 
 endowed. But for the larger spheres of life, social, political, 
 intellectual, they have no aptitude. Thus the real tragedy of 
 hfe is the exclusion of the men of talent from their rightful place 
 in the world. 
 
 It must, indeed, be confessed that the refinements of M. Bour- 
 get's aristocracy are a little exotic. Most of his aristocrats are 
 
 '" Cf. especially the "Crise du Parliamentarisme" in Vol. II of "Pages 
 de Critique." 
 
 ^^ On all this the earlier pages of M. Sageret's book are both apt and 
 amusing. 
 
180 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 a little weary, and they have drained the cup of life to the dregs. 
 So that they have need of that which will enable them to main- 
 tain existence in its proper perspective. It is thus that they 
 come to adopt the Catholic rehgion — as a kind of perfume for 
 the soul. It is thus, too, that they possess themselves of the mor- 
 al superiority which distinguishes their mind from that of the vul- 
 gar herd. For they wear their religion as a beautiful garment, 
 and they have none of the intense realisation of its presence by 
 which the lower classes deface it. Their acceptance of relig- 
 ion is largely a result of their world-weariness on the one hand, 
 and their recognition of its social utility on the other. They 
 accept it elegantly, in the spirit of an academician awarding a 
 prize of virtue. They do not trouble themselves with dogmas. 
 They do not, as German peasants have attempted, undermine 
 its social character. They recognise its function in the promo- 
 tion of social well-being, and they accept it out of duty to the 
 position they occupy. 
 
 For the f undamentaL fact in their character is the unique- 
 ness of their position. M. Bourget has continually insisted 
 that the virtues he extols in the aristocracy are pecuhar to 
 that class. They form an elite, a caste. Study the world of 
 politics or of industry, and those qualities are notably absent. 
 And their absence is the more notable since the one object of 
 the bourgeoisie is their cultivation. The simple 'act is that 
 nowhere is there present outside the aristocracy th6 milieu 
 appropriate to their development. And since it is clear that 
 these are the qualities demanded of a governing race, it is 
 obvious that the aristocracy, reinforced, he will admit, by the 
 upper class of the bourgeoisie, ought to have charge of govern- 
 ment. They alone have the faculties which will take from the 
 business of politics its modern uncleanliness. A class-strati- 
 fication of society, at once formal and fairly rigid, he deems 
 essential to its well-being. It is true, of course, that this class 
 does not rule today. It is true also that its qualities are de- 
 voted to any save poHtical ends; but that, after all, is the fault 
 of the system to which we submit. Such superior beings can- 
 not be expected to ask the suffrages of the mob, or to mingle 
 with the modern politician. It is true, indeed, that men may 
 
 i=« "Etudes," III, 264. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 181 
 
 be met who, though not of the aristocracy by birth, seem to 
 partake of its quaUty. They, however, are exceptional; and 
 the race from which they spring is rapidly exhausted by the 
 effort it expends in the production of such imitations. We 
 cannot erect a theory upon the chance fact. of their occasional 
 emergence. That would be to consider man as an individual 
 and to give him rights in virtue of his own personality. But 
 that is a doubly false conception. Social rights M. Bourget 
 denies; it is upon social duties that he lays his emphasis. It is 
 the duty of the aristocrat to accept luxury and refimement just 
 as it is the duty of the peasant to accept his lot to toil. They 
 accept it, because as individuals they are unimportant. The 
 main need is to promote the solidarity of society and that is 
 effected by the expression of its needs in terms of the family. 
 Now of that the individual is but part and his personal tastes 
 are thus insignificant. The fundamental fact, indeed, upon 
 which Bourget's system of ideas is founded is the denial of an 
 individual regime. For immediately we admit its claims we 
 remove the basis of a horizontal social structure. We cast 
 confusion into the state. Birth becomes unimportant. Culture 
 is a matter of purchase and sale. Competition becomes the 
 order of the day and an inelegant dynamic is the basis of the 
 state. But that is the basic error of which the nineteenth 
 century has been guilty. 
 
 It is clear enough — it is also unimportant — ^that such an 
 attitude is out of accord with the current of thought in our time. 
 But when M. Bourget left his romances to restate his social 
 theories in a more formal guise it was upon the basis of these 
 sentiments that he wrote. Nor did he fail to claim for his doc- 
 trine the benison of science. The fundamental virtue of Bonald, 
 he pointed out, was his reahsm. He based his theories on the 
 facts of social experience and his tremendous inductions have 
 thus the validation of Ufe. Such a method M. Bourget deemed 
 finely experimentalist in temper. He compared it to the dis- 
 coveries of Le Play, and, indeed, the researches of the latter 
 have long been annexed by the traditionahsts.^^' What M. 
 Bourget did not. understand was the simple truth that the im- 
 
 '" M. L6on de Montesquieu has, indeed, edited an anthology of Le 
 Play's writings on this principle. 
 
182 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 portant contribution, both of Bonald and of himself, is not the 
 facts collected, but the interpretation that is based on those 
 facts. Bonald may emphasise the excesses of the Revolution 
 just as M. Bourget himself insists on the deficiencies of parlia- 
 mentary democracy. But the problem does not end there. 
 There is a side to the Revolution which is not outrageous just 
 as there is a side to parliamentary government which is not 
 deficient. Where the scientific temper is not evident in the 
 work of either critic is in the modification of his observations 
 be facts which, however unwelcome, are still important. The 
 experimentalist method, if it is to be valid, must consist in an 
 accurate report of the experiment. 
 
 Nor is there more ground for satisfaction in the results of 
 the- enquiry, which, also, are for M. Bourget in accord with the 
 discoveries of science. They are summed up in a plea for re- 
 ligion, for aristocracy, and for monarchy. That is to say that 
 M. Bourget finds the real need of the nineteenth century to 
 consist in the destruction of its own achievement. Nor is he 
 at all uncomfortable in his denial of the Revolutionary assump- 
 tions. It is so easy to take its watchword as an abstraction 
 instead of as a programme, that M. Bourget considers it refuted 
 by the mere statement of the difficulties it encounters. Lib- 
 erty he identifies with anarchy. He cannot understand the 
 enthusiasm for its attainment. He seems to regard it as no 
 more than the product of the uncritical enthiisiasm of the 
 eighteenth century for individualist doctrine. But individu- 
 alism in only an endeavour to escape from the consequences 
 of the social bond, and he is thus happy in his right to dismiss 
 it. It is hostile to order and security. It shatters the exercise 
 of legitimate authority. Nor is he less confident about the 
 folly of equaUty."' This is obviously out of accord with the 
 facts of every day life. But the mistake of M. Bourget is to 
 think that equality is the expression of anything save an op- 
 portunity for the full development of personality. The study 
 of his own master, Taine, should have taught him that obvious 
 lesson. To proclaim that men are born equal is not in the teast 
 to proclaim, as M. Bourget would have us believe, that they 
 are born identical. Equahty so defined it is, of course, easy 
 
 ^'^ "Etudes," III, 140 ff. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 183 
 
 to scatter to the winds; and where it is absent there is no real 
 ground for fraternity. Brotherhood is bom of similarity of 
 function, and where there are the barriers of class, there is no 
 ground for its existence. So that when the Revolution has 
 been thus dismissed, it is at last possible to attempt the re- 
 construction of a France which has been untrue to herself. 
 
 To M. Bourget, indeed, the whole problem is as simple as 
 an algebraic equation, with the consequence that his work has 
 all the specious exactitude characteristic of Taine. The life of 
 a nation is its tradition. That has in it elements of truth. But 
 M. Bourget would use the tradition of France as a dogma and 
 he will not allow the nineteenth century to form any part of 
 it. For him, indeed, tradition is not a living thing, but a series 
 of dead, inert principles to the logic of which the national life 
 must be chained. The tradition of France is monarchical, 
 regional, catholic, aristocratic.'*' So at least it is if one neglects 
 its history since the Revolution. But that M. Bourget will do 
 without difficulty because the nineteenth century has been a 
 century of novel experiment and he is dissatisfied with its 
 results. Disorder, individualism, scepticism, corruption, these 
 have resulted from the adoption of the Revolutionary ideals; 
 and M. Bourget is unsparing in his denunciation of their 
 source.'^" Disorder is bad because only in stability can se- 
 curity be found. Individuahsm is contrary to the obvious 
 structure of society. Scepticism is evil because the nature of 
 the social bond demands the sanction of religion if it is to oper- 
 ate at all adequately. Corruption is the clear consequence of 
 the method a democratic society must evqjve for its govern- 
 ance. It is the natural result of a parliamentary regime and 
 to him this is the head and centre of disaster. Legislation is 
 passed in haste to suit the transient whim of the electorate. 
 The most sacred rights of society are lightly violated. Promises 
 are wantonly made and as wantonly broken. Personalities 
 replace principles, and national institutions are dishonourably 
 perverted to private ends. Party spirit replaces pubhc spirit. 
 The only fruit of universal suffrage is the pathetic manipula- 
 
 1'" Cf. his letter to M. Maurras in the "EnquSte," and the latter's com- 
 ment. 
 
 '6" "Pages de Doctrine," Vol. II, 52 ff. 
 
184 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 tion of the electorate. The pretended estabhshment of self- 
 government brings with it only the erection of a sinister oli- 
 garchy the more dangerous because it is invisible. The elective 
 system fails to pick out those who can best serve the interests 
 of the state. Argument is stifled by the development of a 
 colossal bureaucratic machine. Within the chamber, talk has 
 replaced action. The purely idle belief in equality has resulted 
 in the withdrawal of the most capable from public Hfe. The 
 vital elements of the state, in short, are poisoned at their 
 source. Heroic remedies are essential if so terrible a malady 
 is to be counteracted. 
 
 It is, of course, undeniable that there has been a decline in 
 the parliamentary life of democracies in the last quarter of a 
 century. That has been true not merely of France but of every 
 country in the old world and the new. But where Bourget's 
 criticism is erroneous is in his suggestion that it is the root idea 
 of democracy which is mistaken. The real truth is rather that 
 we are working with a machinery adapted to deal with a civili- 
 sation immensely less complex than our own. It is only in our 
 time that the full fruit of the Industrial Revolution has been 
 gathered. Only since 1870 has it been fundamentally necessary 
 for the state to relate itself to industrial problems. The decline 
 in the parliamentary life of France is the decline that is natural 
 to an organisation hampered by a multitude of uimecessary 
 business. France has had to deal with constitutional problems, 
 the Separation, the problem of administrative efficiency, a 
 vast revolution in foreign policy, a new era in the history of 
 labour. The whol§ centre of her life has been readjusted at the 
 very moment when the mechanism of government has been 
 most inadequate. But there is certainly not perceptible a 
 dechne in the quahty of French life. Rather does the outsider 
 see a gain in sohdity and effectiveness. Her pohtical thought 
 has never been richer, i^i Her economic ideas have rarely been 
 so profuse. Her literary achievements have been immense. 
 The condition of her people has been vastly improved. And 
 beyond the traditionalist group of which M. Bourget is so 
 
 "' It is hardly necessary to mention names. But the work of Duguit, 
 of Geny, of Paul-Boncour, of Leroy and of Hauriou constitutes an achieve- 
 ment of which any nation might well be proud. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 185 
 
 effective a sponsor, it does not seem that there have been any 
 doubts of democracy. 
 
 Certain new truths, indeed, France has been compelled to 
 learn. We have too long regarded the discovery of represen- 
 tative government as a panacea, and nothing is today so greatly 
 needed as new methods of administration. It is undeniable 
 that what is vaguely termed the general will of society does not 
 find complete expression either in governments or in legisla- 
 tures; we are simply forced to the realisation that majority 
 government cannot be the last word on our problems.!*^ The 
 real crux of the democratic difficulty is the fact that political 
 power is divined from economic power. Wherein representa- 
 tive government has been supremely successful is in the se- 
 curing of general political rights in which rich and poor alike 
 have been interested; but once the transition has been made 
 from political rights to economic interest the basic sectional- 
 ism of society has been apparent to anyone who has had the 
 patience to observe the facts. What has happened is simply 
 a growing consciousness on the part of the workers that the 
 concepts of democracy are as applicable to industry as to poli- 
 tics, and we have lived in the time of criticism and unrest which 
 is naturally symptomatic of the search for a new synthesis."' 
 But the orientation of the problem is as different as possible 
 from that which M. Bourgefhas given it. He is so obsessed 
 by the political vices of democracy that he has neglected 
 altogether their real source. He has failed entirely to see that 
 capitalism on the one hand and the present form of parlia- 
 mentary government on the other are nothing so much as 
 historic categories which disappear when they have served their 
 purposes. In the result the solution he suggests reads less like 
 an answer to our questions than an interesting survival from 
 an ancient time. 
 
 He demands a monarchy."^ One of the follies of democracy 
 
 '«2 Cf. Berth's articles cited above. M'a "National Being" is an impor- 
 tant landmark in this connection. Cf . The New Republic, Vol. X, p. 270 
 and the first chapter of my "Problem of Sovereignty." 
 
 '" Of which M. Paul-Boncour in his "F^d^ralisme Economique" 
 (1901) has brilliantly sketched the outlines. Cf. also Maxima Leroy's 
 'Transformations de la Puissance Publique."' 
 
 1** On all this M. Maurras' "Enqudte" is fundamental. 
 
186 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 is its distribution of power of which the only consequence is 
 its nullification. But M. Bourget has only to study history to 
 see that the distribution of power is only the expression of cer- 
 tain social facts which are inherent in the nature of society. 
 It may be true, as he says, that monarchy unifies that power; 
 but that is exactly why monarchy is more and more rejected 
 as a form of active government by intelligent men. It may 
 stand as the symbol of the national soul;, but it stands as the 
 symbol of the national soul only in its antiquarian moments. 
 The self-interest of. monarchy may demand, as M. Bourget 
 claims, that it serve the national well-being. But the test here 
 must be historical and it is precisely because of its failure so 
 to validate itself that the monarchical solution has been re- 
 jected. Supple it may be; but there are other forms of gov- 
 ernment no less capable of elasticity. M. Bourget, indeed, 
 would urge that if the monarch be deceived error, after all, is 
 inherent in all human endeavour. He suggests that the very 
 elevation of the monarch's position, his dynastic interests, 
 will make his evasion of error the more essential as his responsi- 
 bility is the greater. He finds in the monarchy the power of 
 selection in which democracy has so signally failed. For what 
 is here necessary is continuity which implies the removal of 
 certain families from the mass of the people that they may serve 
 the state. The corollary of his monarchy, in fact, is aristoc- 
 racy — not, indeed, closed to external access. The man of the 
 people will be permitted to ascend above his station, but he 
 must demonstrate his right and not assume it. Here he goes 
 back to the ideal of the ancien regime and finds in a hierarchy 
 of classes to each of which its functions are attached the true 
 method of social distribution. Of course it goes without saying 
 that the members of his aristocracy will be rightly chosen. In 
 mind and attitude, in taste and in desire, they will have all 
 that goes to the making of a brilliant civihsation. Such quali- 
 ties it must possess since, otherwise, it will prove unacceptable. 
 Criticism of such demands is as unnecessary as criticism of 
 Bonald's ideas. Nor is it easy to have sympathy with. Bour- 
 get's plea for a restoration of the Catholic system. It is, of 
 course, true that Catholicism is social and orderly and mystic. 
 It would assist his political schemes in that it has no room for 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 187 
 
 divergent belief. It acts as the consolidation of faith. It ex- 
 alts the heart over the head; and Bourget, Hke Bonald, has 
 no doubt that what comes from the Catholic heart is noble. 
 He demands the Catholic religion as a safeguard against the 
 disruptiveness of rationalism."^ It will provide men with a 
 sanction of self-sacrifice. Its hierarchical organisation makes 
 it well fitted to stand sponsor for the monarchical idea. It is 
 zealous for authority, it has continuity, it has discipline. For 
 the purpose of protecting his antiquarian state he could hardly 
 have chosen better. But the very choice is simultaneously 
 demonstrative of M. Bourget's failure to understand his age. 
 The glamour of the theocracy he postulates no longer haunts 
 the minds of men. The worship of unity is dead. The oneness 
 we seek is the oneness of effort and not of purpose. We are 
 not willing to set conditions to men's dreams. We are not de- 
 sirous of returning to the orthodoxy of medieval time. Tolera- 
 tion has been the parent of hberalism, and liberaHsm has effec- 
 tively destroyed conceptions of society which leave no room for 
 its innumerable variations of form and desire. With the power 
 that monarchy implies we cannot trust any man in so complex 
 a civilisation. We cannot mark off class from class in face of 
 the social and biological evidence we possess. M. Bourget has 
 to account for the structure of American society and the trans- 
 formation of the English aristocracy before we can accept his 
 static theories. ^^' The invitation he issues to intolerance an 
 age which finds its surest guarantee of progress in the freedom 
 of the mind dare not for a moment consider. Loisy in France, 
 Tyrell in England, stand out as the achievements of a democ- 
 racy which has rejected the moral guarantees a rigid Catholi- 
 cism has proffered."' It is otherwhere we shall search for new 
 hopes. 
 
 XI. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VARIETY 
 
 So we are led to the rejection of unity. And it is worth while 
 to emphasise the grounds upon which we reject iti That for 
 
 '"5 Cf. "Pages de Critique," Vol. II, p. 110 ff. 
 
 "«The illogical character of his "Outre -Mer" is one of the strangest of 
 M. Bourget's many inconsistencies; for the aristocracy he found there 
 is barely fifty years old. 
 
 1'' Cf . the essay on Lamennais below. 
 
188 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 which we are concerned is the preservation of individuali 
 It is fifty years since John Stuart Mill pointed out its relati 
 to human improvement. ^^^ Certainly if there is one truth 
 which all history bears witness it is that unity is the parent 
 identity. But it is almost an equal commonplace that wh 
 men seek the ease and sloth of uniformity they are, in fact, 
 unconsciously, attaining the bitterness of stagnation. That v 
 the error of the Eastern world. It was the secret which' t 
 great thinkers of Greece taught us by their example to avo 
 It is particularly important at this hour to prevent so gra 
 a disaster. Democracy has made termendous progress in t 
 generation. But the destruction of social and poHtical pri 
 lege has a fatal tendency to extend itself into the sphere 
 mind. It is, indeed, difficult for a state at once to acce 
 difference of opinion and to be effective as a striking ur 
 But that, after all, is the price we pay for our achievement 
 freedom. Nor is it unessential to insist upon its worth. "Me 
 kind," says Mill in a famous sentence,"' "speedily becoi 
 unable to conceive diversity when they have been for some tii 
 unaccustomed to see it." To establish the singleness of poh 
 cal sovereignty is certainly to assist in its suppression. Poli 
 cal reality is never at bottom single, and there is no ri§ 
 purpose in its coercion to unity. Let the mind once bow its 
 to that yoke, and truth, at a bound, is sacrificed to comfo 
 Thus to submit to the pressure of a peace that must inevital 
 be temporary is, indeed, the subtlest form of self-indulgen 
 Thought is by nature revolutionary, and to the consequer 
 of a great idea it is obvious we can set no limit. But, after i 
 thought is the one weapon of tried utility in a difficult a 
 complex world. If it is to be effective we must place power 
 its hands; for to withdraw from it the means, of active exerti 
 is to blunt its effort after good. Therein, it is clear, the d 
 tribution of sovereignty is involved. Yet the forces that ma 
 against our progress are so great that it is hardly less th 
 treason to our heritage thus to deprive ourselves of what sei 
 ice thought may render. Nothing, at any rate, is so certi 
 to make our corporate life devoid of its richness and it's elevatii 
 
 "8 "Liberty," Chapter III. 
 
 ^^^ Ibid. (Everyman's ed.), p. 131. 
 
CHAPTER THREE 
 
 LAMENNAIS 
 I. THE PROBLEM OF LAMENNAIS 
 
 THE enigma of Lamennais remains still a problem for those 
 who seek to probe the secret of the human mind.' The 
 winds of controversy that so sorely swept his troubled 
 life even yet are far from stilled. To many, he remains the arch- 
 apostate of the nineteenth century; and to them, his abandon- 
 ment of beliefs for which he had at one time so stoutly fought 
 is, without exception, the greatest treason of which we have 
 evidence.^ He did not, like Newman, live to receive the homage 
 of his friends, even while he retained the respect of those who 
 rejected his philosophic outlook. He did not, like Tyrrell, 
 create in his death a reformation of which, even now, the con- 
 sequence can be but dimly conceived. It was by hard and 
 tortuous thought that he abandoned the beliefs of his youth; 
 and those on whose affection his life had been founded, left him 
 to an end of which the proud courage could not conceal the 
 lonely despair.' 
 
 There is a sense, indeed, in which his career is little less than 
 the mirror of his age. For the course of his life represents not 
 merely the reaction of Cathohcism from the destructive assault 
 of the French Revolution, but also the dawning perception in 
 the minds of able men that when due rejection of its errors has 
 been achieved, it still embodied political truth which is funda- 
 mental to the creative understanding of modern life.' The high- 
 priest of the Cathohc reaction, it was his fortune, partly, no 
 
 ' I have appended to this essay a critical note on the more important 
 discussions of Lamennais. 
 
 2 Cf. Guillon, "Histoire de la Nouvelle Hdrfeie du XIX me siScle," and 
 the work of Lamennais' friend, Gerbet, "Reflexions, sur la chute deM.de 
 Lamennais'' (1838). Lacordaire's "Notice sur le r^tablissment en France 
 de I'ordre des Fr^res Prgcheurs, " p. 68 f. is in the same tone. 
 
 ' Cf. the comment of the Duchesse de Dino, " . . . . et I'abb^ de 
 Lamennais qui meurt comme un pauvre chien aveugle." Chronique, Vol. 
 IV, p. 159. (3 March 1854). 
 
 •• The paper below on Royer-CoUard endeavours to illustrate this thesis. 
 
190 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 doubt, by what he wrote, but, above all, by what he was and 
 what he symbolised, to forge the mightiest weapon in its undoing 
 By an intellectual evolution of which it is difficult to deny the 
 logic, ^ he came to argue that all for which in his earlier days he 
 had stood as so passionately the protagonist, was out of accord 
 with the need of his time. Little enough is left now of the great 
 edifice he so laboriously constructed. Pages, indeed, there are 
 in his work of which Renan said* that no more brilliant anthol- 
 ogy exists than that which could be gathered from it. But his 
 books are no longer read ;' for they were written essentially f oi 
 a series of specific situatioBS and the great work he dreamed of 
 writing he did not live to complete. 
 
 Yet he remains as the champion of two mighty causes which 
 still battle for the empire of the mind. The eternal struggle 
 between order and liberty has received no more arresting em- 
 bodiment than in his own febrile and tormented soul. The 
 memory that remains not even the dull weight of time can, in 
 the result, deprive of its fascination. He strove to answer prob- 
 lems of which we are still searching the solution. If we now 
 state them differently, their fundamental content has in no 
 sense been altered. That he wrote in an age before theology 
 had been made scientific^ has in no wise disturbed the basic 
 principles of his plea. That he did not grasp the true basis of 
 the democratic faith hardly weakens the argument he made on 
 its behalf. He stood at the parting between two worlds. He 
 strove to arrest the onset of forces he was at the last driven to 
 recognise as irresistible. It is the dramatic quality of his chal- 
 lenge to those whom he had so splendidly led which gives him 
 in the nineteenth century a place at once exceptional and im- 
 portant. He dare not be forgotten so long as men are wilKng to 
 examine the principles upon which their life is founded. For 
 few have faced so courageously the difficulties of existence. 
 None has suffered more nobly in the effort to confound them. 
 
 * Cf. Janet, "Philosophie de Lamennais," p. 56 f. 
 
 ' "Essais de Morale et de critique." M. Mar^chal has edited such an 
 anthology for his strictly ultramontane years. 
 
 ' Most of them are now unprocurable except by accident. 
 
 * Renan has emphasised the significance of his lack of a critical spirit. 
 "Essais de Morale et de Critique," p. 154. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 191 
 
 II. THE CHURCH IN THE NAPOLEONIC AGE 
 
 He had grown to manhood in the most complex and troubled 
 age the church had known since the cataclysm of the sixteenth 
 century. If the papacy had refused to make of itself the un- 
 questioning instrument of Napoleon's purpose, it could not 
 withstand the fury of his onset. He had proclaimed himself the 
 protector of the ideas of 1682,' and the principles of clerical 
 nationalism were invoked to justify an Erastian regime. Napo- 
 leon, in fact, looked upon the church as no more than an effective 
 pohtical weapon,'" and thereby he gave to ultramontanism a 
 new reason for existence. A church which lay at the heel of a 
 miUtary adventurer must search out afresh the foundations of 
 its being. The localism upon which it had built so much seemed, 
 in the result, likely to prove fatal to its sense of tradition and 
 of personality. It was not unnatural that those who were at- 
 tached to it by the closest of personal ties should turn from the 
 old GalUcan theories to principles which seemed to give it a 
 wider basis for its claim to freedom. Sons of France its priests 
 might be: but, above all, they were citizens of a religious so- 
 ciety. To own allegiance to one who persecuted their church 
 was to admit that the ecclesiastical power was inferior to the 
 secular. But that involved the betrayal of a fundamental 
 tradition. It seemed, too, to suggest that the events of which 
 Napoleon was the symbol had won from them an adherence 
 that was logically impossible.'^ They dare not reconcile them- 
 selves with the Revolution.'^ Many of them it had sent to the 
 scaffold; many were in exile. Of those who remained in France 
 not the least part had refused to take oaths which seemed to 
 them the denial of their faith. For them, the church was itself 
 a state, and they would not bargain over the nature of their 
 citizenship with an organisation hostile to its purposes. And 
 of that revolution. Napoleon was the heir. If he had restored 
 a clerical order, it was clear that he did not love it. The Pope 
 
 ' Nielsen, "History of the Papacy in the XlXth Century," I, 317. 
 
 '» Ibid., I, 223 f. 
 
 " Cf. the speech of J'ius VI printed in Theiner's "Documents," I, p. 1 f. 
 
 " In this aspect it is important to remember that the Concordat of 1801 
 was in truth an ultramontane victory and was generally so regarded. Cf . 
 Debidour, "L'Eglise et L'Etat," p. 210 f. 
 
192 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 was a prisoner in his hands. Many of the cardinals were 
 captivity; and those who stood by his purposes were no mo 
 than the weak creatures of his defiant ambition. ^^ What, aboi 
 all, Napoleon taught the church was the impossibility of r 
 maining a function of the state. It must work out again tl 
 principles of its freedom. It must re-establish its separatene 
 that it might regain its purity. A church could not claim cat] 
 olicity if it became the instrument of a single and jealous powe 
 Nor did Napoleon render it the homage of an unique affectioi 
 To Jew and Catholic, to Protestant and Mohammedan 1 
 proffered his goodwill indifferently. But in the credo of th 
 Roman Church such toleration found no place. A new syi 
 thesis was required if it was to be true to its ancient heritage. 
 
 So it was that men began to turn their minds to the task ( 
 its reconstruction. In that mission which was in truth the mof 
 tragic of exiles, De Maistre was forging the new weapons of 
 regenerated papacy." Bonald had already asserted in h 
 tremendous, if tedious syllogisms, the old dogmas of the ancier 
 conflict between Rome and an earlier empire. The new uMu 
 montanism, indeed, was no more than a different aspect of th 
 old. Nor was what it preached absent from the hearts of thov 
 sands, even if the iron hand of Napoleon's crafty ministe 
 stifled it at the utteraince." But de Maistre and Bonald wei 
 concerned less with the church than with the state. If eac 
 adopted the theocratic solution it was not because they realisec 
 a priori, that the starting-point of inquiry must be the rightnes 
 of ecclesiastical control. They approached the problem a 
 statesmen, and their establishment of the papal sovereignt 
 was, for them, less a principle than an induction. It was froi 
 the tremendous experience of an age so full as to make th 
 previous generation already antiquity that they went back t 
 Rome as to the parent of all social order. They urged the neces 
 sity of an ultramontane policy rather as an effective supplf 
 ment to other means than as itself the basis of all things. Loj 
 
 " Though Maury, of course, had great talents. 
 
 " I have discussed De Maistre's solution of the problem of tlie Revi 
 lution in the previous volume of these studies. 
 
 " For Fouchd's work as censor see D'Haussonville, "L'Eglise Romaii 
 et le premier Empire," passim. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 193 
 
 alty to, and passion for its splendor they of course in no sense 
 lacked. But what was needed was a philosopher who should 
 speak in the name of the Church, and deny the principles of the 
 Revolution solely as the servant of its claims. If Bonald and 
 de Maistre served that end, it was the accident of good fortune 
 rather than of design. But it was in the name of the Church 
 that Lamennais came to do battle with the Revolution, to deny 
 its principles and to refute its purposes. He came to vindicate 
 the church from the trammels of state-control. For secular 
 politics he had no interest. It was religion alone which held 
 his allegiance. With the state, with Napoleon, he in no con- 
 scious sense concerned himself,'^ save insofar as they affected 
 the subject of his enquiry. How to regain for the church her 
 ancient sway over the minds of men, — this and this only was 
 his problem. It was in the answer he made that he created the 
 Roman Church of the nineteenth century. 
 
 He was a child of the Breton country, and his family inherited 
 the simple loyalties of that primitive race.^' But Lamennais, 
 from the outset, was different. His temperament was morose, 
 and the fits of nervous anger to which he was liable account, 
 in some sort, for the solitude of his childhood. Books and the 
 sea were his main companions, and to the end of his life he 
 retained a passionate affection for the wild coast of Brittany. 
 Away from it, indeed, he was never really happy, and once, in 
 Paris, he compared himself to those exiles who sat down in 
 ancient days by Babylonian waters.'* He read much and 
 widely; and it is difficult to doubt that his early acquaintance 
 with Rousseau and Voltaire must in some degree have influ- 
 enced his mind." His own theories on education, indeed, show 
 distinct traces of the influence of Emile;^" but the pressure of 
 events must have effaced the early impression of such dis- 
 turbing thoughts. It was to his family that priests fled from 
 the persecutions of the Jacobins, and in their house that they 
 
 " Note, however, the eulogistic passage in the "Reflexions sur I'Etat de 
 I'EgUse," p. 21. 
 
 " Lamennais's ancestry has been copiously studied by M. Mar6chal in 
 his "La famille de Lamennais" (1913). 
 
 " SpuUer, "Lamennais," p. 27. 
 
 "Cf. Duine, "Notes de Lamennais" (1907). 
 
 '"' "Correspondance" (ed. Forgues), i, 61. 
 
194 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 celebrated, at dead of night a mass the more sweet because i 
 was surrounded by danger.^^ It is not difficult to understan 
 how firm an impression such scenes should have imprinted o 
 his mind; nor can one hesitate to trace to them the secret c 
 his hatred for the Revolution and its works. 
 
 But though he was deeply attached to the Cathohc faith, h 
 did not shrink from questioning it; and it was not until the ag 
 of twenty-two that he made his first communion.^^ That th 
 erosion of his doubts was mainly the work of his brother it i 
 not difficult to assume; and once they had passed Lamennai 
 was able to accept the dogmas of his faith not merely in ful 
 sincerity but with some surprise that he had ever doubtfii 
 them.^^ But that early hesitation is important, because i 
 shows that his attachment to Catholicism was never unthinking 
 If, at the behest of his brother, he plunged into the bottomles 
 abyss of theological apologetics, he still, even at this time, hai 
 a deep affection for Plato and Malebranche, for Cicero anc 
 Montaigne. We know too. little, indeed, of these early year 
 to do more than vaguely guess at their intellectual nature.^ 
 Royahst he was, of course, by inheritance. Cathohc he couk 
 not fail to be in the sense that he accepted it as superior to al 
 other rehgions. Yet there is no trace of fanaticism in his atti 
 tude, and the one certain passion which these years evoked wa: 
 a hatred of the University in no degree traceable to any savi 
 personal causes.^^ The real starting-point of his rehgious adven 
 ture came in 1807 when he went with his brother to the httl 
 house at La Chenaie which was their joint inheritance. Jeai 
 Lamennais had only one object in life, the service of his church 
 and his indefatigable energy spurred on the undertaking of i 
 common task. The result was the appearance, in 1808, of i 
 joint-work on the condition of the Church. That is the trui 
 beginning of his career as a servant of ultramontanism. 
 
 We do not, of course, know how much of this early work i 
 
 21 Cf. SpuUer, op. cit., p. 35. 
 
 ^^ The story of these early difficulties is fuUy traced in Marshal, "L 
 Jeunesse de Lamennais," pp. 31-87. 
 
 25 Cf. Laveille, "Vie de J. M. de Lamennais,"' I, 47-8. 
 
 ^ One cannot help feeling that M. Mar6chal's fine book is marred exactl; 
 by this assumption of a logical sequence in Lamennais's ideas. 
 
 2* Spuller, op. cit., p. 67. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 196 
 
 the product of Lamennais' own thought. That it enshrines 
 much hard work on the part of his brother is clearly unques- 
 tionable; and in the fact that Lamennais himself refused it a 
 place in his collected works,^^ is perhaps evidence that he did 
 not regard himself as its principal author.^' Certain it is, how- 
 ever, that it contains no doctrine which he would in his Catholic 
 days have disavowed. Already its one clear effort is for the 
 advancement of the church. Already he has a vivid sense of 
 its corporate independence. Just as the experience of political 
 pressure led Newman to the passionate denunciation of Eras- 
 tianism,^ so does Lamennais' dislike of ecclesiastical subjection 
 lead him to demand an extensive cleric freedom. He stands 
 at the outset as the avowed champion of its extreme claims, 
 and he seems to enter the list as a knight who will encounter 
 all adversaries with gladness. It is not a book of criticism but 
 of assertion. It does not argue; it only pretends to refute. 
 It is simply a statement of principles made on the assumption 
 that they are axiomatic in character. It attacks the heresies 
 from which the church has suffered. It paints in vehement 
 colours the evils of hberty of thought.'" It derides, almost with 
 passion, the incompetence of the human mind. The whole 
 achievement of the eighteenth century is dismissed with bitter 
 contempt. The church is pictured as standing where it stood 
 after the civil wars of the sixteenth century. What is needed 
 is a new effort after freedom. The church must be released 
 from the meddHng of Jansenist magistrates.^" There must be 
 an end of the deadly egoism of the philosophers." What can 
 be hoped where the Revolution has spoiled, and the Directory 
 persecuted.'^ If with Napoleon the Concordat has come that 
 is the beginning and not the end of virtue.'' Not until the 
 church is restored to the fullness of omnicompetent power is 
 
 "« "Correspondence" (ed. Forgues), i, 10. 
 
 " This would seem the net result of M. Mar^chal's laborious researches 
 Cf. his "Jeunesse de Lamennais," Bk II, Ch. 1, 
 " Cf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," Ch. III. 
 " "Reflexions," p. 49. 
 «» Ibid., p. 59 f . 
 " Ibid., 46-59. 
 « Ibid., 67-90. 
 " Ibid., 95-100. 
 
196 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 there real hope for its future. What is needed is a regenerated 
 clergy which, now that the storm shows signs of passing, can 
 attempt the work of reconstruction. The life of the church 
 must be renewed in all its richness. The corporate vigour of 
 its institutions must be restored.^* In scholarship and in 
 education it must resume its leadership and its control.^^ The 
 enemies are indifference and atheism, and without knowledge 
 they cannot be combated. ^^ The book is clearly a programme; 
 and it is interesting to note how admirably it fits into the effort 
 of his liberal years. But it is also, on the whole, a moderate 
 book, nor does it, save by implication, attack the Napoleonic 
 settlement. Rather does it, not without much shrewdness, 
 suggest the inevitable hnes upon which that settlement must 
 develop. Congregations are to be increased, missions are to 
 be multiphed, the faith more stoutly avowed. He was propos- 
 ing, in fact, a church that should be worthy of the empire. 
 But that innovation must have been unacceptable to the im- 
 perial plans; for the book was confiscated by the police imme- 
 diately on its appearance; The Pope had just hurled his 
 excommunication at the empire, and it was no time to think 
 of Cathohc freedom.^^ 
 
 It is probably from that confiscation that Lamennais' hatred 
 of Galhcanism is perhaps most certainly to be traced. It 
 suggested to him that a strong church was not desirable to the 
 emperor. Napoleon desired to keep it in its chains; and he 
 boasted of their connection with the national tradition.'* La- 
 mennais could then but draw the conclusion that the result of 
 Gallicanism was the subjection of the church, and that only in 
 its abandonment could freedom be found. There is not, it is 
 true, anything in the "Reflexions" directly incompatible with 
 Galilean doctrine. But the events of Napoleon's last years 
 were to force Lamennais to the conviction that a free church 
 must henceforth mean a Roman church, and he did not hesi- 
 tate to draw the inference. It is in the fight of this attitude 
 
 "Ibid., 116-34. 
 ^^Ibid., 134-42. 
 ''lUd., 142-50. 
 " Debidour, op. cit. 263. 
 "/bid., 275. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 197 
 
 that the study of episcopal origins is probably to be explained. 
 The difficulties over the papal confirmation of Napoleon's 
 nominees to the vacant bishoprics'^ gave to such an effort a 
 peculiar importance. For to show the direct dependence of 
 the bishops upon Christ is to argue, even if tacitly, that imperial 
 interference is without justification. Apostolic succession in- 
 volves apostolic independence; and Lamennais can urge that 
 when the edifice of freedom is threatened, the time is not ripe 
 for concession to the civil power;^" The church must revolve 
 on her own axis, and that the more proudly because of her 
 divine origin. The two worksj though they excited but little 
 comment — Lamennais himself complains of the indifference 
 with which they were received^' — nevertheless are important 
 in that they reveal a thought that is already formed. They 
 did not, indeed, bring him reputation; nor did they still the 
 tormenting doubt of his vocation which still caused him deep 
 concern.*^ But they gave him a sense of his powers and were 
 to prove the stimulus to further effort. 
 
 He had, already, in 1809, been received into minor orders, 
 but he found no comfort in the thought of his priesthood. 
 Already his letters are full of that bitter sadness from which 
 he never obtained release.^' "II n'y a plus pour moi," he wrote," 
 "d' autre saison que la saison des tempites;" and the thought 
 was truer than he could then have conceived. He was uncer- 
 tain of his career. Moments of confidence were succeeded by 
 long periods of hesitation in which thinking and reading were 
 alike impossible.^^ The earnest efforts of his friends could 
 bring no peace to his agitated mind. In 1812, he seemed de- 
 cided that the final step must be taken ;^^ but he could not 
 bring himself to act upon it. Meanwhile he continued to write. 
 In 1814, he pubUshed, just before the Hundred days a passion- 
 
 '9 Ibid., 265-8. 
 
 " Cf. Blaize, "Oeuvres In^dites de Lamennais," I, 108. 
 
 " SpuUer, op. cit., p. 55. 
 
 « Blaize, op. cit. I, 106. 
 
 " Cf. the pathetic letter printed in Roussel, "Lamennais," I, 22 f. 
 
 " Blaize, op. cit., I, 107. 
 
 « IhU., I, 89. 
 
 "Forgues, "Correspond." I, xvi. 
 
198 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 ate attack on the university as a servile instrument of the state. 
 He re-edited the "Tradition de TEghse" and made it the 
 occasion of a vehement attack upon the emperor.^' He dreamed 
 of a journal which should support the papal cause. ^* He 
 thought of spending his days with his brother in perpetual 
 collaboration.*^ But the mood soon passed. Even the Res- 
 toration gave him no pleasure; it was but the exchange of a 
 strong tyrant for a feeble despot.^" He disliked the antagonism 
 of the Gallican bishops to Rome.*^ Ultramontanism seemed to 
 him the one sure means of restoring Cathohcism to its rightful 
 position in France. So he re-edited his "Reflexions" in such a 
 manner as to make more evident its Roman bias. A clergy 
 with its own means of subsistence obeying only the sovereign 
 and inf alHble pontiff seems to him now the one sure means of 
 success.^2 It was the begining of that tremendous assault which 
 sought to rewin for Rome the ancient dominion she had lost. 
 
 But the dream was not to last. Napoleon suddenly returned 
 from Elba, and Lamennais, convinced that he was in personal 
 danger, fled to England. He found httle consolation there. His 
 friendship with the abb6 Carron, indeed, strengthened his reso- 
 lution to enter the priesthood,^' and he seems even to have 
 thought of a missionary enterprise in America. But Napoleon's 
 efi^ort was broken into pieces at Waterloo; and Lamennais' 
 return to France made his path inevitable. 
 
 But it was with a bitter heart that he strengthened himself 
 for the last step. There is in his letters no sign of any gladness, 
 no admission of any satisfaction. Rather does it seem to have 
 been a response to the urgency of his friends. If it caused him 
 anguish, they seemed even happy that he should be thus given 
 so splendid an opportunity of self-sacrifice.^* He was almost 
 dragged to the altar by his brother and the abb6 Carron; and 
 
 ■" See esp. "Tradit.," II, 306-8. M. Margchal places their composition in 
 1813. "Jeunesse de Lamennais," p. 423. 
 
 " Blaize, i, 136. 
 
 " Blaize, I, 168. 
 
 ''"Ibid., I, 150. 
 
 "76id., 1, 170. 
 
 52 "Reflexions'' (ed. of 1814), p. 96. 
 
 '2 Blaize, op. cil., I, 215. 
 
 " lUd., I, 259. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 199 
 
 there is no single fact to contradict the view that his decision 
 was in truth wrung from him against his will.'^ Nor is it less 
 certain that for him the step seemed to end all prospect of his 
 happiness.^" But it was, at any rate, a decision, and from the 
 knowledge that it was irrevocable he may have derived some 
 comfort. Henceforth, he was dedicated to the church and it 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 convince himself, that he took up with vigour his old po- 
 lemic. A new era had dawned for France; and it might be 
 that he could shape it to his purposes. 
 
 HI. EARLY ULTRAMONTANISM 
 
 If the Bourbon restoration seemed a triumph for the Catholic 
 Church, it was, in truth, a victory to which the facts themselves 
 had set conditions. It was true that everywhere the union of 
 throne and altar seemed the indispensable condition of national 
 safety.^'' Nor was it likely that men who had suffered so piti- 
 able an exile would allow the ideals of the Revolution to obtain 
 political or reUgious expression. But two fundamental facts 
 stood in the way of a restoration of the ancien rSgime. The 
 Charter was a guarantee of religious toleration; without it 
 Louis XVIII could never have returned to the French throne. 
 Whatever privileges the Catholic Church might, in the future, 
 receive, it could not, as in the past, be the religious body to 
 which the French State extended a unique protection. It would 
 be compelled to endure the criticism of other religious societies 
 which were no longer excluded from political existence. Nor 
 was this all. The Charter had pledged Louis to the irrevoca- 
 bility of the sale of those national possessions in large part de- 
 rived from ecclesiastical confiscation; and if this meant any- 
 thing it meant that the restoration of church wealth would 
 depend upon the doubtful generosity of an almost bankrupt 
 state. 
 
 Nor was it a united church which returned to power. While 
 
 » Cf . SpuUer, op. dl., p. 87. 
 " Cf. the tragic letter in Blaize, op. cit., I, 263. 
 
 " See, for instance, the remarks of the Bishop of Troyes in "L'Ami de 
 la religion," I, 101. 
 
200 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 men like Lamennais urged that ultramontanism had been justi- 
 fied by the experience of the Revolution, there were not wanting 
 able and influential men who insisted on the rectitude of Galilean 
 theories. The French clergy, as a body, would admit neither 
 papal absolutism nor papal infallibility.^^ They relied on the 
 generosity of the crown as the bulwark of their future. They 
 had no sympathy with the Romanising tendencies of de Maistre 
 and of Bonald. They were satisfied with the regime of a charter 
 which, whatever its defects, had declared Catholicism the reK- 
 gion of the state. They were content to beUeve that historic 
 necessity would result in the restoration of what the Revolution 
 had destroyed. They had none of the intractability of the 
 Petite Eglise; they lacked the deep sense of corporate independ- 
 ence, by which the Ultramontanes were distinguished. Where 
 they erred was in their failure to perceive that the promises of 
 the Charter were a fundamental stumbhng-block in the path- 
 way of their dreams. Whatever they might in substance a- 
 chieve — and of concessions they were to have a plethora — the 
 formal recognition of their desires had become impossible. 
 Louis XVIII might love to call himself the eldest son of the 
 Church,^' but he was a son who by no means recognised the 
 patria potestas. The spirit of criticism had gone too far to make 
 it possible for their ideas to obtain acceptance. Their ambition 
 was bound up with an age that was past. The future of the 
 Church lay with newer conceptions. 
 
 It was the signal merit of Lamennais to have perceived, even 
 before the Restoration, that it did not, in fact, promise real 
 hope for the church.^" The Revolution had taught him the 
 futility of placing confidence in the state. He suspected its 
 motives, and he felt that it was guilty of a silence upon eccle- 
 siastical problems which, indicated its lack of identity with 
 the interests of Catholicism." The fundamental problem was 
 the general indifference to rehgious matters which character- 
 ised the age. If the temper of the people remained profoundly 
 
 **Cf. Frayssinous, "Les Vrais Principes de I'Eglise Gallicane" (ed. 
 of 1826), p. 89. 
 
 " Debidour, op. cit., p. 332. 
 
 «" Cf . Blaize, op. cit., I, 152, 159, 170, 177. 
 
 " Blaize, op. cit., i, 201. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 201 
 
 Catholic, it did not find expression in dogmatic channels. The 
 essential task was to analyse the conditions of such an attitude 
 and to attempt their remedy. Chateaubriand had, indeed, 
 sketched in magic prose the glories of Christianity; but he 
 had conveyed an emotion rather than resolved a problem.'^ 
 What Lamennais desired was to indicate the means whereby 
 the Catholic church might regain its institutional integrity. 
 It was without reference to the state that he desired to write. 
 He would consider men as members of his church, and discuss 
 the terms upon which its empire might be restored. The 
 "Essay on Indifference in Matters of Religion" was published at 
 the end of 1817, and its result was to make Lamennais the first 
 theologian in France. Forty thousand copies were sold in a 
 few months." The veteran de Maistre wrote of it with pas- 
 sionate enthusiasm," nor were Chateaubriand and Bonald 
 less generous in their praise. ^^ If there were some who detected 
 grounds for theological suspicion, most men, as Lacordaire has 
 told us,^^ looked upon its author as a new Bossuet. Hence- 
 forward he was the uncontested chief of the Ultramontane 
 party; and the government itself was anxious to win the 
 adherence of one who had thus, in a single day, attained so 
 notable a fame.^' 
 
 The plan of the book is simple in the extreme. It is an 
 attempt to show that social salvation depends upon the su- 
 premacy of Catholicism, and it demands intolerance as the 
 price of that victory. It is the work of a man disturbed by the 
 bewildering lack of unity in his time. Everywhere there is 
 indifference to fundamental dogma; everywhere men have 
 erected their system of private alternatives. On all sides there 
 is an evident neglect of spiritual truth. Reason and the senses 
 fight once again their eternal combat. But the fight against 
 reason is the fight against order ;^' and the result has been the 
 
 " Cf. SpuUer, op. cit., p. 92. 
 " Boutard, "Lamennais," I, 152. 
 " "Oeuvres," XIV, 224. 
 •* Boutard, op. cit., I, 152-4. 
 
 ™ "Considerations sur le syst^me philosophique de M. de Lamennais," 
 Ch. I. 
 
 " Blaize, op. cit., I, 285. 
 
 " "Essai," I, 9 (ed. Gannier). 
 
202 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 pitiful lack of moral and political certitude. He does not, 
 indeed, claim that this is a novel situation. Christianity — 
 which for him is the combination of the spiritual truths thus 
 far known to man — has struggled continuously to secure the 
 paramountcy of reason.'' It fought the selfish interests of 
 imperial Rome; it triumphed over the persecutions of the 
 decadent pagans; the attacks of protestant sects revealed the 
 unbreakable strength of its foundations. Deism, atheism, 
 philosophy — all these have left it unmoved.'" 
 
 But the age in which he lives differs from its predecessors in 
 the contempt for all belief by which it is characterised. La- 
 mennais insists on the danger of this attitude. Action is the 
 consequence of opinion, and when we know the faith of men 
 we can predict their conduct.'^ Every idea reacts upon the 
 social structure.'^ But every doctrine, being as it is either 
 right or wrong, is therefore, of necessity, dangerous or bene- 
 ficial to the well-being of society. The essential basis of an 
 adequate social order Christianity had, at any rate before the 
 Reformation, been able to supply. It had given a sanction to 
 obedience. It had purified the customs of men. From its 
 fountain the law had drawn its strength.^' But with the Ref- 
 ormation there came a change. It was no longer admitted that 
 authority was the basis of faith, and intellectual libertinism 
 had replaced it. The Divine reason had been compelled to 
 abdicate, and the human mind had not shrunk from the sac- 
 rilege of replacement.'^ Each man had become intellectual 
 emperor over himself, and the spirit of independence erected 
 anarchy into a social principle. It is obvious that society 
 cannot acquiesce in its virtual annihilation. 
 
 The indifference he castigates so passionately has taken dif- 
 ferent forms in the life about him. Some deny religion for 
 themselves, but admit its political value. They regard it as 
 an admirable means of popular restraint.'^ But Lamennais 
 
 "'/bid., p. 11. 
 
 '"'Ihid., p. 12-18. 
 
 " Ibid., p. 30. 
 
 '''Ibid., p. 31. 
 
 " Ibid., p. 33. 
 
 '< Ibid., p. 35. 
 
 " Ibid., Ch. II. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 203 
 
 has no patience with this atheism. It cannot, so he claims, 
 account for reUgious origins. It cannot explain the universal 
 basis of society in religion.'^ It cannot explain the strength 
 of the religious sanction not less in politics than in law." He 
 insists on the evil of the hypocrisy that would force upon men 
 a faith in fact untrue.''* Nor will he admit the natural religion 
 of Rousseau. Humanity, he urges, has never been content 
 with deism which is, in fact, only the vestibule of atheism.'' 
 It is no more satisfactory in its social result, and he cannot re- 
 sist from heaping contumely upon its foremost representative. 
 He does not, moreover, find Protestantism any less unsatis- 
 factory.*" It is the apotheosis of religious individualism. It 
 destroys the unity of the church.*^ It has no answer to those 
 who, like itself, take their stand upon the teaching of scripture.*^ 
 It cannot have fundamental articles — whether sentiment or 
 unanimity, or the admission of decisive significance.*' It in 
 fact denies the inspiration of God by substituting for his guid- 
 ance the results of human interpretation. But, as a conse- 
 quence, it leads in the end to atheism; for both claim to speak 
 in the name of reason, and they are alike confounded by its 
 social inadequacy.** 
 
 He had thus, in substance, denied the logic of any attitude 
 distinct from that of Catholicism. What he had next to at- 
 tempt was the constructive demonstration of its necessity. 
 He had to show that religion was socially invaluable, and that 
 by religion could only be understood the position he himself 
 maintained. The end of man is happiness; but the condition 
 of happiness is repose. Here is the first reason of religious 
 utihty for without it there is no contentment.** Surely the 
 
 ™ "Oeuvres" (ed. of 1834), i, 32. 
 
 " Ibid., 34. 
 
 '« Ibid., 35-8. 
 
 " Ibid., Ch. IV and V. 
 
 «» Ibid., Ch. VI and VII. 
 
 «i Ibid., I, 62 f . 
 
 «2 "Oeuvres," I, 60. 
 
 « Ibid., I, 65 f. 
 
 " Ibid., I, 73 f . 
 
 ^ Ibid., I, 82. 
 
204 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 cause of such a pronouncement is to bs found in Lamennais' 
 own troubled soul. He had gone into the church that he 
 might find peace. It was then but natural that he should in- 
 sist upon its splendour. But repose can come only when man 
 has discovered the laws of his being. Without them men cannot 
 realise their end. But those laws are religion and it is thus 
 that without religion men cannot attain their end. Philosophy 
 is useless for that purpose. What it does is to make of man a 
 God, and thus to destroy the bonds of social existence.*' That 
 is an attitude socially impossible. All that we are, all truth 
 that we can know, comes in its origin from God.*' We have 
 to put trust in him simply because from nowhere else is to be 
 derived the certitude and faith which are the conditions of 
 existence.** The result of religion is thus to put man in a 
 right relation to his environment. It assures that order and 
 fixity he so passionately desired. It centralises his life, and the 
 great object of human endeavour must be the discovery of 
 unity. That, indeed, is, for him, the whole object of order." 
 To see life in terms of a single principle was to see it in the one 
 context that is socially adequate. 
 
 But unity demands its conditions. It can only be estab- 
 lished by a system of relations. It necessitates the abolition 
 of interstices. The structure of society must be monistic.'" 
 Lamennais has httle difficulty in showing that this demands 
 an hierarchical organisation. The individual must be sacri- 
 ficed simply because he has no interest except in relation to 
 the larger whole. The real unit, in fact, is society itself and man 
 becomes no more than a fragmentary moment of its existence." 
 But the equihbrium must be maintained and power is its in- 
 strument. It is, indeed, the fatal error of philosophy that it 
 destroys that power; for when it proclaims the self-mastery 
 of men it in fact removes the foundation of authority. No 
 
 ««/bid., I, 85. 
 " Ibid., I, 90. 
 '^IHd., I, 91. 
 «" Ibid., I, 97. 
 "» Ibid., I, 98. 
 91 Ibid. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 205 
 
 one will, he urges,^^ has any real right to assert its superiority 
 over another. That is the flaw in Rousseau's social contract. ^^ 
 To make will the basis of society is at once to admit anarchy. 
 But to derive society from God, to coerce its elements into 
 oneness by the force of religion is to find a basis for the beliefs 
 he cherished so deeply. It is then not difficult to urge that 
 man exists for the glory of God and that the perfect and eternal 
 society is that in which the glory of God is most amply pur- 
 sued.^^ The littleness of the individual beside so infinite an 
 end is clear; and Lamennais can take comfort in the pain that 
 he has suffered by the thought that he in fact ministers to a 
 harmony to which his very pain contributes. 
 
 It is here, moreover, that the church emerges; for man has 
 to relate himself to God, and it was through Christ that the 
 mediation was accomplished. But the fundamental achieve- 
 ment of Christ was the foundation of his church,'^ and we have 
 then the text of the whole argument. For the church was 
 clearly founded that Christ might preserve those rules of social 
 order he had revealed in his gospel. When he confided their 
 preservation to the church he in fact entrusted it with the 
 government of society. He made it the vital hnk in that sys- 
 tem of relations which Lamennais had postulated as funda- 
 mental. That is why the denial of Catholic sovereignty is a 
 crime;'* for it is the denial through human pride of an order 
 established by God. All power, in its origin, must then be 
 derived from the church. It is the guardian of social relation- 
 ships. But the church means Rome, and Rome, as Lamennais 
 was soon to argue, means the Pope. So it was that he went 
 back to Rome that he might discover there the lordship of 
 the world. 
 
 IV. THE GLORIFICATION OF ROME 
 
 It is not difficult to trace the origin of the first section of his 
 essay." To Bossuet and Pascal but, above all, to Bonald, it 
 
 « Ibid., I, 99. 
 
 " Ibid., I, 99. 
 
 « Ibid., I, 134. 
 
 "'■Ibid., L 137. 
 
 ^Ibid., I, 139. 
 
 " Cf. M. Mar^chal's fine analysis, op. cil., 577-634. 
 
206 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 is immensely indebted.^^ It reflects the general reaction from 
 individualism so characteristic of his age. Its exaltation of 
 authority, its insistence on philosophy as socially disruptive, 
 its translation of man into an entirely religious context — these 
 are the terms upon which Bonald and de Maistre had proposed 
 to rebuild the world. Like them, even if by impHcation only," 
 it was to Rome that he was driven back for his answer. But 
 the book is everywhere distinguished by the magnificent orig- 
 inality of its spirit. No one save Lamennais could have 
 written it simply because it bears in every Une the intense 
 expression of the bitter struggle through which he had lived. 
 His denial of the importance of the individual is simply the 
 self-knowledge that he must sacrifice his ambition to the de- 
 mand of his friends. His picture of the evils of philosophy is 
 the angry farewell to one of the delights of his youth, the 
 attempt to convince himself that the sacrifice has been worth 
 the making. The book, in fact, is essentially a personal docu- 
 ment. But it is also more than that. Its imphcations are far 
 more significant than the results it expressly declares. Lamen- 
 nais is laying the foundation of an argument of which the con- 
 clusion is an ecclesiastical imperialism based upon independence 
 of the state. He is, in truth, insisting that for centuries the 
 centre of world-importance — a centre, moreover, distinguished 
 in his eyes by the divinity of its origin — ^has been Rome. In 
 
 /[ that aspect it is but a step to the demonstration that the 
 \ ecclesiastical federalism in which the Galhcans put their trust"'" 
 
 ' has no root in historical reahty. It subjugates the church to 
 the state. For if power is Roman in its derivation, there was 
 good ground for the tremendous claims of Gregory VII, and 
 the minimising efforts of 1682 are so much error. Such an 
 attitude, moreover, has even deeper immediate significance for 
 
 " Lamennais, indeed, speaks with immense admiration for the latter 
 throughout his work. 
 
 " It is to be noted that it was only later final attack on Galhcanism in 
 1825 and the following years that Lamennais expressly drew the obvious 
 conclusions from the "Essay on Indifference". 
 
 1°° A federalism, of course, which goes back to the conciliar movement. 
 Cf. Dr. Figgis' classic analysis in "From Gerson to Grotius" passim, but 
 especially pp. 16, 92. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 207 
 
 the France of his time. It condemns the Revolution out of 
 hand. It is the text-book of intolerance, for it proclaims the 
 importance of orthodoxy in its liberal meaning of correct doc- 
 trine. That is, perhaps, in some sort due to Lamennais' own 
 character. Whatever he believed, it was essential for him to 
 believe wholeheartedly. He was above all things a great pam- 
 phleteer, and it was thus fundamental to his work that he 
 should be capable, granted his passionate temperament, of 
 seeing but a single side of any problem. The vivid eloquence 
 of the book gives it, even after a hundred years, a sense of 
 burning life which but little literature of its character possesses. 
 "Ce Uvre," wrote de Maistre,"' "ce livre est un coup de 
 tonerre sous un ciel de plomb." But that thunderclap was, 
 in truth, no more than the vague herald of the storm. 
 
 For a decade after the pubhcation of the first part of the 
 "Essai" Lamennais, while he was never friendly to the French 
 state, was at any rate not in active opposition to it. Nor is 
 the reason far to seek. If the Bourbons did not yield to the 
 enormous pretensions of the church there was always hope of 
 their surrender. The history of the Restoration, indeed, is 
 little more than a continuous effort of the church to capture 
 the political machinery of France. If too much was not to be 
 expected from Louis XVIII — after all a good-humoured sceptic 
 of.the eighteenth century'"^ — it was known that his heir dreamed 
 of nothing save a return to the golden days of the ancien regime. 
 And even Louis was willing to do much to efface the results 
 of the Revolution. The Concordat of 1817, whatever the 
 defects of its application was, after all, a great victory for the 
 church. An extensive attack was launched against the uni- 
 versity — in a sense not the least fundamental of all Revolu- 
 tionary institutions.^"^ The Jesuits came out of their hiding- 
 places and made of the Rue du Bac a seat of government which 
 challenged comparison with that of the crown.^"* Missions 
 
 111 Boutard, op. ail., I, 152. 
 
 >» Cf. Debidour, op. cit., p. 331. 
 
 "" It is indeed possible to make the struggle for educational control 
 between church and state the central thread in the history of France since 
 the Revolution. Cf. the admirable book of Grimaud, "Histoire de la 
 liberty d'enseignement" (1898). 
 
 "* Cf. G. de Grandmaison, "La Congregation," passim. 
 
208 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 and congregations multiplied with extraordinary rapidity. 
 Members who sat on the Pariiamentary Commission which 
 examined the Concordat of- 1817, did not hesitate, as a duty, 
 to inform the Pope of its proceedings.'"^ When it became clear 
 that the project, in its original form, did not meet with the 
 approval of the Chamber, its amelioration was effected by an 
 act of grace from Rome and, even then, not through the ordi- 
 ilary diplomatic channels, but by a representation to the 
 French government by the Grand Almoner of the French 
 church.'™ When the Concordat of 1817 was finally abrogated, 
 the clergy did not hesitate to stigmatize a ministry of which, 
 from its own point of view, the sole fault was surely no more 
 than weakness, as atheist in character.'"' Men like Bonald 
 even affirmed that the creation of new bishoprics — in part, at 
 least, a financial matter — depended not at all upon the wishes 
 of the Chamber, but entirely upon negotiation between Louis 
 and Rome.'"* When Richeheu resigned in 1821, it was per- 
 missible to doubt whether the state had not been reduced to 
 the police department of the church. 
 
 It was as a journalist fighting for these ends that Lamennais 
 is remarkable in these years. But he was clearly dissatisfied 
 with the hesitations of the government.'"" He seems to have 
 considered that the end of its weakness must be a new and more 
 terrible revolution. So that he was not illogical in giving his 
 support to those who were fighting for the most extreme claims 
 the church could put forward."" But association with Viltete 
 and Chateaubriand inevitably meant the confusion of religious 
 with political ends, and upon the latter Lamennais had no 
 opinions. It is clear, moreover, that Lamennais disliked the 
 use of rehgion as a political weapon. The extreme Right had, 
 after all, ends to serve which made the religious question only 
 a single aspect of its pohcy; nor was he certain that in those 
 
 "5 Debidour, op. ciL, 353. 
 1™ Ibid., 355. 
 "" Ibid., 357. 
 "8 Ibid., 361. 
 
 '»" Cf. the letter of November 10, 1819, to Benoit D'Azy Laveille, op. cit. 
 p. 83. 
 
 "» Cf. Boutard, I, 170. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 209 
 
 other aspects he agreed with its aims. He had already come 
 to regard opposition to the pohtical results of the Revolution 
 as impossible."' His own thought was almost exclusively oc- 
 cupied with very different things. 
 
 What, obviously, he was trying to do was to work out the 
 principles upon which the French church could be regarded 
 as itself a state — or rather part of the Roman Catholic state — - 
 of which the French government must not diminish the sover- 
 eign rights. He denies, for example, the right of the Minister 
 of the Interior to ask for account of its charitable donations ;"2 
 that is simply, for him, the irrelevance of unnecessary despot- 
 ism. He insists that Galhcan doctrine is subversive of the 
 government of the church; and to postulate the inferiority of 
 . the Pope to the canon law he identifies with a spirit of hcense 
 and rebellion."' He admits that the exercise of the clerical 
 function is essential to the welfare of the state; but he is 
 anxious for the church to build up, by means of foundations, 
 its own revenues rather than depend upon official subvention."* 
 He wishes to free the sacrament of marriage from its connexion 
 with the civil law; for the marriage of Catholics concerns only 
 the church which does not extend the admission of legitimacy 
 to any other act of union."* He seeks to free the observance 
 of Sunday from any reasons that are not purely reUgious in 
 character."' When a. Protestant is prosecuted for his failure 
 to place a carpet before his house on the occasion of a religious 
 procession, Lamennais agrees with the accused that the ex- 
 tension of toleration under the charter releases the state from 
 any attempt to assist the church."' The state, he insists, is 
 now non-religious in character, and where there is not complete 
 fusion it is necessary that there should be the recognition of 
 complete independence. So the civil authority may not force 
 upon the church the burial of those who have violated its laws."' 
 
 "> Laveille, op. cil., p. 94, letter of March 2, 1820. 
 
 '« "Oeuvres," I, 604. 
 
 "» "Oeuvres," I, 606. 
 
 '""Oeuvres," I, 614. 
 
 "' "Oeuvres," I, 616-23. 
 
 "« Ibid.., I, 625. 
 
 '" Ibid., I, 626. 
 
 "»/6Mi., I, 618. 
 
210 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 The church has its own code of legislation and its self-suffi- 
 ciency must be recognised."' From the principles of religious 
 freedom that the charter has consecrated he draws the inference 
 that the right to form associations is fundamental; for without 
 them the Catholic church cannot prosper."^" Because man be- 
 longs to two societies,' the religious and the civil, his education 
 is the function of both alike ;i^' but he denies that government 
 can in any sense act as the controlling agent in the process. 
 The real decision must rest with the family, whose rights in 
 this aspect no government may invade. ^^^ Clearly he is seek- 
 ing to make of the allegiance of men to his church a thing in 
 nowise distinct from that which the state may demand. 
 
 Nor is other proof of this attitude lacking. His interpreta- 
 tion of the Concordat of 1817 casts a special illumination upon , 
 his doctrines. The royal nomination to the bishoprics it estab- 
 lished he looks upon as the concession made of grace by one 
 sovereign to another. ^^^ It would, in his view, be impossible 
 for the Chamber to create bishoprics or to define their functions. 
 "Un pareil pouvoir," he declared, ^^ " . . serait une 
 
 sacrilege veritable de I'autorite spirituelle." He goes even 
 further. He denies that the Chamber had the right to deal 
 with the Concordat at all. In his view, the virtual withdrawal 
 of that agreement was due not to its refusal by the represen- 
 tatives of the people, but by their unwiUingness to provide 
 the funds for its application. The Concordat itself he regards 
 as no more than a piece of private legislation for the Roman 
 church which the Pope, out of courtesy, had communicated to 
 the king of France. Certain relations between the two required 
 a readjustment of financial arrangements, but that was all. 
 The analogy between this conception and the Cathohc inter- 
 pretation of Wiseman's famous pastoral of 1851,"^^^ is of course 
 
 1'° It is interesting to compare this situation with the similar contro- 
 versy in England over the Deceased Wives' Sisters Act. Cf. my "Problem 
 of Sovereignty," p. 118 n: 23. 
 
 «« Ibid., I, 629 f . 
 
 "1 Ibid. I, 649. 
 
 ^"'Ibid., I, 656. 
 
 '23 "Oeuvres," II, 123. 
 
 '24 Ibid. 
 
 '26 Cf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," p. 145 f. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 211 
 
 clear. Each looks upon the church as containing within itself 
 all the essential elements of a state. That the field of terri- 
 torial action is the same as that of the state proper it regards as 
 unessential; for the content of its regulation is purely mental 
 in character. But insofar as men give allegiance to the papal 
 crown it has the right to exercise a sovereignty over them. 
 "Le Christianisme," he wrote/^' "est une soci6t6 . . . mais 
 point de soci6t6 sans pouvoirs et sans devoirs, sans commande- 
 ment et sans ob^issance; done il existe un pouvoir et des de- 
 voirs spirituels, une autorite ayant droit de commander aux 
 esprits, qui sont tenus de lui ob6ir . qui n'admit pas 
 
 un pouvoir souverain, perpetuel et permanent, ou ne s'entend 
 pas, ou nie I'Eglise." Obviously, such a conception of the 
 church leaves no room for secular interference. Rather does 
 it almost challenge it by the infinite power to which it lays 
 claim. And that was the more inevitable since Lamennais 
 makes continual insistence of the necessity of rehgion to the 
 state. At the same time to deny the state the right to sug- 
 gest conditions upon which that relation may be established 
 is virtually to deny the right of the state to settle the terms 
 upon which it may exist. 
 
 Not even "from that conclusion did Lamennais shrink. The 
 state has to decide between atheism and religion. If it chooses 
 to admit the latter it must not attempt the control of its asso- 
 ciations. It must submit, where the infiuence of the church 
 is concerned, to the disciphne it demands.'^^ That is, in effect, 
 to submit to the Pope; for he accepts with eager gladness the 
 conclusion of de Maistre that the power of the sovereign pontiff 
 is ilUmitable.i^ To put one's confidence in councils is not 
 merely heretical, but even destructive of the basic conception 
 of the chiirch. For the church above all things is an unity, and 
 to suggest a power above, or concurrent with, that of the Pope 
 is to destroy that unity. '^^ So he does not hesitate to define 
 religious liberty as obedience to the civil power and to argue 
 
 126 "Oeuvres," II, 129. The article is particularly important as it is an 
 enthusiastic review of de Maistre's"Du Pape" which had then just appeared. 
 '« "Oeuvres," II, 156 ff. 
 ">IUd., II, 135. 
 '" lUd., II, 134. 
 
212 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 that liberty is greatest where that obedience is most complete."" 
 To free man from religious obedience seems to him not different 
 from his erection into God; for from whom does power originate 
 if not from God?^^^ He denies the sovereignty of the people 
 because its consequence is the subversion of all social order, 
 and a doctrine cannot be true of which the results are so dis- 
 astrous."^ So, too, tolerance becomes impossible; for it makes 
 of power the plaything of ambitious pride, and thereby destroys 
 at once its object and its function."' 
 
 It is a powerful assault against both individualism and the 
 foundations of the modern state. But what it lacked was the 
 demonstration — which neither Bonald nor de Maistre pro- 
 vided — that individualism is as a fact defective in its philo- 
 sophic foundations. It was easy to dismiss the right of free 
 enquiry as the basis of behef ; but the real necessity was to 
 show wherein its error consisted. It was to that task that 
 Lamennais addressed himself in the second part of the "Essai 
 sur I'indifference" which he published in 1821. The volume, 
 indeed, made nothing like the sensation of the earher portion; 
 and so careful a judge as Barante seems to have found it 
 tiresome."* But the book has an important place in the intel- 
 lectual history of Lamennais since the theory by which he 
 sought to refute individualism, is, in fact, that which contrib- 
 utes most singularly to the destruction of his ultramontane 
 ideas. It is in reality Cartesianism that he is attacking. The 
 philosophic analogue of protestantism, it is the parent of social 
 disorganisation. So immense was the authority of Descartes 
 that practically unaided he had given a passport to rationalism 
 in theology."^ What Lamennais strove to show was the bank- 
 ruptcy of philosophy, its inability to solve the central problems 
 by which man is faced. He urges that the core of life is, in 
 fact, not doubt but certainty and that the basis of this certainty 
 
 «° lUd., II, 165. 
 "1 md., II, 186. 
 
 '^^ Ihid., II, 188. In this he agrees with the famous speech of Chateau- 
 briand, Journel Offidel, 25 February, 1823. 
 «3 Ihid., II, 193. 
 
 ^^* "Souvenirs," Vol. Ill, p. 126. Cf. p. 28. 
 '35 "Essai," Pt. II, Ch. 1. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 213 
 
 is the unanimous testimony of men. In such an aspect, truth 
 is easily obtainable. It is no more, but no less, than the gen- 
 erality of men beheves. It is not a system that he expounds. 
 What he does is to take those dogmas most necessary to his 
 system and to proclaim their truth by the demonstration of 
 their common acceptance.*'* Men have faith in God, and 
 therefore God exists."' The religion which rests on the broad- 
 est basis of visible authority is the Roman Catholic which there- 
 fore is the most incontestably true."' But if it is true it must 
 be revealed from God;"' and that is to give it the authority 
 it had claimed for its principles in the earUer portion of his 
 essay. 
 
 Of the philosophic weakness of such an argument it is not 
 necessary here to speak."" It occasioned the most vehement 
 controversy, and there were not a few who regarded it as hereti- 
 cal."* The fundamental point was the fact that it left open the 
 road to hberahsm. For Lamennais, after all, had only to con- 
 vince himself that the majority of men disbeUeved in ecclesias- 
 tical conservatism to be able to urge its untruth. At the moment 
 he might be the defender of ultramontane doctrine, but it was 
 the defence of a passionate individuaUst who thought that most 
 men believed it was right simply because he did so himself. 
 Rome, indeed, gave a tacit admission of the theological recti- 
 tude of his doctrines by permitting the appearance of an Itahan 
 translation."^ Whatever Rome may lack, she has the virtue 
 of abundant patience; and she was content to tolerate the un- 
 certainties of theological novelty where the poHtical conse- 
 quences were at the moment so beneficial. 
 
 Meanwhile, the political situation was giving new determin- 
 ation to the extreme royaUsts while it made the radicals more 
 
 ™ "Works," I, 177 f. 
 
 '" lUd., I, 186 f . 
 
 "» Ibid., 1, 229 f . 
 
 "9 Ihid., 1. 237 f. 
 
 "° Cf . Janet, "La philosophie de Lamennais,'' p. 26 f, and Ferraz, op. cit., 
 II, 180-210. 
 
 "1 Cf. LaveiUe, op. cil., p. 121. Letter of November 9, 1821, and Bou- 
 tard, op. cit., Vol. I, Gh. XIV. 
 
 i« "Correspond" (ed. Forgues), 1, 41 f, and Cf . Boutard, 1, 217, for a list 
 of distinguished Catholics who accepted it. 
 
214 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 desperate. The seeds of the Revolution would have their harvest 
 and if the retirement of Decazes meant the surrender of the king 
 to the Right, it was evident enough that the intransigeance of 
 that party was leading to disaster. Lamennais, certainly, did 
 not deceive himself. The violence of the ministry seemed to him 
 to be no less threatening than that of the Revolutionaries;"' 
 and he found their theory of a state-religion in every sense 
 embarrassing. Between poUtical atheism amd spoliation he 
 was not anxious to make a choice. ^^ The only sure remedy was 
 the frank adoption of Christianity as the basis of society, and 
 for that step the government lacked the necessary courage."^ 
 It was impossible, as he urged,^^^ to give any sanction to au- 
 thority without the estabhshment of a regime almost anti- 
 thetic to that of the Restoration. He saw fear and jealousy as 
 the guardians of national pohcy."' The principles of the Holy 
 alhance seemed to him worthless; and already he foretold the 
 onset of a new revolution."^ The disUke of the Jesuits seemed 
 to render impossible a genuinely reUgious pohcy such as he 
 desired."^ When men like Courier and Beranger were wiUing to 
 undergo prosecution for their cause the unity he cherished was 
 clearly far-off . The press might be controlled; but the passion- 
 ate opposition of the Uberals showed thait patience would have 
 its limits. 1*° It was easy to attack such papers as showed a 
 contempt for the State religion, and to deliver up the university 
 to the priests. But each step that was taken only showed more 
 clearly how utterly the old regime had passed. Guizot and 
 Cousin might cease to lecture ;i^^ but it was impossible perman- 
 ently to silence such men. Nor did the Spanish policy of the 
 ministry prove as efficacious as might have been desired. The 
 restoration of absolutism might be preached as a crusade, but 
 
 '■" "Corresp. entre Lamennais et Vitrolles," p. 86. I cite this volume as 
 VitroUes. 
 
 "' "VitroUes," p. 93. 
 
 '« Ibid., 99. 
 
 i« Ibid., 100. 
 
 "' Ibid., 120. 
 
 "s/Wd., p. 125, letter of Jan. 1, 123 cf., p. 132. 
 
 "« Laveille, op. cit. 164, letter of Jan. 24, 123. 
 
 «« Debidour, op. cit. 369. 
 
 »5i "Bafdoux Guizot," p. 34. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 215 
 
 the war was everywhere reahsed to be a disastrous failure which 
 served only to make more evident the impossibility of royalist 
 extremism. Lamennais might justify the Inquisition ;'^2 but he 
 knew in his heart the folly of such efforts.*^' So high did passion 
 run that the minister of the interior actually invited the clergy 
 to preach Galhcan doctrines, and particularly the articles of 
 1682, in the vain hope of assuaging men's anger.'" When 
 Charles X mounted the throne in the autumn of 1824 the cler- 
 ical party may have obtained the king it desired; but it was the 
 tragedy of his accession that his ideas made a successful reign 
 impossible. For Charles was still the Count d'Artois and he 
 was incapable of understanding the age in which he was to rule. 
 The man of Coblentz could not govern 9, France which had 
 tasted the sweets of Revolution. 
 
 The demands of the clerical party, in fact, were inconsistent 
 with the charter which had been the express condition of the 
 Bourbon restoration. What churchmen Uke Clermont-Ton- 
 nerre desired was simply the absorption of the state by the 
 church; and if his audacious programme resulted in his prosecu- 
 tion, it was symptomatic of the temper of his party."^ Charles' 
 ministers might draw up new projects of a code of sacrilege in 
 the manner of the middle ages;'^° but in the long run they could 
 not meet the arguments of men hke Constant and Royer- 
 Collard.'^^ The king might be given power to authorise by 
 ordinance the establishment of new congregations."* But this 
 in fact, was not a church-policy to which Lamennais could give 
 his adhesion. It was Galhcan to the core since it emphasised 
 by its very nature the dependence of the church on the goodwill 
 of the king. Villele with his law of sacrilege seemed to him like 
 the serpent tempting Eve in Paradise.'^' It seemed less hke 
 
 '52"Works,"I, 193. 
 
 "' As the whole of his correspondence with VitroUes from 1822-4 makes 
 evident. 
 
 '" Debidour, op. cit. 376. 
 
 "» Ibid., 379. 
 
 '" See his great speech in Barante, Royer-CoUard, II, 242 f, and the 
 following essay. 
 
 •" Debidour, op. cit. 383. 
 
 ''» "Correspond" (ed. Forgues), I, 191, March 13, 25. 
 
216 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 service to the church than an act of devotion to the crown.!'" 
 "On pousse de toutes parts" he wrote,"!" a ^^g rupture avec 
 Rome et I'^tablissement d'une Eglise national, d'une Eglise 
 representative. " What he desired was an opportunity for the 
 church to live freely its own life. One may imagine that he felt 
 this the more keenly since his reception at Rome in the previous 
 year had been all that his heart could have desired; the man 
 who found in the workroom of the Pope no other decoration 
 save the image of the Virgin and his own portrait"^ was not 
 Ukely to behttle the value of Roman influence, and that at a 
 time when Rome was more than suspicious of the Gallicanism 
 of French ecclesiastical poHcy.'^^ 
 
 Nor, from his own standpoint, was he wrong in his suspicions. 
 The Galilean church had embraced the cause of royalismwith 
 a fervour which suggested nothing so much as Anglican enthusi- 
 asm for the house of Stuart. Their bishops no less than their 
 priests seem to have convinced themselves that in the estab- 
 hshment of a royal despotism they would find the means of , , 
 ecclesiastical triumph. It is true that they did not hesitate to 
 make their victory the condition of their support; and it is 
 even possible to argue that many of them went further in their 
 demands than Lamennais himself would have done.i«< But the 
 fundamental fact remained that they were satisfied to work out 
 their own salvation through the state. What they wanted was 
 the exclusive establishment of the anden regime; and they in 
 no sense reahsed that they were separated from their ideal by 
 the flaming sword of the Revolution. Lamennais saw more 
 deeply and more truly. He was far from'certain that the cause 
 of monarchy was destined to triumph ;i'=5 and he was unwilling 
 to prejudice the church by alliance with an institution which, 
 
 «« Ihid., I, 195, April 30, 25. 
 
 «i IhU., I, 208, October 12, 25. 
 
 "2 Boutard, op. cit. I, Ch. XVI. It is impossible to know how much 
 credence may be attached to the famous story that Leo XII made Lamen- 
 nais a cardinal in petto. 
 
 "« Artaud, "Hist, de Leon XII," I, Ch. 20. 
 
 '« Cf. the judgment of Viel-Castel, "Hist, de la Restauration," Vol. 
 XIV, p. 29. 
 
 "^ "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), I, 208, October 13, 25. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 217 
 
 after all, would profit more than it would confer benefit by the 
 alliance. He was acutely conscious of the important dissensions 
 within the ranks of those who were eager to rebuild the ecclesi- 
 astical edifice. Clermont-Tonnerre might demand an ultra- 
 montanism expressed in terms of state-control; but there were 
 men who, Uke Montlosier,'^^ while earnest supporters of a church 
 as the Jansenists conceived it, were yet bitter in their reproaches 
 of a government which, as they urged, had surrendered itself to 
 the clergy."' In any case, he did not like the idea of state- 
 dependence. What he was convinced of was the power of the 
 church to stand on its own foundations. It could reach the 
 minds of men without the intervention of secular government. 
 It was to the demonstration of that fundamental belief that he 
 turned his energies. 
 
 V. THE ATTACK ON THE SECULAR STATE 
 
 What, clearly, Lamennais feared was the sovereignty of the 
 state; and it was to avoid its control over religious affairs that 
 he elaborated in his discussion of the relations between religion 
 and pohtics the basis of that theocracy which reached its inevit- 
 able culmination in the decrees of the Vatican Council."^ He 
 submits every sort and kind of question to the authority of the 
 church, and the judgment of the church he equates with the 
 papal judgment. The whole work, in fact, is a passionate pro- 
 test against the implicit federalism of 1682. He does not, like 
 de Maistre, attempt a historic justification of the ultramontane 
 theory. Rather does he assert the simple doctrine that only, 
 as a practical question, in the unified sovereignty of Rome can 
 relief be found from the dangers by which the church is con- 
 fronted. Every idea which tends to discredit the necessity of 
 its unique control is, as he insists, a fatal blow at the 'whole 
 ecclesiastical structure. What, of course, he is attacking is 
 essentially the principles of liberaUsm. He attempts to dis- 
 
 ™See Bardoux's able monograph, "Montlosier et le GaUicanisme." 
 
 '" "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), I, 209. 
 
 "' The "De la Religion Consider^e dans ses rapports avec Hordre poli- 
 tique et civU" was originally published in two parts, the first four chapters 
 as a volume in 1825 and the last set in 1826. I have discussed them as a 
 single work. 
 
218 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 credit them by proof that they are the logical precursor of 
 anarchy. He denies the adequacy of any system which does not 
 base itself and its rights upon the authoritative pronouncement 
 of a single and supreme power. Without a centraUsed govern- 
 ment he believes that every safeguard of orthodoxy is open to 
 , destruction. And since religion is the safeguard of the whole 
 social edifice, it is clear that upon the acceptance of ultramonta- 
 nism the salvation of society itself may without difficulty be 
 made to depend.^'' 
 
 Lamennais, at any rate, so makes it; and it is interesting to 
 reflect that when his own change of attitude was so near at hand 
 the starting-point of his attitude should have been a distrust of 
 democracy. The regime of the time he regarded as already — it 
 seems incredible enough — no more than a representative 
 republic,™ and it was with a grim picture of its defects that he 
 began his survey. The existence of the chamber he insisted 
 was already the division of the sovereignty of the state. "^ The 
 king was no more than a great memory of the past. His func- 
 tions had passed from him to a ministry dependent upon Parlia- 
 ment. But that Parliament itself derived its powers from the 
 people, so that France was already that democracy which is the 
 source of political illusion."^ But democracy lacks stability. 
 It has no principles and it is irresistibly in a condition of per- 
 petual agitation. You cannot teach it. It is contemptuous of 
 authority and it trusts no one of superior talent. Those who 
 attain its favours are always the mediocre, and they win their 
 position by servility and dishonest adroitness. Democracy 
 destroys Christianity; for the latter centres itself round the idea 
 of a single and supreme authority which is alien from the spirit 
 of democratic government. And while Christianity is conser- 
 vative, democracy is by nature liberal so that there is already 
 a fundamental incompatibility. It is thus that he explains the 
 hostility of the Revolution to the church; for to strike at the 
 guardian of orthodoxy is to prepare the way for that egalita- 
 ranism which he regards as no more than the parent of universal 
 
 "^ For a useful discussion of the whole work cf Janet op. cit. pp. 37-54. 
 1™ "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), Vol. I, p. 209. 
 1" "Oeuvres," II, 15. 
 '« Ibid., II, 10. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 219 
 
 confusion."' There are, of course, minor confusions also, 
 corruption, the destruction of all sense of right, atheism and a 
 highly-flavoured type of despotic rule are sooner or later inevit- 
 able."^ Legislation means no more than the triumph of special 
 interests, administration is the victory of caprice and incoher- 
 ence."* There is no longer room for virtue, and the multipli- 
 cation of private speculation and invention results in the con- 
 fusion of public prosperity with the progress of civilisation."^ 
 
 Such an exordium does not promise well for particularisation. 
 When he applies these generalities to the France of the Restora- 
 tion, it is at once clear to him that the state is atheist."' It is 
 true that the charter declares Catholicism to be the religion of 
 France, but these are words without meaning. It has become 
 essential to conciliate, and the real purpose of the charter can 
 no longer be maintained."* The result of this political atheism 
 has been to destroy the hold of religion on domestic society. 
 No one can now hope for a religious revival; indifference, 
 negligence, avowed disbelief are the characteristics of the time."' 
 Public instruction has become a political institution; and Bos- 
 suet's Defense of the articles of 1682 has become a text-book for 
 the young.i*" The law has come to look upon religion simply as 
 a political weapon; it is now a thing to be administered, a 
 public establishment which is recognised out of courtesy because 
 some milhons of French men happen to believe in a certain form 
 of it.^'^ It has thus become essential to regard Catholicism with 
 defiance, for alone of all religions does it pretend to set limits to 
 the sovereignty of such anarchic doctrines.^*^ Protestantism is 
 in different case. Lacking as it does both dogma and discipline 
 it has no corporate bond. It is by its very nature destined to 
 dependence upon the civil power. But the duration of Cathol- 
 
 '" Ibid. 
 i» Ibid., 17. 
 '« Ibid., 18. 
 "« Ibid., 19. 
 '" lUd., Chap. II. 
 "'Ibid., 20-21. 
 ■" Ibid., 25 t. 
 '«« Ibid., 29. 
 '" Ibid., 33. 
 "2 Ibid., 34. 
 
220 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 icism would alone prove it to ba the strongest of societies. It 
 has, however, other and decisive virtues. It is divine in its 
 institution and independent by its nature. It has its own hier- 
 archy, its own laws, its inaUenable sovereignty. It has remained 
 unchanging from its origin. It has the noblest of missions. It 
 teaches in the name of the greatest legislator of all. Whatever 
 of stability the modern world possesses it owes to the Catholic 
 church. Yet the exercise of its rights is hampered on every side 
 by jealous men; and they seek to dissolve its unity as a corpor- 
 ate force. In suijh a situation the one object of rnen's efforts 
 must be the preservation of its oneness that it may remain as the 
 life-giving force of civilisation.'^' 
 
 What, then, he has to discuss are the conditions under which 
 the existence of Catholicism is possible. He fastens at once 
 upon its unity as the fundamental safeguard of its continuance. 
 For him the whole motive force of the church haS been Rome. 
 It is he insists, '^ the constituting power of Christianity. Only 
 the name of Rome deters the enemies of social order from their 
 fatal work. "Point de pape, point d'Eglise," and that whether as 
 a matter of history or of dogma. The church is a corporation in 
 which true reUgion finds its resting place. '^* But, fundamentally, 
 as it has been universal and perpetual, so it has been always one. 
 But it could not be one unless it had a centre of unity, and that 
 centre is to be found in the sovereign pontiff.- So that if the pope 
 is thus to be identified with the church — Ubi Petrus ibi ecclesia'*^ 
 — the consequences are clear. The Pope must be infallible and 
 none must contest his authority. He is a supreme monarch, for 
 once his decisions are called into question his sovereignty is 
 worthless. But the syllogism is more tremendous even than its 
 premiss. Point d'Eglise, point de christianisme. Idle dreamers 
 have thought to revise the rehgion of Christ by reforming the 
 church, but the result of their efforts has always been to destroy 
 the principles of rehgion itself .''' For to deny a single dogma is 
 to destroy the structure of the whole; and what man cannot 
 
 iss Ibid., 85. 
 
 '«^ Ibid., 44. The phrase is De Maistre's. 
 
 i»» Ibid., 47. 
 
 ^^ Ambrose's comment on Psalm XL. 
 
 '" Ibid., 48. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 221 
 
 prove by his reason he must beUeve on faith."* So we are led 
 to our conclusion. Point de christianisme, point de reli- 
 gion . . . et par consequent point de sociHS. Once we de- 
 clare ourselves independent of Christianity duty is destroyed 
 and vague sentiment takes its place."' Everyone, as in his own 
 time, does as he pleases; the obligatory character of faith ceases 
 to bind the conscience of men. But thus to loose the bonds of 
 religion is to deprive society of the sanctions upon which its 
 existence depends. So to attack the pope is a crime against 
 society, an attempt at the destruction of the very principle of 
 civilisation.!'" That we may be men, we must, in such an analy- 
 sis, embrace ultramontane doctrine; and he will show from the 
 examination of its antithesis how deadly are the effects of its 
 rejection. 
 
 It is clear that in such an analysis whatever seems to diminish 
 the strength of papaUsm is a severe blow at the roots of the 
 church. Here is the real root of Lamennais' distrust of Gal- 
 ilean doctrine. It lays emphasis on the particular church in- 
 stead of the universal. It fore-shadows a federal instead of a 
 unitary organisation of its powers. What, above all, arouses 
 his distrust is the fact that Gallicanism is not ecclesiastical but 
 political in its origin."' It may demand "liberties" f orthe French 
 church, but it asks them only that the state may the more com- 
 pletely destroy its independence. Gallicanism speaks of liberty; 
 but the liberties of the church are rights that the pope concedes, 
 and he would not concede the freedom of doctrine or of govern- 
 ance to a body which cannot meet save by secular permission."^ 
 But his objections go even deeper. The real effort of Gallicanism 
 is summed up in two propositions each of which is fatal to 
 Catholicism. It asserts the independence of temporal sover- 
 eignty. It assumes the superiority of a general council to the 
 Pope. But he will admit neither of these conclusions. For to 
 assert the independence of temporal power is at once to assert 
 the duality of the world and thus to render impossible thatreduc- 
 
 '»» IMd., 49. 
 '»» lUd., 50. 
 "» Ihid., 52. 
 '»> lUd., 63. 
 '« Ihid., 55. 
 
222 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 tion to unity for which he was so anxious. Moreover since the 
 church and the church only is the source of the divine law such a 
 doctrine assumes that a law made by men is to rank as of equal 
 worth with what comes directly from God."' It does not even 
 admit that God's law must be supreme since it confers sovereign 
 power upon what is by definition non-religious in nature. He 
 does not deny the existence of the two powers; but he insists 
 on the dogmatic and historical inferiority of the secular."* Nor 
 will he admit that a council can control the papacy. That is to 
 establish a collective sovereignty and thus to transform the 
 church from the monarchy it ideally is into a republic such as 
 Rome or Venice."* But a collective sovereignty is no longer 
 unified, and to postulate it is thus to destroy the fundamental 
 fact that the church is one."* Lamennais embarks upon a long 
 and acrimonious dissection of the tendencies towards church 
 nationalism so notably represented in his time by bishops like 
 Frayssinous and laymen like Montlosier."' He denies that 
 popes can ever err. He insists that the decrees of 1682 simply 
 deliver the clergy into the royal hands."* But that is to weaken 
 the allegiance they owe to Rome, and to weaken that allegiance is 
 to destroy the corporate character of the church. It is therefore 
 not merely uncatholic, but in its very nature it iS the kind of 
 church that tends to dependence upon the good will of the 
 state. "^ Even in the France of the Restoration, that good will 
 is apparent in the lack of fixity in the relations between the 
 church and the government.^"" Today the church receives its 
 subvention, but no one knows the possibilities of the morrow. 
 The law passes an annual judgment upon the advisability of its 
 continuance; and its educational desires are frustrated by the 
 existence of the university. The whole mechanism of church 
 government, in fact, is operated tentatively and with difficulty 
 
 i« Ihid., 57. 
 
 »'* Ihid., 61. 
 
 "5 Ihid., 65. 
 
 19" lUd., 67. 
 
 '" Cf. Frayssinous, "Les Vrais Principes de I'Eglise Gallicane" (1818); 
 Montlosier, "De la Monarchie Frangaise au ler Janvier," 1824 (1824) and 
 Bardoux op. cit. 
 
 "« "Oeuvres" II, 73. 
 
 "» Cf. Chapter VIII, passim. 
 
 "» Ibid., 85. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 223 
 
 when such continual account of the state has to be taken. It is 
 only in complete independence that the terms of a satisfactory 
 existence can be found. ^'" 
 
 So he drives us back to the dreams of Hildebrand. There 
 is but one pope and all kings are his subjects. The Pope must 
 rule because, without his guidance there is no alternative but 
 anarchy. ^"^ Where men erect themselves the judges of every 
 social dogma, the fall of civilisation is certain. He deems that 
 cataclysm already at hand; and it is to protect France against 
 its onset that he proposes this pitiless solution. But, as with 
 Bonald, Lamennais in nowise suggests the means by which 
 that solution is to be applied to events. Nothing is more fatally 
 easy than the diagnosis of social evils and their removal by 
 heroic remedies. Lamennais lived at a time when the principle 
 of authority could no longer command the widespread assent 
 of men. If Royer-Collard and Guizot could find no comfort 
 in his theories, it was assuredly not because they were hostile 
 to the division of sovereign power. It was simply because an 
 immense political experience had taught irien that the safe- 
 guard against its abuse was its partition. Lamennais was 
 striving to breathe new life into a loyalty that was already 
 dead. The alliance of throne and altar no longer possessed the 
 magic of the eighteenth century to support it; and he was 
 profoundly right in his insistence that in such a partnership the 
 throne would most greatly benefit. The dissolution of the 
 alhance would, as he urged, give the church a new sense of 
 freedom. She would cease to be chained to the wheels of the 
 monarchic chariot. But the deduction from separation is not 
 supremacy. It is one thing to believe that Rome is mistress 
 of the world; but the fundamental fact remains that the 
 greater part of men are unwilling to concede her right to domin- 
 ion. He was right in his urgent assertion that Rome was a 
 world-state and that the attempt to federalise her governance 
 would be out of accord with her historic traditions. Rome has, 
 since the Conciliar movement at least,^"' been consistently 
 
 "' Cf. Chap. IX, passim. 
 
 'o' lUd., 93. 
 
 *" Cf. Figgis," From Gerson to Grotius," Lect. II. N. Valois "Le Pape 
 et le Concile" is a magnificent analysis of the whole attempt at, and failure 
 of, the revolution in organisation. 
 
224 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Austinian in temper. She has set the model for centrahsed 
 government, and not even the catastrophe of a Reformation 
 or a Revolution could sway her in the direction of change. 
 But she has been more and more compelled to surrender her 
 position as a temporal power. She has been more and more 
 compelled to confine her jurisdiction to the spiritual control 
 of those who are willing to submit to her guidance. Even in 
 Lamennais' own time she was losing that temporal expression 
 of her penalties which, in the middle ages, had made what we 
 now call the state, rank as no more than her constable. Luther 
 had a final retort to her claims when he invented the divine 
 right of kings. ^"^ Effective she still might be within her sphere 
 — how effective the greatest of her advocates was himself 
 within a decade to learn. But the effectiveness of her effort 
 was no longer external; it had come to depend upon the con- 
 sent of men. Membership of the state was no longer condi- 
 tional upon baptism within her communion; and that, after 
 all, was the final blow to her widest claims. ^"^ Her sovereignty, 
 in fact, had been reduced from the universality of pre-Reforma- 
 tion times to a will, still, indeed, great, but now coinpeUed to 
 struggle not so much to advance, as actually to maintain 
 its position. Men had freed themselves from the notion that 
 power is justified by the mere fact of its existence. They had 
 learne d — and it is here that Rousseau has a claim on our grati- 
 tude that we have still to pay — that the fundamental problem 
 in politics is not the description or maintenance of the organs 
 of authority but the inquiry into their legitimacy. ^''s In that 
 light the claims of Lamennais were already obsolete. 
 
 Where, indeed, there was much to be said for his attitude 
 was in his firm refusal to base his theory of social organisation 
 upon no other consideration than that of public policy. Here, 
 it is true, he was obviously medieval; for the abandonment of 
 
 2" Of course it is much earlier in origin; but what Luther did was 
 finally to make it effective as against Ronie. 
 
 ^'^ Cf . for this viewer in its most extreme form the "Sum-ma" of Augustinus 
 Triumphus (1473) XXVI, 5. 
 
 ^" Cf. the remarks on the distinction between Montesquieu's theories 
 and his own in the fifth book of the Emile; and for his insistence that force 
 gives no right the "Contrat Social" Bk. I, Chs. Ill and IV. I think T. H. 
 Green accepted this view. Works II, 396 f . 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 225 
 
 the attempt to discover a natural order founded upon divine 
 right is the chief poUtical characteristic of the modern world. 
 We have come to see that not the least significant criterion 
 of any political structure is its expression in terms of the gen- 
 eral happiness of common men. It is, perhaps, a more terrestrial 
 standard than that which Lamennais adopts. He was above all 
 anxious that men should be right; and he meant by right the 
 acceptance of the extreme limits of Cathohc doctrine. It is 
 obvious, of course, that intolerance is impUed in such an atti- 
 tude and the modem rejection of intolerance seems based upon 
 two assumptions of which Lamennais could take no account. 
 We are too uncertain of the truth of any spiritual interpretation 
 of life to give it the final sanction of complete authority; and 
 we find that the historical results of intolerance in no sense 
 justify its exercise. It is, in some sense, the banishment of 
 God from politics; and in that sense we live in an anti-theocratic 
 age. We have passed, as Mr. Figgis has finely pointed out,^"'' 
 "from the defence of rights to the realisation of right," and 
 it is from actual experience that we give to right its modern 
 connotation. What Lamennais did not realise was the historic 
 fact that the multiplication of authority arose from exactly 
 that process. Catholicism had abused its powers; and in the 
 pohtical no less than the rehgious sphere — ^he would, of course, 
 have denied the legitimacy of such separation — ^new institu-s 
 tions arose to defend what men, if wrongly, at any rate sincerely, 
 had come to regard as fundamental. The very existence of 
 such diversity had relegated to the impossible the theory for 
 which he stood. The old high-prerogative notion of sovereignty, 
 three centuries af a history of which the Revolution was only 
 a dramatic climax, had securely slain. His own theory of cer- 
 titude by universal consent should surely have made him ap- 
 preciate the significance of that diversity of opinion he so deeply 
 regretted. But the time had not yet come when that realisa- 
 tion should be driven relentlessly into his soul. 
 
 VI. THE TRANSITION TO LIBERALISM 
 
 It was, at any rate, a striking protest; and if it met everywhere 
 2" From "Gerson to Grotius,'-' p. 17. The whole lecture is a very 
 precious possession. 
 
226 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 with a doubtful reception^o^ it was yet a challenge which no 
 weak government dare allow to pass unanswered. That was 
 the more certainly the case since the very month before the 
 publication of its second part the veteran Montlosier had 
 charged the ministry with a cowardly surrender to the clerical 
 party ;^'" and even if the accusation were only in part the 
 truth.^i" yet Lamennais' arraignment of the alliance between 
 throne and altar seemed to give colour to his pretensions. 
 The only step they deemed it possible to take was his prose- 
 cution; and his virtual acquittal,^" after an argument in which 
 his counsel, the great Berryer, denied that the decrees of 1682 
 were a part of French law, was in every sense a personal tri- 
 umph.212 gy^ \^ -jy^as noteworthy that he had already arrayed 
 against himself the episcopal powers of France. The bishops, 
 headed by Frayssinous, addressed a declaration to the crown 
 which was unexceptionally Galilean in sentiment ;2" and it was 
 henceforth clear to Lamennais that neither from the croivn 
 nor from the episcopate was help to be expected. 
 
 That is the real source of his later hberahsm. Disappointed 
 by ofRciahsm in church and, state, his only resource was the 
 general mass of men. But, as yet, he had other hopes. He 
 was still prepared to stake everjrthing upon the action of Rome, 
 and his letters show how much he built upon the accession of 
 an energetic nuncio to the charge of French affairs.^" Not 
 that he concealed from himself the gravity of the situation. 
 A long struggle was in front of him. From all sides there 
 poured forth acrimonious criticism of his pVinciples.^" He 
 beheved, indeed, that the body of the clergy was well-disposed 
 to him, and he still insisted on the glorious future of the church.^^* 
 But that made him the more insistent on the need for a direc- 
 
 2»8 Cf. Boutard, op. cit. I, 302-3. 
 
 209 "Memoire h. consulter sur un systSme," etc. (1826). 
 
 2" It is denied, not without some interesting evidence by Grandmaison 
 in his interesting work "La Congregation." 
 
 ^" He was fined thirty francs. 
 
 ™ See Lamennais' own description of the trial in his "Corresp." (ed. 
 Forgues), I, 246. 
 
 ™ Boutard I, 334 f . 
 
 2" "Corresp." I, 241. 
 
 2" See an account of these attacks in Boutard, I, 345 f . 
 
 "8 "Corresp." I, 253. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 227 
 
 tion of their enthusiasm. "Tous les yeux," he wrote,^" "sont 
 fixfe sur Rome .... qu'elle continue de se taire, 
 qui osera, qui pourra, parler?" 
 
 He had ceased to expect aid from the state. His condemna- 
 tion had completed in him a long process of disillusion. He 
 could not interpret it otherwise than as a determination upon 
 the part of government to use the church for its purposes. So 
 that Rome only was left, and it was upon the issue of that 
 confidence that his future depended. He seems to have thought 
 highly of the Pope,^'* and though he declared that the idea of 
 a national church was in everyone's mind, he did not doubt 
 that once a frank word came from Rome, the loyalty of the 
 provinces to the true conception of Catholicism would assert 
 itself.^'' Rome, as he thought, could not long endure the 
 supervision of its decrees by the government.^^" So great was 
 the servility of the Galilean party that it had disgusted even 
 the honest Uberals. He was already prepared to believe that 
 they would lend a new support to his cause if Rome would 
 but do its duty. " Le monde a change," he wrote to a friend,^^! 
 "il cherche un maitre: il est orphelin, il cherche un pSre. Le 
 trouvera-t-il? Voila la question." For, on all sides, the ultra- 
 montane position was menaced. Men who held his opinions 
 were ruthlessly dismissed.^^ A society for the propagation of 
 pious books was attacked because he supported it.^^' Orders of 
 which the bishops did not approve were prevented from under- 
 taking missions. People even went so far as to whisper that 
 at Rome itself Lamennais' opinions were held in Uttle esteem.^^* 
 It is little wonder that he should have begun to feel a deep 
 distrust of his opponents and that there should have crept 
 into his writings that note of acrimony which made a distin- 
 guished Jesuit protest against his bitterness.^^s Even in the 
 
 «" Ibid., I, 257. 
 
 «8 Ibid., 1, 273. 
 
 "' Ibid., I, 274. 
 
 «» Ibid., 1, 276. 
 
 *" Ibid., I, 288. 
 
 '^ Ibid., 1, 279. 
 
 «» lUd., 1, 270. 
 
 s" Ibid., I, 274. Cf. Boutard, op. cit. I, 350. 
 
 iw/6id., I, 355. 
 
228 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Jesuits he had lost all confidence. Attacked as the society was 
 on all sides, it had not ceased to intrigue with every party; and 
 its declared ultramontane opinions were, for him, no excuse 
 for the hatred it engendered in the minds of honest men.^^* 
 The nuncio listed with poUteness to his expositions of policy; 
 but his responses seem to have been no more than diplomatic 
 expressions of the papal difficulties. ^^^ If the ideas for which he 
 stood sponsor were gaining widespread acceptance he still 
 feared greatly the influence of authority against them.^* 
 
 More and more he was driven to distrust the state. "II 
 faut d'avance," he said,^^' "poser les bases d'une nouvelle 
 societe . . . c'est fohe de compter sur les gouverne- 
 
 ments qui ne sont plus des gouvernements, qui ne peuvent 
 plus le redevenir. II s'agir de faire des peuples." It is a note 
 which constantly recurs. Government might attempt the con- 
 trol of the press,^^'' but he saw in it only a weapon by which 
 ultramontanism might receive its deathblow. He was appalled 
 at the incapacity of the clergy. Only a great reform could 
 effect the requisite change.^" More and more he feared that 
 religion had ceased to exercise an influence over the minds of 
 men. Europe had become simply a vast alHance of the strong 
 against the weak and a system of principles gave way to a 
 system of interests. Only when they regained their empire 
 would it be possible to hope. Only one man could draw the 
 attention of the peoples to their existence, and he was silent.'"^ 
 
 That silence is the fundamental fact in Lamennais' transi- 
 tion to hberahsm. Rome seemed to him too temporising in 
 her attitude.2^5 If she showed signs of compromise, that would 
 be false to the future.^^^ A new generation was arising which 
 needed her direction. The progress of revolutionary ideas was 
 evident on every hand. The government interfered with in- 
 
 ^' "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), I, 295. 
 
 =«" Ibid., 1, 298-9. 
 
 »« Ibid., I, 309. 
 
 =29 lUd., I, 310-1. 
 
 ^'' Debidour, op. oit. 397 f. 
 
 '^^ VitroUes, p. 180. 
 
 ^2 Spuller, op. cit. 144. "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), I, 348-9. 
 
 =«' Ibid., I, 436. 
 
 «< Ibid., I, 466. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 229 
 
 creasing enthusiasm in clerical affairs. Speed, above every- 
 thing, was necessary to the church's safety. "Une immense 
 liberty," he wrote towards the close of 1828,^^^ "est indispensa- 
 ble pour que les v&it6s qui sauveront le monde." But that 
 liberty could come only when Rome should speak. Lamennais 
 did not understand the thousand poHtical considerations which 
 were the cause of her silence. He was asking her to devote 
 herself to spiritual empire alone; but that was to invite her 
 to surrender a faculty of temporal interference to which she 
 held firmly. Nor did he yet understand that for Rome he was 
 himself less the guardian of a truth which meant everything 
 to her future than the head of a party within the French church 
 of which the success was more than doubtful. Rome would 
 probably have agreed to many elements in his programme. 
 But she must have realised that what he demanded'''* she 
 would not attain without a struggle far more bitter than La- 
 meimais can even have dreamed. He was, after all, free; and 
 he could follow his principles to their logical conclusion. But 
 Rome had a hundred warring interests to conciliate and in- 
 numerable traditions to obey. In the result, an abyss devel- 
 oped inevitably between their views. His influence was grow- 
 ing and many of the younger generation were rallying to his 
 side. The "Ecole Menaisienne" was already conceived at the 
 end of 1828. Men like Gerbet and de SaUnis were already 
 his firm friends. Little by little he was coming to see that 
 authority, even in the church, may be poisoned at its source. 
 It was with this feehng already deeply rooted that he pub- 
 lished, early in 1829, his "Progres de la Revolution." 
 
 It is not so complete a rupture with his earher views as he was 
 presently to make; but the book marks in a real sense the 
 birth of Uberal CathoKcism and there are few of its doctrines 
 one may not impUcitly find there. In a society that is really 
 Christian, Lamennais points out, the unity of the people is 
 secured by spiritual ties; as they submit to the prince so should 
 they submit to God.^' But from the time when Louis XIV 
 
 2» Ibid., I, 486. 
 
 "' His programme is briefly summarised in the letter of Jan. 26, 1828. 
 "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), I, 416. 
 '" "Oeuvres," II, 242. 
 
230 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 proclaimed the destruction of the two powers the realisation 
 of that ideal has become impossible. Two theories at least 
 have arisen which aim at or result in its destruction.^' A 
 hberaUsm so logical as that of the Globe,^^ must break every 
 social bond; for while it denies sovereignty either to king or 
 people, it replaces them only by individual opinion which is, 
 in truth, to let loose the floodgates of anarchy. Nor is it 
 favourable to liberty; for the condition of liberty is the ex- 
 istence of a legitimate power which shall act in accordance with 
 the eternal principles of justice.^" Nor is Galhcanism in better 
 case. It is, in truth, a gloss for servitude. It does no more 
 than free kings from the moral code and leads to their deifica- 
 tion. It makes men think of religion as the natural ally of 
 despotism and thus dissipates their affection for it. What is 
 needed is a Christian order. After all, it is under the segis of 
 Catholicism that Uberty was first born; and the guarantee of 
 its continuance is the submission of the temporal power to the 
 spiritual. If men turn once more to the church the destructive 
 combat between hberahsm and the GalUcans wiU cease.^*' 
 With neither should the clergy ally itself. Rather should it 
 proclaim its entire dissociation with all pohtical life, and its 
 connexion only with Rome. It must assert its ancient rights. 
 The bishops must resuscitate the diocesan synods and the 
 provincial councils. The mismanagement of the state in edu- 
 cation and worship must cease. The clergy must free itself 
 from the reproach of ignorance and take account of the niarch 
 of knowledge.^*^ The reign of the church will be the work of 
 liberty; from freedom only can truth be born. Liberty of 
 conscience, hberty of the press, liberty in education— these 
 and not less than these are his demands.^^ "Sortez de la 
 maison de servitude .... entrez en possession de la hb- 
 erty." It is a cry that the church had not heard in two hundred 
 years of her history. 
 
 '^^ "Les Progr^s," etc., Ch. II and III. 
 
 '"'The paper of Royer-CoUard and the doctrinaire hberals. Cf. the 
 admirable paper of Paul Janet in the Bevtie de Deux Mondes for 1879. 
 
 "» "Oeuvres," II, 249. 
 
 =«' "Oeuvres," II, 251 f. 
 
 ^ "Oeuvres," II, 290 f. 
 
 ''*' Cf . the preface to the Progrfes de la Revolution. 
 
AUTHOEITY IN THE MODERN STATE 231 
 
 The book is the logical consequence of his earlier work. 
 Where, before, he had trusted kings, he now trusted the people; 
 where before he had trusted Rome, he now puts his confidence 
 in the collective power of the priesthood. He has seen that 
 kingship has traditions which make its reconciliation, in any 
 full sense, with CathoKc ideals impossible. And if monarchy 
 is thus held back in the state, his experience of Rome's hesita- 
 tions suggested that the condition of the church is not different. 
 To be driven back as he was to the general body of its members* 
 was to find its real meaning in the life that it led. It is surely 
 this that explains the almost complete absence of dogmatic 
 discussion from his enquiry. He is interested in Catholicism 
 as a spirit which may become again the mistress of men's 
 souls. Indeed, he is so far cognisant of the changing intellec- 
 tual perspective that he insists on the necessity of the clergy 
 being fully abreast of progress in scholarship. It is here, 
 clearly, that the tenor of his Kberalism is evident. That for 
 which he is seeking is the conditions upon which the Christian 
 church — ^for him that societas perfeda which seems destined 
 eternally to haunt the minds of men — may develop unheeded. 
 Doubtless he is still anxious that she may win the empire of 
 the world. He is still — as he remained to the end— in the full 
 sense of the word a theocrat. But he has already come to 
 understand that the realms of church and state are by their 
 nature distinct. He is already, even if, in some sort, xmcon- 
 sciously, admitting that authority cannot be single. He had 
 hardly, as yet, worked out the implications of his admission. 
 He perhaps did not then realise that he was thereby reducing 
 the church to the condition of a voluntary society which, even 
 if it had the features of a state, was nevertheless distinct from 
 the territorial character of the secular organ. He no longer, 
 as in 1818, spoke of government as all-powerful. He had not, 
 indeed, as yet embraced liberalism in any full sense of the 
 word. He appealed to it as men who are persecuted always 
 make appeal to the principles of freedom. But he had come to 
 understand that without it the guarantees of progress would 
 be lacking. He disliked its vagueness; and he hoped to abro- 
 gate it by establishing his demand upon the basis of an accept- 
 ance of the Christian faith. He beheved then, as he always 
 
232 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 believed, that only in the acceptance of the spirit of Chris- 
 tianity could Europe find its salvation. That was what he 
 meant by saying that .unity would be reborn in the struggle 
 for freedom. That was why he welcomed the onset of the 
 revolution he so clearly foresaw. Renovation must be the 
 child of destruction; the tempest, as he said, would purify the 
 air. But he did not yet know that he was speaking the lan- 
 guage of revolutionary democracy as he was abandoning the 
 ideal of papal Rome. 
 
 VII. THE FOUNDATION OF L'AVENIR 
 
 "When a certain number of men," Lamennais wrote early 
 in 1829,2" "keenly conscious of those truths which are the 
 basis of social security shall unite among themselves, then we 
 shall have the germ of a new order .... for that end two 
 things are essential: we must enlighten men's minds by dis- 
 cussion, and we must strengthen their hearts by fighting. From 
 that it follows that liberty, whether we have it, or whether we 
 merely seek it, is today the first need of the people as it is the 
 indispensable condition of our salvation." That is, in brief, 
 the whole method and programme of Liberal Cathohcism as 
 Lamennais conceived it. The opposition to his attitude was 
 passionate and strong. The Archbishop of Paris preached and 
 wrote publicly against him;^ the nuncio regretted the violence 
 of his attitude.^*^ His fierce determination was ascribed on 
 every hand to pride and an overweening confidence in his own 
 conclusions. Few reahsed, as did Lamennais himself,^' the 
 magnitude of the task he had undertaken. With the bishops 
 unitedly against him, the silence of Rome was ever more ex- 
 asperating; and the death of Leo XII deprived him of one who 
 was perhaps his friend. ^^ The church seemed to him as one 
 given up in the arena to gladiators and wild beasts.^^' Not 
 
 «« "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), Vol. II, p. 6. 
 ^ See his two letters in reply, "Oeuvres," II, 323 ff. 
 "« Dudon, "Lamennais et le Saint-SiSge," p. 76. Lambruschini himself 
 seems not to have disagreed with his arguments. 
 «' "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 27. 
 "' Ibid., II, 15, and cf. his remarks on p. 18. 
 "» Ibid., p. 51. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 233 
 
 even the Revolution of 1830 seems to have stirred him very 
 deeply. He had long prophesied its coming; and he valued it 
 only as a sign that his prevision was not mistaken ;2*'' nor did 
 he conceal his view — nor his satisfaction — that the crisis must 
 eventually end in a republic. The situation mainly interested 
 him as a means to the greater freedom for which he was now 
 so anxious. "Chacun," he wrote,^*' "chacun doit aujourd'hui 
 chercher sa s^ret6 dans la s{iret6 de tous, c'est k dire dans 
 une liberty commune. La hbert^, c'est le droit et la faculty de 
 se d^fendre contre toute volont^ arbitraire et oppressive." The 
 problem was the translation of that attitude into terms of 
 Catholic life. 
 
 He did not embark upon its solution unprepared. His re- 
 treat at La Chfinaie had for some time been a kind of communal 
 retreat for those few close friends who, Hke Gerbet and SaUnis, 
 thought as he did upon the fundamental questions. As eafly 
 as 1825 he had dreamed of opening there a kind of institute, 
 where, with a few chosen comrades, he might work and think 
 and pray. At Malestroit he had founded the little Congregation 
 of Saint Peter which won the highest praise from Leo XII.^^^ 
 Its object was, above all, to harmonise the results of science 
 and reUgion. "Lorsque I'Eglise tenoit entre ses mains le scep- 
 tre de la science," he wrote,^^' " c'etait une des causes de I'ascend- 
 ant qu'elle avait sur les esprits." That was, perhaps, a some- 
 what chimerical ambition to anyone who had any historic 
 sense of the Catholic church. But over his companions, as 
 even a hostile witness like Wiseman bears testimony,^" his 
 ascendancy was amazing. It was under his aegis that Rohr- 
 bacher began that history of the church which, if its lustre be 
 dim now, was for its time a mighty undertaking. Bor6 came 
 there; the grim Lacordaire who came to doubt remained to 
 bless ; Sainte-Beuve felt its influence ; and the letters of Maurice 
 de Gu6rin bear witness to the joy that tender and graceful spirit 
 
 »« Ibid., II, 161. 
 
 «" Ibid., II, 160. 
 
 "i^Dudon, op. cit. p. 70. M. Dudon attributes this praise to mere 
 politeness on the Pope's part; but when one considers the general relation 
 between Leo and Lamennais that conclusion seems unduly sceptical. 
 
 ^ Spuller op. cit., p. 161. 
 
 2" Cf. his "Four Last Popes," p. 301 f. 
 
234 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 felt in the friendship of his master. And a little later towards 
 the end of November, 1830, there came to his aid the ablest 
 and most renowned of his disciples in Montalembert.^^^ With 
 such men as these he could indeed face the future without fear. 
 
 If, at first, the Revolution of 1830 seemed hostile to the 
 Catholic forces, it soon became evident that this was in fact 
 a passing mood.^** The nation, as a whole, found its full sat- 
 isfaction in having deposed the king who had broken the 
 Charter of 1814; and it was sufficiently Catholic in character 
 to indulge in no more than sporadic and momentary excesses. 
 Nor did the government show itself more inimical. The new 
 dynasty was, after all, too frail to embark on the troubled seas 
 of religious persecution; and if the Charter of 1830 was more 
 liberal than its predecessor it in nowise deprived Catholicism 
 of its pre-eminence. Lamennais did not disguise from himself 
 that difficult times lay ahead; but he believed that the sup- 
 port of the Orleans dynasty would lead to the protection of 
 those rights by which alone the existence of religion was possi- 
 ble.''" Almost immediately the means of active propaganda 
 were to hand in the foundation of that journal L'Avenir which 
 in its feverishly brilliant career, did Wore, perhaps, than any 
 other weapon to fasten the roots of liberal doctrine deep down 
 in the soil of Catholicism. "Son but," Lamennais told his 
 friends,^'^ "(est) d'unir, sur la base de la liberty, les hommes 
 de toutes les opinions attaches a I'ordre." At almost the same 
 time there was instituted a society for the defense of rehgious 
 Hberty.^^' It undertook to support every religious school. It 
 protected the clergy from wrongful prosecution. It safeguarded 
 the right of association. It desired to act as the common link 
 by which all rehgious societies in France should be linked 
 together for mutual protection against all attacks on the hberty 
 of their faith.^^" Both journal and society are simply Lamennais; 
 nowhere is there any thought in either of which he is not the 
 
 "^ The first volume of Lecanuet's admirable "Life of Montalembert" 
 details the history of their relations in full. 
 265 Cf. Debidour, op. cit., p. 412. 
 2" "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 168 f. 
 »=' Ibid., II, 173. 
 
 i»9 Ibid., II, 185, and Boutard, op. cit., II, 181 f. 
 "» See their statutes summarised in Debidour, op. cit., 421. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 235 
 
 directive inspiration. His letters take on a note of optimism by 
 which, in general, they were rarely distinguished.^^' He seems 
 clearly to have felt the greatness of the work he had undertaken; 
 nor was he any longer possessed by the old terrors of its f utihty. 
 The Avenir lasted for a year, when the hostility of Rome com- 
 pelled its suspension. Certainly no journal has ever more 
 splendidly fulfilled its programme. Its very disappearance 
 was important; for it marked the first of the three great defeats 
 suffered by Uberal Catholics in the first century of their exist- 
 ence.^^^ Yet in the short period of its existence it was able to 
 elaborate a political theory of which no one can as yet foretell 
 the complete potentialities. Lamennais himself has told us the 
 essence of the doctrines he therein preached. It started out 
 from the assumption that the right to command, which he calls 
 sovereignty, belongs to God alone ;^^' every one is dependent 
 upon Him and therefore no person can possess, in the strict 
 sense, sovereign powers. As a consequence, all men are equal 
 in their rights; for their rights are derived from their nature 
 which come equally from God. Liberty is thus the essential 
 condition of civil institutions. The power which is given to 
 rulers is derived from the agreement of men to arrange for the 
 protection of their liberties. Rulers, ,as a result, possess only 
 that power which is judged by the citizens of a state necessary 
 to the conservation of the law of their being. ^*^ Men have thus 
 imprescriptible rights and it follows that liberahsm must always 
 be the basis of their existence. The Revolution and the Restora- 
 tion ahke denied these truths; it was by a poUcy of concerted 
 violence that in their different ways each sought to govern. 
 The monarchy of the Restoration, moreover, used reUgion as a 
 poUtical weapon and thereby brought it into discredit. ^^^ They 
 
 "1 e. g. "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 177, and cf. Laveille, op. cit., 258. 
 
 ''' I suppose it would generally be admitted that the history of liberal 
 Catholicism can reasonably be divided into the Lamennais period; that 
 which culminates in their defeat at the Vatican council; and that which 
 culminates in the issue of the encyclical pascendi. I have discussed the 
 significance of the second episode in the fourth chapter of my "Problem 
 of Sovereignty." The last is discussed below. 
 
 «" Oeuvres, II, 362. 
 
 i!" Ibid., II, 363. 
 
 2» Ibid., II, 366. 
 
236 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 deprived it, in fact, of the character of a religion by taking from 
 it its character of independence. They used it as a means 
 against that democratic regime which is always incompatible 
 with monarchy ;2^^ and they bought its compliance by the gift 
 of money, of dignity and of power. But a struggle inevitably 
 arose when the people came to reaUse that the state was being 
 used for the interest of a privileged class. The people demanded 
 their rights and they did not hesitate to take them. A new 
 order was born; and it was to preserve Catholicism from the 
 evils by which it was threatened that the Avenir came into 
 being.^^^ It is upon that foundation that its effort was made. 
 It insisted upon the separation of rehgion and poHtics; a reh- 
 gion which is endowed by the state is no longer a religion but an 
 establishment. It asked for the right to establish schools, the 
 abolition of episcopal nomination, the complete independence 
 of church and state. For the essence of their doctrine was to 
 look upon Catholicism as in itself a sufficient way of life, bound 
 not to earth but to God. So, by separating itself from the 
 world, it secured the conditions of its freedom. So it became 
 the mirror of that which it was destined to enshrine.^^' 
 
 There is no article in the Avenir throughout its history which 
 is not faithful to this programme. It is difficult to do fuU jus- 
 tice to the eloquent passion with which it is throughout advo- 
 cated. It is clear enough that Lamennais was happy in the 
 work of propagation. His letters reveal a new faith in things 
 which triumphs over the difficult physical conditions under 
 which he laboured. He saw the work grow on every hand. The 
 response to his charitable appeals was remarkable.^™ The 
 demand for men of letters whom he could trust came from every 
 part of France. 2'" They gave active support to the Belgian 
 Revolution and the PoUsh insurrection."^ They followed the 
 efforts of O'Connell in Ireland with eager enthusiasm."^ They 
 had feelings of deep sympathy for the kindred ideals of Gorres 
 
 »« Ibid., II, 367. 
 2" Ibid., II, 368. 
 
 268 Ibid., II, 370. 
 
 269 Cf. "Oeuvres," II, 368. 
 
 "» "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 193. 
 
 2" Avenir, no. of Sept. 17, 31. "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 189. 
 
 "2 Boutard, op. cit., II, 202. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 237 
 
 and Dollinger.^" They dreamed of a general union of Catholic 
 forces throughout the world of which the end was to be the 
 attainment of a general freedom for all peoples.^* They pro- 
 tested against the enmity of science and religion; for Cathol- 
 icism dare not fear truth otherwise it was not worthy of preser- 
 vation. Nor is it difficult to see that in the process of work 
 Lamennais became more and more convinced of the rightness of 
 his attitude; certainly not even in the dark days of his suspen- 
 sion did his conviction for a moment falter. 
 
 It is not easy to mistake their system. On the morrow of a 
 revolution they saw, as they deemed, but two things still firm 
 amid the universal disorder: the action of providence and the 
 need for Uberty. It is with their integral reconciUation that 
 they are, abov-e all, concerned.^^ It is in effect, a demand that 
 the spiritual future of the church be based upon an acceptance 
 of what, in the most hberal estimate, the Revolution may be 
 taken to mean; with the addition that where the Revolution 
 misunderstood the significance of corporate freedom,^^^ Lamen- 
 nais insists upon its attainment. From that basis they make 
 their judgments. Their connexion with Rome must be uninter- 
 rupted and direct; to attempt the control of such communica- 
 tion is an intolerable and oppressive surveillance. For it means 
 that the papal power over the church is reduced to a nullity, 
 and without that power the church can have no real existence."' 
 They insist on the right of association. The holding of opinions 
 impUes the right to take means for their protection. Man is so 
 pre-eminently a social being that without such right his life is 
 deprived of half its meaning."^ They demand liberty of instruc- 
 tion; for it is surely clear that without the opportunity to educate 
 their children in Catholic principles they have no means of en- 
 suring what they believe to be their salvation."' Nor does their 
 demand end there. They recognise that religious liberty is the 
 offspring of political Hberty. That was why they rejoiced at the 
 
 s" Avereir, Nov. 21, 30; Dec. 2, 30; May 11, 31. 
 
 "« Boutard, op. cit., II, 213 f. 
 
 "' AveniT, Oct. 16, 1830. 
 
 "' Cf. the essay on "Administrative Syndicalism." 
 
 "' Avmir, Oct. 26, 1830. 
 
 "« Avenir, Oct. 30, 30. 
 
 "» /6id., Nov. 26, 30. ' 
 
238 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Polish insurrectioD.^sD That was why the power of government 
 was by its very character an object of suspicion in their eyes. It 
 was the very power of government which really lay at the bot- 
 tom of their advocacy of separation. It was an historical deduc- 
 tion from their experience that a church so fettered cannot from 
 the nature of things be free. Their desire for liberty of the press 
 is only the impUcit translation of Uberty of thought into terms of 
 action. Their insistence on such a form of election as will en- 
 able the suffrage to be exercised by the humblest men is a result 
 of their desire to give power the broadest basis of consent; and 
 it was for that reason that Lamennais declared himself opposed 
 to the existence of an hereditary chamber.^^^ Nor was it less 
 consistent with his theory of power that he should have de- 
 manded administrative decentralisation. It was part of the 
 natural right to -self-government that he should desire to mini- 
 mise the evil influence of the absorptive effect of the Napoleonic 
 system. If we once admit the right of a people to look after its 
 own affairs it becomes sufl5.ciently obvious that federalism more 
 nearly meets the needs of a complex society than the unitary 
 state.^^^ Nor was he illogical in his view that only in the in- 
 creasing application of intelligence to public questions, the contin- 
 uous realisation that this is a changing world and that CathoHcism 
 must meet the implications of its changing perspective, could 
 there be a victory for his principles.^' In the end, it is to that con- 
 ception that all liberal Catholicism goes back. The idea of a de- 
 veloping tradition was for him the simple deduction from the 
 obvious fact that CathoHcism was a living personality which, if 
 true to itself, was surely destined to conquer the world. If he 
 states his beHef , less in terms of a dissatisfaction with its narrow 
 dogmas than of discontent with its narrow poHtical outlook, 
 that only means that he was the child of his age. The 
 need of the moment was political; the scientific criticism of 
 Catholic dogmatics began to penetrate only a quarter of a 
 century later. Yet his anxiety for a learned priesthood is suffi- 
 cient evidence that he was not without some understanding of 
 the need that one day would come. 
 
 "» Ibid., Sept. 17, 31. 
 
 '"■ Ibid., May 28, 31. 
 
 "2 Ibid., June 28, 31. 
 
 '^ Ibid., June 30, 31. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 239 
 
 What, then, emerges from it all? The real problem by which 
 he was confronted was the problem of government. He did not 
 for one moment doubt the eternal truth of the fundamental 
 maxims for which Christianity stands. But he had come to the 
 stage where it was necessary to distinguish between the collec- 
 tive conscience of Christian society — the general will which lay 
 buried beneath the appearance of evil and misunderstanding 
 — and the consciously formulated practice of those who actually 
 governed it. He had come to disbeheve that the church could 
 be fully represented by her ministers. What she was, no one 
 body of men could claim to be. She was essentially a brother- 
 hood of a life to be lived on certain principles and the fundamen- 
 tal test of her worth was the regulation of her conduct in the terms 
 of those principles. That was why he was prepared to reject 
 the authority of the state. As a consistent Christian he could 
 not regard himself as linked to what was in idea neither religious 
 nor free. And that sense of antagonism to secular things made 
 him anxious to insist in every particular upon the distinct and 
 corporate hfe of the church — its self-sufficiency, its own right 
 to freedorn, to government, to development. It was for the 
 expression of its personahty that he above all cared; and he did 
 not greatly mind that the sense of power a state-relation might 
 add to it should be withdrawn. It did not greatly matter to him 
 that he did not — perhaps could not — attempt the definition of 
 Catholicism. For him the vital test was — as it is the vital test 
 of every society — that he felt its meaning deeply enough to be 
 able to share fully and richly in its life. He would never — -cer- 
 tainly, at least, before 1834, — have denied that the church must 
 actively organise her strength; his passionate defence of ultra- 
 montanism is the sufficient proof of that. But he was virtually 
 claiming aheady a right to judge it, was reserving for himself 
 the power to insist that, when the last order has been issued, 
 it was, after all, a matter for his own judgment whether he would 
 accept it. All his work had gone to show that he had, as much 
 as any Catholic authority, a deep sense of the disintegrating 
 effect of schism, a wish that there should be unity of purpose 
 even if there were variety of effort. He had the deep and abiding 
 sense of the church as an apostohc society of which the mission 
 was the preparation of the city of God. But that is clearly a 
 
240 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Catholicism distinct in a fundamental sense from the sectarian 
 orthodoxy of the schools or the poHtical ambitions of Eome. It 
 is, as the greatest of his successors said of the true Cathohcism of 
 his own time, "simply a spiritual society organised purely in the 
 interests of rehgion and morahty."^ 
 
 Such an attitude, of course, involves the hving of one's faith 
 rather than the observance of its dogma or its ritual. Here, 
 surely, is one of the keys to Lamennais' hatred of Galhcanism; 
 for, as he interpreted it, it rendered impossible any full realisa- 
 tion of the Christian life. For Gallicanism, as it had developed 
 under the Restoration, ^^^ had become an exclusive and intolerant 
 search for power. It had lost sight of the significance of the 
 spirit of the church, in the effort to re-assert a speciaUsed and 
 departmental control over a section of the thoughts of men; 
 and it was not very careful as to the means it used to that end.^* 
 With such an attitude he had no sympa,thy. As an essay in the 
 ideal church for which he lived it seemed to him abortive by the 
 very fact that it trod the path of the state. The desires he 
 cherished were different. A free church in a free state was re- 
 served for other and greater destinies. It would hnk itself to 
 the current of social change which was to fashion a new world. 
 Science and hberty would be its comrades, and it would advance 
 in kinship with the profoundest hopes of democracy.^? If it 
 rejected the sovereignty of kings, it was only that it might be 
 true to itself. If it is suspicious of authority, it is only because 
 it has experienced its evils. If he was prepared still to maintain 
 extra ecclesiasm salus nulla, what he meant by the church was 
 no longer obedience to a single power. He beheved, it is true, 
 in the unified governance of the church; but he beheved in it 
 
 '»■' Tyrrell, "A Much-abused Letter," p. 64. I do not think there is a sen- 
 tence in this magnificent justification that Lamennais would have repudiated. 
 
 ''*' One has to distinguish between different hands; that of Grfigoire, or 
 that which goes back to Porte-Royal, are very different from that of 
 Frayssinous. 
 
 '"' It is interesting to note Macaulay's deep indignation against the 
 church of the Restoration. On the margin of Paul-Louis Courier's pam- 
 phlet "Response aux Anonymes," No. 2 he wrote "Worthy of Demosthe- 
 nes. It makes my blood boil against that accursed tjTanny." Trevelyan, 
 Life (Nelson ed.), II, 502. 
 
 2" "Oeuvres," II, 372. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 241 
 
 only so long as that governance was in accord with liberal doc- 
 trine. It is clear that he is already in the stage when in a choice 
 between what Tyrrell called "the only absolute duty and the 
 highest sort of conditional duty''^^* there could be no alternative. 
 That is not to say he was a Protestant. His sense of the dangers 
 of rehgious individualism were far too keen for that to be pos- 
 sible. It meant only that his sense of the church was such that 
 he could give to her only the best that was in himself. The real 
 problem was her attitude to his gift. 
 
 Vm. THE APPEAL TO ROME 
 
 Had Lamennais been content with the composition of a hymn 
 to liberty it is possible that his views, if they involved discussion, 
 would yet have avoided condemnation. But, from the outset, 
 both he and his disciples were anxious to promote their utili- 
 sation. Within a month of its first publication, Lacordaire 
 urged the French bishops not to accept the nominations of 
 Louis Philippe,^^^ while Lamennais demanded the immediate 
 abrogation of royal control. The result was a prosecution by the 
 government in which both were acquitted.^'" If, as Lamennais 
 himself thought, the verdict wrought immense good,^'^ it was yet 
 only the beginning of their difficulties. His own sense of their 
 contingency is clear from his letter of a month later to Cardinal 
 Weld. It assures him of their entire good wiU towards Rome, 
 their humble dependence upon the papal commands.^'^ He was 
 soOn repudiating calumnies which accused him — as falsely as 
 intelligibly — of a desire to destroy the episcopate.^'^ But more 
 serious was the attack on their democratic principles from the 
 Father-general of the Theatines, Ventura; not only was he a 
 friend of Lamennais, but he was well acquainted with Roman 
 opinion.^'* Lamennais, indeed, more than refuted his objections 
 but the criticism, pubUshed as it was in the most intransigeant 
 
 «8« Tyrrell, op. cit. 99. 
 
 *«' Avmir, Nov. 25, 30. 
 
 "» Boutard, op. cit., II, 216-223. 
 
 "1 "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 197. 
 
 "«/6td., II, 198, Feb.27, 131. 
 
 "' lUd., II, 199-202. 
 
 »" Dudon, op. cit, p. 94. 
 
242 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 of the Gallican journals, was full of significance. ^^^ Bishops 
 began to urge him to cease his propaganda.^'* It was bruited 
 abroad that the late nuncio had denounced him as one of the 
 greatest enemies by which the church was confronted.^^ The 
 Jesuits began to cast subtle doubts upon the orthodoxy of his 
 principles.^'' Dupanloup, then on the threshold of his immense 
 influence, had begun to intrigue for his condemnation. Lamen- 
 nais, he said,^'' "entraine les jeunes pr^tres dans I'ind^pendence 
 politique et la rebelhon religieuse." Nor did Rome speak as he 
 had hoped. "La on ne voit rien," he wrote of the papacy,^"" 
 "on ne comprend rien encore; on est plough, perdu dans les 
 t^nebres exterieures des int^r^ts terrestres, qui ne laissent pen- 
 6trer aucun rayon de lumifere." Priests who were suspected of 
 adhesion to his doctrines were attacked; and the clerical sub- 
 scriptions to the Avenir suffered a forcible dechne.'"! - They were 
 threatened by interdict and intrigue, and Rome gave support to 
 those accusations. Their demand for encouragement from Rome 
 met with no response.^"^ The note of sadness begins to reappear 
 in his letters. "Ce n'est pas le courage que je perds", he an- 
 swered a friend who urged him not to lose hope,"" "mais la voix; 
 je prevois que bientot elle nous manquera aucun moyen de 
 rfeister a 1' opposition 6piscopale." In October of 1831 he wrote 
 to Montalembert that it was hopeless to continue in the face of 
 such relentless antagonism.'"^ Lacordaire urged that they go 
 to Rome to justify their attitude;, and though Montalembert 
 seems already to have feared condemnation, Lamennais him- 
 self insisted that it was impossible.'"^ On the 15th of November 
 the Avenir was suspended, and the three friends set out, "as did 
 
 ^^^ Lamennais' reply is in the Averiir for Feb. 12, 31. Ventura published 
 his criticism as an open letter in the Oazeite de France. 
 
 296 "Correspondence," II, 214. 
 
 "" Ihid., II, 225. 
 
 "s Dudon, op. cit., 95. 
 
 2" Lagrange, "Dupanloup," I, 121. 
 
 »»» "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 213. 
 
 »" Ibid., II, 227 f. 
 
 8»2 Jiyid., II, 228. This is doubtless a reference to the letter to Cardinal 
 Weld. 
 
 "^ Ibid., II, 230. 
 
 «"< "Lettres k Montalembert," pp. 6-7. 
 
 '«6 Boutard, op. cit., II, 255. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 243 
 
 the soldiers of Israel" to convince the papacy of the honesty of 
 their intentions and the justice of their cause.'"^ 
 
 The Roman adventure is to Lamennais what, three centuries 
 before, the visit of Luther was to that greatest of schismatics. 
 It is the real turning-point of his life. It brought to the final test 
 his theory of the part that Rome was to play in the governance 
 of the world. He had never denied the omnicompetence of the 
 Pope. He had always insisted that the plenitudo potestatis was, 
 in this realm, at least, justified by its exercise. At the distri- 
 bution of rehgious power he had frankly scoffed. He had again 
 and again been urgent as to the necessity of monarchical and 
 unified direction by the church. Not even when he had come, 
 by 1829, to realise the necessity of hberal principles had he 
 changed his convictions in this regard. Nor did he doubt that 
 Rome would welcome the opportunities that freedom offered. 
 There is not a tithe of evidence that Lamennais expected an 
 unfavourable reception; but the amazing dishonesty of his 
 treatment completed in him a disillusion of which the first seeds 
 were already sown. What he learned was the danger of unified 
 authority even in the CathoHc church. He was defeated by pa- 
 pal unwillingness to separate the spheres of temporal and spirit- 
 ual. He found that, in thought, at any rate, the papal ideal 
 was still the dream of a worldly dominion against which three 
 centuries of reformers had uttered in vain their protest. He 
 learned that the papacy regarded itself as a temporal power 
 which had benefited by the possession of certain valuable spirit- 
 ual weapons. The Rome of which he dreamed vanished the 
 more speedily as he contemplated it in actuahty. It was a 
 Rome which was unwilling to regain a spiritual empire if secular 
 dominion must be sacrificed. 
 
 It is, in fact, clear enough — even when the evidence arrayed 
 against him by Rome itself is considered'"^ — ^that the main 
 grounds of his condemnation were not rehgious but political in 
 character. Religious they could not be, for the sufficient reason 
 that to the composition of his hberal CathoHcism no element of 
 
 "« "Oeuvres," II, 480. Cf. Corresp. (ed. Forgues), II, 231. 
 
 '" Cf . Dudon, "Lamennais et le Saint-Siege" for the orthodox Roman in- 
 terpretation of this time. It is such criticism as his that has led me to use 
 Lamennais' "Affaires de Rome" only as a check upon the immediately 
 contemporaneous documents. 
 
244 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 dogma contributed. Gregory XVI sacrificed him to the fear 
 that the prolongation of his active career might embroil him 
 with the governments of Em'ope. The age was not hberal in 
 its outlook. The papal states themselves were the centre of 
 national disaffection. The Enghsh administration of Ireland 
 was rarely more harsh and never more unpopular. Russia was 
 breaking into pieces the men who dreamed of a reconstructed 
 Poland. Under the shadow of hberal phrases the Orleanist 
 monarchy was erecting a despotism not less ugly than the old. 
 In Prussia an omnicompetent bureaucracy was codifying the 
 maxims of MachiavelH upon the relations of rehgion to the state. 
 Austria seemed, under the oppressive reactionism of Metternich, 
 to confound the apphcation of the penal code with that of the 
 Beatitudes. It was the antithesis of such doctrine that Lamen- 
 nais came to urge; and what he offered to Rome was an alter- 
 native in which the nobler choice could have been taken only 
 by men who did not deem themselves bound by the ordinary 
 canons of secular diplomacy. 
 
 The powers themselves did not fail to urge Rome along this 
 course. Simultaneously with his arrival in Rome, the French 
 ambassador demanded his condemnation;'"^ and he was able 
 to report to his government that the pope was as compliant as 
 he could desire.'"' The weight of Metternich's incomparable 
 authority was used to the same purpose. "EUe appartient," he 
 wrote of the Avenir,^^^ "au desordre, comme les femlles d6- 
 vouees au pur radicahsme." The Archbishop of Paris was 
 urgent in his request for immediate and adverse action, while 
 he skilfully mingled praise of intention with hostihty to result.'" 
 Even Russian influence was exercised for the same end.'^^ The 
 commission appointed by the Pope to deal with Lamennais'' 
 doctrines could by no possible fortune have been favourable 
 to him. Ventura had already published his suspicions. Lam- 
 bruschini was, to say the least, distrustful of the whole tend- 
 ency of which Lamennais was representative. Sogha had, to- 
 wards the end of 1830, written to Lamennais urging him to 
 
 »»8 Dudon, op. cit., 110 f. 
 '»9 Ibid., 113. 
 »'° IWd., 118. 
 3" lUd., 122. 
 "2 Ibid., 129. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 245 
 
 retrace his steps.''' Means were taken to prevent direct access 
 to the Pope; and if they were allowed to present a memorial in 
 which their position was defended, still Lamennais began to 
 feel the amazing falsity of his position. What, after all, could 
 Gregory do, a simple monk caught, as they were caught, in the 
 meshes of a labyrinthine system?''* The sense of embarrass- 
 ment on both sides was very painful. "Notre d-marche," 
 wrote Montalembert,''^ "si catholique et si simple, a jet6 la 
 cour de Rome dans un embarras qu'elle ne nous a pas pardonne; 
 uniquement occup^s de leurs intSrets temporels, qui se trouvent 
 dans la position du plus critique, les cardinaux et les pr^lats qui 
 entourent le saint-p6re voient avec le plus grand m^contente- 
 ment les efforts que nous avons f aits pour detacher la religion et 
 I'Eghse de la causes des rois qui sont, a leurs yeux, la Providence 
 vivante de ce monde." It was no more than the simple truth. 
 
 On every side, indeed, the situation conspired against them. 
 If the pope was uniquely sovereign he still had need of his dele- 
 gates and he was compelled, in some degree, to give ear to their 
 complaints. So, even before any decisive action was taken, he 
 accused Lamennais of sowing discontent among the French 
 clergy,''* and to rid himself of a troublesome visitor, he fore- 
 shadowed a long examination of doctrine which made his con- 
 tinued stay in Rome inadvisable. The fact of the matter was, 
 as Lamennais began to reahse,'" that Rome had a choice be- 
 tween the hberaUsm of her original inception and the temporal 
 interests resultant on her massive organisation, and she was not 
 prepared to sacrifice substantial material possessions. Before 
 the pilgrims separated, they were allowed to see the Pope; but 
 discourse on the weather and the sardonic offer of snuff stifled 
 from the outset all effort at discussion."' Lacordaire returned 
 to France, Montalembert set out for Germany. Lamennais 
 himself, for the moment, remained in Rome. His stay there 
 was only serving the more firmly to convince him that it was 
 essential to continue his work. He began with almost feverish 
 
 a« Ibid., 135. 
 
 «" Blaize, op. cit., II, 92. 
 
 "' Dudon, op. cit., 151. 
 
 »'« lUd., 154. 
 
 "' Blaize, op. cit., II, 99. 
 
 "' See Montalembert's account of the interview in Lecanuet's life, 1, 228. 
 
246 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 energy to draw up programmes of detailed future activity.''' 
 He began to write a treatise on the ills by whichi the church was 
 oppressed. Meanwhile the French ambassador was able to 
 inform his government that Rome was set firmly against all 
 such liberahsing innovation.'^" The revolt that simultane- 
 ously broke out in the papal states was not without its lesson. 
 If liberalism involved the occupation of Ancona by an Austrian 
 garrison — a step which seemed likely to embroil Gregory with 
 the rest of Europe'^' — he would have none of it. The French 
 bishops gave him all the help he could desire. Lamennais' 
 enemies, to the papal satisfaction, drew up a formidable list of 
 his suggested heresies.'^^ Upon their basis Lambruschini re- 
 ported in favour of action. The sacred Congregation at last 
 settled down to the final stage and recommended formally that 
 his programme should be condemned.'^ 
 
 It meant the rejection of a church which should pursue a 
 religious avocation. It meant insistence upon the belief that 
 Rome, whatever her interests in the other world, has a very 
 definite connexion with the secular problems of the present. No 
 one who reads the correspondence of Lamennais in Italy can 
 doubt that this was the foremost impression defeat would make 
 upon his mind. Rome already seemed to him, morally, a desert 
 where none could breathe.'^* He did not in any sense blame the 
 Pope for his silence; but he regarded him as the tool of corrupt 
 and ambitious men.'^* It is certain that at this time at any rate 
 he had no other thought than obedience to the church.'^^ But 
 he would have been less than hunian if he had not felt bitterly 
 the intrigues against him. Yet some hope he must have re- 
 tained almost to the end, since he was insistent that funds should 
 be obtained for the continuance of the Avenir}^ How should 
 he not who had boasted so long of the splendour of Rome, and 
 
 »>9 Blaize, op. cit., II, 115, 122. 
 
 »2o Dudon, op. cit., 163. 
 
 »2i Nielsen, op. cit., II, 60 f. 
 
 '22 Dudon, op. cit., 168 f. 
 
 ^ Ibid., 177. 
 
 '" "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 235. 
 
 »» Ibid., II, 236. 
 
 »28 Ibid., II, 238. 
 
 '" "Lettres k Montalembert," p. 9. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 247 
 
 could not but feel certain of the lightness of his cause? He was, 
 indeed, saddened by the self-effacement of the papacy, its 
 general deafness to popular desire, the ambition of the cardinals, 
 and their absorption in secular interests. It was, to him, humil- 
 iating to find Rome completely dependent upon the good will of 
 the European concert, painfully without answer for the new prob- 
 lems that confronted men. He could not avoid the thought that 
 its preoccupation with poUtics was the root cause of its bUndness 
 to a new world. Nor did its internal condition make for bet- 
 terment. The secular ecclesiastics were too ignorant, the very 
 means of instruction were uselessly difficult of access. Rome 
 was suffering from intellectual deterioration, and her attempt at 
 the control of new opinion resulted in oppression.^^ He drew a 
 striking picture of the suspicion with which the papacy was 
 everywhere regarded.'^' He insisted again that only in the 
 assertion of her permanent alliance with the forces of freedom 
 could she restore her ascendency over the world. But he was 
 asking too much of an institution so securely wedded to her 
 past traditions, and he realised that it was useless to linger. 
 He left Italy, and, with Montalembert, who joined him at Flor- 
 ence, he set out for Munich. There he met Gorres and DoUinger, 
 and found in their ideas a fine kinship with his own.''" It was 
 that same Dollinger who, a quarter of a century later, was to 
 bring the whole weight of his incomparable learning and magni- 
 ficent honesty to the service of ecclesiastical liberalism. There 
 is a dramatic fitness in his presence at Lamennais' side when 
 the news of the latter's condemnation was published to the world. 
 
 IX. THE CONDEMNATION 
 
 The encychcal Mii ari Vos,^^^ is the first step on the road which 
 led, first through the Syllabus of 1864 and the definition of papal 
 infallability,''* and later through the condemnation of modernism 
 in the Pascendi, to the proclamation of war on the basis of mod- 
 
 "» "Oeuvres," II, 573 f . 
 
 >" Ilnd., II, 378. 
 
 "» Boutard, op. cit., II, 325. 
 
 "' See the text of the encyclical in Lamennais, "Oeuvres," II, 603 ft, 
 or Dudon, op. cit., 389-400. 
 
 "' I have tried to point out the significance of these in my "Problem of 
 Sovereignty," pp. 176 f. 
 
248 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 ern society by Rome. To Lamennais' plea that the cause of the 
 church and the cause of society are one, it virtually replied that 
 while that was undoubtedly true, the church would only permit 
 the triumph of the social cause upon its own terms. But those 
 terms were themselves the hard-won creed of a democratic time; 
 and by their rejection the papacy declared its determination to 
 stand aside from modern progress as we generally conceive it.''' 
 No one will deny the greatness of that defiance. What, in fact, 
 it has involved, is a claim to a complete lordship over the minds 
 of men. Pius X only completed, on the dogmatic side, what 
 Gregory XVI outhned on the political. In that aspect the work 
 of de Maistre, and of Lamennais before 1830, has borne its due 
 fruit. The papacy has given birth to a political and intellectual 
 system of which the broad outUnes are perfectly clear. The 
 Roman Catholic church has become a centraUzed and, for its 
 members, an infalhble despotism. It has insisted that the Ufe of 
 the world must be written in religious terms; which is virtually to 
 pronounce that the pope is its sovereign since to him has l?een 
 confined the control of rehgious destinies. GregoryXVI, at the 
 very outset of his encyclical, repudiated as noxious the notion 
 that the church was in need of regeneration.''^ He Hghtly casti- 
 gated those who attacked the celibacy of the clergy and the 
 indissolubility of marriage."^ But the great evil of the time was 
 indifferentism, and from that every species of intellectual de- 
 lirium is born."* Liberty of conscience is impossible; in result 
 it is an invitation to erroneous opinion. It leads to a contempt 
 for sacred things and for laws that demand respect. It is the 
 root of all social evil. Nothing has so much contributed to the 
 decay of great empires than such immoderate freedom of opin- 
 ion."^ It of course follows that the liberty of the press is like- 
 wise condemned; it is no more than the instrument which 
 secures the expansion of monstrous errors."* He insists on the 
 
 3's It is interesting to compare Tyrrell's judgment on this episode at the 
 time when his orthodoxy was unquestioned. See his, " Faith of the Millions," 
 Vol. II, p. 86 f. 
 
 '3* Lamennais "Oeuvres," II, 604. 
 
 »5 Ibid, II, 608. 
 
 »= md., II, 609. 
 
 '" Ibid., II, 610. 
 
 «' Ibid. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 249 
 
 necessity of submission to princes. To deny their right to au- 
 thority is to deny the divinity of power. Nor must men preach 
 the desirability of separating church from state. That union 
 results in benefit to both and only the partisans of a boundless ' 
 license can deny its virtue.'^' He attacks the association of 
 catholics with men of other reUgions; it results only in the 
 demand for impossible liberties and the destruction of worthy 
 authority.'^" Such doctrines he condemns as the reasoning of 
 an insolent pride, the confidence of men in a reason that by its 
 nature is weak and broken. Perhaps the most significant clause 
 in the encycUcal is its ending. That which Lamennais had de- 
 manded was, above all, the freedom of the church from secular 
 interference, its independence from all external institutions by 
 the very fact that it was a church. Of all this Gregory makes 
 not merely abstraction but denial. It is upon the princes, whom 
 he calls his children, that he lays the task of executing his theo- 
 ries. They have their authority not less for the protection of 
 the church. It is in them that he puts his trust.'*' 
 
 Not even Metternich could have desired a more complete 
 condemnation. The direction which Lamennais had endeav- 
 oured to give to the forces of CathoHcism was repulsed to the 
 minutest detail. He was offered a clear alternative. Either he 
 must continue his work outside the church or he must submit 
 to a Catholicism in which he had ceased to find spiritual consola- 
 tion. He could not take refuge in the propagation of his politi- 
 cal ideas; for the rehgious impUcations of Catholicism were so 
 defined in the encycUcal as clearly to include the whole field of 
 political inquiry. That doctrine of the two kingdoms which, 
 in reality, lay at the bottom of the philosophy of the Avenir 
 could draw no sustenance from the papal pronouncement. He 
 did not conceal its significance from himself. "Les princes et le 
 pape," he Wrote,'*^ "ont crut qu'en s'unissant, ils arr6teraient 
 le mouvement des peuples et les maintiendraient sous le joug. 
 Gr6goire XVI, comme vous avez vu, vient de proclamer cette 
 grande alliance, et de condamner par la les catholiques a I'in- 
 
 "» Ibid., II, 612. 
 
 "» Ibid., II, 613. 
 
 "' lUd., II, 613-4. 
 
 »« "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 245. 
 
250 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 action. lis ne peuvent pas defendre I'Eglise centre la volont6 
 de son chef; nous nous tairons done." The Avenir and the 
 Agence Generate were suppressed with perfect submission to the 
 papal authority f*^ and the pope had written in approving 
 acceptance.^" Not, indeed, that he had surrendered any of his 
 opinions. He had simply agreed to silence because one who 
 had -the right to command him had so ordered. He was not less 
 fearful for the future of cathoHcism than before; the tempest 
 he had descried would yet shake Christianity to its founda- 
 tions.^^ Meanwhile he asked only for peace. 
 
 But it was exactly peace that his opponents were not willing 
 he should enjoy. Vague whispers began to be bruited abroad 
 which were calculated to do him harm at Rome. It was suggested 
 that his submission had been merely formal and that he did not 
 mean it. Men pointed out that he had made no formal abjura- 
 tion of his principles. It was the hounding of the wounded Hon 
 to his lair. He was reduced to the utmost poverty f^^ the pope 
 had condemned him; the bishops still treated iiim as their 
 enemy. He had, of course, a gigantic problem before him. If 
 an infalUble pope condemned a liberalism he beheved to be es- 
 sential what must be his attitude?^*' It was simple enough for 
 him to say that inf allibiUty came only when the papal voice was 
 that of the whole church,^^^ but who was to judge the occasion? 
 He seemed himself uncertain. "Laissons aller, " he wrote to 
 Montalembert,^^' "le pape et les ^vgques .... iln'yariena 
 faire par le clerge, ni avec le clerge," and there are surely few 
 who cannot pardon that weariness of spirit. 
 \,. The event which seems to have precipitated the catastrophe 
 was the publication by Montalembert, early in 1833, of his 
 translation of Micki^wicz's hymn to Pohsh hberty in which 
 he passionately defended the late insurrection. Since Rome 
 had approved its suppression, the enemies of Lamennais did 
 not hesitate to draw the conclusion that they were contemptu- 
 
 ™ Boutard, op. cit., II, 340. 
 
 '« lUd., II, 346. 
 
 ^ "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 250. 
 
 ^ "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 264. 
 
 '" Cf. the letter to Count Kzewuski. "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 270. 
 
 3" lUd., II, 272. 
 
 s" "Lettres h. Montalembert," p. 43. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 251 
 
 ous of papal authority.'^" Accusations were scattered broad- 
 cast that he was guilty of insincerity; and Gregory himself 
 made protestations to the Archbishops of Toulouse.^" All his 
 friends begged him to be silent and to submit once more. He 
 was willing enough where reHgion alone was concerned. But 
 outside the church he demanded an absolute freedom. "In 
 purely temporal affairs," he declared,'*^ "particularly where 
 France is concerned, I recognise no authority with the right 
 either to impose opinions upon me or to dictate my conduct. 
 I say boldly that in this sphere — which is unconnected with 
 the spiritual power — I will never abdicate the independence 
 that comes to me in virtue of my humanity, and that alike in 
 thought and action I will take counsel only of my conscience 
 and my reason." 
 
 It was undoubtedly a defiance of Roman sovereignty, an 
 assertion of the supremacy of that last inwardness of the 
 human mind which resists all authority save its own convic- 
 tion of rectitude. He wrote to Rome that so far as the church 
 was concerned no speech or writing of his would discuss it; 
 and he asseverated his acceptance of papal control in faith and 
 morals.^'^ He insisted that all he had promised in the Munich 
 declaration had been fulfilled and more than fulfilled.'^* He 
 resigned the headship of the Congregation of St. Peter and the 
 little society of La Chesnaie was dissolved. But the pope was 
 not satisfied. He insisted that a new submission was essential 
 when the affront of Montalembert was borne in mind.'^* The 
 letter was written privately to the Bishop of Rennes who 
 promptly pubHshed it with some comments which were simply 
 calumnies.™ Lamennais replied by another appeal to the 
 pope in which he emphasised his submission in all that religion 
 demands as well as his eagerness to please him so far as his 
 conscience would allow; but he insisted on his right to freedom 
 
 »" Boutard, op. cit., II, 366. 
 
 »' "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 306-7. Boutard, op. cit., II, 368. 
 
 "2 "Coneap." (ed. Forgues), II, 307. 
 
 >» lUd., II, 309. 
 
 '^ Ibid., II, 312-4. The letter is clearly written to a Roman Cardinal. 
 
 »* Boutard, op. cit., II, 378. 
 
 »» Ibid., II, 379. 
 
252 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 in purely temporal affairs.^" "I have defended the rights of 
 God and of the church," he wrote to a friendj^^s "j ^ju ^0^ [^. 
 suit God by deserting those of humanity;" and he insisted 
 that to proclaim the twofold sovereignty of Rome would be 
 to surrender men to an insupportable tyranny. Nor could the 
 urgency of his most intimate associates move him from that 
 position. "My conscience will not allow me," he told Monta- 
 lembert,'^' "to abandon the traditional doctrine of two socie- 
 ties, each distinct in its own sphere, and I wiU make no declara- 
 tion which suggests even my implicit abandonment of it." To 
 Rome such a limitation seemed entirely xmsatisfactory.'"' 
 Lamennais has told us himself that at this juncture he began 
 to feel uncertain as to the very basis of Catholic authority. 
 He wished only for peace and he would sign any declaration 
 they chose to exact from him.'^^ A plenary submission was 
 exacted and Rome congratulated itself on a magnificent 
 victory.'^^ 
 
 But Lamennais' own mind was still tortured by doubt. He 
 was distressed at the abuse Rome would make of such power 
 as she claimed when she came to exert it over temporal inter- 
 ests.^^' He had signed the declaration because he desired, 
 above all, not to be regarded as a rebel and a schismatic. He 
 saw in the situation simply the necessity of peace, and to that 
 end he would, as he bitterly said,'*^ have been willing to identify 
 the Pope with God. What the event had impressed upon him 
 was the urgent necessity of distinguishing between the divine 
 and human elements in the church that the confusion of their 
 demands might be avoided. For himself he was determined 
 to avoid for the future all contact with ecclesiastical affairs.'^^ 
 He was beginning to make plainer to himself that, distinctioii 
 
 '" "Oeuvres," II, 555. 
 
 '^^ Laveille, op. cit., p. 303. 
 
 '69 See the fundamental statement of his position in the letter to Monta- 
 lembert of Nov. 25., 33. "Lettres k M.," p. 219 f. 
 
 S8° "Oeuvres," II, 558-9. 
 
 '" Ibid., II, 561. 
 
 '«2 Dudon, op. cit., 292 f. 
 
 3« "Lettres k Montalembert," p. 229. 
 
 3M Ibid., p. 231. 
 
 8M "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 351, 353. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 253 
 
 between Catholicism and Christianity which had for some 
 time impressed him.'^* He angrily repulsed some curious at- 
 tempts to attract him to Rome.'^' But even in this difficult 
 position his antagonists did not cease to annoy him. The 
 Archbishop of Paris was insistent that he should thank the 
 Pope for the acceptance of his submission. A priest of Saint- 
 Sulpice pubUshed an acrimonious attack against him to which, 
 by the nature of his agreement, he could make no reply.^*^ His 
 health was broken, and so generous a soul as Maurice de 
 Gu^rin was moved to indignation by his sufferings.'^' He 
 needed something that would restore his self-confidence and 
 make him feel that he had not deserted his ideals. After all, 
 he was certain of their truth; and peace at the price at which 
 he bought it was not worth the purchase.''" He was deeply 
 moved by the cruelty with which the Lyons insurrection was 
 suppressed;'" and that seems to have been the last pain he 
 could bear. He was not a man to whom, silence came easily 
 and where he felt profoundly his thought took expression in 
 his pen. By the end of April, 1834, the "Paroles d'un Croyant" 
 was ready for the press. He seems to have had no illusions as 
 to the bitterness it would arouse; but the time had come when 
 he could contain himself no longer. "I have seen," he wrote,"^ 
 "the tears which becloud the eyes of the people; I hear their 
 cries of pain, and my heart yearns to comfort them." He did 
 not doubt that he would be attacked. Men would tell him 
 that he ought to have kept silence. The simple answer was 
 that he could not. "How could I be silent," he asked,'" "sur- 
 rounded, as we are, by such iniquity, such tyranny, such pain, 
 such want? I have felt that deeply; I have said my say. 
 Could I consent to allow future generations to lay to my 
 
 '» "Lettres k Montalembert," p. 124. 
 ••' "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 351. 
 "» Boutard, op. cit., II, 403. 
 >«» "Lettres," Jan. 10, Feb. 1, May 10, '34. 
 
 "» This feeling comes out very clearly in his letter of March 29, '34, to 
 the Archbishops of Paris, "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), II, 360. 
 •" IMd., II, 362-4. 
 '« Ibid., II, 367. 
 »" Ibid., II, 369. 
 
254 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 memory's account one of those iniquitous silences which harm 
 not less, and often more, than direct connivance at wrong?" 
 He felt this the more keenly since his thought had now reached 
 a point where he looked for salvation in purely political propa- 
 ganda. He reported to Montalembert — still faithful to him 
 when Lacordaire had already deserted his ideals — a rumour 
 that the Russian ambassador had accused him of desiring to 
 make Catholicism a power once more, an effort which Russia 
 would never permit. "I am glad," he said,f^ "that he will not 
 permit it. That way we shall find no solution." 
 
 Only those who read day by day the letters to his closest 
 friends can realise what the decision, must have cost him. He 
 did not hide from himself that he was burning the bridges 
 behind him. To write a hymn to the splendour of democracy 
 was indeed, after all that had passed, to hurl defiance at Rome. 
 It is useless to blame him. It is too fatally easy to ascribe his 
 determination to pride, to self-confidence, to an overweening 
 sense of his own Tightness for such analysis to be satisfactory. 
 The issue is far more complex. Rome had extorted from him 
 the admission of dogmas to which, in his heart, he could give no 
 assent. If, like Tyrrell, like Dollinger, he strove hard to stand 
 by the ancient ways, to make himself one with what he beheved 
 to be the real splendour of a Catholicism that enshrouded itself 
 in an appearance of evil, there came at last the realisation that, 
 in any final examination, he must take for truth and right conduct 
 that which his conscience told him he might identify with truth 
 and right conduct. Rome, he admitted freely, had the power 
 to demand obedience from him; but the power to exact it she 
 did not possess. It was the simple fact that in the last resort 
 only his own conscience could be sovereign that he asserted. 
 Wrong remained to him wrong however much his masters 
 might proclaim its rectitude. He counted the cost of measur- 
 ing his forces against the greatest of ecclesiastical institutions. 
 It might bend him; certainly if he remained subject to its 
 strength it would absorb his forces as the rivers are absorbed 
 in the endless sea. But he was too confident of his own soul 
 thus to mangle it. What Rome called a submissive sacrifice 
 he branded as an unrighteous desertion. What she called the 
 
 »" "Lettres k Montalembert," p. 254. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 255 
 
 victory of her collective wisdom he denounced as the blind- 
 ness of her past. So he took the privilege of every human 
 being to think out for himself the conditions of his intellectual 
 striving. 
 
 X. THE RED CAP ON THE CROSS 
 
 Where even the magic of Sainte-Beuve has failed to give 
 adequately the significance of the "Paroles d'un Croyant," 
 none else may attempt its analysis. It is a lyrical version of 
 the "Communist Manifesto." It denies the legitimacy of all 
 authority that is not based upon the widest liberty and heralds 
 in its destruction the onset" of a brighter dawn. It is written 
 in a style that has a splendour and elevation not merely unique 
 in Lamennais' own work, but in the whole range of French 
 Uterature. It is instinct with a passionate generosity^ and its 
 flaming mysticism has in it much of the exquisite character of 
 k Kempis. Sainte-Beuve has told us how the workmen respon- 
 sible for its composition could hardly continue for their ex- 
 citement.'" New editions could hardly keep pace with the 
 demand. Lamennais himself has written how workingmen 
 contributed from their savings to buy a copy that they might 
 read together at night; and how it was read aloud in the 
 workshops."^ Students declaimed its finest passages in the 
 Gardens of the Luxembourg; and even the members of the 
 Chamber of Deputies forgot the pressure of public business 
 in their anxiety to feel the throb of its eloquence.'" 
 
 But no one can attack the foundations of an existing order 
 without waking the slumbering vigilance of property.'™ "It 
 is the apocalypse of Satan," wrote his friend, the Baron de 
 VitroUes.'" "It is the red cap of liberty upon a cross." The 
 Duchesse de Dino was amazed at his Jacobinism.'^" A dis- 
 tinguished journalist denounced him as the herald of insurrec- 
 
 «" "Nouveaux Lundis," Vol. I, p. 39 f. 
 "' "Le'ttres k Montalembert," 316. 
 '" IMd., 270. 
 
 "' Mr. Gladstone has an interesting reflection on this attitude. Morley, 
 "Life," III. 352. 
 
 "» "VitroUes," p. 248. 
 
 "" "Souvenirs de Barante," Vol. V, p. 137. 
 
256 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 tion.381 Guizot has left us a curious and involved expression 
 of horror at Lamennais' tergiversations.'*^ De Rigny, the 
 minister of foreign affairs, wrote to Rome at the universal 
 astonishment that such ideas should emanate from a priest.'*' 
 The Gazette d' Augsburg declared that if the devil visited the 
 world, he would come with the "Paroles" in his hand.'** There 
 was no question of defence, nor did Lamennais desire it. He 
 had written, as he said, to salve his conscience and to cleanse 
 his soul from its association with an insupportable tyranny."* 
 Refutations poured in on every side. The book was speedily 
 prohibited at Rome, though Lamennais at first thought it 
 doubtful whether the pope would pronounce officially against 
 it.'*^ Lacordaire, with a cruelly indecent haste, had signalised 
 it as the end of the Menasien school,'*^ and his own brother 
 did not dare to read it.'** If there were favom^able voices they 
 were nowhere those of authority. It is clear enough that this 
 adverse opinion failed to move Lamennais from the certainty 
 that he had done right. Once he was certain of that, he cared 
 httle for their praise or blame.'*' 
 
 Rome, as always, moved slowly. The reports that came to 
 Lamennais seemed, on the whole, to suggest that she would 
 keep silent."" But it was, in reahty, impossible for the papacy 
 not to pronounce its judgment. The encycUcal "Mirari Vos" 
 was^hardly two years old; and its plea for political obedience 
 was imphcitly set at naught by Lamennais' work. The French 
 government itself was in a quandary. Had it prosecuted La- 
 mennais for sedition it was more than doubtful if a jury could 
 have been persuaded to convict him, and it dare not risk the 
 chance of failure. Metternich, indeed, did what the French 
 ministry did not feel able to do, and sent a passionate denun- 
 
 881 S. M. Girardin, "Souveniers," p. 270. 
 
 =s2 Cf. his "Memoirs" (Eng. trans.), Vol. Ill, Ch. Ill, passim. 
 
 '» Boutard, op. cit., Ill, 39. 
 
 »^ IbU., Ill, 43. 
 
 '«« "Corresp." (ed. Forgues), I, 115. 
 
 8™ Ibid., II, 380. 
 
 '" "Considerations sur le syst&me philosophique de M. de La Mennais." 
 
 »'« Boutard, III, 51. 
 
 3»» "Lettres k Mohtalembert," p. 260. 
 
 ^<"> Ibid., 287., Lavalle, op. cit., 324. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 257 
 
 ciation of the book to Rome, and Russia also made its protest.''' 
 It is doubtful enough if Gregory needed such persuasion. His 
 secretary of state, Bernetti, looked already upon Lamennais 
 as a Catholic Luther.''^ fhe Pope himself spoke freely of the 
 pain the book had caused him; and in the encyclical "Singulari 
 nos" of June 25, 1834 the condemnation was published. It 
 rightly recalls that 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 excited disobedience to kings, 
 contempt for law and order, destruction as well of religious as 
 of political power. Its attitude to authority was denounced 
 as an outrage to the civil and ecclesiastical hierarchy — a mere 
 cloak for the attainment of freedom of conscience and the 
 press. It attacked Lamennais' call to the peoples of the world 
 to unite, its justification of tyrannicide, the astute temerity 
 with which it had cited scripture to its purpose. "Its proposi- 
 tions," said the Encyclical,''^ "are false, calumnies, .rash, con- 
 ducive to anarchy, contrary to the word of God, impious, 
 scandalous, erroneous and already condemned by the church 
 in such heresies as those of the Waldenses, the Wyclifites and 
 the followers of Hus." It was, in fact, a doctrine totally out 
 of accord with the political direction that Gregory had finally 
 chosen."* The historical relation of Lamennais' teaching is, after 
 all, mere verbiage; his democracy had as much connexion 
 with the doubtful communism of Wyclif as with the antagonistic 
 safeguard of the Fourteenth Amendment; though Lamennais, 
 like the great English heretic, did sever the action of the church 
 from that of the world by reason of his deep sense of its un- 
 earthly dignity.''* If it is a sin to love the church so greatly 
 as to be fearful of its degradation, assuredly no one will question 
 the rightness of the papal condemnation. 
 
 If Lamennais was surprised, the blow seems to have hurt 
 him less for himself than for his friends.'" He did, indeed, feel 
 
 ™ Boutard, op. cit., Ill, 76-8. 
 '« lUd., 82. 
 
 ™ See the integral text in Dudon, Op. cit. 427 f . 
 '" Cf. Nielsen, Op. cit. 11, 64 f. 
 
 '" Cf . Mr. Poole's comments, "Illustrations of the History of Medieval 
 Thought," p. 302 f . 
 
 »» "Lettres k Montalembert," p. 306. 
 
258 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 deeply indignant that a power he had served so well and so 
 deeply loved should speak of him as the basest of men. He 
 hated the low intrigues which had led to his fall. He objected 
 to the condemnation of a book in terms so vague as never to 
 specify wherein its error consisted. He did not for a moment 
 believe that the blow could at all arrest the onrush of forces 
 which were working towards the destruction of an intolerable 
 regime.^'' He was, indeed, unfortunate in his attempt to dis- 
 tinguish between the voice of Gregory the pope, and that of 
 Gregory the man; Rome has given us no criterion for making 
 such delicate distinctions.^'* His complaint that Lamartine 
 and Chateaubriand spoke as he did and yet escaped condemna- 
 tion misses the point that they were not, after all, priests, and 
 the measure of authority that could be exacted from them 
 was therefore different. It was useless to hope that peace 
 could be made. The fact was that so long as Lamennais made 
 his conscience the supreme arbiter of his faith there was no 
 place for him in the church unless his doctrine coincided with 
 that of Rome. He saw in the fight the same old struggle of 
 medieval time;^'' and not even the most earnest solicitations 
 of Montalembert could induce him to withdraw from his posi- 
 tion. At the end of 1834 even Montalembert deserted him so 
 that the last of his disciples was gone.*"" He was now alone 
 and there remained only the task of completing the defence of 
 his ideas. The "Affaires de Rqme", which he pubhshed to- 
 wards the end of 1836, was the narrative of his difficulties with 
 the Papacy. It is a magnificent piece of dispassionate analysis, 
 unanswerable as it has gone practically unchallenged. Only 
 at the end does he permit himself reflections and it is then only 
 to prophesy that since the victory of democratic principles is 
 certain, Rome nlust embrace liberalism or perish. But Rome 
 had chosen another path and the break between them was 
 final. Henceforth he devoted himself entirely to the cause of 
 the people. There is a certain dramatic irony in the thought 
 that, almost simultaneously, Newman had entered upon that 
 
 '" "Corresp.," II, 386. 
 
 398 "Lettres k Montalembert," p. 307. 
 
 399 Ibid., 324. 
 
 «»» Boutard, op. cit., HI, 103. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 259 
 
 struggle against dogmatic liberalism which ended in his adop- 
 tion of the Cathohc faith."' 
 
 XI. IMPLICATIONS 
 
 It is an astounding evolution. Yet it is an evolution condi- 
 tioned at every stage by the logic of a bitter experience. La- 
 mennais started out with a firm belief in royalisna and the 
 church. He was the envenomed antagonist of the Revolution, 
 and few have drawn up, from his standpoint, an abler indict- 
 ment of its tendencies. He distrusted the people and he found 
 no comfort in the dogmas of individualism. He came, in the 
 end, to see that all for which he had previously contended was 
 a tissue of error. Nor is clarity wanting to the basis of his 
 change. He saw the church used as no more than a political 
 instrument, and, like Chalmers and Newman, he made insist- 
 ence upon its corporate independence. It was here that he 
 found the means of a sympathetic acquaintance with liberal 
 doctrine. But he soon found that ecclesiastical liberalism is 
 only part of a larger whole. He discovered that, when the 
 government of men is despotic, religion is too valuable an in- 
 strument in the security of servitude to be left untrammelled. 
 So he was led to. the examination of the political basis of des- 
 potic government and thence to its rejection. He came to 
 understand that a free state was the condition of a free church, 
 that he had, in fact, allies exactly in that party for which he 
 had earUer professed the deepest hostihty. He urged upon the 
 church an adventure in liberalism. Let it once make the people 
 free and its own triumph must inevitably follow. If Rome 
 would abandon the pursuit of earthly power and devote herself 
 to the liberation of those who loved her most deeply, she could 
 save herself from the contamination that came from alliance 
 with the apostles of political tyranny. 
 
 He did not, at the outset, doubt that such an appeal must 
 win response. But he had totally mistaken the character of 
 the church. He had himself been the protagonist in the defi- 
 nition of her Austinianism without, as it seems, understanding 
 the real significance inherent in such power. For Rome could 
 
 *" "Apologia" (ed. Ward), p. 150; and cf . my "Problem of Sovereignty," 
 Chapter III. 
 
260 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 not embrace the cause of the people and remain blind to her 
 own condition. The men who directed her government were 
 too deeply fond of power ever to submit to its partition. To 
 make alhance with hberalism would be to condemn the church's 
 past, to lessen the empire to which her greatest governors had 
 for eight centuries laid claim. Herself rigidly authoritarian 
 in temper, her natural affinity was with those powers which 
 were struggling against the tidal wave of democratic advance. 
 What, in truth, Lamennais asked was that she should be un- 
 true to her special ethos. Of dogma, indeed, he might make 
 entire abstraction; but to ask the church to concern herself 
 with the discoveries of modern civilisation was to demand her 
 admission that there was a truth of which she was not the 
 appointed guardian from the dawn of her history. She would 
 not suffer such diminution of her sovereignty. If the choice 
 was between a claim to the widest powers and an alhance with 
 the unknown future, she would take her stand by that past 
 which had given her those powers. Her situation was consistent. 
 Lamennais would have made a newer and a different Rome. 
 He would have turned a state into a church. For Rome is the 
 one fundamental institution of medieval times which has re- 
 tained the indicia of her universal dominion. Today, perhaps, 
 they are no more than a magnificent gesture, but they bear 
 witness to the tenacity of her memory. 
 
 Her expulsion of Lamennais was the registration of her sover- 
 eign power. Yet, by that very exercise, she demonstrated her 
 impotence. Even the mightiest prince, as Hume pointed out 
 in a famous essay, is dependent upon his abihty to lead men 
 by their opinion. It was herein that Rome failed. For while 
 she possessed the external sanction, she could not exact passive 
 obedience. She might command, but she lacked any security 
 that she would be obeyed. She demonstrated once more not, 
 perhaps, so much for herself as for the world outside, that a 
 final control of opinion rests always with each individual mem- 
 ber of an association, and that whatever the penalties attached 
 to its adoption. Nor was this all. The rejection of Lamennais 
 from a society he so deeply loved is, when the last criticism of 
 him has been made, still a tremendous tragedy, and it is well 
 to enquire into its conditions. For what, basically, was he 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 261 
 
 condemned? He' had no faith in any creed except Catholicism. 
 No man of his generation had more eloquently repelled the 
 seductions of alternative creeds. He was unequalled, save by 
 de Maistre, in the unUmited hope he placed in the benefits of 
 papal sovereignty. It is, as an acute observer noted at the 
 critical epoch of Lamennais' life, Uttle less than astounding 
 that it should have repulsed the one man of genius who then 
 lent it the service of his powers.*"^ 
 
 The answer involves the most gigantic problem by which we 
 are confronted: the nature of corporate personality. Where- 
 in that personality consists is sufficiently matter of strenuous 
 debate. The claim of Lamennais was that the real basis of the 
 church was not its doctrines but its life. He saw in it a living 
 society which, even in change, remains true to itself and not a 
 mass of individuals united by a chance agreement upon certain 
 formulae.'"'^ The conception of Rome was far more akin to the 
 legal interpretation of the English courts. The members of 
 the church were to it simply an associated body of benefici- 
 aries who profited by the commands enjoined by a governing 
 court. In such an aspect, the withdrawal of Lamennais was 
 inevitable. If he could not obey the commands, he could not 
 profit therefrom. If he was out of sympathy with its dogma, 
 he was out of accord with its principles. Yet no one who reads 
 what Lamennais has written can deny his essential sympathy 
 with the broad aims of Cathohcism. If Lamennais had lived 
 in the time of Leo XIII his condemnation would have been 
 extremely dubious; but that, to say the least, is to assert that 
 there is an integral part of the Catholic church with which he 
 was at one. To deny the validity of dissent is to prohibit the 
 growth of corporate opinion, to insist on changelessness as the 
 basis of the church. Yet it is impossible to deny that the church 
 has changed, impossible, at any rate till answer has been made 
 
 *"' Cf. the very interesting comments of d'Herbelot, "Lettres k Monta- 
 lembert," pp. 88-9, 146. These were written as early as 1829. 
 
 *™ I have discussed this question partly in my paper on the "Personality 
 of Associations," 29 Harv. L. Rev. 404, and partly in that on "the strict in- 
 terpretation of ecclesiastical trusts" in 36 Canadian L. T. 190. The whole 
 force of the distinction between the two views will be apparent to anyone 
 who compares the judginents of Lords Halsbury and Macnaghten in the 
 Free Church of Scotland case as published in Mr. Orr's verbatim report. 
 
262 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 to its own historian's account of its councils, or to the masterly 
 polemic of Bollinger. Newman's "Doctrine of Development" 
 is not yet on the Index; and it is simply a plea for the recog- 
 nition in dogma of that which Lamennais demanded in politics. 
 
 For, after all, he was asking no more than the opportunity 
 to convince the church of the superiority of one way of life to 
 another — as Saint Francis made his plea for poverty, as, in 
 another sphere, the Jesuits made demand for the dogmatisa- 
 tion of the Immaculate Conception. He did not ask it to 
 change its personality, any more than Gerson did when he 
 would have federahsed its government, or Mariana when, 
 contrary to the later teaching of Gregory XVI, he issued a 
 justification of tyrannicide.^"^ For, after all, the collective 
 experience of the church, the sense of its collective experience, 
 is a greater thing than its interpretation at any given moment 
 of its history. Papal infallibility meant something very differ- 
 ent to Newman from what it did to Manning; yet, somehow, 
 the church was wide enough to include them both.^"^ It is 
 characteristic of any society, whether or no it be rehgious in 
 its nature, that it should contain elements in some sort diverse. 
 We cannot, in fact, avoid the incessant evolution of doctrine 
 so long as man is a thinking animal. To each one of us the 
 fact appears somehow different and, as a result, the interpre- 
 tation can hardly coincide.^"^ 
 
 It means, perhaps, that within every organisation, as within 
 each individual, there must be a continuous struggle between 
 life and tradition. In that sense, the career of Lamennais 
 would be intelligible as the expression of a moment in which 
 tradition was victorious. But the larger problem still remains. 
 To ascribe the whole life of a society, entirely to' one element or 
 the other is a dichotomy that is wanting in perspective. It is 
 to mistake life for anatomy or physiology. The body cannot 
 function without its background; and a skeleton is still dead 
 
 "" Cf. Figgis,"From Gerson to Grotius," pp. 191-3. On all this his fourth 
 lecture in "Churches in Modern State" is invaluable. See also a very good 
 little book by Mr. Richard Roberts, "The Church in the Commonwealth.'' 
 
 "s Cf. My "Problem of Sovereignty," Chapter IV. 
 
 ■•" On all this the reader will find invaluable assistance in the two famous 
 books of M. Loisy, "Autour d 'un petit hvre" and "Quelques Reflexions." 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 263 
 
 matter, even if it have living form. The principles of any so- 
 ciety are not and can not be an expression of the totality of 
 motives by which men bind themselves into a community. For 
 community is like friendship in that it lies too deep for words. 
 Its relations do not end with their formal utterance, and it 
 subsists even where majority and minority conflict. The funda- 
 mental thing is to remain true to the life of the society. It has, 
 indeed, principles so fuiidamental that their violation involves 
 the rejection of that life. One could not deny the historic 
 existence of Christ, and yet remain a member of the Catholic 
 church. If the basis of Lamennais' condemnation be found 
 here, then it would be argued that the alliance of Catholicism 
 and the political system of the French Restoration is funda- 
 mental to membership of the church; but it is evident that 
 this is not the case. That, indeed, is the weakness of Lamennais' 
 ultramontane teaching. He equated the church with its head, 
 and he found himself, in the result, compelled to deny the truth 
 of his infallibility. From the standpoint of organisation he 
 discovered that while it might have its conveniences it was not 
 free from grave difficulty. For, once admit the fact of variety, 
 and the "tradizione son io" of Pius IX may be heresy in a 
 coming generation. It is the distinction which Rousseau makes 
 between the "general" will and the will of all. The "general" 
 will, in this aspect, is the will that is true to the social life not 
 at any given moment, but in the broad perspective of its his- 
 tory and its prospects. The "will of all" is the will that, at 
 a given moment, gets itself obeyed. In an Austinian system 
 like that of Rome the "will of all" becomes concentrated in 
 the person of the pope. We judge its identity with the will 
 of the church in the light of the years that he ahead. 
 
 The quarrel of Lamennais with Rome, in fact, goes back to 
 one of the decisive moments of the fifteenth century. The de- 
 feat of the federaUsing efforts of Gerson and Nicholas of Cusa 
 at the great council of Basle in 1449 resulted in the erection 
 of a papal absolutism. It is the decisive step on a road that lead 
 logically to the definition of papal infalhbility in 1870. But 
 the result was to give to Rome exactly those powers against 
 which Lamennais made complaint in the modern state. When 
 the Reformation split Europe into a collection of diverse sover- 
 
264 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 eignties each state inherited the shattered fragments of the 
 Roman imperium. It was in that sense that the obsequious 
 Parhament of Henry VIII declared the realm of England to be 
 an empire. But the history of the ensuing three centuries is 
 the record of a transference of sovereign power from a single 
 head to the general body of the state. By Rome alone, in 
 Western Europe, was this tendency successfully resisted; and 
 by Rome alone has the maintenance of absolutism been con- 
 sistently secured. The knowledge of her vast pretensions was, 
 throughout the nineteenth century, a fertile source of diplo- 
 matic difficulty. It was from those pretensions that, little by 
 httle, the states of Europe were compelled to build up what is 
 essentially an alternative scheme of civic life. It was those 
 pretensions which made of toleration the ultimate dogma of 
 modern politics. It was those pretensions which resulted in 
 the stern control of Catholic life. The Roman church was 
 
 I nowhere free. Her claim to statehood was on all sides met by 
 the response that her competing system of allegiance was in- 
 
 : compatible with the sovereignty of the state. It was against 
 the assumption that the sovereignty of the state must be unique 
 that Lamennais made his first protest in the name of Hberalism. 
 It was a claim made in the face of an external power. It did 
 not discuss the conditions of an interior life within the church 
 itself. It sought only to show, as de Maistre had attempted 
 to demonstrate, that in her corporate freedom Rome will find 
 such means of dominion as will enable her to govern the world. 
 But corporate freedom was not a synthesis in which a system 
 of which Metternich was the symbol could find comfort or 
 hope. 
 
 From the protest against external bonds Lamennais turned 
 to the internal life of the church. But here, too, he found him- 
 self confronted by a similar problem. The virtual apotheosis 
 of the Roman pontiff stifled on every side the initiative of the 
 individual. There was no limit set to the bounds of papal 
 authority, and, as a consequence, there was no room in the 
 church for any save those who agreed with the expressed 
 declaration of its will. Loyalty was interpreted to mean not 
 faith in the future of the church, not belief in the principles 
 of its creeds, but acceptance of the political principles 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 265 
 
 __ . : ^ 
 
 by which its sovereign chose to be guided. Of course such a 
 sovereignty must, in practice, have been limited by the obvious 
 facts of Ufe. But where, as in Lamennais' own case, the indi- 
 vidual was forced to dissent from the conclusions of authority, 
 no choice was offered between obedience and expulsion. He 
 felt that the Roman theory was false. The liberalism he had 
 appUed to the external relations of the church he endeavoured 
 to insist must be true of her internal relations also. To be a 
 true church her will must be the will of her whole personality 
 and not of a part of it. It must synthesise the whole, and not 
 a part, of her purpose. It must, in actual terms, be something 
 more than the voice of a feeble old man dominated by an ambi- 
 tious and grasping bureaucracy. They substituted their private 
 advantage for the public need, and the church paid the penalty 
 of such prostitution of its purposes. 
 
 He learned, in fact, what has been one of the fundamental 
 lessons in the history of the modern state. Disguise it how we I 
 will, the sovereignty of the state will mean, in the long run, 
 the sovereignty of the rulers who govern it.^"' On occasion, in- | 
 deed, the exercise of power by those who misrepresent the 
 general will may result in their dethronement; but history is 
 sufficiently uncatastrophic to make revolution the exception 
 rather than the rule of political life. Lamennais might protest 
 that the sense of the church was against the decision of Gregory; 
 but the only defence he could make was an appeal to the future. 
 That, for the most part, is the defect of any distinction between 
 the will of the state and of those who govern it. The latter, 
 at any given moment, possesses the formal attributes of sov- 
 ereign power. There is no means of questioning it save the 
 means of patience. But, after all, the counsel that truth will 
 eventually prevail is a maxim for eternity rather than for 
 mortal men. Lamennais found that the concentration of power 
 in the hands of the papal government deprived him of every 
 normal means of protest and of argument. In the result, there 
 is every cause to understand why the protagonist of ultramon- 
 tanism should have become the tribune of the people. 
 
 Nor was his second discovery less important. He had him- 
 
 "' I have discussed in detail this contention in the first chapter of this 
 book. 
 
266 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 self suggested that the centrahsed system of French civil ad- 
 ministration neglected the welfare of the provinces. He found 
 that the centralisation of the Roman church was not less un- 
 fortunate. Here, again, it is to the conciliar movement that the 
 main thread of his ideas goes back. He confronted, intellectu- 
 ally, exactly the situation that the Europe of the fifteenth 
 century confronted in matters of organisation. An England 
 that had passed its statutes of Provisors and Praemunire knew 
 the dangers of a unitary government. The plea of Gerson was 
 frankly utilitarian and he argued that "solus populi suprema 
 lex" cannot safely be interpreted in terms of centraHsation.^"^ 
 So, too, did Nicholas of Cusa speak in the name of Germany 
 when he made his striking plea against the reduction of a 
 Christian community to papal serfdom. The difficulties of the 
 sixteenth century were material difficulties — problems of finance, 
 of jurisdiction, of place. Those of the nineteenth century by 
 which Lamennais was confronted were spiritual in character, 
 but it is to the same source that they are to be traced. So long 
 as the powers of the constituent parts of the Roman church 
 were derivative and not original it was iiseless to contend 
 against the papal will. The Roman bureaucracy had every- 
 thing on its side. It was useless to appeal to history or to 
 tradition for of these the Pope was the appointed interpreter. 
 It was unmeaning to accuse him of error, for he had been made 
 the church and the church had been dignified by infallibility. 
 It was useless to protest that, after all, the Pope was a man and 
 thus subject to error. It was the future to decide whether 
 he had spoken with the Jovian thunder of an ex-cathedra 
 decision. The whole problem was but one instance of the 
 fundamental truth upon which Dr. Figgis has insisted that 
 "wherever blind obedience is preached, there is danger of 
 moral corruption."*"' The institution, in fact, which can safely 
 deny the necessity of criticism, the value of dissent from its 
 conclusions, the resultant good of a re-examination of its foun- 
 dations, is thus far unknown to human history. The claim of 
 perfection is a common error among societies, but it is never 
 
 "« Cf. Figgis, "From Gerson to Grotius," p. 64 f ; and for tfie whole 
 problem of Valois, "Le Pape et le Conoile," Vol. I, Ch. II-III. 
 409 Figgis, "Churches in the Modern State," p. 154. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 267 
 
 made save where there is evidence of decay. The omnipotent 
 autocracy of Rome revealed its ignorance of the real conditions 
 of social existence when it made that claim. For the totality 
 of influences, spiritual, intellectual, historic, that go to the 
 building of a community are not to be resumed in the dicta of 
 authority. There is no loyalty compelling enough to absorb 
 the affections of men. All that we can hope is so effectually 
 to exclude the possibility that its demands may be rejected 
 as to minimise the dangers of anarchy. But that is only to 
 urge that the basis of our institutions must be liberty. 
 
 XII. THE INHERITANCE 
 
 Once again in her history Rome was given the opportunity 
 to make her peace with modern life. The modernist movement 
 was, of course, for the most part, and directly, a theological' 
 movement. But, indirectly at least, the problems it raised 
 were not theological questions at all, but governmental ques- 
 tions, and it was a discussion as to the nature of a particular 
 form of community that was in reality the main issue. The 
 critical work of men like Loisy may have provided the move- 
 ment with its intellectual penumbra. He doubtless expressed 
 its yearnings after a more adequate scholarship with an ability 
 that has made him one of the most striking figures of our time. 
 But the thinker most representative of the modernist spirit 
 was not Loisy but Tyrrell.*'" For it was Tyrrell, above all, who 
 realised from the outset that what was in fact in debate was 
 the nature of communal authority. He never denied the 
 fundamental necessity of order in a state; where he was in- 
 sistent was upon the limits that may be set to its demands. 
 He was not a scholar; and the technical details of M. Loisy's 
 researches he doubtless would have been willing to concede as 
 beyond his purview. What he essentially urged was the fact 
 that CathoUcism was a life, and that the only unchanging 
 principle of life is the fact of change. Like Lamennais, the 
 
 *'" Miss Petre's biography is our main authority. His most important 
 worksare (l)"AMuch-abusedLetter;" (2) "Through Scylla and Charybdis;" 
 (3) 'Medievahsm;" (4) "Lex Credendi." The reader will also find much of 
 importance in the two volumes of essays collected under the title "The 
 Faith of the Millions." 
 
268 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 fundamental burden of his protest was a regret that the end 
 of Catholicism should have perished in pursuit of means.^i 
 A member of the most ultramontane of ecclesiastical founda- 
 tions, he had an unique opportunity to study its objects and 
 to test its purposes. It was by the deliberate choice of conscience 
 that he took the road which led eventually to his excommuni- 
 cation. But in his travelling he had evolved a theory of social 
 structure which is one of the most precious possessions of our 
 time. 
 
 The real problem that confronted him was the place of 
 liberty in organised life. With unlimited individualism he had 
 no sort of sympathy; for the rights of one man must inevitably 
 conflict with the claims of another and order is essential to 
 the maintenance of a just equilibrium. So he saw that the 
 Catholic church is not a group of men who can believe any- 
 thing they please. "As to dogmas and Cathohc truths," he 
 wrote,^^^ "all loyal sons of the church are bound to accept 
 them." That is no more than to say that the Catholic church 
 has a certain personality loyalty to which is essential to mem- 
 bership. But he saw also that loyalty to the Cathohc hfe was 
 not the same thing as loyalty to its government. Where that 
 goverimient seemed to him false to the church he was bound, 
 as Newman held himself bound, to proceed by the light of his 
 conscience.^'' "I am driven on," he wrote,*" "by a fatality 
 to follow the dominant influence of my life even if it should 
 break the heart of all the world," and thereby he proclaimed 
 the truth which lies at the bottom of every scheme of social 
 arrangement. Rome seemed to him ■ to be suffering from a 
 feverish worship of authority, and to demand as a consequence 
 an uncritical and unquestioning obedience from Catholics which 
 it is not in human nature to give.*'* The problem then con- 
 fronted him as to whether he should obey those who had the 
 technical right to demand his submission, or follow what he 
 believed to be the truth. Like Lamennais, he came to see 
 clearly that in such a choice there was in fact no real alternative. 
 
 «i "Life," II, 74. 
 «2 "Life," II, 129. 
 «= Ibid., II, 141. 
 "< Ibid., II, 142. 
 "'/tid., II, 146. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 269 
 
 What baffled him was the unquaUfied absolutism of Rome. 
 She was not amenable, as he deemed,"*'^ to the arguments of- 
 truth and justice. The seal of orthodoxy was set upon views 
 which virtually denied all personality to the church as a whole 
 to concentrate it in the Pope alone.*" But such a view, as 
 DoUinger had long before shown, was totally out of accord 
 with the history of the church. " It is in the collective mind of 
 the church," he says,*'* "not in the separate mind of the Pon- 
 tiff that the truth is elaborated .... so the Pope cannot 
 be conceived to speak excathedra except when he professedly 
 investigates the ecumenical mind." Infallibility, in fact, is 
 reserved for those occasions where the papal will interprets the 
 "real" will of the church. Obedience then becomes due not 
 to the Pope as a person, but to the Pope as the registering 
 centre of a general consensus of opinion. But, it is clear enough, 
 such a consensus would take account of minds like Loisy and 
 Tyrrell and their direct condemnation would be thus impossi- 
 ble. So that he can draw a distinction, often, indeed, an antithe- 
 sis, between obedience to authority and obedience to the church, 
 precisely as Lamennais had done when he urged that Rome 
 only was against him. Moreover such an absolutism was obvi- 
 ously bound to result in stagnation. "A creed and a theology," 
 he wrote,*'' "ought to have been merely and only the product 
 of her spiritual life and its exigencies." But in such an aspect 
 it would be necessary for dogma to undergo continuous adapta- 
 tion to the varying needs of each age. The difficulty with Rome 
 was exactly her use of sovereign power to prevent the exercise 
 of that adaptive faculty. She claimed to project her decisions 
 without the category of time; and by claiming an immediately 
 eternal character for her pronouncements she misunderstood 
 the nature of society. For the "only adequate organ of re- 
 ligious development" was to him "the recognition of the entire 
 Christian people as the true and immediate Vicarius Christi."*''" 
 
 The distinction, of course, is fundamental; it is the distinc- 
 
 "» Ibid., II, 149. 
 "' Ibid., II, 156. 
 "»/6irf., II, 156. 
 "» Ibid., II, 185. 
 «» Ibid., II, 191. 
 
270 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 tion between autocracy and democratic government. The 
 "consciously formulated mind and will of the governing body 
 of the church" could not obtain his final allegiance just because 
 in his view, it mistook its class interest for the interest of the 
 whole.*^^ That governing body was endeavouring to make the 
 life of. the church run into channels which were, in fact, not 
 wide enough to contain it. To him the unconscious self of the 
 church was, equally with the conscious, the personality to 
 which he owed his allegiance.^^^ The fault of Rome was to 
 neglect that deeper life and it had thus far failed in its work 
 of the improvement of civilisation. To Rome, then, he would 
 owe no duty save that of doing what in him lay of bringing 
 her back to a sense of her greater mission. Nor was he con- 
 founded by the obvious difficulty that if the government of 
 the church had failed no one could officially record her nature. 
 "When authority," he wrote,^^^ "is -dumb Or stultifies itself, 
 private conviction resumes its previous rights and liberties." 
 For authority is based upon trust and the violation of trust is 
 duly resultant in its dissolution. 
 
 Such a distinction between clericalism and CathoUcism^^ is 
 obviously fundamental enough. The weakness of individual- 
 ism is admitted, and the purpose of submission to collective 
 organisation is to remedy it. "Our courage and hope and 
 confidence," he said in a noble passage,*^^ "are measured by 
 our sense of the strength of the army to which we belong, of 
 the history of her past victories." But the victories must be 
 the victories of truth and the strength the strength of virtue. 
 To share in a collective experience is not to be assured of sal- 
 vation effortlessly. The soldier upon whom there is borne in 
 a sense of purpose so wrong that the whole personafity of the 
 army becomes for him an evil thing has no alternative save to 
 lay down his sword. That does not mean that his original 
 membership was wrong. "On their spiritual side," he said of 
 societies in general,^^^ "and in so far as they are freely self- 
 
 «i "A Muoh-^abused Letter,'' p. 58. 
 
 *22 Cf . the very beautiful passage in Ibid., p. 52 f . 
 
 ^ Ibid., 47. 
 
 "^ Ibid., 66. 
 
 «5 Ibid., 83. 
 
 «" "Through ScyUa and Charybdis," p. 13. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 271 
 
 forming, their future evades all prediction since it is not con- 
 tained in or predetermined by their present .... spiritual 
 development is not a process of passive unfolding, of which 
 each step is vigorously determined by the preceding; but a 
 process of active reconstruction, conditioned by the chance 
 materials furnished by the quite incalculable succession of 
 experiences." Life, in fact, refuses the categories of a formal 
 syllogism, just as Lamennais' ultramontanism broadened, by 
 actual contact with chance experience, into a liberal doctrine 
 so wide that his theology was absorbed into its expanse. So 
 Tyrrell understood, as Lamennais came to see, that the vital 
 fact in membership of any society was not the actual bond but 
 that of which the bond was symbol. He was compelled by his 
 standards of right not merely to be a member of his fellowship, 
 but also to stand outside and judge it. 
 
 Nor was that dualism insignificant since it formed the basis 
 of the society's authority. " It is not their red robes," he said,*^' 
 "but my own judgment about them that gives the pack of 
 cardinals any title to distinction. Like Ehzabeth, it has frocked 
 them, and can unfrock them. It is they who are in peril, not 
 we." The ability to withstand such a judgment is surely not 
 the test of social worth. It is obvious enough, in reUgion 
 above all things, that the judgment will not be made save in 
 the most decisive conflicts of interpretation; and the only 
 criterion of adequate compromise is the conveyance, on one 
 side or the other, of genuine conviction. Nor does it matter 
 where the problem of conflict shall arise. We too little realise 
 that the fundamental principles are so important as inevitably 
 to challenge an incessant discussion. Nor is it less inevitable 
 that the existence of variety in temperament should result in 
 diversity of interpretation. Newman and Manning could 
 never have agreed in the meaning they attached to the dogmas 
 of the church any more than it would have been possible for 
 Cromwell to make his peace with Charles I. What is required 
 on both sides is a wilUngness, not, at the final conflict, to use 
 the bludgeon of authority instead of the rapier of argument. 
 It was exactly the lack of that wiUingness on the part of Rome 
 which resulted in her mistaken conception of authority. So 
 
 *" "Life," II, 196. 
 
272 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 long as she held that her governmental interpretation of dogma 
 was not a phase but eternal, she could not, as Tyrrell saw, 
 but be hostile to intellectual Uberty. Partly, of course, her 
 hostility was the result of her belief in the divinity of her mis- 
 sion; but even when the temperamental consequences of that 
 attitude are admitted grave difficulties remain. For even if it 
 be granted that the Roman church is an eternal society, it 
 has had periods in its history which are not the expression of 
 a golden age. Did she not forget, as Tyrrell asked,*^^ "that 
 development means death and decay as well as growth, that 
 it means continuity only by way of reproduction in a new gen- 
 eration?" Even if Rome expelled from her principles the idea 
 of development she could not destroy it; for even she must be 
 bound by the laws of nature. 
 
 The problem Tycrell thus confronted in the church he found 
 not less acute within the Society of Jesus itself. In the whole 
 range of theological literature there are few analyses more in- 
 comparable at once in their subtlety and their simplicity than 
 the account he penned of his relations with the Society.*^' 
 Nothing of the splendour of Newman's own Apologia se^ms 
 wanting to it; and it has the additional merit of being written 
 from an impersonal attitude that only adds the greater weight 
 to its authority. It begins by a refutation of the ordinary 
 charges against the Jesuit order. "I do not see in the Society 
 of Jesus a monstrous and deliberate conspiracy against liberty 
 and progress in religion and civilisation. "^^'' What he attacks 
 is the attitude of those within the order who object to criticism 
 on the ground of disloyalty. One who loves the society to 
 which he belongs must inevitably work for it; what he found 
 was that to work for the interests of Catholicism, as he imder- 
 stood them, was to invoke the hostility of his superiors. To 
 defend liberalism, as he defended it, was to be the upholder 
 of a cause to the destruction of which the whole forces of the 
 Society were devoted. Nor could he change its purpose. " The 
 alterations needed to adapt it to our days," he wrote,^i "were 
 
 «s Ibid,, II, 220. 
 
 «' Ibid., II, Ch. XII, and the letter to Father Martin printed as Ap- 
 pendix III. 
 
 "" Ibid., II, 272. 
 
 '" Ibid., 277-8. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 273 
 
 too radical to be ever recognised or carried out by a body whose 
 supreme government was vested in the rare assembly of a 
 senate of men . . . of whom only about one-eighth repre- 
 sented the living and progressive nationahties of the world. 
 Unable to progress with its environment, the Society could only 
 hope to live and to retain its ascendency in the church by keep- 
 ing its enviromnent unchanged." He did not blame it com- 
 pletely. "Corporations and crowds are non-moral agencies, 
 and, judged by the standard of individual ethics, seem to com- 
 mit atrocious crimes which, in fact, are no more crimes than 
 the ravages of sea and storm, or of brute passion, or of other 
 natural forces. "^^ He rather dissented from the whole idea for 
 which it had come to stand.'*'' He objected to its exaction of 
 "a slavish, unintelUgent military obedience" which destroyed 
 the whole purpose of the true submission to society.*'^ He 
 regards it as importation from state to church and as "wedded 
 to principles subversive of ... . social order and prog- 
 ress."*'' It has become less a zeal for progress than an enthu- 
 siasm for mechanical uniformity. It has abandoned its trust 
 in unity of spirit to replace it by a juridical compulsion.*" It 
 has neglected the manysidedness of personality. "Even a 
 soldier," he finely says,*'' "has a life outside his barracks in 
 which he is a man and not merely an instrument .... he 
 does not, like the Jesuit, dehberately, as a matter of religion and 
 principle, merge his whole life in his profession, nor of set pur- 
 pose disown his personality and rights as a free spiritual individ- 
 ual." Yet it is to this obedience that society drives its mem- 
 bers. It sets as the correlative of its autocracy an obedience 
 that is bhnd and uncriticising. Such a method "is the worst 
 and most profoundly immoral forms of government that the 
 world has yet known. For the essence of all vice and immorality 
 is the destruction of spiritual liberty."*'* 
 
 «2 Ibid., II, 279. Cf. his essay on the Corporate Mind in "Through 
 Scylla and Charybdis." 
 «»"Life," II, 465. 
 «' Ibid., II, 467. 
 «* Ibid., II, 469. 
 «" Ihid., II, 476. 
 «' Ibid., II, 479 f . 
 ««76id., II, 481. 
 
274 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 He does not, it has been pointed out, blame the society as 
 he would blame a man. "So far," he writes,^^' "as a society 
 has a self at all, it must be self-assertive, self-complacent, 
 proud, egotistical;" but it is just because of its inherent openness 
 to these dangers that the loyalty of its members dare not be 
 unhmited. "A sane and healthy loyalty, far from blinding a 
 man, will make him keenly critical of his regiment and observ- 
 ant of its defects and weakness, and will check any sort of 
 dangerous complacency and optimism." He insisted on the 
 significance of the influence exerted by the corporate action of 
 the society upon the character of its members. He denounced 
 its Corporate complacency. "The first condition of progress 
 and improvement," he said,^" "is a confession of fault or of 
 falhbility." But this the society virtually refused to admit 
 since it would have been an invitation to thought upon the part 
 of its members. But thought was incompatible with passivity, 
 and it was that deadly negation of personality which, above 
 all, the society desired. 
 
 What was the result? "I see in Jesuitism," he wrote,^' 
 ". . . . just the counter-extravagance of Protestantism; on 
 this side liberty misinterpreted as the contempt of authority; 
 on that, authority misinterpreted as the contempt of liberty. 
 The Society's boast is to have stayed the spread of Protestant- 
 ism and to have saved half Europe to the church. Its success 
 has been its ruin; its action has been met with reaction; in 
 buttressing, it has crushed liberty and established Absolutism 
 \ ... The true synthesis of liberty and authority is still to 
 ! seek." Assuredly, Tyrrell himself did not pretend to supply it. 
 But where he insisted upon the extravagance of absolute power 
 he was surely correct in his assertions. His own case is the 
 clearest proof of the dangers of a system which regards itself as 
 immune from attack. The fact is that Nature expresses herself 
 less in absolutes than in compromises. It may be true, as a 
 distinguished French thinker has argued,"^ that only in the 
 
 «9 Ibid., II, 482. 
 «» Ibid., II, 485. 
 «i Ibid., II, 497. 
 
 <« Cf. M. Sorel's preface, p. 12, to M. Berth's "Les M^faits des Intel- 
 lectuals." 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 275 
 
 absolute affirmative can the seeds of progress b3 discovered; 
 yet the penalty of such formulation is the inability to supply 
 more than a temporary need. Such lack of elasticity is surely 
 in itself evidence of an unfitness to survive in an environment 
 where the true criterion of worth is an adaptability to a chang- 
 ing environment. 
 
 Nor is this all. No discussion of social organisation is satis- 
 factory which does not take account of the inherently plural 
 character of human personality. That was what Tyrrell meant 
 by his urgent insistence upon freedom. For however rich may 
 be the genius of a man for fellowship he has also an inwardness 
 of perception which no association can absorb. Few men have 
 been more passionately at one with the church than was Lamen- 
 nais before 1829 ; yet even amidst the fever of a passionate activ- 
 ity he remained a brooding and lonely being. It is the existence 
 of that intimate and precious arcanum of the soul which makes 
 loyalty, in the last analysis, in every case a matter of the private 
 judgment of each of us. Organisation may attempt, as Tyrrell 
 urged that the Society of Jesus attempted, to root out the 
 recesses. Doubtless a long training in subjection to despotism 
 is more powerful than the individual will. Yet the experience 
 of nations seems to suggest that the effect is one rather to be 
 stamped afresh upon each generation than to be inherited by 
 the memory of a people. Excessive authoritarianism breeds 
 less affection for, than suspicion of, a government. For it is 
 guilty of one of the gravest fallacies in the business of adminis- 
 tration by its effort to treat men as uniform machines. No 
 government is secure which fails to remember the uniqueness 
 of the individual. Practical legislation may take the greatest 
 common measure of consent or of desire, but where men are 
 driven back to first principles it is only moral unanimity that is, 
 as the fathers of the church were wise enough to realise, in the 
 full sense effective. Every Ireland will have its Ulster"' where 
 fundamental human emotion is at stake and no theory of 
 society that neglects it will be adequate because it will be then 
 no more than a theory of coercion. A papal condemnation may 
 drive a Montalembert and a Hefele into acceptance of ideals to 
 which they have been a stranger; but a Lamennais and a 
 
 *" This must not be taken to indicate a belief that Ulster has been right. 
 
276 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Dollinger will remain unmoved, and it is the protest that will 
 live rather than the acquiescence. 
 
 In the last instance, then, the individual can make his appeal 
 beyond that tribunal which, for practical purposes, is clothed 
 with sovereign power. "Above the constitutional headship," 
 wrote Tyrrell,^^^ "there is the pre-constitutional, which is a 
 necessary fact and not a doctrine. It cannot be denied that in 
 the life of that formless church which underlies the hierarchic 
 organisation, God's spirit exercises a silent but sovereign 
 crilicism; that his resistlessly effectual judgment is made known, 
 not in the precise language of definition and decree, but in the 
 slow manifestation of practical results; in the survival of what 
 has proved itself life-giving; in the decay and oblivion of all 
 whose value was but relative and temporary." It is, perhaps, 
 an appeal to the future; but it is an appeal to which judgment 
 must be rendered, since it takes its stand upon the basic char- 
 acter of the institution involved. It means, of course, ulti- 
 mately, a refusal on the part of men to accept the reduction of 
 social form to unity; for such reduction impHes, as we have 
 . learned, the destruction of what is living and vigorously in- 
 dividual to be replaced by a meaningless uniformity. A Lamen- 
 nais who surrendered his Hberalism otherwise than by the slow 
 arrival of a conviction of its error would be no longer, in any 
 real sense, the Lamennais we know. That is why, despite its 
 practical efficiency as a working instrument, authority must, at 
 every stage of its activity- submit to the closest scrutiny. It 
 must not so exert itself as to involve treason on the part of its 
 members to their consciences. From some, doubtless, that 
 treason will not be difficult to secure; but there will always be 
 those who, Kke Lamennais and Tyrrell, feel themselves bound to 
 show "that resistance was still a contingency to be reckoned 
 with .... that Rome was trading on the assimiption that 
 the idea of actual obedience had so triumphed that she might 
 say or do anything, however reckless."*" The choice has its 
 difficulties and, as Tyrrell finely said,^''^ "the deliverers of the 
 crowd will be stoned and crucified by the crowd .... (but 
 
 «" "Through Scylla and Charybdis," p. 381 
 «' "Life," II, 340. 
 «« lUd., II, 347. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 277 
 
 when) .... the religion of the crowd is corrupted .... 
 there we cannot be with the crowd." Both of them saw that 
 Rome had gone beyond the boundaries of her real purpose, that 
 she was asking from her children an allegiance to ends in fact 
 unconcerned with the true ethos of Catholicism. To Lamennais 
 she was the ally of despotism as to Tyrrell she was the assailant 
 of civilisation and each saw the fatal prospects of her effort. 
 "Rome," wrote Tyrrell in a letter that might have been Lamen- 
 naisV*^ " Rome cares nothing for religion — only for power . . . 
 Hinc illae lacrimae! she will never yield wilUngly. But her power 
 will soon be broken to pieces by the pressure of modern govern- 
 ments — weary of her turbulence and sedition; and then per- 
 haps she may have no reason to oppose modernism and may 
 remember her true raison d'ttre." But until that return had 
 been made obedience was impossible. "I rightly or wrongly 
 hold," Tyrrell said to one who consulted him in distress,^^' 
 "there is a limit to ecclesiastical as to civil authority—a time 
 when resistance is duty and submission treason. If I believe 
 the captain is unawares steering for the rocks I will not obey 
 him. I am not infallible; he may be right; but I must go by 
 my own moral certainties." That is still the watchword of the 
 deepest freedom. 
 
 Yet there is one weakness in Tyrrell's attitude upon which 
 it is worth while for a moment to insist. There are -few things 
 more dangerous than the effort to evolve for corporate person- 
 ality a standard of judgment different from the criterion by 
 which we judge of the conduct of men. It is, of course, true 
 enough that the unity of corporate hfe is less strong, in the sense 
 that it is less tangible, than that of individiial personaUty. Yet 
 it is clear enough that in law, in politics, in economics, at the 
 present time, the emphasis of our needs is driving us to an 
 insistence upon vicarious liabihty. We are forced more and 
 more to recognise that while, in the last resort, a corporate 
 relation is, basically, a relation of individuals, nevertheless, for 
 most practical purposes, it is of the fact of their unity that we 
 must take notice. How Rome is built up matters, to outsiders, 
 but httle; but the influence of the Rome so built upon modern 
 
 «' lUd., II, 355. 
 «»/bid., II, 405. 
 
278 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 life matters to all of us very greatly. A modem corporation 
 acts as an individual would act in a similar situation; that is to 
 say by agents and servants. Surely, if that be the case, an 
 adequate interpretation of their activities must take account of 
 the real unity whence they derive.*^' 
 
 It is not an adequate reply to answer as certainly Tyrrell, 
 perhaps Lamennais also, would have answered, that the "real" 
 will of an institution may differ from that of those who operate 
 it, that the will of the Roman Church is not the will of its sov- 
 ereign pontiff. The will upon which our judgment must be 
 expressed is surely the will that is promulgated and obeyed. 
 The dumb and enforced acquiescence of a people may be 
 tragedy enough; but if the cohesive force of their acquiescence 
 is bent to the corporate purpose it is difficult to see how the 
 separation of their acts from its own may be made. For, after 
 all, it is precisely the fact of their acquiescence which permits 
 the registration of wrong. The only course is active dissent 
 from the conclusions of authority, as both Lamennais and 
 Tyrrell implicitly admitted when they withdrew from the 
 Roman Communion rather than follow it in paths they deemed 
 mistaken. Lamennais could easily have urged that it was folly 
 to pit his strength against Rome and have acquiesced in the 
 condemnation of democracy. Tyrrell could similarly have 
 insisted that his single effort would not avail to teach Rome the 
 inevitabihty of modernist doctrine. Yet they would not have 
 been Lamennais and Tyrrell if they had been silent 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 hable to egoism than an individual 
 will means surely no more than the answer that we must then 
 be more vigorous in the apphcation of our standards. Our 
 judgment that corporate sin is more easily to be excused is 
 probably no more than an inference from the separation 
 MachiaveUi effected between politics and ethics. How fatal 
 that step has been Lord Acton has magistrally demonstrated in 
 a famous argument.^^" It is, in short, a simple excuse for wrong- 
 
 «" Cf. my papers in 29 Harv. L. Rev. 404 and 26 Yale Law Journal 122 f. 
 ■'*° Cf . the great inaugural lecture, reprinted in his "Lectures in Modern 
 History" with the introduction to Mr. Burd's edition of "The Prince." 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 279 
 
 ful conduct. Because, as in the famous Taff Vale case, men will 
 do things for their trade union which they would hesitate to do 
 in private life, that is no reason to excuse an institution of which 
 the nature demands illegal activities from its agents. Because 
 the church of Rome was anxious to discredit the efforts of the 
 French repubhc, that does not justify the activities which 
 culminated in the curious tissue of falsehood and corruption 
 revealed by the pubhcation of the nuncio's dispatches."' If we \ 
 are definitely wedded to a complex scheme of group-loyalties, ! 
 the only method of moral safety is to demand from each group j 
 the standards exacted from its individual member. The argu- 
 ment so often and so unthinkingly made about the non-existence 
 of corporate mind misses the point completely. We are dealing 
 with unified action and we cannot mistake the real character 
 of its personahty. We have too recently had demonstration of 
 the tragic evil which comes from elevating it without the moral 
 law, to be willing to allow it release from the penalty of its cor- 
 porate offences. 
 
 Such an attitude, indeed; would serve to strengthen the posi- 
 tion of Lamennais. It is no more than the affirmation that 
 what, above all, we need is the democratic interpretation of the 
 principles of authority. We refuse to reduce the individual to a 
 nullity simply because he is a human being. The basis of our 
 social organisation is living and not mechanical; it is founded 
 upon the consciences of men. It does not conceal from itself 
 the dangers to which it lies open. Consciously, it is a threat 
 against order. Consciously, it offers a loophole to what may 
 well resolve itself into revolution. But that is only because we 
 are certain that the supreme thing in the modern world is the 
 love of what men deem to be right. A society which is able to 
 admit the protest of its members has already safeguarded itself 
 against the shock of disruption. If the principle of its life be 
 the exclusion of fundamental dissent, that hfe is already poisoned 
 at its source. That was why Tyrrell fiung abroad his flaming 
 protest against the evil of absolutism. The individual doubt- 
 less, will often be mistaken just as authority itself has never 
 been free from error. Yet in the clash of ideas we shall 
 
 ■"' Cf. the collection of documents published as "Les Fiches Pontificales 
 de Monsignor Montagnini" (Paris, 1908). 
 
280 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 find the means of truth. There is no other safeguard of 
 progress. 
 
 XIII. CONCLUSION 
 
 Lamennais never returned to the Catholic church. He lived 
 and died and suffered with those for whom he had chosen the 
 path of exile. His ideas grew more and more liberal until, 
 towards the end, he found himself in. close kinship with the 
 apostles of communism. Of the love the common people bore 
 him there is evidence enough; and his pen was ceaselessly 
 employed in the task of their hberation. He found new friends 
 who, in some measure, at least, healed the wounds that had 
 been caused by the defection of the old. The church made 
 divers efforts to secure his conversion but always without 
 success. His death seems to have meant but Httle to a democ- 
 racy that was being fed on the dangerous fruits of imperial 
 adventure. Yet even as it was, so great was the honour of his 
 name that the government of Louis Napoleon compelled his 
 interment in the earlier hours of dawn. He was buried, as he 
 had wished, without any religious ceremonial; and it was by 
 his request that Auguste Barbet refused the usual offer of a 
 cross. That was perhaps less an epitaph than a prophecy. 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 THE POLITICAL THEORY OF ROYER-COLLARDi 
 
 I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESTORATION 
 
 THE restoration of the Bourbon House created more 
 problems than it solved. It was intended by the allies 
 less as a consecration of political doctrine than as the 
 refutation of the Napoleonic idea. It had, indeed, the merit 
 of preserving, to some extent, the self-respect of the French 
 nation by returning to it a ruler supported by every historic 
 tradition in France anterior to the Revolution. But it was 
 exactly therein that its error is to be found; for to make ab- 
 straction of the Revolution had already become impossible. 
 The new system, in fact, was, fi;om the outset, incapable even 
 of understanding the problems with which it was called upon 
 to deal. Those who had returned with Louis from exile in 
 nowise perceived that new and acceptable dogmas had already 
 replaced the prejudiced privileges of the ancien rigime. They 
 came not to fulfil but to destroy. They did not realise that 
 even the despotic system of Napoleon had taken due account 
 of the revolutionary spirit. They were, above all things, eager 
 to restore the social and political edifice of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. They did not understand that their principles, no less 
 than their methods, were already obsolete. 
 
 For the Revolution, despite its excesses, had been a fruitful 
 epoch in pohtical thought. It had been an incredible experi- 
 ence in the formation of political habits. Those who had 
 
 '■ 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 volume of his " Politiques et Moralistes" to which I am much indebted. 
 There is a useful little life by SpuUer; and M. Nismes-Desmarets has 
 recently published a laborious and exhaustive analysis of his political 
 doctrines. The essay by Scherer in the first volume of his "Etudes" and 
 that by C. de R^musat in the second of his collected papers are both of 
 much value. 
 
282 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 tasted the sweets of national sovereignty were not willing to 
 resign their power because Napoleon had been beaten upon 
 the battlefield. From the thousand strands of the complex 
 web of the Revolution, a certain order and meaning had eventu- 
 ally emerged. The idea of privilege had suffered a final shock. 
 The sovereignty of the state had been transferred from king to 
 people. The Declaration of Rights had embodied an enthusiastic 
 belief in the dignity of human personality which suggested the 
 potentialities of a new and profitable organization of society. 
 The idea of toleration, if it had been bent by the oppression of 
 Napoleon and the unclean craftiness of Fouche, was far from 
 broken. The third estate had arrived at manhood; from being 
 nothing it had come, as in Sieyes' superb prophecy, to demand 
 all. If it was a serious limitation upon democratic growth that 
 the workers should have been excluded from power still, when 
 nobility and bourgeoisie stood face to face, the prospects of 
 advance were fortunate. For no one could doubt where ths 
 victory must one day lie. 
 
 Little enough, indeed, of all this was perceived by those 
 whom the downfall of Napoleon had swept into power. What 
 rather is remarkable is the rapidity with which the old order 
 was estabUshed again. The reaction was as thorough-going as 
 the Revolution; and even if the essential work of the Revolu- 
 tion had penetrated too subtly into the structure of the social 
 fabric to be overthrown at all speedily, signs are not wanting 
 that it was not for lack of ill-will towards it. The Restoration 
 divides itself clearly into three periods; and only in one brief 
 moment was there the faint hope that a compromise with 
 liberalism might be effected. No justification save that of 
 revenge can ever be found for the pitiless extravagance of the 
 reaction which followed the Hundred days;^ not even the com- 
 bined efforts of a king and government which alike took no 
 satisfaction in persecution were able to withstand the brutality 
 of its effort. From 1816, when the moderation of M. Decazes 
 stayed for a period .of four years the desire of royalism to come 
 to death-grips with the remaining factions which clung to the 
 ideas of 1793, there was hope of peace. But the period was 
 
 2 M. Viviani has finely described it in his contribution to Jaures' "His- 
 toire Sociahste." See Vol. VII p. 99, 103. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 283 
 
 full of troubles and dissension; and the assassination of the 
 Due de Berri persuaded Louis that a compromise with liberal- 
 ism was an invitation to disaster. Henceforth, as M. Scherer 
 has finely said,' it was already Charles X who ruled. The 
 system that the charter had endeavored to inaugurate was 
 struck at its foundations. The reactionary efforts of the Roy- 
 alists only spurred their opponents to greater violence. It was 
 the old antagonism between the emigres and the Revolution 
 in which the former had learned that the methods of parlia- 
 mentary government can be used to effect an administrative 
 despotism. Henceforth they had no other object; and the bar- 
 ricades of 1830 were the one possible answer to their pretensions. 
 It was an assault upon individuahsm that they attempted; 
 and thinkers were not lacking who were willing to invent a 
 theory upon which to embroider the necessity of oppression. 
 Nor is the passion by which they were inspired unintelligible 
 to a generation which has felt the shock of an European catas- 
 trophe. They proclaimed the superiority of society to the in- 
 dividual and drew therefrom the inference that their own self- 
 interest might be equated therewith. To the revolutionary in- 
 sistence that only by his own efforts could man create an ade- 
 quate civilisation, they retorted that the only true creation 
 could come from the hands of God. Where the Revolution 
 had asserted the significance of novelty they affirmed the su- 
 preme value of tradition. They sought out the true principles 
 of social order and discovered them in the antithesis of revolu- 
 tionary doctrine. Whether their interest was in politics, as 
 with Bonald, or in religion, as with Lamennais, it was always 
 the secret of unity for which they were searching. They were 
 convinced that the source of the Revolution had been the 
 weakness of authority and they sought to re-establish it upon 
 an unshakeable foundation. They had no experience of a 
 world in which power might be safeguarded by its dispersion. 
 All they could understand was its expression in the ancient 
 terms. They considered the problem of the relation of the in- 
 dividual to the state and answered unhesitatingly that he must 
 be absorbed by it. It is the beatification of the status quo and 
 it is very intelhgible. Their fundamental desire was to safe- 
 
 » "Etudes,"*!, 68. 
 
284 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 guard a system which they believed essential for social salva^ 
 tion. That it happened to coincide with their retention of the 
 control of the state was perhaps rather accidental than the 
 result of set purpose. For they were, in some sort, empirical 
 in their outlook. They had a real sense of the growth of insti- 
 tutions.^ They set themselves firmly against a pohtical theory 
 which should fit its facts to an a priori system. But their em- 
 piricism was essentially emotional and, in reality, it signified 
 no more than the translation into facts of their political desires. 
 Their sense of development was limited to their respect for 
 certain well-worn and traditional avenues of growth. They 
 were almost amazingly unable to understand that the Revolu- 
 tion was a fact no less than a tragedy; and their effort to ignore 
 its meaning was only evidence of their intellectual limitation. 
 
 The truth simply is that they were in no real sense seekers 
 of truth. Pohtical ideas for them were essentially offensive 
 weapons. They held themselves at hberty to misinterpret 
 ideas, to falsify conclusions, to distort purposes. Their, view 
 of human nature was uniformly low and they were never logical 
 enough to admit that their vihfication must apply equally to 
 themselves. They seized upon a single fact in the pohtical 
 history of France and made of it a gospel of defiance. Power 
 was theirs, and the efforts of philosophers and evil men had 
 hurled them from what was rightly their own. What, then, 
 they had to do was to search out the conditions upon which 
 the maintenance of its restoration might be possible. Of the 
 obvious change in social perspective they took no account. 
 That commercial growth and intellectual discovery was ren- 
 dering obsolete the paternal system for which they stood spon- 
 sor they had no shadow of perception. That the source of au- 
 thority in anything so complex as a pohtical society can never 
 in fact be single they did not in the least degree imderstand. 
 They wished the people well; but the possession of will they 
 restricted to themselves. They did not grasp the basic fact 
 that the state is in truth no more than a wiU-organisation and 
 that if, on occasion, that will may result in unified activity 
 that gives no guarantee of permanent unity. They misunder- 
 stood the conditions of state-hfe. They did not perceive that 
 
 « Cf. H. Michel, "L'Idte de I'Etat,". p. 167 f. * 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 285 
 
 there are always limits to the exercise of power. They were 
 so nicely tender of their own consciences that they did not 
 admit the existence of conscience outside their own order. 
 They were so satisfied with their manipulation of the state 
 that they mistook their private good for the general welfare 
 and Paris retorted in its usual fashion to that error. 
 
 Their theocracy, in brief, was as violent as the passionate 
 democracy they so virulently condemned. Yet it is important 
 to remember that their ideas were not confined to France. 
 The war of liberation resulted in England in seventeen abortive 
 years of stagnation and distress. The very poets who had 
 written hymns to liberty found excuses for the deferment of 
 its application. The typical English statesman of the age 
 was Eldon; and the toryism he represented was not less pro- 
 found than that of France. The English bishops adopted an 
 attitude to Catholic emancipation which suggested nothing so 
 much as a belief that England was the private appanage of 
 the English church.* The Duke of Welhngton was little more 
 able to appreciate the drift of opinion than the Prince de 
 Polignac. If England avoided a theoretical revolution, the 
 Reform Act of 1832 was symbolical of a new era in the history 
 of political structure. It was the admission that Toryism was 
 dead, and when Sir Robert Peel became Prime Minister his 
 first act was to recognize that a revolution had been silently 
 effected. 
 
 Nor was the reaction less marked in Germany.* The effort 
 of Savigny was toward nothing so much as the dethronement 
 of the rationalism by which the eighteenth century had been 
 distinguished. "Law," he said- in effect, "cannot be made at 
 the behest of men;" and if he was justified in his emphasis on 
 the thousand forces that go to its construction he was yet as 
 surely transforming the doctrine of evolution into a defence of 
 conservatism. His theory of legislative function is so precisely 
 the antithesis of that of Rousseau as naturally to occasion the 
 
 ' Cf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," p. 123. The intellectual current of 
 time is finely analysed in Professor Dicey's classic "Law and Public 
 Opinion," Lect. V. 
 
 « The really admirable essay of R. Haym "Die Romantische Schule" is a 
 mine of wisdom upon this problem. 
 
286 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 suspicion that he was answering the latter. His sacrifice of 
 the individual to the state, his insistence upon the superiority 
 of its life to that of its constituent parts' could be used, in the 
 hands of Hegel, as the high road to a thoroughgoing absolutism. 
 Herder and Schelling could find sufficient beauty in the romance 
 of Rome to disguise the direction in which its ideals were bend- 
 ing. Fichte did not hesitate to absorb the individual in the 
 state.* In such an analysis personality becomes no more than 
 the opportunity to become part of an immense organism in 
 which no interstices are to be found. But such negation of the 
 individual mind is, in fact, no more in its results than a the- 
 ocracy in which God has been replaced by the King of Prussia. 
 Germany, in fact, threw off the bonds of Roman despotism only 
 to demonstrate that the root of her objection was less to the 
 despotism than to its foreign character. So she, too, could 
 forge the weapons which, in Bismarck's hands, were to stimu- 
 late the ideal of a world reduced to an unity expressed in terms 
 of German dominion. 
 
 Liberahsm, in such an attitude, was clearly difficult enough. 
 Much of this distrust of freedom was, of course, inteUigible. 
 It was a dictum of Sir Henry Maine's that progress is the 
 exception in history; and certainly in each epoch of novel 
 ideas the universal tendency of those who hold the reins of 
 power has been to insist upon the virtue of traditional system. 
 They feared so greatly the movement of liberal ideas that it 
 seems never to have occurred to them that they might be 
 harnessed to government. They met the proclamation of behef 
 with an emphatic defiance; and demonstrated once more the 
 danger that is inherent in the very fact of power. Those who 
 stood by the cause of freedom in these difficult years had 
 much obloquy to undergo. To accept the fact of the Revolu- 
 tion was held to be synonymous with a justification of its ex- 
 cesses. To put the individual outside the state, to deny his 
 absorption by the various loyalties by which he was bound, 
 was regarded as giving a handle to every sort and kind of 
 dangerous ambition. Anyone who reads the long list of legis- 
 
 ' Cf . his "Heutige System das Rom. Rechts," Bk. I, Ch. II, Sec. 9. 
 ' His "Geschlossene Handelstaat" (1800) is a striking example of this 
 attitude. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 287 
 
 lative efforts during the Bourbon Restoration can make no 
 mistake as to its nature. Control of the' judiciary, censorship 
 of the press, restriction upon the right of association, laws of 
 exception, Umitation upon the right of franchise, a system of 
 military privilege' — by these on every hand we are confronted. 
 . The idea of toleration seems almost dead. The generous en- 
 thusiasm of 1789 is hardly to be perceived. It is a cynical 
 generation, mistrustful, wearied, without conviction of prog- 
 ress, without courage to experiment. It is a generation that 
 has seen its parents gamble for their Uves and conceived a 
 natural distaste for adventure. Yet it is also a generation re- 
 deemed from unrelieved suspicion of men by the devoted eager- 
 ness of some few of its most distinguished figures. A generation 
 in which Guizot learned the principles of representative gov- 
 ernment and in which Royer-CoUard united to ethics the poli- 
 tics from which it had been too long divorced, is not entirely 
 without its fascination. It serves, at any rate, to enforce the 
 lesson that even the most vicious of political systems contains 
 within itself the germs of self-destruction. 
 
 II. THE THEORY OP THE CHARTER 
 
 There is little or no dramatic interest in the life of Royer- 
 CoUard. He was a typical member of the bourgeosie whom 
 one at least of his opponents did not hesitate to characterise 
 as jealous of the ancient nobility.'" He sat in the National As- 
 sembly, and his deep opposition to the Jacobin poUcy resulted 
 in a narrow escape from the guillotine. '^ With the coming of 
 more moderate days he sat in the Council of Five Hundred and 
 was, for a time, the cherished adviser of the exiled Bourbons. 
 In the Napoleonic regime he withdrew from political life and 
 occupied himself with the study of philosophy as a lecturer at 
 the Sorbonne. With the return of Louis XVIII he took a dis- 
 tinguished place 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, a directorship in the council of 
 
 • Cf. the speech of Royer-Collard, Barante, 1, 371 f. 
 
 '» Vmae, "M^moires," I, 346. 
 
 " See the splendid story of his escape in the Life by Spuller, p. 29-30. 
 
288 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Public Instruction and a brief Presidency of the Chamber, he 
 held no political ofSc'e. He was in sympathy with no adminis- 
 tration save at a single moment in his career. Save for his 
 association with Guizot, De Serre and Camille Jordan, it is 
 not untrue to suggest that he never belonged to a political 
 party in the sense of merging his convictions with those of a- 
 group of men. His authority came from the power of his elo- 
 quence, the impressive distinction of his personality, the sub- 
 stantial splendour of his convictions. He was, indeed, a difficult 
 colleague. He had a sufficient sense of his power to make others 
 realise a little acutely his awareness of it.^^ He was regarded 
 for so long as infallible by a group of admiring friends that he 
 came, in the end, almost to share their convictions upon that 
 question." His spirit was difficult alike from his mistrust of 
 power and of its exercise, i* as from his persistent and disdainful 
 refusal of office. ^^ Whether Villele is right in his suspicion that 
 his aloofness came from a pride that had been hurt by the 
 ingratitude of Louis XVIII^' the fact remains that while he 
 was willing to disturb ministers he was never eager to construct 
 them. Of his private life we know Uttle or nothing; and though 
 his love of Pascal is evidence enough of his sincere attachment 
 for the somewhat mellowed Jansenism amidst which he was edu- 
 cated, we have little enough evidence whereby to estinaate its 
 influence upon his opinions. All that can be said of the man 
 himself is that he was sincere, that he was honest, and that he 
 was deservedly eminent. There have been few men in history 
 whose life is so completely to be sought in the doctrines that 
 he preached. 
 
 The name that has become attached to his school is, in truth, 
 in no small degree misleading. We tend to think of the Doctrin- 
 aires as a body of men who appUed arid principles to circum- 
 stances for which they are unsuited. It is much more accurate 
 to compare them to that Fourth Party which rendered so great 
 a service to English politics in the last century. Different as 
 
 12 Cf. VitroUes, "Memoires," III, 73. 
 
 " Cf. remarks of the Duchess de Brogliein Barante, "Memoires, "II, 374- 
 
 " Cf. Guizot "Memoires" (Eng. trans.), I, 117. 
 
 1' Spuller. op. cit. 154 
 
 "= ViUMe op. cit. II, 46. 
 
■AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 289 
 
 were their constituent personalities, the four men in each were 
 invaluable aUke from the independence as from the ability of 
 their criticism. Each continually drove back government upon 
 the principles from which it took its vise, principles too often so 
 implicit in the business of dehberation as to be forgotten by 
 those whom they inspire. Not that the Doctrinaires were any 
 clearer than Lord Randolph Churchill in their ultimate meta- 
 physic. What surrounds them is less a theory than an atmos- 
 phere, so that M. Michel could without injustice claim that 
 what they attempted was simply the analysis and justification 
 of a certain interpretation of circumstances," Yet the assertion 
 is perhaps less true of Royer-Collard than it is of his colleagues. 
 Anyone who compares the political theory of Guizot with his 
 policy as minister will not be inchned to doubt the grotesque 
 flexibility of his ideas. Royer-Collard's attitude was in every 
 situation consistent. If he seemed to be effecting a compromise 
 between the ancien regime and the Revolution, he would 
 probably have explained his effort by justifying it. -The whole of 
 his life was spent in the insistence that government depends upon 
 rational principles of compromise. He was alike opposed to the 
 gloomy extravagances of royalism as to the democratic pre- 
 tensions of the disappointed heirs of the Revolution. Each 
 signified for him the party of a despotism and he endeavored to 
 search out the philosophy of a juste milieu. It was thus that he 
 was led, as Guizot has aptly remarked,^' to the maintenance of 
 interests rather than the affirmation of rights. That was why 
 he equally condemned the Chambre Introuvable and the ideas 
 of 1793. For he believed that the true analysis of political 
 structure renders impossible any conception of national inter- 
 ests which suggests their unified nature. He on the contrary 
 insisted that the state is composed of interests often antag- 
 onistic between which an equilibrium must be maintained by 
 compromise. The maintenance of that balance was the busi- 
 ness of government and it was in that very absence of unity that 
 he therefore discovered merit; for, by its very nature, it set, 
 as he deemed, a limit to the abuse of power. 
 What, in fact, is the keynote of his whole doctrine is the 
 
 " Michel, "L'ld^e de L'Etat," p. 291. 
 
 " Guziot, "Memoires" (Eng. trans.), I, 154. 
 
290 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE" 
 
 denial of the existence of sovereignty. He admitted the exist- 
 ence of power, but he was always, as Guizot remarked,'' a mor- 
 ahst who was suspicious of its exercise. The result was his 
 insistence that its necessary limitations should be discovered 
 and it was to that search that he devoted himself.^" The pecu- 
 liar expression of policy for which he stood was embodied in the 
 charter. To him the charter was not so much a compromise 
 as a solution. He never seems to have realised how unwilUngly 
 it had been drawn from the restored king. He did not feel, 
 with so many of his contemporaries, its lack of clarity. He did 
 not understand their refusal to believe in its certainties. "For 
 all of us," Barante has said,^"^ "it was simply a formahty exacted 
 by circumstances and destined to perish with them. The Lib- 
 erals saw with what repugnance and, consequently, with how 
 little good faith, submission had been made to the necessities of 
 the Revolution." Royer-CoUard did not regard it in this way. 
 Sceptical of all things he may have been by nature f^ but in the 
 virtues of the charter he put complete confidence. It was for 
 him a touchstone by which the rightness of all action might be 
 tested. He looked upon it as the crystallised experience of the 
 whole of French history. 
 
 It was the expression of such Hmitations upon the exercise 
 of power as the past seemed to suggest. Sovereignty of king 
 a,nd people it alike rejected. The one presupposed a despotism 
 and the other a repubUc. But France by her pohtical nature 
 was a monarchy in which the king governed by means of his 
 ministers. He chose his ministers and his will was law. But 
 upon his action a vital check was laid. The Chamber of Depu- 
 ties was a deliberative council resort to which gave government 
 bhe means of realising wisdom in legislation.^* Since the object 
 jf royalty was to translate into action the balance of interests 
 svithin the Chamber the result was to limit the possibihty of 
 despotic government. Neither king nor Parhament was therefore 
 sovereign for the simple reason that the power of each was hm- 
 
 " "Memoires," 1, 117. 
 2» Barante, "Life," II, 130. 
 " "Memoires," Vol. I, p. 385. 
 
 22 Ibid., Ill, 20. 
 
 23 Barante, I, 219. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 291 
 
 ited, either in practice or in theory. To each was assigned func- 
 tions which, while they might involve the exercise of will, never 
 admitted the possibihty of a will without control. The king 
 was government, and government might involve the exercise 
 of force; but the problem was always the extent of force to be 
 used and the test was the principles of the Charter. Nor did 
 he admit an uncontrolled right in the people. They represented 
 only the brute mass of men and he would not admit that the 
 mere agglomeration of numbers would justify the exercise of 
 sovereign powers. The despotism of many was for him still 
 a despotism, and he rejected it." He would no more admit that 
 principles so fundamental can be contradicted by tradition or 
 number than he would have admitted the justice of extrava- 
 gance. 
 
 The psychological background of this attitude it is not diffi- 
 cult to discover. The abuse of sovereignty under the ancien 
 regime had resulted in the despotism of the Convention. In 
 each case the claim of uncontrolled power had resulted in the 
 destruction of hberty. It did not matter that in one case that 
 lack of Umitation could give itself historic background. It was 
 unimportant that in the other men were tasting, for the 
 first time, a right which they had been too long denied. He saw 
 clearly that some system of checks and balances was essential 
 if order and peace were to be safeguarded. That safeguard he 
 discovered in the Charter. It was the connective tissue of the 
 body-pohtic. It represented the principles upon which the state 
 could with security lead its Ufe. To say that the charter was 
 the source of law was to say that any specific exercise of power 
 was in accord with the tradition of France.^* And the charter 
 divided power. If it gave the king the power of government, 
 it gave power of criticism, of suggestion, of grievance to the 
 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-book none can in reality say whence, exactly, it is 
 derived. But that is to show that the charter is successful. It 
 is to admit that varying interests have combined in a result 
 which, because limited by all, is acceptable to all. 
 
 " Ibid., II, 152, 463. 
 
 ^ Cf. Faguet, op. cit., I, 263. 
 
192 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 It is the whole history of France that he finds in the charter.^s 
 L,ong centuries have gone to its painful elaboration. It was 
 leedful that he should urge the accuracy of this fiction in order 
 hereby that he might counterbalance the strength of royalism. 
 ii'or, clearly, that upon which he was engaged was the substitu- 
 ion of a rule of law for a rule of force. Unless he could gain the 
 tdmission that the strength of a law is not the chance acquies- 
 ience of a majority behind it the administration of power would 
 je therein deprived of its moral significance. But, to that end, 
 t was essential that he should not have to struggle against the 
 jast and he prevented that catastrophe by annexing it. He saw 
 juite clearly that two powers stood face to face. The monarchy 
 lad elaborated the dogma of personal sovereignty; the Revolu- 
 tion had transferred it to the nation. If he could emphasise the 
 egitimacy of the one, by which he meant its full accord with the 
 lational tradition, he could then insist upon the significance of 
 bhe other. He could point out that the decline of royal absolu- 
 tism was only the growth of a condition already inherent in the 
 mcien regime. France was the synthesis of many sovereignties 
 syhich need not always claim a royal origin.^' They had lived 
 together; and that was to say that the conception of a balance 
 jf internal powers was already old. What the Revolution had 
 ione was to aboHsh those sovereignties and to leave the indivi- 
 iual face to face with the state. " Nous ne sommes pas citoy- 
 3ns," he said in an effective phrase,^ "nous sommes des admin- 
 istr^s," and the problem was to prevent th6 submergence of the 
 individual that had been effected by the centralisation of power. 
 
 That, in effect, was the object of the charter. The path from 
 the despotism of the ancien regime to the new despotism of 
 the Revolution was largely accidental but equally 'dangerous. 
 "La democratie," he said in a famous sentence, "coule k pleins 
 bords"^' and there was for him no need to suspect it of needing 
 safeguards any more inherent than the ancient monarchy had 
 possessed. What then it clearly became necessary to do was to 
 put certain states of fact beyond the reach of ordinary adminis- 
 
 2« Ihid. 
 
 " Barante, II, 13. 
 28 lUd., II, 131. 
 ^' Ibid., II, 134. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 293 
 
 tration. France had become egalitarian and centralised. The 
 pressure of its parts must not overwhelm certain principles that 
 safeguard the fullness of life. These principles are rights in the 
 possession of which the individual will find protection against 
 absorption.'" These rights will be general in character; Jacques 
 Bonhomme has been made the center of the French state by the 
 Revolution. They will be private rights in the sense that they 
 attach to individual personality. But they will be general in 
 that unUke the rights of the ancien regime they will not be ex- 
 ceptional in character. They will replace the old privileges that 
 the flood-tide of 1789 had borne away upon its eddies. They 
 will be a centre of inAdolability and thus a limitation upon power. 
 Therein he finds of course, the main source of their virtue. 
 
 III. NECESSARY FREEDOMS 
 
 Beoadly speaking, the Hberties which lie at the base of his 
 system were four in number. Liberty of the press he would 
 perhaps have regarded as most fundamental. It was, for him, 
 not merely a condition of political Uberty, but, even more, its 
 very foundation.'' That it might result in abuse he would cer- 
 tainly not have denied any more than he would have refused to 
 punish the violation of the right to publication.'^ The problem 
 for him was to find the conditions under which the right could 
 be most wisely exercised. It was wrong to dispair of a solution. 
 It was wrong because the result of so desperate a conclusion must 
 result either in an anarchy or in despotism.'' But it was only 
 by means of the press that the ideas of the mass of men might 
 become known. Such knowledge clearly must set limits to the 
 exercise of power. It is a safeguard; for it is from popular 
 silence that, above all, the idea of despotism draws its richest 
 nourishment. "Power," he said in a striking sentence,'* "Hke 
 the individual, has its temperament, its manner, its natural 
 instinct." But that is to say that it is capable of being influ- 
 enced, and freedom of the press was a valuable weapon to that 
 
 »» Ibid., I, 298. 
 " Ibid., I, 340. 
 « Barante, II, 500. 
 " lUd., I, 341. 
 " Ibid., I, 349. 
 
294 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 end. Its inconvenience to government he in no sense denied; 
 but he attributed that inconvenience less to -the inherent nature 
 of thought than to the absorptiveness of power. So long as a 
 desire for arbitrary action is checked at .every point of its ad- 
 vance by those whose business it is to examine its justification, 
 its translation in fact is sufficiently remote to ensure the general 
 security.^^ That in practice it will become the possession of a 
 few he knew. But he was unwilhng to leave at the mercy of 
 government the surest method of criticising it. It was a barrier 
 against absolution. In his eyes it needed no further j ustification. 
 It was, indeed, for him the replacement of those old checks on 
 the abuse of monarchy which had characterised the anden 
 regime. Just as the independent magistracies of ancient France 
 had limited the full exercise of sovereignty for the common 
 good, so is freedom of the press a political institution which 
 safeguards the rule of law. "The day on which it perishes," 
 he said,'^" is the day on which we shall return to servitude." He 
 insisted, moreover, upon its necessity for another reason. The 
 democracy of France was full of spirit and energy. It was pos- 
 sible to direct, it was impossible to destroy its progress. What 
 it meant was the admission of an ever greater number of men to 
 the full benefits of civihsation." Nothing so surely prevented 
 the growth of wrongheaded thinking in a changing society as the 
 free interchange of thought. Democracy had power; and 
 nothing was more useless than the failure to recognise that the 
 possession of power meant influence in the work of government. 
 The whole problem by which they were confronted was the 
 instruments by which that power should be exerted. To de- 
 prive the pepple of a hberty which had taken such deep root in 
 France was to destroy the surest guarantee of peace. It was to 
 drive underground, ideas which must then translate themselves 
 nto action without the purifying influence of criticism and of 
 correction. ^8 It was to offer no alternative between conquest 
 md resolution. It resulted in the profanation of Justice. " The 
 3nly remedy for liberty," he said in a magnificent speech,'' 
 
 ^ Ibid., II, 132. 
 '« Baratite, II, 133. 
 " Ibid., II, 134. 
 S8 Ibid., II, 138. 
 2» Ibid., II, 293. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 295 
 
 "is prison, the only remedy for intelligence is ignorance." But 
 upon both of these it is only the most dishonourable of gov- 
 ernments that takes its stand. 
 
 In similar fashion he demanded freedom of reUgious belief. 
 Every church was a power in the state and its danger to the 
 body politic could only be mitigated by the admission of its 
 freedom.^" That was why a privileged church resulted in dis- 
 content as it was why a theocracy was the most dangerous form 
 of absolute rule." For to add to political power the sanction of 
 religion was to make captive the intelligence of men. That was 
 why a church to which freedom had been guaranteed was a per- 
 petual pledge of private liberty .^^ It was the admission that 
 there is no institution so vast as to absorb the complete alle- 
 giance of man. It made him conscious of his duty to his intel- 
 ligence which, in fact, is his duty to his humanity. It results in 
 the freedom of his soul. It insists upon the development of his 
 conscience. It enables him to refuse submission to wrong by 
 the creation of a criterion of right which is not merely the judg- 
 ment of the state. It is a powerful safeguard of originality 
 because, by reminding the citizen of the perpetual duty of polit- 
 ical judgment, it guards that individualism which makes him 
 adamant against the assault of absolute power. 
 
 Nor is he less insistent upon the influence of religious freedom 
 on the church itself. Where the church is free it is an association 
 of consciences and at once a moral element is introduced into 
 its composition.^' It is a republic within the state, an associa- 
 tion which sets limits to the demand the state may make upon 
 its members. But once its freedom is changed into state-union 
 the conditions of value disappear. Inevitably it becomes offici- 
 alised. Inevitably those who direct it are compelled to subvert 
 it to their purposes from the very temptations it offers. It lives 
 on the bounty of the state and the price of its maintenance is at 
 least its silence and in general its support. It brings to the cen- 
 tralised power a source of authority of which the possession is 
 fraught with danger. It gives a reUgious sanction to state-de- 
 
 " Barante, II, 99. 
 
 « II, 103. 
 
 *2 Ihid., II, 100. 
 
296 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 cisions which are in fact entirely without relation to ecclesias- 
 tical purposes. It aggravates the possibility of despotism by 
 tinging government with the suspicious colours of theocracy. 
 It offers temptation in another direction. It asks, inevitably, 
 for privileges.^* It desires to exalt itself at the cost of its com- 
 petitors. It ceases to regard any conscience other than its own. 
 It puts itself under the protection of the political police. It sub- 
 mits the choice of its rulers to government.^^ It meddles in the 
 appanage of temporal power. What it may gain in dignity it 
 loses in independence. It becomes a social magistracy, and the 
 basic purpose of its existence is diverted to temporal ends. He 
 cannot resist the comparison between the simplicity and effec- 
 tiveness of the catholic church in England and the stately gran- 
 deur of the Anglican Church.^^ The latter he regarded rightly 
 as no more than the creature of the civil power. It had ceased 
 to be a church and had been debased into an establishment. 
 "Let a religious organisation," he said,*' "be exclusive or ever 
 dominant and one may rest assured that its ministers wiU be 
 rich and important in political hfe, that they will exercise a vast 
 dominion and intervene without cessation in civil life to bring 
 it under their own control." No one who reads the history of 
 the Church of England in the first half of the nineteenth century 
 can doubt that it is an illustration of this general principle. No 
 one who is acquainted with the history of the Catholic Church 
 in France under the ancien regime can mistake the fact that it 
 was exactly from these vices that it suffered. It was nonsense, 
 in his eyes, to argue that a state which does not profess some 
 definite religious behef is already atheist.** The choice is not 
 between infidelity and theocracy. The choice is between the 
 use of an illegitimate weapon for wrongful purposes and the 
 admission that the function of religion does not enter into the 
 field of politics. The charter, as he insisted, had recognised its 
 value by giving it the means of independence. It offered them 
 the protection of the law; but it realised so far the danger of 
 
 « Barante, I, 321. 
 « Ibid., II, 101. 
 « Ibid., II, 100. 
 " Ibid., II, 101. 
 « Barante, II, 250. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 297 
 
 choosing out some form of faith for especial favour that it pre- 
 ferred the loneliness of a complete impartiality between them.*' 
 The recognition of literary freedom and religious independence 
 is the admission of impalpable influence. Both result less in 
 the control of practical power than in the creation of an at- 
 mosphere in which it may be suitably restrained. The one 
 throws the full glare of public criticism on governmental ac- 
 tivity. The other, by its refusal to admit the entire absorption 
 of the individual in the state, gives him a certain externality 
 which quickens the pubhc conscience by its insistence on the 
 significance of the elements which go to the constitution of the 
 whole. But more than that is required. Power that is uncon- 
 trolled in practical affairs can hardly be limited by theoretical 
 criticism. It is only when opposition becomes materiahsed 
 into a legal barrier that we have real safeguards against abso- 
 lutism. Such a safeguard he believed to exist in the immova- 
 bility of the magistrate. Just as the admission of freedom of 
 conscience puts a conscience outside the state that account 
 may be taken of its actions, so does the permanent tenure of 
 judicial office involve the admission that not even the state 
 can transgress the principles of justice. It is the guarantee of 
 impartiality in the fundamental process of the state. The 
 judge is the guardian of all the natural and social rights of 
 man.^" It is upon his integrity alone that they depend. The 
 whole existence of society is dependent upon the satisfactory 
 administration of his office. But even a judge is human and 
 he needs protection against his frailties. If the fear of dismissal 
 is before his mind he must inevitably be affected in his decisions 
 by the result they wiU exercise upon his career. He is given 
 permanent tenure in order that he shall be free from such a 
 possibihty. He is immovable because he is then in a position 
 to protect the principles of the charter even against those who 
 appointed him to office.*^ His immovabUity simply connotes 
 his independence. It is a recognition of the fallibility of the 
 state. It sets a limit to the temptations of power. Undoubt- 
 edly, he is a functionary of the state; but he is a functionary 
 
 " im., II, 252. 
 " Barante, I, 171. 
 " Ibid., I, 172. 
 
298 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 appointed for the express purpose of protecting society against 
 itself.52 It is the guarantee of those privileges that reason 
 demonstrates to be necessary to social welfare. 
 
 Yet all these Uberties he counts as nothing compared to the 
 supreme privilege of parhamentary government. This, above 
 all, is the final check upon absolutism. This, above all, pro- 
 vides the mass of men with the material means of guaranteeing 
 a regime of liberty. For what, in the last analysis, is meant by 
 parliamentary government? The right of self-determination 
 in finance and of its supervision when the vote has been made.^' 
 Liberty, at bottom, is a matter of hard purchase. You keep 
 the government in the path of right conduct by the potential 
 refusal of the means of its subsistence. Should its foreign 
 policy displease you can refuse the funds for its support. If its 
 domestic administration is unjust, you may keep your hands 
 in your pockets. It is, perhaps, somewhat rude as a govern- 
 mental method; yet, of all, it is the most efficacious. It effects 
 a practical revolution without the destruction of a single life. 
 
 Of course it is itself a power that has its dangers; and few 
 have sketched more vividly than Royer-CoUard the inherently 
 sinister potentialities of a parliamentary system. It tends, by 
 its nature, to absorb the very power it limits.^* Instead of 
 making laws, of applying the principles of the Charter to the 
 political situations which may arise, it desires to invade the 
 executive function and to undertake the actual work of admin- 
 istration. That is, of course, simply a manifestation of the 
 thirst for power which is common to every person and institu- 
 tion. But when a parhament attempts it, it steps outside its 
 proper sphere. Government requires rapid decision, secret de- 
 termination, continuous resolve. ^^ It must .in the last resort 
 be unified action, the action of, at the most, a small group so 
 single in thought as to act as one will. With a modern parha- 
 ment he denies that such action is possible. It is responsible 
 to the nation and, by its very nature, it must discover the will 
 of the nation before it can act. A deputy is thinking less of 
 
 ^ Barante, I, 172. 
 » lUd., I, 22. 
 " Ihid., I, 219. 
 « Barante, II, 132. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 299 
 
 the governmental decision that has to be made than of the 
 verdict that wUl be passed upon his decision by his constituency 
 at the next election. He cannot work swiftly and silently.^ 
 What he is demands at once deliberation and prominence. But 
 that is to say that his business is the elaboration of general prin- 
 ciples which is in no sense the business of administration. 
 
 Royer-CoUard is naturally led to examine the roots whence 
 this theory of usurpation takes its origin. It starts out from 
 the assumption of the sovereignty of the people. It suggests 
 that the Chamber of Deputies as the representatives of the 
 sovereign people is the recipient by delegation of their sover- 
 eignty. But that is to assume the identity of parliamentary 
 government with representative goverimient and he hotly 
 denied the equation.** The deputies do not represent the na- 
 tion. They represent the interests of the nation, and he insists 
 upon the vital character of the distinction." Were they to 
 represent the nation no form of government save a republic 
 would be possible. To represent the nation is to represent man, 
 an eager, passionate thinking being, who possesses in himself 
 an atom of power. But you cannot, so Royer-CoUard argues, 
 delegate that power. *^ It rests where it originates and each 
 can only exert it for himself. Representative government is, 
 he sees clearly enough, majority government and power goes 
 to the party whom the greater part of the citizen-body sup- 
 ports. But that is already direct government which is not the 
 government of France. The deputies depend for their exist- 
 ence not upon the people but upon the charter.*^ The charter 
 conferred rights upon the people but it did not give them rep- 
 resentation. What it did was to create a body of men who 
 should represent in the constitution of the state the divers 
 interests of the nation. To represent the historic unity of 
 France it gave the government to the King. To represent the 
 upper classes it created the House of Peers. But from each of 
 these there is a distinct interest — that of the people and the 
 charter represented that interest in the Chamber of Deputies.*" 
 
 '» Ihid., I, 228. 
 
 " lUd., I, 229. 
 
 " This is the whole tenour of the speeches on electoral reform. 
 
 " Barante, II, 20. 
 
 " lUd., I, 230. 
 
300 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 It was careful to insist upon indirect representation for the 
 very reason that it is from the charter that the Chamber 
 derives; had it been intended to create representative govern- 
 ment only universal suffrage would have been logically defen- 
 sible.^^ In such an analysis the chamber is simply a function 
 of the state. It is not coeval with it. It cannot pretend to 
 override the two checks upon the exercise of its powers. 
 
 For Royer-Collard saw clearly that the effort of the popular 
 chamber was aimed at the possession of sovereignty. If that 
 sovereignty did not exist, it was clear enough that its effort 
 was vain. It is clear that it was not intended from the mere 
 fact that there are two chambers. There are two chambers 
 because there are two interests and neither of them can uniquely 
 be sovereign. ^^ He emphasises that conclusion the more ve- 
 hemently because of every aspirant to supreme power it is of 
 parhament that he is most suspicious. ' It hides itself behind 
 its corporate personaHty and thus lacks the responsibility of 
 actual office.*' It is the maker of laws and so continually en- 
 croaching upon authority that is not its own by very reason 
 of that favourable situation. It can obtain control of the 
 executive, as it can break the independence of the judicial 
 power. It can destroy the external guarantees of freedom by 
 curbing ahke thought and conscience. That is why hmits 
 have been placed to its activity. That is why, for example, the 
 charter did not estabhsh single-chamber government. Had it 
 done so, it might equally have established a plebiscite. But 
 each ahke is the manifestation of a supposed popular sover- 
 eignty and of its existence he has already made denial. For 
 whatever sovereignty we recognise is a depositary of force and 
 from it will originate law. Since his effort is to trace the origin 
 of law to a reasonable interpretation of conditions in the hght 
 of certain fundamental principles of justice, it is obvious that 
 he cannot admit that conclusion. 
 
 What then, he asked himself, is the people? He had no 
 doubt of the reply. The people, hke the King and hke the 
 aristocracy, is simply the depositary of a function in the state.^* 
 
 " lUd., 1, 222 f. 
 
 ^ Barante, II, 18-20. 
 
 » lUd., I, 472. 
 
 " Barante, I, 212. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 301 
 
 It has to set a limit to absolutism. But it has, simultaneously, 
 to be prevented from usurping that power which it has itself 
 come to limit. That is why it is counterbalanced by king and 
 nobles. That is why it cannot vote at pleasure but only as the 
 fundamental law may permit it.°^ That is why the charter 
 did not recognise universal suffrage. That is why the chamber 
 is only partly renewed at a general election; for a total renewal 
 would be a plebiscite, and the force behind a plebiscite would, 
 whether for good or for evil, be too massive to make effective 
 resistance possible.'^ It would then engender the creation of 
 a sovereignty, and in that creation would be involved the 
 denial of the charter. It would be an ochlocracy of the most 
 dangerous kind, and it is with vehemence that he repudiates 
 its consecration. 
 
 IV. IMPLICATIONS 
 
 M. Faguet has insisted that the political system of Royer- 
 CoUard is in no sense a metaphysic and there is certainly a 
 sense in which this is entirely true." For what it clearly de-. 
 sires to do is to effect the canonization of one fundamental 
 truth derived from his own experience. He had learned alike 
 from history and his own share in the Revolution that the use 
 of power is poisonous to those who exert it. That for which he 
 was anxious was the prevention of its exertion for dangerous 
 ends. He did not care greatly whether the wielder of it were 
 one or many. What he desired was to prevent the recurrence 
 of a time when the personality of men should be stifled by the 
 authority of the state. That does not mean to say that he was 
 in any sense anarchistic in outlook. Again and again in his 
 career he accepted the necessity of repressive legislation when 
 occasion for its passage seemed to him evident. But for the 
 normal state he was clear that pohtical hf e would be intolerable 
 unless certain limitations of power were postulated as funda- 
 mental. The individual must have certain hberties no matter 
 what inconvenience may flow from their possession. He must 
 
 "/bid., 211, 298. 
 
 » II, 32 f . 
 
 " Faguet, op. cit., I, 285. 
 
302 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 have certain liberties because once their possession is denied 
 the result is either Louis XIV or the Convention. That is what 
 he meant by his famous doctrine that hberties are the capacities 
 to resist. 8* It is an opportunity to deny the vahdity of en- 
 croachment. It is a chance to insist upon the submission of 
 any given situation to the analysis of reason. It was, on the 
 whole, a simple and practical attitude, intelHgible enough when 
 one reads it in the hght of his time. For he was witnessing, 
 after all, a gigantic struggle between two parties anxious on 
 the one hand to maintain, on the other to destroy, the work 
 of the Revolution. He saw clearly enough that their colUsion 
 must inevitably be violent. What he sought to outhne was a 
 political method under which an orderly progress became pos- 
 sible. He had no sympathy for those who, like VillSle, regarded 
 the work of government as the privileged possession of king 
 and nobles. His defence of legitimacy shows how Uttle he ap- 
 preciated the spirit of democracy in his time. His philosophy 
 was one of checks and balances, derived, perhaps, from an 
 admiration of the way in which the British constitution had 
 preserved the equipoise of interests without a revolution. 
 
 Not that he desired to see France governed upon the Enghsh 
 model. Few of his speeches are more admirable than that in 
 which he insists on the speciahst character of a national tradi- 
 tion.^' France cannot import the English constitution simply 
 because she is France; to dq so would be to reverse the signifi- 
 cance of a thousand years of history. His mind was essentially 
 compromising in its outlook and the rigidity with which he is 
 usually credited comes not from his enunciation of a system 
 of dogmas as from his constant search for the conditions under 
 which a compromise may be effected. When there was hope 
 of a moderate liberalism under Decazes he did not object to 
 the grant of extraordinary powers; it was under the oppressive 
 absolutism of Charles X that his insistence upon the value of 
 hberty found its full strength. 
 
 The influence of Montesquieu upon his mind is, of course, 
 obvious enough. That separation of powers upon which the 
 former insisted as the key to liberty became in Royer-CoUard's 
 
 68 Cf. Faguet, op. cit., I, 291. 
 89 Barante, I, 216 f. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 303 
 
 hands the corner-stone of his political edifice.'" But in his 
 hands it also underwent a vast extension. He desired not soi 
 much the separation of powers as the separation of power. I 
 What he wanted was to prevent the supreme force of the' 
 state from being concentrated at any single point within it. 
 So long as the possibility of effective resistance had to be con- 
 sidered there was a reasonable certainty that power would not 
 be abused. His insistence that sovereignty is no more than 
 a peculiar synthesis of power is immensely valuable. It pre- 
 vents the attribution to the state of any mystical rights or 
 functions. He saw that while the state as a whole has, from 
 the nature of things, the theoretical possession of all power, 
 actually that power is always distributed among its constituent 
 elements. The sovereignty of the state then comes to mean in 
 actual practice the amount of power that is exerted by the 
 governing body of the state. What Royer-CoUard emphasised 
 was the danger of permitting, that power to become so great 
 as to override all possible expression of difference within the 
 community. What you have to do is not to strangle opinion 
 but to persuade it. Hence, for example, his postulation of 
 Uberty of the press as fundamental. A government that is 
 continuously subjected to the raking fire of criticism is in fact 
 a limited government; it cannot become a despotism save by 
 the real consent of its subjects — ^which is to say that it cannot 
 become a despotism.'^ For, to its subjects, two appeals are 
 already addressed and the question of obedience becomes a 
 problem of how far the decision of authority outweighs in the 
 strength of its appeal the moral force of organized opposition 
 to it. 
 
 It is difficult to deny the validity of such an argument. 
 The separation of powers is admittedly a cumbersome concep- 
 tion. Translated into the practical expression of the American 
 Constitution it may result, as an acute observer has emphasised, 
 simply in the confusion of powers.'^ But that is simply because 
 in its orthodox form it forces a natural assumption into an un- 
 natural classification. The threefold division of governmental 
 
 '» Barante, I, 207 f . 
 
 n Cf. Barante, II, 15 f. 
 
 " Cf. Mr. Lippmann's remarks, The New Republic, Vol. X, p. 151. 
 
304 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 power into executive, legislative and judicial, is only the rough 
 apportionment of convenience and does not exist in the nature 
 of things. Indeed the profoundest student of the American 
 Constitution has recently and expressly emphasised the conclu- 
 sion that the logic of judicial review involves ipso facto the ex- 
 ercise of legislative power.'' But what Royer-Collard saw 
 clearly is that our inability to force so muddle-headed a classi- 
 fication upon government is not equivalent to the conference 
 upon it of absolutism. What on the contrary it suggests is 
 the need of setting Umits to its power by the admission that 
 without it there exist rights which, on occasion, will call its 
 activity into serious question. Admittedly those rights are 
 only vaguely defined. Admittedly, he did not lay down the 
 conditions under which they may justifiably be exercised.'* 
 But that only means that he refused to prophecy the future. 
 It only means that he recognized how difficult it is to forecast 
 the precise manner in which events will shape themselves. 
 He laid down the general principles upon which the conduct 
 of authority must be judged in each situation; but his own 
 career as a member of the chamber revealed how clearly he 
 understood the compulsion of circumstance. He knew that 
 the France of the Restoration must confront its problems dif- 
 ferently from the France of 1789.'* The exact nuance of the 
 change he dare not have predicted. What he saw was that 
 so long as the existence of the state was not threatened there 
 must be an eternal conflict between its constituent parts. 
 Events have not thus far contradicted the general correctness 
 of his interpretation. 
 
 In such an analysis, of course, the conception of an unitary 
 state must disappear. Where there is sentient existence, there 
 will be judgment; wherever there is personahty there will be 
 power. The state then becomes multicellular in character. It 
 develops features traditionally associated with what we term 
 federal organisation. The vast claims of legal theory for any 
 single organ of the state begin to lose their substantiality. 
 Not, indeed, that they lose their legal correctness. No court 
 
 " See the dissent of Holmes, J. in Southern Pacific v. J-efiifn, 244 U. S. 221. 
 " Barante, II, 237, 309. !iCwaerv- 
 
 " This is indeed the whole essence of the Doctrinaires' position. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 305 
 
 will question the legal right of parUament to work its will in 
 whatever way may to itself seem most necessaryJ^ Our doubts 
 of its authority must obtain a sanction in every case extra- 
 judicial. Yet it is surely clear that a theory so little connected 
 with the reality of pohtical Ufe is unsatisfactory enough. 
 That is where the force of Royer-CoUard's analysis becomes 
 obvious. The rights he demanded as the guarantee against 
 absolutism are rights which, sooner or later, no state can 
 afford to disregard. He may, indeed, have been vague enough 
 in his conception of liberty; though here it might justly be 
 argued that those who have been most precise in its defini- 
 tion have usually been unable to make their concept stand 
 the test of analysis. The simple fact is, as he seems to have 
 perceived, that hberty is less a tangible substance than an 
 atmosphere." We know what it is less by its presence than by 
 its absence. It is the sense of a cramped personality, the arrest 
 for spiritual development, that signifies encroachment upon its 
 necessities. To Royer-CoUard certain rights might be defined 
 which would prevent the onset of despotism. He defined those . 
 rights; and their fundamental object was to prevent the con- 1 
 centration of power at any isolated centre of the state. That, \ 
 surely, is the fundamental characteristic of federal government. 
 He insisted upon its value less for the reasons we should 
 today assign to it than for the single cause that it prevented 
 the absolutist tendency of government to have its sway. But 
 it is of interest to note that the milieu in which he sketched 
 the nature of power should have swung so exactly upon the 
 lines he suggested. He lived in a period of developing pariia- 
 mentary power. It was the Chamber of Deputies which over- 
 threw the government of the Restoration just as, in England, 
 the fortunes of the ministry depended upon the goodwill of 
 the House of Commons. But there has been an interesting 
 divergence at this point between the experiences of France 
 and of England. Right down to our own day the great fact 
 in French administrative history has been the increasing power 
 of the Chamber of Deputies; and the demand for administra- 
 
 "1. e. What Professor Dicey calls "legal sovereignty;" my whole 
 point is that this is an entirely unnatural conception as a separate fact. 
 " Cf . the eloquent remarks of Mr. Philipps, "Europe Unbound," Chap. II. 
 
306 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 tive autonomy on the part of the f onctionnaire is simply the 
 effort to restore a balance of power that has been regrettably 
 lost.'^ The instinct of tyranny which is so nourished by ac- 
 quaintance with power has led in France to an impossible situ- 
 ation." Today, as a consequence, the rights that the civil 
 servant is claiming are exactly calculated to take from the 
 Chamber of Deputies all power save that regulation by the 
 proclamation of general principles which, fundamentally, was 
 Royer-CoUard's conception of its function.*" 
 
 In England the evolution has been in an almost antithetic 
 direction. Where Bagehot could note the overwhelming su- 
 premacy of ParHament the fact which confronts the modern 
 observer is the even greater power of the executive body.'^ 
 The House of Commons has come to depend upon the cabinet; 
 and as yet, at any rate, we have discovered no means of re- 
 storing an effective balance of power. Yet here, too, the result 
 has been exactly what one who accepts the general analysis for 
 which Royer-Collard stood sponsor might have predicted. 
 More and more the executive organ has attempted to free it- 
 self from the trammels of the rule of law. The development 
 of a specialised administrative code was probably inevitable; 
 and certainly French experience suggests that its growth can 
 well harmonise with the simultaneous acceptance of the idea 
 of responsibility. The fact still remains that, as yet, the in- 
 creasing power of the bureaucratic side of EngKsh government 
 has not brought with it its compensations in the safeguarding 
 of general liberty .'^ It is more than absurd to talk thus early 
 of a transition to the servUe state. Yet it is difficult not to 
 analyse the latest fruits of English legislation in terms of a 
 movement from contract to status.*' Synchronously, indeed, 
 may be observed the appearance, in half-articulate fashion of 
 
 " Cf. Lefas, "L'Etat et les Fonctionnaires." 
 
 " As is admirably pointed out by M. Leroy in his "Transformations de 
 puissance publique." 
 
 8» Barante, II, 193 f . 
 
 '1 Cf. Low, "The Governance of England," passim. 
 
 ** Cf . Dicey, "The Growth of Administrative Law," in the Law Quarterly 
 Review for 1916. There is some interesting material in a curious volume 
 by E. S. P. Haynes. "The DecUne of Liberty in England." 
 
 ^ Cf . Pound in Harvard Law Review for January, 1917. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 307 
 
 the attitude which the French call solidarist — ^the attempt to 
 interpret political life in terms of function instead of terms of 
 property. The growing distrust of ^tatisme is, doubtless, sig- 
 nificant enough in this regard; and it is worth while suggesting 
 that it is in the conception of a fundamental social interde- 
 pendence which an 6tatiste regime obscures that we shall 
 regain the synthesis we require.*^ 
 
 Nor must the significant moment of American development 
 be disregarded. Of the conflict between centralised and local 
 authority it is not necessary here to speak. But due attention 
 must be paid by any observer who would grasp the real nature 
 of sovereignty to the process of American government at the 
 present time. Observers have long insisted that the traditional 
 institutions of 1787 would prove unequal to the strain of crisis; 
 and if the Civil War seemed, in some degree, to negative that 
 conclusion, it is emphatically accurate at the present time. 
 The original suspicion of executive authority threw the burden 
 .of power into the hands of Congress, and so long as the ordinary 
 conception of representative government reflected with accuracy 
 the conditions of American life, the emphasis of authority 
 began slowly to move away from that centre. It has become 
 commonplace to assert that the President is today more powerful 
 than at any time in American history. It is still more obvious 
 that congressional debate has largely ceased to influence the 
 character of pubHc opinion. New instruments of opinion are 
 everywhere in the making. The conventions of the American 
 Constitution already merit examination. New administrative 
 organs are already in process of construction. Much of what 
 has come into being has no popular mandate for its rulings; 
 it depends on what seems to have become the far more effective 
 sanction of expert confidence. Congress, it is clear, would be 
 chary enough of risking a total collision with its opinions. No 
 one can estimate the future of these novelties except to feel 
 dimly but decisively that they have a future. The individual 
 congressman has undergone an eclipse as complete as that of 
 the private member of the House of Commons. The Congres- 
 sional committees have become less the moulders of legislation 
 
 " Cf . myintroduction to Duguit's "Transformations du Droit Public" in 
 its English form and his "Droit Social, Droit Individuel." 
 
308 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 than its pathetic because grudging recipients. The key to the 
 whole has come to He in the president's hands and in the dis- 
 cernment of the few chosen councillors he has gathered about 
 him. This is not, it is clear, the government envisaged by the 
 constitution. Equally certainly, it is not a government which 
 meets with the approval of Congress. In some sort issue has 
 been joined between the two; but the fact that it is already 
 a government which functions suggests the inevitable outcome.** 
 Observation, then, seems to tend in the direction of confirm- 
 ing the conclusion at which Royer-CoUard arrived. It would 
 seem to demonstrate that the legal theory of sovereignty is 
 without root in actual existence. It would suggest that there 
 exists rather a broad thing we call power and that sovereignty 
 is simply its exercise in actual terms of life. Sovereignty, then, 
 is simply an act of will. It depends upon the consent of the 
 members of the state for its effectiveness. Generally speaking, 
 what decisions the organ of sovereignty may make wiU obtain 
 acceptance; and Royer-Collard most certainly would not have 
 doubted that government is so vital a thing as to make the 
 refusal of obedience the extreme marginal case. But the con- 
 secration of a region into which government may not normally 
 enter is the guarantee of a reservoir of resistance which con- 
 firms his theory that no conception of power is adequate into 
 which the element of morality does not enter; and that is 
 already to say that no power can in any event be absolute.'^ 
 What we do, then, is to remove the check upon the exercise of 
 sovereignty from without the organ which exerts it. We insist 
 upon the externality of the individual. We make of him a 
 complete personality who, while he is a member of the state, 
 and thereby contributes to the justification of its authority, is, 
 at the same time, something more. , It is an affirmation of 
 political pluralism, the beUef that while the state is responsible 
 to itself, is a moral being from which seK-judgment is expected, 
 the nature of power demands also the retention of the safe- 
 guard that we, too, as beings with personality, are compelled 
 
 ^ There is no better comment on this change than Mr. Croly's articles 
 in The New Republic from April to September, 1917. 
 
 ^ As Lord Bryce has noted, Cf . his essays on "Obedience and Sovereignty" 
 in his "Studies in History and Jurisprudence." 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 309 
 
 not merely to passive reaction to its decisions but to active 
 registration of our dissent therefrom. What, of course, it sug- 
 gests is a type of government very different from anything we 
 have thus far known. If the spirit of decentralisation is im- 
 pKcitly present in every state, it would seem an economy off 
 organisation to give it distinct existence in form. 
 
 That problem, indeed, Royer-CoUard did not face, for the 
 sufficiently good reason that he was not confron ted by it. 
 Those who occupied themselves with the politics of the Restora- 
 tion had a different task from our own. The nations of Europe 
 had made holy alUance against democratic principles and the 
 main problem for all who recognised, as did Royer-CoUard, 
 that the basic demand of the Revolution was right, were occu- 
 pied in the affirmation of it. That involved a different and 
 simpler struggle from our own. The distinction between the 
 anden rigime and the Revolution was, after all, clear even to 
 the least acute spectator of events. The whole problem was 
 simply whether the basis of government should be the will of 
 one or a generalised ^presentation of the will of all. The 
 Restoration answered that question in two antithetic ways. 
 The Royahsts proclaimed loudly that the intellectual teachings 
 of the Revolution had produced such disastrous results as to 
 be inacceptable to honest men. They desired for that cause 
 the return to the conception of power by which the anden 
 regime had been governed. Those who may broadly be termed 
 Uberal in outlook suggested what was in effect a compromise. 
 While they distrusted the dogmas of royalism they were a little 
 sceptical of the full and logic consequences of its negation. 
 What they sought was the synthesis of the potentialities of 
 both; and it was by the limitation of authority in the recogni- 
 tion of individual rights that are, generally speaking, inviolable, 
 that they sought to effect it. The solution, of course, was too 
 simple. The ancient institutions of France could not be at 
 once idealised and modernised. The practical defect of Royer- 
 CoUard's own outlook was that he did not take sufficient 
 account of the legacies of hatred that had been inherited. His 
 own confidence in the charter was pathetically unique. To 
 Charles X it was a subject of abhorrence; to Barante it was 
 
310 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 useless because it was operated without good will;*'_ to Chateau- 
 briand it was merely the material for an elegant, if capricious, 
 pamphlet.*^ The charter did not, as Royer-Collard had hoped, 
 reconcile the institutions it had estabhshed; it merely provided 
 a basis for their more violent division. The fact was that it 
 sought the unification of two permanently irreconcilable prin- 
 ciples — an active monarchy and a democracy. Until the tri- 
 umph of the one or the other had been secured, their collision 
 was unavoidable. 
 
 V. ETHICS AND POLITICS 
 
 If the main motive of this outlook is the effort to solve a fairly 
 definite and practical problem, the answer has an ethical impli- 
 cation which it is worth while for a moment to examine. Royer- 
 Collard was the philosophic disciple of Reid,^* and, like the 
 latter, his metaphysical work was really an attempt to find 
 means of escape from the scepticism of Hume. That to which 
 his analysis led him was an insistence on the worth of conscience. 
 Few theorists of his time have so greatly emphasised the im- 
 portance of what contribution each individual can make to the 
 general fabric of state-thought. He had reahsed that the in- 
 sistence the Revolution had laid upon the worth of human 
 personality was in some sort its most vital work. For it im- 
 mediately involves on the part of the state an effort to organise 
 means whereby that personahty may obtain expression. Here, 
 clearly enough, emerges the real significance of the connotation 
 he attached to freedom. Liberty, for him, is the hindrance of 
 attack upon, the development of personahty. That is why he 
 is so anxious to put beyond the area of ordinary interference 
 certain rights without which personality is worthless. That 
 was why, also, he was suspicious of authority. For where 
 authority encroaches beyond the domain that circumstance 
 will, in a rational analysis, ascribe to it, it negatives the mean- 
 ing of personahty. That was the defect of the anden rSgime. 
 
 " "M^moires," II, 180. 
 
 '* "La Monarchie Selonla Charte." For the circumstances of its origin 
 if. Daudet, " Louis XVIII et Decazes," pp. 153-5, 169-70. Viel Castel, 
 'Histoire," Vol. V, pp. 240-63. 
 
 89 Barante, II, 70 f . 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 311 
 
 It confined humanity within certain bounds and the richness 
 of which it was capable failed to obtain adequate recognition. 
 Of course Royer-CoUard had here the defects of his time. 
 His perception of the value of the individual conscience did not 
 go far enough to make him see the necessity of universalising 
 its political expression. He was so wrapped up in his doctrine 
 that what obtains representation is not will but interests that 
 he failed to reaUse that interests are no more than the material 
 expression of will. He did not push far enough his analysis of 
 the basis of the state. Had he done so he would have grasped 
 firmly what, in fact he only dimly perceived; that it is in actual 
 life impossible to test the legitimacy of a will that clamors for 
 expression merely by the discussion of its origin.'" His own 
 theory, indeed, was one of function; and he satisfied himself 
 that the interests of the French people were sufficiently ex- 
 pressed in the power of the middle classes to which he himself 
 belonged. The day of the workers had not yet dawned; and 
 the attempt to explain the economic significance of class-dis- 
 tinction certain English thinkers had only begun to attempt. 
 It is, of course, an inconsistency in his thought to have stopped 
 at a point where the conference of political power would then 
 have prevented the violence he hated so passionately. But 
 his thought was always hmited by the necessities he encount- 
 ered; and he did not pursue its imphcations into the realm of 
 abstract possibihty. 
 
 Whatever that Hmitation, his insistence on the value of per- 
 sonality as the real source of political power is very important. 
 It is difficult not to feel that it is derived, above all, from 
 Kant. Henri Michel has pointed out how greatly Guizot, at 
 any rate, was influenced by the German speculation of his 
 time;'! and what influenced Guizot would not have been un- 
 known to Royer-CoUard. His own spiritualist philosophy led 
 him to attach great weight to the idea of the soul; and he 
 reaUsed early that it is an attitude favorable to Hberty.'^ If, as 
 he was never weary of insisting, man alone, of all creatures, is 
 given the faculty of judgment, no state can be adequate in 
 
 '» This, I think, is the real defect of his interpretation of the charter. 
 
 " Op. cit., 298. 
 
 « Ferraz, "Histoire de la Philosophie," III, 157. 
 
112 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 vhich provision is not made for its exercise.'' Indeed, it is that 
 acuity of judgment which in fact Ues at the basis of society. 
 (Vhat it demands is the recognition that certain ideal rights 
 tre inherent in the fact of individual existence. The self can- 
 lot be itself unless it is given material upon which to pass 
 udgment. But the provision of that material is already the 
 •ecognition of hberty of conscience. It involves the conception 
 )f a personahty that is more than the sum of its relations. 
 '.t is not, of course, in any sense a legal conception. That 
 vhich, in any state, is the accepted organ of ultimate power 
 nay refuse the recognition in its code of such rights. But 
 here is set alongside the legal conception of right a moral 
 ilaim of which it is difficult to make denial of the inherent 
 uperiority. Actual law and ideal law may never coincide; 
 )ut where they come into conflict there can hardly be doubt 
 IS to where the ultimate allegiance is due. But such an analy- 
 is must surely mean that the claim of the state upon us is 
 ;mphaticaUy subjective, depends, for its vahdity, upon the 
 aoral appeal it makes to our conscience. Where its pohcy seems 
 o step beyond right, it becomes, as Royer-CoUard reahsed in 
 .830, a moral duty to warn those who are exercising its control, 
 hat the acquiescence of its constituent wUls has become at 
 east matter of doubt.'* And, in the last resort, the refusal of 
 ibedience is inevitable. That refusal, indeed, may involve pain 
 o him who thus makes his challenge; and, indeed, as Mr. 
 Barker has argued,'^ it may well be that the presumption is 
 .gainst us. 
 
 Yet the duty surely remains. There are few rights more 
 )recious than the right to be wrong. For once we accept the 
 dea of the state as not merely the whole of ourselves, but 
 , thing without us of which we are compelled to take ceaseless 
 .ccount, it is clear that we can accept no doctrine that would 
 ierive our rights from the state and condition than by the 
 lecisions of its will. That is, in fact, to postulate for the state 
 , kind of centraUsed infalhbility of which we have thus far 
 
 » Barante, II, 293. 
 " Cf . Barante, II, 419. 
 
 5' "English Political Thought," p. 60. The whole chapter is immensely 
 aluable. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 313 
 
 had no experience. It is difficult to conceive of its decisions 
 as having in any sense "a final moral value," for that is to 
 confer upon ourselves too vast a relief from thought. Here, 
 surely, is the real meaning of the new form given by Kant 
 to the fundamental principle of law.'^ Before his time law 
 had attempted no more than the preservation of order. The 
 condition of society had rendered peace the vital social in- 
 terest. Dissent then clearly becomes an attitude contrary to 
 law; for dissent is nothing if it is not the disturbance .of peace. 
 So there comes a strife between the interest of the individual 
 who would make his protest and that of the state which would 
 prevent him. What Kant did was to insist that the problem 
 we have to solve is the reconciliation of government with 
 liberty. Justice, for him, was simply the opportunity for the 
 good- will to obtain its fullest development in action; and he 
 sought to find wherein the balance of individual interest and 
 social interest might be discovered. Our own problem is in 
 nowise different. If our greatest need is, at the moment, or- 
 ganisation, that does not in any sense lessen, rather does it 
 increase, the value of individual responsibility.'' A state in 
 which the liabihty of its members is shifted to the shoulders 
 of government is not likely long to remain free. Organization 
 may, indeed, leave room for initiative; but the very condition 
 of its preservation is in the understanding of individualism. 
 It would, indeed, be a simple world if all of us could be swept 
 into the vortex of an all-embracing personality like the state. 
 But a truer analysis seems to suggest that, as James said, 
 "every smallest bit of experience is a multum in parvo plurally- 
 related."'^ Because experience is many and not one the indi^ 
 vidual personahty can not engulf itself in a single expression 
 of one of its aspects. When, that is to say, you have described 
 man as a member of the state you have not exhausted his 
 nature. He refuses that reduction to unity. He refuses it for 
 the simple reason that it does not represent the facts. He is 
 not merely a member of the state. His capacity for fellowship 
 
 » Cf. Janet, "Science PoUtique," II, 576 f. 
 
 " Cf . the suggestive paper of Dean Pound in the American Journal of 
 Sociology for May, 1917. 
 
 •« "A Pluralistic Universe," p. 321. 
 
314 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 is not so meagrely exhausted. Above all, there are moments 
 when the Athanasius element in his nature must have its way. 
 But that is to admit already breakage and ignorance in the 
 tvorld, to postulate a discontinuity which impels decision as to 
 (vhere the leap shall be taken. 
 
 Here, surely, is the moral background of the hberty that 
 Royer-CoUard envisaged. It is the one certain guarantee 
 igainst absolutism. It denies perfection by the very fact of its 
 nsistence that the object of individual judgment is to secure 
 moral progress. It does not deny personaUty to the state. On 
 the contrary, it is the ascription of moral purpose to the state 
 ivhich it deduces from the fact of personahty. But it realises 
 :hat, like the individual, the will of the state is not a simple 
 effort after good. It would, perhaps, be simple if we could base 
 3ur activity upon such an analysis. But the will of any being 
 nay be perverted to wrong ends; and exactly as the state will 
 judge us for the use we make of our personahty, so, reciprocally, 
 ive must judge the state. For, after all, our own will is swept 
 nto the strength of its decisions; and where we deeija it wrong 
 jnly the active registration of dissent can excuse us from par- 
 ticipation in its crimes. Royer-Collard had experience enough 
 jf a state that wrought its own piu-poses without the hindrance 
 rf dissent. He reaUsed the uselessness of any doctrine that, 
 nerely for the sake of survival, would confuse pacific conduct 
 mth good conduct. It is, indeed, clear that a state in which the 
 )nly effective will is that which at the moment of expression 
 las to be taken for the general will can never be a democratic 
 itate. For the very condition of democratic organisation Hes in 
 ;he realisation that self-government means something more 
 ;han to contribute one's mite of personal agreement to the vast 
 ^hole of which one is part, and, in this aspect, it is surely 
 lignificant of much that what time the democratic state seemed 
 ;o waste in the effort to attain unity of action in fact gave to 
 ;hat action a moral strength denied t<b unthinking acquiescence.'' 
 
 But, in such a conception, it is clear that the object we ascribe 
 ;o the state is something more than survival. It is to that end 
 )nly that acquiescence is directed. A freedom of conscientious 
 
 »» Even the most zealous advocates of state-unity seem to have admitted 
 ihis, cf. London Times, May 17, 1917, p. 231. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 315 
 
 objection such as Poland knew, may have been the inevitable 
 precursor of partition. We may have, as Royer-Collard realised, 
 to sacrifice the rigidity of our theory to the changing perspective , 
 of events.'™ But that simply involves our realisation that the 
 cost of survival may be too great; to perish, as he once bitterly 
 remarked,"" may also be a solution. A state may, as Machiavelli 
 said, go to work against good and charity, but assuredly the 
 result of its effort will be written deeply in the life it will thence- 
 forth lead. That was the point of Huxley's oft-misinterpreted 
 dictum that the cosmic process is opposed to the ethical. For 
 all that the state is primarily concerned to do is to secure sur- 
 vival and that means fitting its methods to a non-moral end. 
 But if the environment be bad, the ethical process suffers as a 
 consequence. In a world of murderers the survival of any one 
 man does not guarantee an ethical superiority. That was surely 
 the meaning of Aristotle's distinction between the good man 
 and the good citizen. Herr von Bethmann-HoUweg may have 
 saved his state when he agreed to hack his way through Belgium; 
 but he himself admitted that it was a crime. The state was 
 working its end through him; but most of us are agreed that its 
 end was not a moral end. It is interesting to speculate as to our 
 judgment of one who, in such a crisis, should fearlessly challenge 
 the state-decision. In our own time, certainly, it seems to have 
 profited it but little to aim at the conquest of the world at the 
 cost of its soul. 
 
 This does not mean that the ethic of the state must be dis- 
 tinct from that of the individual. Anyone who studies the 
 historical consequence of such a difference will be convinced of 
 its impossibihty. It means rather that we must" reject the test 
 of state-life which insists on its quantitative expansion and look 
 rather to its qualitative intensity. In that aspect we are com- 
 pelled to stand outside the state and judge it. There will come 
 to us clearly the knowledge that there is an end greater than its 
 survival and perpetuation. Most of us would rather have 
 perished with Leonidas at Thermopylae than have survived with 
 the Persian tyrant; but Persia survived. Was the end its sur- 
 
 "'»Barante, 1, 302. 
 
 "" The dilemma is in feaKty worth more consideration than is usually 
 given to it; but the instinct of state-life is very strong. 
 
316 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 vival served more ethical than the end that would have been 
 served by its downfall? Most of us would doubt it. And it 
 then becomes surely arguable that one of the results of recent 
 evolution has been to make the individual bi-partite — no less 
 himself an end than contributory to the end of the state. The 
 test of value in an institution may be rather its advantage to ■ 
 the state than to the individual, but who is to judge its value if 
 not ourselves?"^ An individual may decide on a course which 
 enables justice to be done even though the state perish in the 
 doing of it. From the standpoint of survival that may not serve 
 the state. But that only leads to the insistence that even if the 
 ethical process be the derivative of the cosmic it is not one with 
 it, any more than a man is one with the father from whom he de- 
 rives. "The simple truth has to be told," says Meredith of 
 Nevil Beauchamp, "how he loved his country, and for another 
 and a broader love growing out of his first passion, fought it." 
 It is at least a conceivable attitude, even if it is rare. Un- 
 deniably, of course, it is an attitude fraught with elements of 
 danger to the body politic. The state-life cannot be lived if its 
 members may make rebelhon against its authority. But the 
 rarity of their dissent is a factor of vital consequence. No one 
 could have predicted that the Royer-CoUard of 1814 would, in 
 1830, have acquiesced in the overthrow of legitimism; yet the 
 sequence of events drove him to an opposition upon which he 
 entered with grave distrust.'"' The fact is that the business of 
 the state is the service of men, and where her defection from that 
 course imperils the rightness of her conduct somewhere or other 
 the protest will be made. And it may then be urged that a state 
 which is in fear of revolution by reason of its policy is less Hkely 
 to be wrong than a state whose citizens have ceased to aim their 
 consciences against it. Ambition, tyranny, selfishness, these 
 men will fight in whatever guise they may be discovered; and 
 it is in their wiUingness so to do battle that the real safeguard of 
 morals is to be found. A conception of the relationship between 
 rulers and ruled which does not include the possibility of 
 
 "2 This, as I conceive, is the real defect of such idealistic iaterpretations 
 of the state as that of Mr. Bosanquet. Cf . the first chapter of this volume 
 and the first essay in my "Problem of Sovereignty." 
 
 i» Cf . Barante, II, 34 f . 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 317 
 
 renouncing the relation is always incomplete; for it is demanding 
 a measure of loyalty and unselfishness from subjects far greater 
 than is sought from their governor. 
 
 The dif&culty of anarchy must, of course, be faced ;*°^ and no 
 consideration of politics would be adequate which failed to take 
 account of its dangers. No one was more convinced then Royer- 
 Collard that government is necessary; no one, assuredly, would 
 have more willinging admitted the vastness of the problem. If 
 Luther may take upon 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 important to remember 
 that creative opposition has come, less from those either fatally 
 certain of their opinion, or eager to play the martyr, than from 
 those who, with Luther, can simply retort that they cannot do 
 otherwise. Yet such wholehearted antagonism will not come to a 
 state which seeks the path of justice. It is when a fundamental 
 choice must be made between right and wrong that men like 
 Luther grow daring enough to shake the world. It is when, as in 
 1830, warning-has been neglected and principle trampled under- 
 foot that men Hke Royer-Collard, fitted by nature for the part of 
 order rather than that of change, will be content to remake the 
 institutions of the state. The danger of anarchy intervenes 
 when wrong has become unendurable. It remains where the 
 path of right conduct is yet uncertain. It is useless to hope that 
 such moments will never come. None can say where the su- 
 preme twinge of conscience may be felt. A supreme issue may 
 be clothed in the garb of an army-officer accused of espionage;^"' 
 it may be found in the exaction of an educational tax. Yet few 
 can read the long history of protest against state-policy without 
 feeling that, on the whole, the fact of its existence has been pro- 
 ductive of good. The Lamennais of the nineteenth century may 
 vainly choose the path of exile; but he will inspire the victorious 
 Lamennais of a later age as he will instruct the institution which 
 cast him forth. Great events such as this become so intimate 
 and vital a part of the state-tradition that none can measure the 
 efficacy of their result. We shall not write in the future the his- 
 
 '" This is the difficulty felt by my able reviewer in the Times Literary 
 Supplement, May 17, 1917. 
 "• Cf. Hal^vy, "Apologie pour notre pass6" (1910). 
 
18 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 ory of a second Galileo. The state, no less than the church, 
 lust learn that is not paramount in the realm of ideas. Few 
 hings are more fatal than the triumph of authority over 
 ruth.ios 
 The great fact that Royer-Collard perceived was that in the 
 enial of infallibility to authority we may prevent that disas- 
 rous victory, i"" When we insist that, in the last analysis, only 
 tie individual is sovereign over himself, we make it possible for 
 im to contribute his best to the sum of social life. But his best, 
 ssuredly, is not blind obedience. His best is the utmost insight 
 f which his judgment is capable. Compared to that, the chance 
 f disorder is relatively unimportant. For the probabihty is 
 lat a view which men will so embrace as to ask the final test 
 f its survival is a view that responds to some inherent need of 
 ature. Christianity, in its early history, was exactly a danger 
 f this kind to the empire it was slowly permeating. The christ- 
 m had choice between his civic obedience and his reUgious 
 )yalty. He saw, on the one hand, the vast authority of an 
 mpire so great that its very limits were hardly conceivable by 
 Lm. He saw on the other a Kttle fellowship of souls driven un- 
 erground, testifying its faith only at the cost of suffering, sus- 
 ected on all sides of crimes the mere thought of which was a 
 ;ain upon their reputation and their opinipns. In the perspec- 
 ve of time the weight of authority as against what the christian 
 eemed to have been truth seems almost imutterably large; to 
 av'e cast his handful of incense was so pitifully easy a tidng. 
 et, also in the perspective of time, it is impossible to doubt 
 lat the christian did service to civihsation when he counted the 
 npire of authority without meaning as against the empire of 
 hat to him was truth. "The worth of a state," Mill finely 
 dd,"8 "in the long run is the worth of the individuals compos- 
 ig it; and a state which pospones the interests of their mental 
 cpansion and elevation to a Uttle more administrative skill, or 
 : that semblance of it which practice of it gives, in the details 
 ■ business ; a state which dwarfs its men, in order that^they may 
 
 '" As Lamennais and TyrreU saw in their sphere. 
 
 1" This is the whole point of Lord Acton's fine protest. "History of 
 
 •eedom," p. 151. 
 
 "» "Liberty" (Everyman's ed.), p. 170. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 319 
 
 be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial pur- 
 poses, will find that with small men no great thing can really be 
 accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which 
 it has sacrificed everything will in the end avail it nothing, for 
 want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might 
 work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish." 
 
 We dare not, in brief, surrender the individual conscience. 
 Only upon its continuous exercise can our state be securely 
 founded. Only therein can we discover the essential compromise 
 between fundamental principles which is the real nature of pub- 
 Uc policy. Here, surely, lies the greatness of Royer-Collard's 
 doctrine. For he came to importance in public life at a time 
 when two antithetic systems of pohtical organisation stood face 
 to face. He was able to understand that neither was of itself 
 strong enough to triumph. He was quick to perceive that the 
 unlimited victory of either would be in no sense an unmitigated 
 benefit. He opposed the theory of the royahsts because it made 
 the state the privileged possession of a single interest. He op- 
 posed the theory of democracy because, as he conceived, France 
 was not ready to accept pretensions ahen to what had thus far 
 been the historic system of her institutions. But in each he per- 
 ceived a truth which might, in combination, work for good. The 
 value of royaUsm lay in its insistence upon continuity. Royer- 
 Collard himself admitted that no rational interpretation of 
 national existence can ever be catastrophic and he accepted the 
 fact of monarchy as the basis of the state. But he simultan- 
 eously realised that the danger of monarchical government Hes 
 in its natural tendency to absolution. The apocryphal equation 
 of Louis XIV had become already an anachronism. What was 
 needed was the impetus of a doctrine which should take account 
 of the personality of each member of the state, and give to that 
 personaHty the opportunity for self-expression. He saw that so 
 limited, no monarch can aim at absolute power without invoking 
 disaster. Yet he saw, too, that a personality of which the 
 exercise was at every stage limited by the will of the state was 
 in no real sense capable of activity. So it was that while he 
 admitted that the idea of national survival was fundamental, 
 he insisted also that the individual by reason of his humanity 
 has certain rights no state may contravene. He defined those 
 
!20 AUTHORITY IN THE JMtOD^RN SXAX^E 
 
 •ights; and he pointed out wherein they tend to the guarantee of 
 iberty. It was a noble effort nobly sustained. 
 
 That it had defects and inconsistencies is undeniable. It is 
 .00 often the speculation rather of an orator than of a philos- 
 )pher. It is the speculation of a man of affairs in that it hmited 
 tself to the analysis of situations which actually confronted the 
 ihamber of Deputies. It is a system rather by imphcation than 
 )y statement. It had not the coherent prevision of the possibil- 
 ties of labour, or, if it suspected its advent, it was curiously sus- 
 )icious of the result. It tended too often to express itself in terms 
 )f a mathematical balance from which the facts are in the real life 
 emote. But it remains, even when these defects have been 
 loted, a constructive advance upon the ideas of his age. It is 
 lot a mere collection of unreasoned prejudices like the attitude 
 )f VillMe; it is more than the uncritical opportunism of Guizot. 
 t was based upon an immense experience, and it was an experi- 
 snce that had been deeply felt and carefully understood. It was 
 m experience which taught him that however valuable may be 
 he benefits of order, they are useless so long as they stifle the 
 pontaneity of the human mind. It led him to insist that tradi- 
 ion is of today as well as of the centuries that are past. He tried 
 o free a generation that had suffered from the ills that had been 
 Qherited. He sketched the foundations of a state that should, 
 •ase its order upon freedom. There are few higjter claims to the 
 nduring gratitude of men. 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 ADMINISTRATIVE SYNDICALISM IN FRANCE^ 
 
 I. THE RIGHT OF ASSOCIATION 
 
 FRENCH tradition has not been favourable to the growth 
 of associations.^ Man may be, even in France, a com- 
 munity-building animal, but the state has watched nar- 
 rowly his efforts at construction. It is only within the last 
 thirty years that the bonds of a restraining vigilance have been 
 finally relaxed. The right of association was, before the Revolu- 
 tion, strictly dependent upon the monarchical will. The royal 
 sovereignty towered above all, so that even the natural tend- 
 ency to labor organisation became nothing so much as a vast 
 secret society Uving less by governmental benison than by defi- 
 ance of it. It seems clear enough that what associations, 
 whether religious or secular, were able to exist, were the offspring 
 of a privilege tardily given and illiberally exercised. For to 
 exert even the legislative powers implied in the concession of 
 recognised personality seemed to the jurist no less than to the 
 political theorist to involve a derogation from state-power. The 
 king must be master of his estate; and he will not hesitate to 
 teach his subjects that sovereignty knows no Umits save his 
 good pleasure. The ancien regime imphed a monistic state; 
 and when for the crown was substituted the nation, the worship 
 of a unified indivisibihty underwent no change. Rather did it 
 increase in intensity; for the associations of that period which 
 the Revolution made at a stroke antiquity were the symbols of 
 a hated privilege. So it was that Le Chapelier could take to 
 heart the teaching of Rousseau;' and when corporate freedom 
 
 'For a very complete bibliography cf. P. Harmignie "L'Etat et Ses 
 Agents" (1911) and M.' Leroy. "Syndicats et Services Publics" (1909) 
 to both of which I am greatly indebted. 
 
 ' For a history of the right of association in France from 1789-1901, see 
 the very able doctor's thesis of M. Faget de Casteljau (1908). 
 
 ' "Contrat Social," Bk., II, Ch. III. Faget de Casteljau, op. cit., Ill f. 
 
322 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 interposed a loyalty between state and individual, it could not 
 avoid destruction. 
 
 It was hardly a generous outlook even if, in the event, it has 
 its explanation. For where the state attempts the absorption 
 of the loyalties of men, what it effects is either to drive them 
 under ground or to transfer their energies to a sphere where the 
 restraint is mitigated. The law might forbid the Jesuits to pre- 
 form their rehgious functions in the state; but the historian has 
 no difficulty in discovering their presence under a variety of 
 different forms.* Nor is it unmeaning to suggest that the divi- 
 sion of French parties into a plethora of groups owes its origin 
 less to any inherent naturalness or to a proved benefit in the 
 performance of party Junctions than to the possibility such 
 division affords for the erection of a system of loyalties external 
 to that of the state. Certainly no such phenomenon has been seen 
 in Anglo-Saxon countries where, on the whole, the right of asso- 
 ciation has found but little legal hindrance;^ and it is surely 
 notable in this connection that when de TocqueviUe visited 
 America, within half a century of the foundation of the RepubUc, 
 what should, above all, have impressed him was the astounding 
 wealth of American group-life.* 
 
 Such suppression was, in fact, no more than a decadent inheri- 
 tance from the Roman conception of the state.' It might be 
 necessary when the restored Bourbons were aiming at the de- 
 struction of the Revolutionary ideals. It had its value when 
 the effort of Guizot was towards the erection of a quasi-despot- 
 ism under democratic forms. The brief history of the second 
 repubhc shows an immediate restoration to men of the forms 
 under which their natural instincts may obtain the satisfaction 
 of unconcealed gregariousness.* But the plebiscite which en- 
 abled Louis Napoleon to renew the system of his great ancestor 
 involved the adoption of that ancestor's attitude tQ all loyalties 
 which might stand between him and his subjects. The third 
 
 * Cf. Debidour, "L'Eglise et L'Etat de 1879 k 1870," p. 329 f. 
 ' Cf. M. H. E. Barraiilt's very able thesis, "Le Droit d'association 
 en Angleterre." 
 
 » "Democracy in America," Part II, Bk. II, Ch. V. 
 
 ' Cf . Duguit, "Les Transformations du Droit Public," Ch. I. 
 
 « Constitution of 1848, Art. 8. 
 
AUTHORITY IX THE MODERN STATE 323 
 
 republic, in its early history at least, was too precariously estab- 
 lished to venture on a freedom which, in the result, might well 
 have proved too costly. It was not until 1884 that M. Waldeck- 
 Rousseau took his courage in his hands and allowed what was 
 virtually freedom of professional association. It was not until 
 seventeen years later that the ideals of 1848 were at last fulfilled 
 and a general right of association estabUshed. Yet, even today, 
 the significant Umitations that exist bear testimony to the stub- 
 born persistence of the older ideas. 
 
 Into one branch of the state the idea of a freedom of asso- 
 ciation penetrated with even greater difficulty. A civil servant 
 was, in the ancien regime, above all a servant of the king; and 
 in that centraUsed system which de Tocqueville has so magis- 
 trally shown to be anterior to the Revolution, the idea of a 
 reciprocal relation between master 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 external observer, 
 many of the characteristics of the king's household.' The king 
 cannot have about him servants displeasing to his majesty. 
 He may, indeed, hke a fourteenth century king, announce that 
 he will look not to the man but to the office ;''' but when sover- 
 eignty is no more than the royal pleasure this is but a counsel 
 of perfection. It does not, at any rate, seem to have been en- 
 forced, and the principles of administration were left un- 
 changed by the Revolution save that the genius of Napoleon 
 secured an efficiency before unknown." 
 
 It is not until the later years of the nineteenth century that 
 signs of a change could be observed.'^^ Whatever breach in 
 hierarchical systems the tidal wave of democratic advance may 
 have made, in the administrative regime it did not progress. 
 Divine right may have been overthrown. A new and more 
 fruitful conception of the state may have forced its way to 
 general acceptance.'' The irresponsibihty of public power may 
 
 • Flach, "Origines de I'ancienne France," III, 504. 
 " Quoted from G. Demartial, "Le Statut des Fonctionnaires.' The re- 
 mark is from a royal edict of 1356. 
 
 " Cf. Leroy, "Les Transformations de la Puissance Publique," p. 143 f . 
 "* Lefas, "L'Etat et les Fonctionnaires," Introduction. 
 " Cf. the first chapter of this work.. 
 
i24 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 mve been at last reduced to the admission of limitations; but 
 Dehind the veil of the internal processes of governmental ac- 
 tivity no force could penetrate. The picture drawn by Balzac 
 n the third decade of the nineteenth century was as true, in 
 ill its essential details, at the beginning of the twentieth." 
 \ complete and arbitrary control over the details of adminis- 
 tration was, after all, an idea that had behind it the weight 
 jf a long, if not an honourable tradition. It had survived, 
 ivithin a century, no less than seven regimes — which seemed at 
 'east a progmatically adequate test of its efficacy. Nor was it 
 i system which might be expected to arouse much popular 
 interest. Mr. Graham Wallas has made it a commonplace to 
 observe that a democracy is but rarely interested in the processes 
 )f administration. What compels its attention is not so much 
 nethods as results. Where it is, largely speaking, indifferent 
 !ven to the more dramatic aspects of its • own political ad- 
 venture, ^^ it could hardly be expected to concentrate its mind 
 )n the mechanical routine in which, from day to day, the civil 
 lervant is engaged. So long as the services of government were 
 )erformed with what seemed an adequate efficiency, thesover- 
 iign elector was content to allow his sovereignty to go by 
 lefault. It is a political maxim of some import that what is 
 mseen does not exist. Public attention was not concentrated 
 ipon the problem of administration simply because its existence 
 bs a problem went unrealised. It was only when it became 
 )bvious that the transformation of the state had affected no 
 ess its organization than its functioning, that it became clear 
 hat a new administrative synthesis was being in fact effected. 
 It was an inevitable synthesis to anyone who had observed 
 it all accurately the evolution of the state. Its sovereignty 
 night go unquestioned so long as the functions it endeavored 
 o perform were hardly related to the positive side of national 
 existence. A state which limited its services to the provision 
 if police, defence and justice had hardly need of new concep- 
 ions. But with the advent of what Professor Dicey has called 
 
 " Sctoes de la Vie Parisienne, "Les Employds" (1836). 
 
 >* For two very different demonstrations of the difficulty of obtaining a 
 sally public opinion cf. Lowell. "Public Opinion and Popular Government" 
 rith Mr. WaUas' "Human Nature in Politics.'' 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 325 
 
 the collectivist age the infalUbiUty of public power was no 
 longer acceptable. The state itself became an industrial instru- 
 ment; and it was inevitable that those who worked for it should 
 be unable to regard it differently from any other employer. 
 Just as the private entrepreneur was being more arid more sub- 
 jected to a new legislative status," so did the worker desire 
 that the state should recognize the superiority of law to itself. 
 Nor was this all. On all sides, pressure upon the political 
 mechanisms of the state assumed almost alarming proportions. 
 Parliaments- seemed, often enough, little more than bodies 
 which registered the will of a successful combatant in a conflict 
 where it had no voice." Fiction might declare its will national 
 and sovereign; but that lighthearted sacrifice to tradition was 
 not in fact deceptive. The life of the state, in fact, had over- 
 sowed the boundaries in which political organisation would 
 have encased it, with the natural result that voluntary effort 
 of every kind began at once to enforce and to supplement 
 political action. It was impossible even for French tradition 
 to resist the impulse implied in these changes; and the loi des 
 associations of M. Waldeck-Rousseau did no more than en- 
 shrine popular aspiration in legislative form. 
 
 In actual fact, it was simply logical that the growth of asso- 
 ciations should change the perspective of the life of the state. 
 Once new loyalties had been established they became for their 
 members sovereign within the limit to which they fulfilled the 
 purposes with which they sympathised. It became clear, for 
 example, that in a choice between loyalty to his fellow-workers 
 in a trade, and loyalty to a state which aimed at preventing 
 those workers from attaining certain ends they deemed good, 
 there was no inherent certainty that the average trade-unionist 
 would feel a deeper claim on the part of the state. Raison 
 d'Stat lost its magic exactly at the point where the variety of 
 group-life made it clear that the will of the state is operated 
 by its agents and that those agents, whom the dissentient 
 worker might himself help both to choose and dismiss, could 
 
 "Cf. my "Basis of Vicarious Liability" in the Yale Law Journal for 
 Nov. 1916, for a discussion of the nature of this change. 
 
 " As was very strikingly evinced in America in the railway crisis which 
 resulted in the Adamson Law. 
 
326 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 lay no claim to infallibility. Indeed, where they came from 
 a class with which, mistakenly or no, he believed himself in 
 permanent conflict, he might even cease to believe that the 
 state had any claim upon his loyalty at all. It would become, 
 for him, the instrument of men with whom he was at war, and 
 his effort would be directed towards its destruction.^* , 
 
 It is in the hght of such a development that the growth of 
 a demand for autonomy in the French pubhc services must be 
 understood. When the old notion of sovereignty showed signs 
 of decay, it was inevitable that those most greatly affected by 
 its control should seek release from its trammels. With the 
 growth of state-enterprise in industry it was even more in- 
 evitable that the state-proletariat thus brought into being 
 should refuse the surrender of privileges it had fought so hard 
 bo win outside the public service. And in an age when the no- 
 tion of authority itself was, in its old acceptance, assailed on 
 jvery hand, to the servants of the state there seemed little 
 3nough reason to abstain from additional criticism. It might 
 be true that the entrance of these revolutionary ideals into the 
 jivil service was hardly perceived by the mass of men. The 
 iemocratisation of institutions had become so general that it 
 s doubtful if men were aware of the retention of despotic ideals 
 n the internal organisation of government. Where, indeed, it 
 iid, it was easy for statesmen to lull the awakening suspicion 
 Dy depicting revolt as an attack upon that process upon which 
 ;he life of the state depended. Government was democratic in 
 ts origins. Its birth might thus be used to throw a cloak of 
 saintliness about it. So that even if the administration of 
 France remained arbitrary in method and hierarchical in struc- 
 ture it had some sort of popular sanction for its retention of 
 m antique custom. A far more radical effort was needed if 
 Dublic opinion was to realise the significance of administrative 
 ;orporateness. 
 
 II. THE COMPLAINTS OF THE CIVIL SERVICE 
 
 The claim of the civil servant of the right to association has 
 ■aised legal and political problems of a magnitude so immense 
 i«Cf. the very able essay of M. Berth, "Marchands, Intellectuels, et 
 'oliticiens" in the Mouvement Socialiste for 1907-8. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 327 
 
 that it is almost impossible to set limits to their imphcation. 
 They have been very variously regarded. To some the herald 
 of release^" from a state dangerous because it is as inefficient 
 and arbitrary as it is unintelligent and all-powerful, to others^" 
 it is httle less than an invitation to anarchy. If the civil servant 
 claim the right to defy the state from whom can obedience be 
 expected? Yet, in fact, the problem is less simple than such 
 statement seems to make it. The effort of the civil servant is 
 less towards defiance of the state than towards the discovery 
 of means whereby the challenge may be rendered unnecessary. 
 In that aspect the movement is less towards anarchy than to- 
 wards order. And a demand so widespread must, after all, 
 have had its causes. The claim put forward by those who 
 advocate the right to association is simple. It is that the 
 abuses from which they have suffered are inherent in the pres- 
 ent system. It is impossible, in their view, at all effectively to 
 mend the civil service. What has become essential is its com- 
 plete reconstruction. It is a technical ideal they have in view — 
 an insistence that administration is a professional service so 
 expert in character as to demand a regulation beyond political 
 control of the ordinary kind.^ But their critics see in their 
 cause no more than an effort which may well paralyse the 
 national Ufe. They urge that what is demanded is derived less 
 from an enthusiasm for administrative efficiency than from 
 the ordinary phenomena of corporate selfishness. Nor is pub- 
 lic opinion more sympathetic. A people which sees on every 
 hand great increase both in the number of civil servants and in 
 the budget they entail, has not the patience, even if it had the 
 time, to examine those demands in detail. The civil service 
 seems to the average man the most comfortable of existences. 
 The salary is fixed and certain. There is no fear of unemploy- 
 ment. Economic crises leave it unaffected. Provision is made 
 against both accident and old age. In a period of growing 
 
 '9 Cf. Leroy, "Syndicates et Services Publics," Ch. III. 
 
 '" F. Faure in Revue Polilique ei Parlementaire 1907, "Les Syndicats 
 des Fonctionnaires et le projet du GoveVnement." I have discussed these 
 various attitudes below. 
 
 ^' Cf. Book IX of M. Leroy's really noble book, " La Coutume Ouvrifere" 
 (1913). 
 
!8 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 txation what he tends to see is less the grievance than the 
 rivilege of such labour. He remembers not the services he 
 IS secured from public administration so much as the ills he 
 IS suffered from its suspension. What impresses him is less the 
 suit of uninterrupted routine than the disasters which may 
 itend such dislocation as the famous postal strike of 5^909. 
 e knows that there are close upon a milhon civil servants in 
 ranee, and Guy de Maupassant has with genial irony con- 
 need him that they have causes for other sentiment than 
 •ievance.^2 Complaints are for him no more than the unusual 
 icompaniments of a process in which he has no interest. They 
 present the failure of services which he pays taxes in order 
 I guarantee. They thus defeat for him the end of the state; 
 id he finds it difficult to understand, much less to condone, 
 le ambitions they imply. 
 
 Yet the problem cannot be thus easily dismissed. More than 
 thousand societies testify to the determination of the civil 
 rvice to protect its interest against abuses. They constitute 
 sentially trade-unions, and, Hke trade-unions, they aim above 
 1 at the defence of the economic interests of their members, 
 hey have, too, the additional object of safeguarding profes- 
 Dnal standards, exactly as similar organizations among lawyers 
 id doctors. Nor can it be denied that their grievances are 
 al. Not, indeed, that they have developed in any special 
 igree in the last ten years. Rather it is that during the last 
 n years there has come an increasing consciousness of the 
 a,y in which they may best be removed. So long as the sover- 
 ?nty of the state went virtually without challenge, it was 
 irdly conceivable that where others were silent, its own serv- 
 its would resist. It was only with the visible transformation 
 the very nature of public power that a reahsation came of 
 lat weapons lay in their hands.^' 
 
 The main abuse of which the civil service complains is nat- 
 ally favouritism. Positions of trust are at the mercy of the 
 
 22 On the numbers and salaries of the Civil Service cf. Lefas, "L'Etat et 
 Fonctionnaires," Chap. II. 
 
 23 For the number of associations and their growth see the official report 
 the Chamber of M. Jeanneney (Hachette, 1908), p. 230 f. But he does 
 t count the societies formed prior to 1901 and suppressed by authority. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 329 
 
 overnment. Partisanship is the test of public advancement; 
 od even so distinguished a statesman as M. Waldeck-Rousseau 
 id not hesitate to assert that confidence could be given only 
 ) those of whose political views the government had the 
 3surance impUed in support.''^ Irregularities of every kind 
 re committed, so that the very rules by which the different 
 epartments of the civil service are governed become in fact 
 orthless. An official may be nominated to the police service 
 ithout passing the necessary examination. A distinguished 
 istorian like M. DeKsle can be dismissed from a lifelong post 
 t the Archives to make 'room for a young poUtical nominee 
 fnorant of even the rudiments of his profession. An inspector 
 1 the ministry of education is almost at the mercy of a deputy 
 'ho can not only destroy his career, but that of the teachers 
 ith whose supervision he is charged.^^ Similar complaints 
 ome from the post-office, the government arsenals, even the 
 lagistracies.^^ France has what has been in England unneces- 
 iry since 1870, its Black Book of political nepotism.^' In a 
 ingle year, M. Simyan, the under-secretary of state for posts 
 nd telegraphs, received more than one hundred thousand let- 
 3rs recommending candidates for office almost entirely on 
 olitical grounds.^ M. Steeg has given numerous instances 
 1 the Chamber of Deputies itself of nominations that have 
 een granted in every part of the civil service for reasons other 
 lan merit, and without regard to the regulations involved.^^ 
 .gainst the poUtical power a deputy can exert the fact is clear 
 lat few officials dare hope to compete. They cannot make 
 eadway against the influence of a man upon whose vote the 
 overnment is counting for its very existence, and that the 
 lore certainly in a country where, as in France, the executive 
 
 '* See the famous Toulouse speech of Oct. 28, 1900. For an ahnost 
 :actly similar American utterance of the speech cf. Mr. Johnson, a con- 
 essman for Kentucky, in the Congressional Record for Oct. 10, 1913. 
 
 ^ Leyret, "La Rgpublique et Les Pohticiens," p. 29 f. 
 
 ''On this last evil of the very able speech cf. M. Louis Martin in the 
 bamber. Journal Officiel, Nov. 10, 1905. 
 
 " Cf. "Le Livre d'or Des Fils k Papa." 
 
 2« M. Thibault, "Les Syndicats de Fonctionnaires" (1909). 
 
 " Journal Officiel, May 9, 1907. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 IS not yet made itself master of the legislature. It is surely 
 ear that the civil servant is literally driven to combine against 
 le minister to preserve the very regulations by which the 
 jpartment is supposed to be governed. 
 
 The private opinions of the civil servant are subject to a 
 jgrading surveillance. "The state," says M. Leroy-Beauheu 
 ith graphic emphasis,'" "strangles its personnel." It seems, 
 deed, to imagine that it has the right completely to control 
 le personal life of its officials in every particular. M. Briand's 
 inistry, at the time of the Separation, refused even to guar- 
 itee officials freedom of religious worship. '^ A teacher was 
 smissed for visiting the cur6 of his commune, and not even 
 le unanimous petition of its inhabitants could secure his rein- 
 atement.'^ A postmistress was transferred on the ground of 
 actionary opinions because one of her sons was a priest, and 
 le other employed by a notorious conservative. '* An in- 
 )ector was dismissed for refusing to answer poUtical letters 
 ■ recommendation.'^ And one distinguished poUtician, M. 
 l^menceau, does not seem to doubt that what the govern- 
 ents pays for is intellectual servitude.'* "The government," 
 id M. Dubief, a former minister of commerce,'^ "will not 
 irrender the right to know the attitude of its servants to the 
 pubUc." 
 
 It of course follows that if private opinions are so carefully 
 rutinised their public expression is rigidly suppressed.'^ Lib- 
 ty of action is necessarily denied if private opinion is to be 
 )ntrolled.' Teachers have been dismissed for making pacifist 
 )eeches.'* Officials who take a leading part in the work of 
 -ofessional organisation find themselves interrogated, sus- 
 
 " P. Leroy-Beaulieu, "L'Etat Moderne et Ses Ponctions," p. 81. 
 " Journal Offidel, Nov. 20, 1905. 
 52 Journal Offidel, Jan. 31, 1909. 
 33 P. Harmignie, "L'Etat et Ses Agents," p. 31. 
 3« Reforme Social, April 1, 1909, p. 417. 
 3= Ibid. 
 
 3" Journal Officiel, Feb. 8, 1905. 
 
 " On this problem in England cf . the Report of the Royal Commission, 
 irl. Papers, 1914, Vol. XVI, p. 95. 
 3» Guiraud, "L'EcoIe et La FamiUe," p. 103. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 331 
 
 jnded, even dismissed.'^ A teacher was dismissed for attack- 
 g the prefect of his department in the press. The maritime 
 ■efect of Toulon refused to admit into the arsenal the trade 
 iper of the Marine Workers' Federation. A clerk who proph-' 
 ied in the journal of his association that conditions in the local 
 easury must eventually result in a strike was dismissed for 
 ) doing. Discipline, it was argued in all these cases, is im- 
 assible if the right to criticise anything relating to government 
 
 assumed. Yet when the administrative means of individual 
 rotest are deemed inadequate it is difficult to see how, on the 
 ne hand, the technical journal of a profession can avoid the 
 Lscussion of a technical problem, or why it is more inappro- 
 riate for a civil servant to have opinions on pacifism than it 
 1 for Mr. Disraeh to make epigrams about Darwin. 
 
 Problems such as these are the most complex the adminis- 
 •ative issue affords, for their solution involves the regulation 
 f parhamentary government in a way that has thus far been 
 aknown.*" The questions raised by the material situation of 
 le civil servant are far less complex in character. It is natural 
 nough that all kinds of grievances should exist in relation to 
 lie physical conditions of service. Wages are often low; the 
 ours of labour are deemed over-long; vacations do not come 
 fc a time when they can be adequately profitable. Not, in- 
 eed, that the civil service has not involved a constantly-in- 
 reasing expenditure. In the post-office, for example, where 
 le intensity of grievance has on two occasions led to a serious 
 ;rike, the expenses have increased in ten years from 177 to 
 97 milUon francs, and the receipts have not risen proportion- 
 tely.'*' The same is true, in some degree, of every government 
 apartment,*^ and that at a time when it is claimed by M. 
 il^menceau that they are all overstaffed.*' The problem of 
 Bnsions is no more than a variation upon a similar theme. 
 
 " Revve Sodaliste, 1909, p. 388. 
 
 *° Except at England where they have largely been met. But for a 
 crudescence of the evils of patronage see an article in the Civilian for 
 ov. 23, '12. 
 
 "Cf. the Report to the Chamber on the Budget des Postes of M. 
 oulens, in 1908. 
 
 *^ Bulletin de Statistigue du Ministkre des Finances, July, 1905. 
 
 « Journal Officiel, May 15, 1907. 
 
332 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 The problem of administrative discipline and pronaotion is 
 far more complex, and the report of every commission that 
 has discussed the subject shows that it has nowhere been satis- 
 factorily solved. The right to discipline a civil servant has as 
 its aim the repression of such conduct as may hurt the condi- 
 tion of the pubUc service. That, after all, is simple and obvious 
 enough; but the way in which the repression is to be exercised 
 involves immense difficulties. Is it action taken by the minis- 
 ter in the name of the state? Does he therein occupy the posi- 
 tion of an employer who settles at his pleasure how he will deal 
 with an inefficient workman? Is it action taken by the minis- 
 ter in the name of the state, as the head, for instance, of a 
 railway company may act as the representative of the corporate 
 person? Or is it, as the civil servants claim, action taken still, 
 indeed, by the minister, but acting as the head of a professional 
 and technical service temporarily placed under his control? 
 The tendency of ministers themselves is to act upon the first 
 hypothesis ; it is only natural, when the evolution of the idea of 
 public service is borne in mind, that this should be the case. 
 Every minister is in theory charged with the compilation of 
 rules to deal with the officials in his department. It is not, 
 then, difficult for him to assume that if he can make and un- 
 make them at his will, his power is autocratic. The hierarchical 
 structure of French administration^* tends, in any case, to 
 identify order with a somewhat arbitrary exercise of power. 
 Discipline, it has been argued, is impossible if democratic co- 
 operation on the part of the civil service is admitted. That 
 autocracy is naturally a matter of grave suspicion to the official. 
 He desires to replace it by a method which will enable him to 
 share in the determination of punishments. He has, indeed, 
 already a certain share in the councils of discipUne; but this is 
 always minority representation and rarely elective.'*' He is 
 anxious, moreover, that official control should be strictly lim- 
 ited to acts done in the course of pubhc employment. If M. 
 Negre, for example, displays a poster containing an open letter 
 
 « For a brilliant analysis cf. Duguit, "L'Etat," Vol. I, p. 475 f, and the 
 caustic analysis of M. Leroy in the third chapter of his "Transformations 
 de la Puissance Publique." 
 
 <' Cf. Bonnard, "De la Repression des Fautes." 
 
AUTHORITY I.N THE MODERN STATE 333 
 
 to the Prime Minister of a. somewliat critical character, he 
 ought not to be penalised for an act obviously done, so it is 
 claimed, in his capacity as a citizen.** The civil servant demands 
 the replacement of such arbitrary power by a system of guar- 
 antees. The entrance to public employment should be so regu- 
 lated as to put it beyond the reach of ordinary ministerial 
 control. Fairness should be guaranteed by communicating to 
 every civil servant the documents upon which his position 
 depends. Punishments should no longer be arbitrary and acci- 
 dental. They should be applied not secretly and from above, but 
 openly, and from below. The council of discipline should cease 
 to be a mere board of advice composed of the minister's nomi- 
 nees. It is only by the removal of these grievances that the civil 
 service can recover its confidence in the goodwill of government. 
 
 And as with discipline, so with promotion. If there is perhaps 
 a tendency among officials to lay too great emphasis on length 
 of service — the natural tendency of the expert to confuse an- 
 tiquity with experience — some safeguard is surely needed 
 against the abuse of favouritism. Unless a bulwark is erected 
 against promotion at pleasure, the deputy, as now, will pick 
 out his candidates for promotion. There are numerous instances 
 of the acceleration of advancement for purely political reasons. 
 At present there is too little guarantee that a meritorious con- 
 tinuity of service may count at all. No precautions are taken 
 to see that those whose names are accepted for promotion are 
 really worthy of it. A vacancy in a higher position is filled in 
 the most arbitrary fashion. Where seniority counts, it counts 
 absolutely instead of relatively, so that no precaution can be 
 taken to see that it is coupled with efiiciency. No system 
 exists which regulates the transference of officials from one de- 
 partment to another. If a civil servant advances, as he thinks, too 
 slowly in one department, he uses political influence to obtain a po- 
 sition two or three grades higher in another. It is obvious enough 
 that thus to remain at the mercy of what is practically the minis- 
 ter's whim should make the official demand the security of pro- 
 fessional standards organised under a charter of independence.*' 
 
 « "Libres Entretiens," 4th series (1907-8), p. 230 f. 
 
 " Of. Demartial "Les Statut des Fonctionnaires" (1909) and Georgin. 
 'Les Statut des Fonctionnaires." (1911). I have discussed below thesig- 
 lificance of these claims. ' 
 
334 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 No one can doubt the broad, conclusion implied in these 
 grievances. Each of them is too vast to make individual effort 
 in any probable sense productive. Each of them demands 
 concerted action if speedy redress is to be obtained. That is 
 why the last decade has seen the immense growth of trade- 
 unionism among the civil servants. That growth was itself 
 the effect of an intolerable situation, and without it the crisis 
 would never have occurred. But it is one thing to form asso- 
 ciations and another to secure their recognition. The law of 
 1884 admitted association for the purpose of safeguarding pro- 
 fessional interests; but it is absolutely clear that its extension 
 to the civil service was at no moment intended.'*^ The law of 
 1901 permits the formation of societies for any general purpose 
 not contrary to public well-being; but it lacks the professional 
 and economic connotation that attaches to the law of 1884.^^ 
 It is the benefit of the first law that the civil servants demand. 
 Without it, and all that it implies, the right of association would 
 be fruitless. For ministers have been prodigal in their prom- 
 ises; and it is sufficiently clear that the mere formation of 
 amiable and well-intentioned groups who have neither threats 
 to make, nor the weapons with which to fulfil them can prove 
 at all effective.^" 
 
 The result has been to drive the lower grades of the civil 
 service more and more in the direction of the syndicalist move- 
 ment. Teachers, postal workers, hospital warders, have formed 
 trade-unions despite the legal prohibition that seems to exist. 
 They attempt to join -the Bourses de Travail." The more 
 eager spirits do not hesitate to claim, and sometimes to secure, 
 affiliation with the Confederation Gen^rale du Travail; and 
 th^us to make proclaim of their eager desire to overthrow the 
 bourgeois state. *^ Prohibitions and dismissals have made httle 
 difference. Dismissals can always be recalled by pressure in 
 the chamber, and since they are the only means by which the 
 
 "8 Cf. below. 
 
 *^ Paiil-Boncour, "Les Syndicats de Fonctionnaires," p. 1.5. 
 '? Alibert, "Les Syndicats de Fonctionnaires," p. 84. 
 " Cf. the prohibitive decree of August 11, 1905. 
 
 '2 Cf. the Open Letter to M. Clfimenceau reprinted by Leroy in "Syn- 
 dicats et Services Publics." 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 335 
 
 prohibition can be enforced it is not surprising that they remain 
 ineffective.^' Nor are the different departments remaining 
 distinct. Federations and congresses, sometimes even interna- 
 tional in character, testify to the community of feehng by 
 which the civil service is penetfated." 
 
 The implication of the demand to associate under the law 
 of 1884 is, of course, perfectly clear. When the association be- 
 comes a recognised trade-union it possesses the right to strike; 
 and certainly there are few among the more advanced fonc- 
 tionnaires who deny their appreciation of this weapon. If it is 
 answered that the strike is not only brutal but often ineffective, 
 the civil servant makes reply, just as the syndicalist, that 
 nothing is so likely to give his colleagues their proper sense of 
 class-consciousness. Indeed, the emphasis on the law of 1884 
 is, above all, an emphasis of sentiment. ^^ The humble fonc- 
 tionnaire cannot help feeling that to call him a member of the 
 governing classes is an absurd mis-application of terms. Rela- 
 tive to the government, his situation is exactly the situation of 
 an ordinary member of the working-classes and the equation 
 of position demands, in his view, the equation of methods. ^^ 
 Arguments derived from legal theory rather naturally leave 
 him a little cold. When he is told by so sympathetic an ob- 
 server as M. Duguit*^ that a strike in the civil service is sub- 
 versive of its very nature he is not likely, until his grievances 
 have received their fundamental remedy, to be overwhelmed 
 with a sense of shame. He will say quite simply that he is im- 
 mediately interested not in the functioning of a service for 
 ends of which he does not approve by methods from which he 
 suffers, but in taking the shortest route to a transformation of 
 the whole system. He has technical ideals without doubt; 
 but one cannot have technical ideals until an adequate milieu 
 for their application has been obtained. 
 
 « Cf. Journal Offieiel, July 11, 1906, March 10, 1908, June 22, 1909. 
 " Beaubois, Mouvemenl Socialiste, April, 1909, p. 291. 
 " Bougie, "Syndicats de Fonctionnaires," Remie Metaphysique et Morale. 
 1907, p. 671. 
 
 '« Foumifere "Les Fonctions de L'Etat," Revue Socialiste, 1907, p. 40. 
 " "Droit Social, Droit Individuel," pp. 134-7. 
 
336 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 III. THE CLAIMS OF THE CIVIL SERVICE 
 
 What, obviously enough, is important in all this is the end it 
 has in view. It is not so much a revolt as a revolution, and it 
 it at the heart of the unified state that it is aimed. The reality 
 of the grievances under which the civil service has laboured is 
 unquestionable; but the sentiment to which they have given 
 rise is no longer to be assuaged by their amendment. For the 
 real problem that has been created is not a doubt of the end to 
 which the state is directed, but a doubt whether the present 
 mechanisms of government can in fact attain that end.^^ The 
 need of authority is undoubted ; but challenge is issued to that 
 authority simply because the fonctionnaire no longer believes 
 that its autocratic exercise can achieve the purposes for which, 
 theoretically, it exists. The fact that authority depends on its 
 acceptance by those over whom it is exerted no longer needs 
 demonstration. Here, as elsewhere, the capital fact is demon- 
 strated that the fundamental problem of political science is 
 not how power originated, but how it can be justified.^' What 
 the theorists of this movement have done is to divide the state 
 into rulers and subjects and to proclaim to the latter that the 
 object of the state cannot, in the present synthesis, be fulfilled. 
 So that they are compelled by conviction to join hands with 
 the revolutionary elements of modern society that, from their 
 joint efforts, a new state may be born. 
 
 Even so barely stated, the argument is far-reaching enough; 
 but the method of its detailed presentation gives it a strength 
 that is even more striking. Unquestionably, of course, the 
 movement contains men of moderate opinions who did not 
 sympathise with the active enmity to the state displayed in the 
 postal strike and desire no more than an improvement in their 
 position.^" Undoubtedly also, as in every great movement, the 
 opinion of the associations has, for the most part, been guided by 
 the ability and energy of a few. But, equally clearly, it is this 
 active minority that has formulated the accepted principles of 
 
 '* Cf. Berth, "Marohands, Intellectuels, Politiciens," in Mouvement 
 Socialiste," 1907-8. 
 
 " As Roiosseau and T. H. Green clearly perceived. I have discussed the 
 problem in the first chapter of this book. 
 
 *" Pouget, "Les Bases du Syndicalisme," p. 21. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 337 
 
 the movement, and their leadership is responsible both for the 
 direction it has taken and the successes it has attained. ^^ Their 
 attitude is simply that of the militant proletariat. They look 
 upon the administrative world as basically akin to that of indus- 
 try. The class-struggle is no less real there. The humbler civil- 
 servant there, as in industry can free himself only by his own 
 efforts. His triumph will come only from the strength and 
 power of his associations which must more and more attempt 
 the domination of the services to which he belongs. By the 
 strength of those groups he can attain the desired reforms, if 
 not peaceably, then by the accepted methods of direct action. 
 The result will be the transformation of the state. 
 
 It is an arresting analogy that is not without its fascination. 
 The hiunbler fonctionnaires seem, undoubledly, to constitute 
 an administrative proletariat. The hierarchical control exer- 
 cised over them by their technical superiors is in no sense likely 
 to produce any real sentiment of co-operation. The attitude 
 adopted to them by the parliamentarians is in every sense lam- 
 entable. It is only at a crisis that they obtain a hearing; but 
 the pronaises so prodigally made are rarely, if ever, fulfilled. The 
 statesmen are too occupied Avith the mechanisms of politics to 
 care for the processes by which their decisions are fulfilled. And 
 within the administration itself there is a hierarchy of classes 
 which corresponds to that of the general social organisation.'^ 
 The division between the privileged few who are well-paid and 
 the mass whose salary is inadequate is very marked. The aver- 
 age civil-servant cannot hope to arrive at those posts; and 
 where promotion is secure, it applies only to the central admin- 
 istration and not to the provinces." There is, in fact, a general 
 disproportion between labour and reward exactly as in private 
 industry." And if the higher fonctionnaires thus reap the profit 
 of their subordinates' work, the state itself is for the mass of 
 civil servants simply an employer. That is, of course, clear 
 
 " Cf. Hannignie, op. cit., p. 145, Journal Offidel, May 14, 1907 (M. 
 Briand). 
 
 «= Cf . Foumi^re, Revue Socialiste, 1907, p. 40. 
 
 " Cf. EconomUte Frangais, Nov. 18, 1905, p. 737 (a civil-servant's 
 letter). 
 
 " Leroy, "Transformations de La Puissance Publique," p. 222. 
 
338 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 when it makes matches or builds ships. It is not less an em- 
 ployer when it takes charge of pubhc instruction. Its work of 
 administration requires a maHual and intellectual proletariat 
 just like any business house. Even in its judicial aspect, so 
 M. Leroy has claimed,"^ the reahty of this character is apparent. 
 Clearly, if the state is an employer its servants are wage-earners, 
 and they cannot, through the accidental choice of employment, 
 deprive themselves of means which will prevent their exploita- 
 tion. Their position, as M. Millerand has said,'^ is no rnore than 
 a particular instance of a general industrial problem. The fight 
 is a struggle against privileges, whether, as in industry, those of 
 the rich, or as in pohtics, those of the government.^' 
 
 If they are a proletariat, they must, like the workers, accom- 
 plish their own salvation. To that end a sense of unity is vital 
 and nothing can be gained until it has been created. So the 
 fonctionnaires have not only formed what correspond to craft- 
 unions, but also federations of workers in the different depart- 
 ments. They have seen that an injury to one may affect the 
 strength of the whole; and they have not hesitated to make 
 corporate protest against individual injustice.** They have 
 supported one another at times of crisis. They have held con- 
 gresses where assurances of fraternity have been exchanged. 
 And their feeling of identity with the working-classes has led to 
 an important rapprochement between them. Its basis, indeed, 
 was already prepared in the existence of an undeniable prole- 
 tariat in the state-monopolies;*' and the steps thence to civil 
 servants who in the technical sense are associated with the 
 administration was not a great one. The teachers were the first 
 to take action. Not only did they attempt to join the Bourses 
 de Travail — despite ministerial prohibition'" — ^but they have 
 gone so far as to seek affiliation with the Conf^d&ation G6nerale 
 du Travail which is avowedly revolutionary in purpose. Un- 
 doubtedly, indeed, that action has failed to secure unanimous 
 
 ^ "Syndicats et Services Publics." p. 187. 
 «« See Le Temps, Feb. 25, 1906. 
 " Revue Hebdomadaire, August 3, 1907, p. 13. 
 '' Harmignie, op. eit., 91. 
 
 " Cf. Beaubois, Mouvement Socialiste, Jan. 1909. 
 '» Decree of August 11, 1905. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 339 
 
 support. But what is important is the fact that it should have 
 won any support at all. "We shall march by its side," said 
 M. N^gre, the outstanding person in the movement," "to work 
 together for the emancipation of the industrial and intellectual 
 proletariat." M. Negre is a teacher, and his attitude is the more 
 striking in that the intellectual position of the teacher in^ France 
 would seem to relate him to the middle class; but the avowed 
 exponents of official syndicalism have at length accepted their 
 adhesion.'^ 
 
 Nor is there any distinction of method between the mihtant 
 fonctionnaire and the militant proletariat. The whole purpose 
 of their desire to benefit rather from the law of 1884 than from 
 that of 1901 is the ability the former affords of using the weapon 
 of the strike. "The collective suspension of work," says M. 
 Briquet," "is the indispensable aim of every labour-group which 
 desires effectively to promote the collective interests of its mem- 
 bers." Indeed, a simple association, the Association of Postal 
 Workers, has not hesitated to disregard the technical distinction 
 between the two laws. It is for them simply a sterile discussion 
 of doctrine with which they have no concern."^ The police of 
 Lyons did not hesitate to go on strike, and, after the face of the 
 government had been saved, it appears that they were success- 
 ful.'* The teachers, indeed, in some respects the most advanced 
 of all the fonctionnaires, have not proceeded so far; for it is 
 clear that in their case the temporary suspension of a public 
 service that would be involved, does not relate with sufficient 
 intimacy to the necessary conduct of the national fife. If these 
 strikes have not had the large results of which their leaders 
 dreamed, they have at any rate shown the powerlessness of law 
 to prevent them. They have demonstrated the all-important 
 fact that a challenge can be issued to government. They have 
 suggested, since the movement is only at its beginning, that it is 
 a challenge to which- there may one day be no possible reply. 
 
 It is, then, essentially a revolutionary spirit with which the 
 
 " Harmignie, op. cit., p. 105. 
 
 " Beaubois Momement Socialiste, 1905, p. 505. 
 
 " Mouuement Socialiste, 1903, p. 147. 
 
 " Though it has discussed. 
 
 " Journal Officiel, May 23, 1905. cf. the London police strike of 1918. 
 
340 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 government is called upon to deal. Exactly as the ultimate aim 
 of the industrial movement is an attempt to create an industrial 
 democracy, so do the fonctionnaires aim at the creation of an 
 administrative democracy. They are compelled, therefore, to be 
 suspicious of power. The state is to them, as it is to the workers, 
 the' real citadel to assault. To attack the government is to sap 
 the foundations of an authority the basic purpose of which seems 
 to them illegitimate.^^ The present system of administrative 
 organisation seems to them unsatisfactory simply because its 
 underlying principles are inconsistent with the aims they have 
 in view. So long as the hierarchy is maintained, the democrati- 
 sation of administrative power is impossible. So long as the 
 present division exists between the higher civil service and the- 
 [lumbler fonctionnaires, the former, whose position is, for the 
 most part, secure, are bound to gravitate towards the deputies 
 md make the civil service political instead of technical in char- 
 acter. That is why the fonctionnaire refuses his confidence to 
 :he Chamber. Its object is too different to be compatible with 
 lis own. It is, so to speak, itself a trade-union and itsadminis-. 
 :rative exertions are only one of the ways in which it promotes 
 ;he interests of its members. It also, then, uses a kind of direct 
 iction for its purposes; and the gesture of the civil service is 
 ihus not distinct in quality from that of the politician. This 
 iiscontent with authority expresses itself in many ways— open 
 jontempt for administrative regulations," vituperation of the 
 ParUament,'^ distrust even of the repubhc itself. "We no 
 onger believe in words," said an able representative of this 
 Lttitude,'^ "we demand realities; we have lost our attachment 
 or forms. We calculate their worth and measure their produc- 
 ivity. We no longer sacrifice .ourselves for sentiment, we con- 
 ult our interests. The heroic times have passed away; the hour 
 if practical effort has arrived." 
 
 The civil service, indeed, has not stopped its effort at the mere 
 riticism of the administrative system. It has been compelled 
 reahse that the administrative system is, in fact, but the re- 
 
 " Cf. M. Jaurgs in L' Humanite, May 1, 1908. 
 " Cf . citations in "Harmignie," op. cit., p. 126. 
 " Ihid., p. 128. 
 " And cf. Ch. Dupuy in Le Soleil, April 5, 1909. 
 
AUTHORITY IX THE MODERN STATE 341 
 
 flex of a larger whole. There are other institutions within the 
 state which equally constitute its stalwart defences. Its mili- 
 tary organisation is essentially a reservoir of state-power. To 
 become a soldier is so it is argued, to lose contact with the work- 
 ing-class, and to destroy a system which thus uses that class 
 against itself is clearly fundamental. A congress of teachers 
 has pledged itself to pacifism, and some of them have suffered 
 dismissal for the violence of their antimilitarist propaganda.*" 
 As is usually the case, the offspring of pacifist doctrine has been 
 internationalism, and at any rate before 1914, many members 
 of the civil service had gone far towards its adoption. 
 
 The fonctionnaires, in fact, do not conceal from themselves 
 that it is nothing less than an entire social reconstruction at 
 which they are aiming. That they can effect it alone, they do not 
 for a moment profess to beheve ; but they urge that government 
 normally disposes of so great a power that without their assist- 
 ance a successful revolution can be hardly accomplished. Nor, 
 given the conditions, is that an exaggerated assumption. Each 
 group of them, moreover, has its function in the task. It is the 
 duty of the teacher to begin in childhood the revolutionary 
 education of the people; while those actually concerned with 
 the technical work of administration can overthrow the whole 
 machine at the critical moment of its functioning. M. Jaures, 
 indeed, was in nowise disturbed by the character of the move- 
 ment. " The afl&Uation," he said,*^ of civil servants to the labour 
 movement, to the class-struggle, is a revolutionary fact. It is 
 not less than a revolution when the servants of the state work 
 to reconstruct the basis of that social order of which the state 
 is the expression and the guardian." It is a movement which 
 has penetrated every section of the civil service. It is ably or- 
 ganized and its propaganda is conducted with relentless energy. 
 It has a brilliant hterature, and a press of its own. It has definite 
 ends to pursue, and it is evolving means by which those ends 
 may be attained. It is a movement which at every stage of its 
 progress, has been marked by the courageous termination of its 
 leaders. Certain it is that one who is at all interested in the 
 
 •• Journal Offidel, June 27, 1908, Guiraud, "L'Ecole et La Famille," 
 p. 111. 
 
 " Journal Offidel, May 15, 1907. 
 
12 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 evelopment of political processes dare neglect the richness of 
 s possibilities. 
 
 For, after all, no social movement is unique in its age. Politi- 
 il change has links with the past so strict and so far-reaching 
 lat it is rarely possible to ascribe novelty to what the heralds 
 ! an idea themselves deem striking innovation. Certainly this 
 
 the case with administrative syndicalism. It represents a 
 ■isis for which there has been long and careful preparation. It 
 part of a larger federal synthesis which has ramifications 
 iroughout the industrial world. The very solutions it proposes 
 ive intellectual ancestors which were themselves the product 
 ■ their time. This is not, indeed, to argue that administrative 
 ^ndicahsm is a phenomenon so ordinary that it can with safety 
 3 neglected. It draws a special importance from a situation 
 hich has of necessity tended to throw it into striking relief, 
 i has succeeded simply because the evolution it summarises 
 
 beginning at last to translate itself into terms of practical 
 ihievement. It is a variation upon the theme of economic 
 deration which is itself the offspring of a breakdown in the 
 achinery of capitaHst organisation. It represents in relation 
 I the state simply what the large aspects of syndicahsm repre- 
 nt in industrial change. It gives a new connotation to sover- 
 gnty. It federalises the will of the state. The hues, indeed, 
 
 its evolution can not yet with any certainty be drawn. We 
 ,n use descriptive terms, suggest tendencies, discover signs of 
 lange. In the elements of opposition are to be discovered the 
 eans of more intimate analysis. From whatever source they 
 e derived, it is a crisis that the facts suggest. The tidal wave 
 
 democratic advance has at last reached the inmost recesses 
 
 the imperial state . Our task is the measurement of the energy 
 conveys. 
 
 IV. IMPLICATIONS 
 
 ' is usual to distinguish three different systems of administra- 
 te organisation.82 What has been called the monarchical so- 
 tion would leave the civil service at the mercy of the execu- 
 te power. The present regime, that is to say, might be 
 tered in its accidentals, but its fundamental features would 
 ^ Salaun, Revue Politique et Parliamentaire, Jan. 10, 1908, p. 148 seq. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 343 
 
 remain unchanged. Such a method, it is clear, would leave 
 the main cause of the present unrest entirely unsolved. It 
 would involve a patent contradiction between a democratically 
 organised political system and an autocratic administrative 
 system. It would withdraw a whole field of social activity 
 From the dominant influences of the time. It would look, not 
 to the organisation that is to be, but to the past history of the 
 state. It could be maintained only by violence, and probably 
 at the sacrifice of administrative efficiency. The second means 
 is its direct antithesis. It proposes to hand over to the civil 
 service the control of administrative functions. The political 
 head of a department would state his demands, and his orders 
 would be fulfilled by the fonctionnaires themselves. The de- 
 partment would be in every way autonomous, so that there 
 would be no room left for the grievances by which the service 
 is oppressed. This, clearly enough, is the organisation which 
 meets with most favour among the civil servants themselves. 
 It transforms them into a technical profession, and it leaves 
 no opportunity for personal causes external to the service to 
 interfere with its functioning. The third solution is midway 
 between the two others. It envisages a statutory organisation 
 of the civil service. The minister will remain in control, but it 
 will be a legally conditioned control. Every step of his policy 
 will be conditioned by statute. The method of promotion, the 
 redress of grievance, administrative responsibility, the mechan- 
 sm of suggestion, will be at every stage controlled by legal 
 regulations. The vise of the monarchical system wiD thus dis- 
 ippear while the danger of administrative independence of the 
 lational life is sufficiently safeguarded. The justice of the com- 
 jlaints urged against the monarchical system is admitted, but 
 t is not felt that they justify so great an innovation as admin- 
 strati ve syndicalism would entail. 
 
 Very clearly, the starting-point of any enquiry must discuss 
 ;he origins of modern centralisation. That is in nowise doubt- 
 ul. We need not agree with Taine's theory that the Revolu- 
 ion resulted in the deterioration of human nature'' to agree 
 ,hat the general chaos prevented the employment of the mech- 
 misms of liberalism. Where the very existence of power was 
 
 » "Regime Moderne," Bk. II, Ch. I. 
 
t4 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 ireatened, it was only by its concentration that it could sur- 
 ive. What Napoleon did was to synthesise that power within 
 imself; and the equality that remained was the equality of 
 
 common subjection to his will. He realised that action in 
 le modern state must be as certainly unified as deliberation 
 mst be multiple. He demanded from the civil service an 
 bsolute abandonment of their personality.^^ It was the fulfil- 
 lent of Sieyes' prevision. "Power," he had said^^ "will come 
 •om above; from below there will be simply confidence," and 
 lat was no more than a simple statement of fact. And cer- 
 linly his administrative system was not his least durable work, 
 'he country was satisfied with an administration that was at 
 ny rate efficient; and the reaction upon it of political democracy 
 -as as yet too novel to be at all impressive. So that Napoleon's 
 accessors could not only use his system but even extend it. 
 Ce sont des administres," writes M. Chardon,^^ "qui de propos 
 elib^r^s, etendent chaque jour I'empire de I'administration," 
 ad, indeed the fact is obvious enough; for not the least im- 
 ortant result of the extension of collectivism has been the 
 sneral expectation that government not only can, but must, 
 leet every conceivable emergency. ^^ 
 
 But while administrative power was thus extended, its exer- 
 se underwent no democratic percolation. The executive' 
 ower retained its imperial purple. Nothing in the whole path 
 f the nineteenth century seemed able to influence its organisa- 
 on. Government, as in the time of Napoleon, is the repre- 
 intative of the sovereign people, and to confide power to 
 lose who are not elected would be to create a state within a 
 ;ate and destroy the unity of the whole. That is why Taine's 
 rilUant description of the Napoleonic prefect remains not less 
 ■ue today than of the time of which he wrote.^^ The civil 
 irvant is not an actor in the events of which he is the admin- 
 trator. He is a kind of perpetual secretary; and M. Chardon 
 
 '* See Tame's impressive remarks, "Regime Moderne," Vol. I, p. 170. 
 
 ^ Ibid., I, 168. 
 
 " "L' Administration de la France," p. 2. 
 
 " This was very strikingly evinced in the food crisis of 1917 which led 
 
 Mr. Hoover's appointment as administrator. 
 
 88 "Regime Moderne," Vol. II, p. 240 f. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 345 
 
 nsists that there are able and competent men who never have 
 a, single decision to take throughout their career.*' The service 
 is recruited in exactly the same way as at the Revolution; 
 sverything is controlled by the central power. If France has 
 no longer Napoleon, she has his ministers, and they are less 
 successful in their psychology in the degree to which they lack 
 bis personal fascination. Here, again, it was Taine who per- 
 ceived the real crux of the problem. "They do not," he said,'" 
 'look upon human association ... as concerted initiative 
 venerated from below . . . but as a hierarchy of authorities 
 Imposed from above." Where the fundamental change in the 
 modern state is an evolution almost directly antithetic to this 
 attitude, it has left untouched the civil service. Not even the 
 admission of corporate freedom has penetrated within the 
 executive realm.'* 
 
 It is a persistence as difficult to justify as it is easy to under- 
 stand. It is difficult to justify because it is an apparent and, 
 as it seems, unnecessary contradiction of democratic govern- 
 ment. It is surely an erroneous attitude to separate compe- 
 tence and responsibility; and that, in fact, is the result of the 
 present system. It is easy to understand because, from a long 
 historical chain of events,'^ the average citizen in the modern 
 democracy seems anxious, above all, to perform his pohtical 
 functions vicariously. What he asks from the professional 
 politician is orderly government and he rarely examines the 
 means by which it is attained. Whether M. Cl^menceau ever 
 really remarked that he could remain in office so long as he 
 wanted,'' the fact remains that he epitomized very neatly the 
 
 «' "L' Administration de la France," p. 9. 
 
 »« "Regime Moderne," Vol. I, p. 213. 
 
 " Cf . the admirable remarks of M. Seignobos, "Hist, of Cont. Europe," 
 p. 222 f . 
 
 " They have been brilUantly analysed, psychologically, for England by 
 Mr. Graham Wallas in his "Human Nature in Politics" and for American 
 Society by Mr. Lippmann inhis "Preface to Politics." In institutional terms 
 of the magistral analysis of Ostrogorski,"Democraoy and the Organisation 
 of Political Parties." I do not know of any similar French work, but the 
 syndicalist criticisms of the modern state, as M.Lagardelle's "Socialisme 
 Ouvrier" esp., Part I, are very valuable on this point. 
 
 ™ Duguit, "Droit Social, Droit Individuel," p. 129. 
 
546 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 typical governmental attitude to the civil service. Democracy- 
 seems to have considered that the security of its life depended 
 Dn the retention of the hierarchical system.'* That may, per- 
 laps, have been true before the separation when the safety of 
 ;he republic was still matter of debate. But with the assurance 
 )f its survival, the Napoleonic system is already obsolete. 
 
 That, indeed, is the real meaning of the growth of adminis- 
 ;rative syndicalism. It has come because there is now no rea- 
 son to restrain it. Antiquity is not a reason; and democracy 
 s, internally at least, in httle danger of disappearance. The 
 executive power can not make a plea for its autocratic exercise 
 vhen the army is no longer a source of disloyalty, and the 
 ;hurch has been reduced to a shadow of its former influence. 
 The only reason for the retention of the present system is the 
 30wer it places in the hands of statesmen. It enables them to 
 jorrupt both the civil service and the electorate. The one he 
 :an hold by the fear of dismissal, the other by the hope of 
 )ffice. But it is too obviously humihating for the civil servant 
 o remain subject both to public and private control. The only 
 ustification of arbitrary power is the impossibility of demo- 
 cratic power. That impossibility the civil servant denies. He 
 naintains that it is based upon an entirely false conception of 
 he implications of sovereignty. The theory that the state 
 aust, by its very definition, be irresponsible seems to him 
 nthout root in political fact. He knows what that irresponsi- 
 )ility has meant in the past. He has weighed it and rejected it. 
 The hour has come for new systems. 
 
 It is in some such fashion that the monarchical system is 
 ejected, and, psychologically at least, there seems every rea- 
 on for its rejection. No administrative system can be ade- 
 [uate in which power is concentrated and not disturbed. No 
 ervice can attract ability where the influence it offers is hidden 
 ,nd potential, not real and responsible.'^ Nor are the syndi- 
 ahsts piore enamoured of a status that is guaranteed by 
 larhament. They are too suspicious of the state to feel secure 
 t what emanates from its organs.'^ It is, after all, from the 
 
 '' Journal Offidel, M. Cl^menceau, Speech of March 13, 1908. 
 
 «5 Mr. Wallas' admirable remarks, "The Great Society," pp. 285-8, 290 f . 
 
 '" For interesting evidence of a similar suspicion in England cf , Bulletin 
 f U. S. Bureau of Labor, Vol. 5, p. 36. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 347 
 
 Parliament above all that they have suffered; and it is largely 
 by the manipulation of the civil service that the majority in 
 the chamber retains its power. They do not believe in the mod- 
 ern state simply because theirs has been the most intimate 
 experience of it. What laws have been suggested are all of them 
 conservative in character. They attempt the compromise of 
 two irreconcilable theories. The administration wants to exer- 
 cise a final control where the civil service demands autonomy. 
 Nor are they eager for a special position in the state. That 
 suggestion is for them no more than an erroneous idea derived 
 from the original irresponsibility of the sovereign state. It is 
 a decaying theory," and they will not found their rehef upon 
 it. Nor is it, in any case, destined very long to survive. Every 
 day, the jurisprudence of the Conseil ct'Etat makes one more 
 inroad upon its life.^' The dogma is already too seriously 
 compromised to be capable any longer of vaUd appHcation. 
 It would stiU leave their relation to the state non-contractual 
 in character to regulate their position by statute. What-ihey 
 desire is a service on equal terms, a right to make their situa- 
 tion a part of the common law. Nor are they — and this is of 
 supreme importance — willing to enjoy a situation which would 
 in fact break the bonds of their friendship with the industrial 
 proletariat. For to attach themselves to the present state is 
 to surrender the right to work for its transformation. It was 
 exactly the need of that change they above all felt at the time 
 of their original revolt against its excesses. Clearly, to accept 
 a favour from its hands would be to desert not merely those 
 who stood by them in their need, but also the original and 
 avowed purpose of their movement. They will not share in so 
 great a self-stultification. 
 
 So that for them there is no alternative save the monarchical 
 and syndicalist solutions. They reject the first because an 
 organization which deprives the workers of a voice in the 
 determination of their labour is in fact psychologically and 
 morally inadequate. The second alone is satisfactory because 
 there .only is there guarantee that the humanity of the admin- 
 istrative proletariat is recognised. There only can the method 
 
 " Cf. Duguit, "Le Droit Social, Le Droit Individual," p. 72. 
 
 «' Cf. Duguit, "Les Transformations du Droit Public," pp. 65-73. 
 
348 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 of action be in such fashion a fusion of wills that every 
 voice can find representation in the result,'^ can make admin- 
 istrative personality democratic in a corporate sense. They 
 believe, moreover, that institutional evolution is far more in ac- 
 cord with the position they have taken up than with the pro- 
 posal of a statute. The parhamentary solution does not, after 
 all, depend upon an improvement in the condition of the people 
 as a whole. Thereby merely to base government upon number 
 is still to leave it open to the pathetic manipulation by which 
 it has been traduced during the nineteenth century,!"" f^p ^g 
 are less confident than before that majority-rule is- a final 
 solution. They point to the increasing development — common 
 to the whole world — of a pohtical life outside the ordinary 
 cadres of parhamentary systems. "^ Not only are they, as it 
 seems, determined to make the government inferior to law by 
 making it responsible, but also, by associations of every kind, 
 they bring pressure to bear upon the legislative process. It is 
 a new and striking effort to bring authority within the bounds 
 of popular control."^ It makes it less hkely to remain merely a 
 weapon in the hands of those who exercise it. Nor can the 
 significance of the elaboration of legislative projects by those 
 who have a professional relation to their functioning be under- 
 estimated.'"* What we are beginning to see is virtually law- 
 making by those over whom the particular statute -will exercise 
 its empire. To say that the system is in its infancy is in nowise 
 to beUttle its imphcations. It is a new source of legislative 
 power, even if it be an indirect one; and it clearly- bears, in very 
 
 '' Cf. the speech of M. Sembat at the Congress of the Agents des Postes, 
 June 5, 1905; and his paper in Documents du Progr&s, May, 1909, p. 408. 
 
 "" This dissatisfaction with the merely numerical solution is admirably 
 expressed by a publicist who cannot be accused of syndicalist ideas, M. Ch. 
 Benoist; of. his "Crise de I'Etat Moderne." 
 
 "' Cf. the very important remarks of M. Ma,xime Leroy, "Libres 
 Entretiens," 4me series, p. 385 f. 
 
 "2 Cf. M. Leroy, "La Loi," p. 346 f. 
 
 I'" This is not less true of America than of France. Cf . Leroy, "La Loi," 
 p. 212 f, with the fact that men like Professors Williston and Brannan of 
 the Harvard Law School have been charged with the drafting of statutes 
 which political bodies pass into law. The influence of such professional 
 autonomy as that of doctors and lawyers is, of course, analogous. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 349 
 
 decisive fashion upon the nature of parliamentary authority. 
 For the preparation of law by the private initiative of experts 
 is the preparation of law by men whose opinion it is difficult 
 to neglect.'"'' Public opinion may be a reserve power, but no 
 one can mistake the ultinaa,te control it can exert, and public 
 opinion tends more and more to appreciate the evolution of 
 this technical legislation. It almost seems, in fact, that a de- 
 mocracy which has been thwarted of its authority by its unifi- 
 cation has found new means of its assertion by dividing the 
 source of power. 
 
 In such an atmosphere, the attitude which regards the state 
 as in any sense an institution of a special character can hardly 
 survive. Once the equahty of citizens before the law is postu- 
 lated, it is evident that their internal relations must be demo- 
 cratically organised. We have passed, as M. Duguit has in- 
 sisted, from a regime of subjective rights to a regime of objective 
 duties. That, from those duties, rights may find a secondary 
 justification does not alter the fact that the real defence of 
 authority is to show the objective necessity of its exercise.'"* 
 Let it be granted that the personality of the state is real, it 
 yet does not follow that corporate personality begets rights 
 superior to individual rights.'"^ What each state-action must, 
 show' is that the force it entails produces a result so valuable that 
 the Ufe of 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 that theory is t)ased so much as the manner in 
 which they function. The principle, in fact, cannot be sepa- 
 rated from the process; its teleology is, at bottom, inductive. 
 Its intentions may be admirable; but judgment cannot be made 
 until the intention is realised in conduct. Exactly where the 
 modern state is being transformed is at the point where the 
 judgment upon its action has led to new methods of political 
 life. Since the only justification of government is the quahty 
 of life its pohcy secures, the members of the modern state are 
 
 »" Cruet, "La Vie du Droit," pp. 289, 332. 
 "* Cf . Chapter I, supra, on this point. 
 
 ™ M. Duguit has denied this; but, as I have elsewhere tried to show, 
 on insufficient grounds. 
 
150 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 eeking new centres of power. Administrative syndicalism is 
 m effort towards their realisation. 
 
 It is thus a kind of decentralisation for which the fonction- 
 laire is anxious. But it is not merely the reconstruction of 
 ,ncient territorial groupings for which he is concerned. It has, 
 ndeed, to some extent been tried already in France; and its 
 onnection with the anden regime has led the monarchist party 
 o lend it a somewhat eager support.'"' But territorial decen- 
 ralisation does not touch the real root of the problem. The 
 eal question to be resolved is that of internal organisation 
 nthin the different groups themselves. . Decentrahsation of a 
 )urely territorial kind is no guarantee of autonomy. Local 
 ontrol might be as difficult and static as centralised control. 
 The desire of the syndicalist is different. He urges that the 
 )usiness of government has now become so complex that it 
 annot maintain at once unity of purpose and unity of method. 
 The explanation that the interest of the state is single, does 
 lot, even if it be true, involve the need of unified administra- 
 ion. On the contrary, the administration of the state cannot 
 )e satisfactory so long as it is so organized. What is desired 
 3 to confide the operation of the different branches of the 
 tate to technical services acting under government control. 
 
 But that control would be a declaration of purpose and no 
 aore. Its actual execution would be the business of the de- 
 )artment concerned. Administrative autonomy would thus 
 lecome real and effective. The department would execute a 
 aw for government exactly as a contractor builds a ship for the 
 .dmiralty. It would know what was required and take the 
 lecessary measures. But its life would be self-determined. 
 ts method of response would be spontaneous and not auto- 
 natic. It would realise the spirit Rousseau envisaged when he 
 tiade the social . contract binding because it was mutual."* 
 
 "' Cf. above all J. Paul Boncour and Charles Maurras, "Un Nouveau 
 36bat sur la Decentralisation" passim. A curious book by H. Cellerier, 
 La Politique F6d6raliste" has much of interest on this point. The short 
 emarks of M. Duguit, Droit Social, Droit Individuel, p. 144 f, give the 
 iith of the matter; and M. Charles Brun, "Le R^gionalisme" is a useful 
 ummary of the whole attitude. 
 
 "8 "Contrat Social," II, IV. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 351 
 
 For the worker who had a certain power of independent re- 
 sponsibility would obtain, in such a system, exactly that psy- 
 chological situation which makes administration a human 
 thing. He would take part in deliberation. He would have 
 ample means of discussion, of suggestion, of experiment. His 
 task would become democratic even while it remained profes- 
 sional, simply because the compulsion of a purpose to be ful- 
 filled would not, by its method, obscure the possibility of a 
 free co-operation in its fulfillment."' 
 
 It is natural enough that where the evolution that is thus 
 envisaged is itself but on the threshold of its first dumb begin- 
 nings, detailed plans should be lacking. After all, this is not 
 an evolution that will be accomplished in a moment of time. 
 It is bound to proceed by stages, and to be temporarily deter- 
 mined by the fluctuations of its failures and successes. Whether, 
 for example, promotion would be self-regulating, or a matter 
 of internal choice, or of election by the members of the particu- 
 lar service, is not a matter for deliberate prophecy. Most of 
 the leaders of the movement have been wisely careful to ab- 
 stain from it. That upon which they have mainly laid insist- 
 ence, from their standpoint assuredly with commonsense, is 
 the fact of autonomy. What they have emphasised is the fact 
 that this autonomy must act as the destroyer of what is unac- 
 ceptable in the modern hierarchical system. Above all, they 
 have pointed out that self -regulation is the only effective guar- 
 antee of equal opportunity. What has been admirably termed 
 an inexorable subalternism is impossible where the administra- 
 tion is in fact a republic, imbued at every stage with the demo- 
 cratic spirit. The conduct of the service will be better simply 
 because men will obey with greater willingness a chief whose 
 position is itself the proof of competence than one of whose 
 powers they have had no reasonable demonstration. 
 
 The aim is not the aboUtion of society. The syndicalist 
 does not wish to make the administration a closed system im- 
 permeable to outside influence and outside control. To give 
 the schools to the teachers, the postal service to the postal 
 workers in full ownership is a solution that only a few of the 
 more extreme enthusiasts have claimed. For they are suffi- 
 
 "' Cf. Berthod, Revue Politique el Parlementaire, March 1906, p. 428. 
 
352 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 3iently alive to Mr. Wallas' grave warning"" not to desire a 
 restoration of that feudal structure which sought to solve the 
 Droblem of society by the unthinking and purposeless multi- 
 alication of groups. They recognize that society has its place 
 n every human equation, and that, as a consequence, it has 
 I right to an indirect control over everything that is related 
 ,0 a social function. The teachers, for example, have not 
 lesitated to ask for the assistance of parents in the redaction 
 )f their educational programmes."^ The very method of or- 
 ganisation adopted by the Confederation Generale du Travail 
 s in fact a guarantee against the dangers of separatism."^ 
 ndeed, as M. Leroy has aptly pointed out,"^ the very situation 
 )f the workers makes a federal structure as necessary as the 
 )ourgeois organisation of society demands a centralised sys- 
 em. The complete independence of any department would be 
 trictly hmited to those problems which do not directly touch 
 he business of any other. Where common problems arise, 
 hey must be settled by common decision. The state, in some 
 orm or other, must persist to protect the common interest, 
 nd it must retain a certain measure of power for that purpose. 
 ?here are some, indeed, who would make wages and prices a 
 latter for general control; and M. Thomas has lent the great 
 reight of his authority to the suggestion that the interest of 
 he consumer must obtain adequate representation at every 
 tage of the new administrative process."^ 
 The problem of the strike then remains. It is clear enough 
 tiat the operation of a public service must be in the general 
 
 "" "The Great Society," p. 324 f. On the place of the state in the most 
 icent system ^f social reconstruction cf. Orage (ed.) "National Guilds," 
 50, 263, and Cole, "Self-government in Industry," esp., Ch. III. 
 
 "1 Resolution of the Lyons Congress, 1908. Cf . Laurier, "Les Instituteors 
 ; Le Syndicalisme" (1908). 
 
 "2 The best account of its structure is in Leroy, "La Coutume Ouvri^re," 
 3. 481-575. Cf . also A. Pawlowski, "La Confederation Ggnfirale du Travail!" 
 he real secret of the difference between American trade-unionism and that 
 
 France will be apparent to anyone who examines the structure and pur- 
 )se of the kindred groups in either country. 
 
 '" "Les Transformations de la Puissance PubUque," pp. 272, 278. 
 
 '" Revue Sodaliste, Oct. 1905, cf. the very able article by M. Bourget, 
 mie Politique et Parlementaire, 1908, p. 365. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 353 
 
 interest of society. If its care is entrusted to the members of 
 that service is the suspension of work at all capable of justifi- 
 cation? If the operation of the state is put into the hands of 
 its servants is not that autonomy the correlative of a respon- 
 sibility for which there must be adequate guarantees? It is 
 difficult to avoid this conclusion. "It is simply elementary 
 prudence," says M. Hauriou,"^ "that the relation with the 
 public, above all upon the fundamental problem of responsi- 
 bility, should not be broken." It is surely obvious that the 
 privilege of autonomy logically implies the acceptance of the 
 purpose for which that responsibility is given. Once the pro- 
 fessional group is given the means of independent action, it 
 must be fully and stringently responsible for the causes of its 
 acts."' That syndicalists are but httle incUned, at present, to 
 admit the extension of the corporate responsibility of their 
 groups does not touch the real point at issue. For the narrow- 
 ness of their responsibility is, for the moment, simply a weapon 
 forged to meet a special industrial situation. Once the cause 
 for that narrowness is removed, there is no reason for such re- 
 striction to continue. The state could not confide the inter- 
 ests of society to men who would not accept the responsibilities 
 of their trusteeship. 
 
 V. THE ATTACK OF THE JURISTS 
 
 It was inevitable that such an attitude should provoke a violent 
 hostility. The dogmas it attacks are too consecrated by his- 
 toric tradition to surrender at all easily to an opposition in 
 part, at least, the product of an ideology. The changes it in- 
 volves are too far-reaching to be accepted without criticism by 
 the conservative forces of the state. And, after all, such an- 
 tagonism is natural enough. For the dogmas that administra- 
 tive syndicaUsm has endeavored to undermine have behind 
 them this justification that they are the source from which the 
 
 "' Cf. his note in Sirey, 1908, Vol. Ill, p. 83. 
 
 "«Cf. RoUand, Revue de Droit Public 1909, p. 301. Duguit, "Droit 
 Social, Droit Individuel," p. 147. M. Hauriou's remarks are very striking, 
 "Principes de Droit Public", (ed. of 1916), p. 745 f. For the theoretic basis 
 jf vicarious liability see my papers in 29, Harv. L. Bei). 404 f, and 26, 
 Yale Law Journal, 105 ff. 
 
154 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 nodern state has derived its strength. The. two great theories 
 )f sovereignty and the unitary state are, for the most part, 
 he offspring of the great controversy between church and 
 tate, matured by the influence of the classical jurisprudence 
 if Rome.'" They are the weapons whereby the state attained 
 ts freedom from ecclesiastical trammels. And they are even 
 Qore than that. For, with the growing independence of the 
 ivil power, it was possible to transfer the seat of sovereignty 
 rom monarch to people. National sovereignty thus came to 
 Qean something akin to the vindication of popular freedom. 
 To attack it was to imperil the progress for which the Revolu- 
 ion stood as the proof and symbol. 
 
 Nor was the history of the unitary state less striking. The 
 reat danger from which, in its recent history, France has 
 uffered is the diverse allegiance of its citizens. There were 
 aany whose membership of the nation d.id not seem to involve 
 iem in loyalty to the Republic; and they did not hesitate to find, 
 Dmetimes in Rome, sometimes at the haK-tragic court of some 
 arely remembered royal exile, the real dwelhng-place of their 
 ffection. There was thus a danger to be confronted external 
 3 French society. Concentration of power might then, with 
 Dme show of reason, be deemed a vital thing. If a citizen 
 id not stand by the Republic, if the Repubhc did not possess 
 le power to make upon him the fullest demand, its survival 
 ■as, to say the least, uncertain. Its sovereignty was strildngly 
 sserted; the fact of unity was at every point displayed. It 
 as not, therefore, difficult to charge administrative syndicahsm 
 ith a purpose that might well destroy the state. It would 
 inder vain the whole purpose of the nineteenth century. It 
 as the coronation of anarchic effort; and compromise with so 
 nister a movement was thus almost logically deemed fruitless. 
 
 Such, for the most part, has been the spirit in which admin- 
 trative syndicahsm has been met. It is an opposition that 
 
 rarely constructive in character. It tends to take its stand 
 ss upon the analysis of future possibihties than upon the 
 lequacy of the present inheritance. But, in sober truth, that 
 to say no more than that it at no point fully meets the effort 
 
 the f onctionnaire towards the transformation of the modern 
 
 "' Cf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," pp. 27-9. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 355 
 
 state. What it has rather tried to do is to demonstrate that 
 3uch purpose is Olegal and unpractical. It is held illegal by the 
 lawyer because the categories of nineteenth century jurispru- 
 dence have no place for so novel an effort. It is held unprac- 
 tical by the statesman because it is a problem he has never 
 before confronted. To the central principles it enunciates, they 
 unite to return an unquahfied negative. 
 
 There are, of course, both in law and in pohtics, exceptions 
 to this general rule. There are some who have been able to 
 see that the present conception of the state is in no sense .per- 
 manent, and it is, for them, natural to expect that the develop- 
 ment of its jurisprudence will be coeval with its political evo- 
 lution. There are statesmen who have been able to realise that 
 administrative conservatism is already obsolete. The crisis of 
 the pubUc services has gone too deeply to the root of. the body 
 poUtic to be solved by an uncompromising denial. The more 
 timid spirits have, as is natural, suggested the wisdom of com- 
 promise. And, in the sense that reforms will do much to 
 remove the bitterness that has been manifested on both sides 
 during the past ten years, reform has a merit that is undenia- 
 ble. But the claims, both of one side and the other, are too 
 divergent to admit of compromise. There is no half-way house 
 effectively to be occupied between the present administrative 
 control and the full independence demanded by the civil serv- 
 ice. The criticisms, indeed, are important; for they show, 
 alike from the standpoints of legal and political philosophy, 
 the defences of modern authoritarianism. And while they are 
 in essence distinct, they both have the merit of an obvious sim- 
 plicity. They thus serve to throw into a clearer light the 
 significance of the competing claims. 
 
 The juristic attack upon administrative syndicalism origi- 
 nates in the attempt to find a legal basis for the claims of the 
 civil service. There are some who have not hesitated to assert 
 that the movement is in no sense opposed to the existing law. 
 On the whole, the lawyers have united to reject that assertion. 
 While they are unanimous in their agreement that the law of 
 1901 provides a clear path of association which the civil servant 
 may take, they are almost equally unanimous that the law of 
 1884 apphes to a type of professional association with which 
 
356 -AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 the civil service can have no connection. Their fundamental 
 criticism is based on an interpretation of the nature of the 
 state on the one hand, and the relation to it of the civil servant 
 on the other. They insist that the regime of administration 
 can at no single point, except one, be approximated to the 
 modern system of industrial organisation. It of course logically 
 follows that the position of the civil servant is in no sense 
 similar to that of the worker. The attempt is made to show 
 that once we are in the domain of state-activity we are in the 
 presence of special facts to which the ordinary formulae of 
 private law are inapplicable. From jurisprudence, therefore, 
 administrative syndicahsm has nothing to expect. 
 
 It seems legally unquestionable that so far as the relation of 
 the laws of 1884 and 1901 really affects the fundamental issue, 
 the legal, critics are absolutely in the right. There is not a 
 shred of evidence that it was ever intended to apply the law 
 of 1884 to members of the civil service; rather, on the contrary, 
 does it seem to have been the express intention of the legisla- 
 ture to exclude them from it.^^' The law of 1884 was simply 
 an effort to equalise the bargaining power of labour to that of 
 capital; and those who passed. if no more dreamed of its appli- 
 cation to the problems of the state than did Mr. Justice Holmes 
 when he enunciated a similar proposition."' Indeed, the syn- 
 dicalists themselves have admitted, on occasion, that the civil 
 service has a privileged position.^^" Not, indeed, that the argu- 
 ment which denies that the state can be equated with the 
 private employer has been very vigorously supported. For, if 
 it is true that the minister is limited by his dependence upon 
 the legislature, that is more and more coming to be the case 
 with the private employer, especially in those industries where 
 the public interest is most directly concerned ;i2i and the result 
 
 "' Cf. Mermeix, "Le Syndicalisme contre le Socialisme," p. 83. 
 
 "' Coppoffe V. Kansas, 236 U. S. I, 26. 
 
 120 Cf . Beaubois, Mouvement Sodaliste, 1905, p. 430, and Montbruneaud 
 in ibid., p. 295. 
 
 1" The action of Congress in the passage of the Adamson Law is, of 
 course, a very striking example of this. On the theoretic issues involved 
 cf. for Anglo-Saxon countries, the remarkable paper of Mr. E. A. Adler 
 in 28 and 29, Harv. L. Rev. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 357 
 
 of a ministerial regulation in regard to the civil service, is not 
 very different, whatever its nature, from the collective agree- 
 ment that is coming to be characteristic of modern business. 
 Nor does M. Briand's insistence that the state does not possess 
 the elasticity of initiative by which private industry is distin- 
 guished in any way destroy the vahdity of the comparison.'^^ 
 
 Not, indeed, that the analogy is in any sense fundamental 
 to this issue. The main fact, after all, is that the Penal Code 
 still makes it a criminal offence for civil servants to plan a 
 strike ;^^ and this has been more than once ratified by the 
 courts ;^^ nor have they hesitated to declare illegal the forma- 
 tion of such trade-unions in the civil service as they have had 
 occasion to judge.'^^ Nor is parUamentary opinion Ifess clear. 
 The two efforts that have been made to give teachers a right 
 to form unions have not even been discussed. '^^ A similar 
 proposal in regard to the medical profession made in 1894 was 
 expressly negatived, at the urgent request of M. Loubet, then 
 President of the Council, on the specific ground that doctors 
 are continually performing services which bring them into 
 relation with government. Where permission has been given, 
 as in the case of the state-railways, and the state tobacco 
 monopoly, it is simply because, in that aspect, the state has 
 definitely undertaken the functions usually performed by a 
 private employer.^^? ]y[ Waldeck-Rousseau, the author of the 
 law of 1884, has expressly declared that he did not have the 
 civil service in view when he proposed it,^^^ and M. Clemenceau, 
 one of its leading advocates, has equally insisted that it had 
 in view only those whose wages are subject to the variations of 
 economic law.'^' 
 
 There remains the law of 1901; and, despite the criticisms 
 
 122 Journal Officiel, May 14, 1907. 
 '»» Code P6nale. art, 126. 
 
 '« Duguit, "Traits de Droit Constitutionel," I, 519 f . 
 ™Cf. Gazette des Tribunaux, July 9, 1903, Revue des Grands Proems 
 Contemporains, 1909, no. II, contains a full report of the leading case; 
 ™ Journal Offiekl, March 24, 1886, Ibid, 1890, p. 1533. 
 "' Cf. M. Ramel in Journal Officiel, May 23, 1894. ^ 
 «« Cf . Mouvement SoHaliste, March, 1905, p. 320. 
 "' Cf . his reply to the teachers' manifesto cited above. 
 
358 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 of M. Berthel^my/^" it seems clear that it is sufficiently broad 
 to cover the associations formed within the civil service.''^ 
 The lawyers, moreover, have been eager to point out that there 
 is little or no juridical difference between the two systems of 
 coaHtion; for the one serious benefit tlie trade-union seems to 
 possess, the power to receive legacies and gifts, is hardly very 
 likely to be exercised by the civil servants ;^^^ and M. Saint- 
 Leon has shown that even this difficulty can be avoided."' 
 Yet the invalidity of the legal argument rests here precisely 
 on the fact that it remains merely legal. For the real question 
 involved is not legal at all, but psychological, and the main 
 advantage that the advocafes of administrative syndicalism 
 seem to expect would be purely moral in character j'^ for, as 
 the great strike of 1909 made apparent, a mere matter of words 
 will not prevent -the use of weapons deemed, for any reason, 
 desirable. For the real purpose of this insistence on the law 
 of 1884 is the advantage it would give of contact with the 
 working-class. It is one more proof of the fact that the move- 
 ment has become far wider than a simple protest against par- 
 ticular abuses of a definite authority and has broadened into 
 an attempt to dethrone a whole system from its controlling 
 eminence. That is why the choice of methods will have more 
 than verbal results; for to admit that the civil servant can form 
 a trade-union is to give him increased opportunity of empha- 
 sising the relation of his demands to those of the workers. 
 
 The lawyers have not, of course, failed to perceive the bur- 
 den of this manoeuvre, and it is in this aspect that they have 
 erected their ablest means of opposition to administrative syn- 
 dicalism. For, juristically at any rate, the real problem in- 
 volved is that of the legal status of the civil servant. If his 
 relation to the state is one of contract, it is clear that the 
 problem admits of an obvious solution; for once we are dealing 
 
 '™ Revue de Paris, Feb. 15, 1906, p. 883. 
 
 1" Cf. M. Hauriou's admirable note, Sirey, 1909, 3, 17. 
 
 "^ Cf. Revue Gdnirak de I' Administration, 1906, I, 203. 
 
 "2 Cf. his interesting comparison in "AnnaJes du Mus6e Social," 1906, 
 p. 61, and the paper of M. Perrinjaquet in Annales de Faculty droit 
 d'Aix 1910, p. 133. 
 
 ™ Cf . Bougie, "Syndicalism et D6mocratie," p. 27 f. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 359 
 
 with contract it is legitimate to apply the ordinary rules of pri- 
 vate law. If it is, on the contrary, a matter of public law, if 
 it bears upon the nature of the sovereignty of the state, then 
 it is clear that the position of the civil servant is specialised in 
 character. Or, as has been urged, it may well be that the 
 state is only in part a specialised institution in that aspect, it 
 is only those who work within the area of its specialised activity 
 who are subject to a special law.^^^ 
 
 Naturally enough, the advocates of administrative syndical- 
 ism have insisted that the relation between the civil servant 
 and the government is one of contract. His position ^vould 
 then be analogous to that of the worker in private industry 
 and most of our difficulties would have been solved. But the 
 question is, in fact, less simple. A civil servant cannot resign, 
 or, at least, the goverrmient need not accept his resignation.'^^ 
 The civil servant who throws up his post to go on strike re- 
 mains a civil servant despite himself until it should please the 
 authorities to dismiss him."' If this is a contract, it is clearly 
 contract of a kind unknown in private law. A contract ought 
 to be the source of rights; and it is clear that against a govern- 
 ment which can change his position, his salary, his work, or 
 even dismiss him at will, he is not protected in any contractual 
 fashion. It is, of course, true that he has what may be called 
 a mediately contractual position; that is to say the ministerial 
 regulations are binding upon the parties concerned. But since 
 they can be altered at will, that is no great guarantee. The 
 will of the state as expressed by its ministers clearly predomi- 
 nates in the situation. 
 
 Nor is the problem made easy by distinguishing between 
 different kinds of civil servants, as M. Berthel^my has urged 
 us to do. Any one can see that the position of a judge is suffi- 
 
 "' This is the well-known distinction of M. Bertheldmy. "Droit Ad- 
 ministratif" (5 ed.), p. 78, between fonotionnaires d'autorit^ and fonction- 
 naires de gestion. Cf . Nezard, "Th^orie juridique de la fonction publique," 
 p. 461 ; and for criticism of it see Duguit, "Trait6 de Droit Constitutionnel," 
 I, 429 f, where, as I think, its impossibiUty is effectively demonstrated. 
 
 ™ Holland, "Revue de Droit Publique," 1907, p. 722. The analogous 
 position of a member of the House of Commons is, of course, suggestive. 
 
 '" Cf. the note of M. Hauriou in Sirey, 1909, 3, 145. 
 
30 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 iently different from that of a worker in a state match-factory 
 3 to give each different rights and duties; but to draw a broad 
 ne between the two becomes impossible immediately we take 
 3rtain critical instances. A prefect, for example, is a civil 
 3rvant who is charged by delegation with the exercise of cer- 
 lin sovereign powers; but he is also the recipient of orders which 
 i is his duty unquestioningly to fulfil. Mining engineers are, 
 )r the most part, technical experts who have no connection 
 ith the semi-poUtical problems of the service; but where they 
 raw up notes on the contravention of government rules in the 
 lines, their position is immediately changed. Nor is it possible 
 ) obtain any large measure of agreement as to where technical 
 !rvice ends and the detention of a part of pubhc power begins. 
 I. Hauriou does not doubt that teachers and postmen are 
 )nctionnaires d'autorite; M. Fontaine hotly denies it.^'* One 
 Dvemment official seems to imagine that any civil servant 
 ho reports infractions of the law is a holder of some delegated 
 ortion of sovereign authority .i'' The distinction is thus obvi- 
 jsly too difficult to make its application as helpful as is sug- 
 »ted by its external sitnpHcity. 
 
 If the legal assumptions are admitted, they constitute, then, 
 complete refutation of the syndicaHst thesis. They imply 
 le satisfactory proof that the relation is not in any real sense 
 )ntractual. The lawyers, however, have been, perhaps, some- 
 hat less happy in the theories by which they attempt to 
 iplace the notion of contract. No one — at least in France"" 
 -now accepts the principle of Rousseau that the citizen, hav- 
 g surrendered all his rights to the state, must undertake at 
 3 behest whatever functions it should choose to ordain.i*i 
 [. Hauriou has suggested what is, in reahty, a feudal notion of 
 is relationship. He regards the tenure of office as a kind of 
 agment of the pubhc domain, and he suggests that the true 
 
 i3« Sirey, 1907, 3, 49. 
 
 1" Cf. the report of M. Malepeyre, D.P., 1905, 1, 259 "(L' Affaire 
 
 lUoche)." 
 
 "» But it is accepted by many very reputable German authorities, cf . 
 
 rthes, "Die Staatsdienst in Preussen," p. 55, and the authorities there 
 
 ed. 
 
 '" "Contrat Social," Bk. 11, Ch. IV. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 361 
 
 analogy is that of the feudal lord, investing his vassal with a 
 fief.*** That pubUc office was, in medieval times, essentially a 
 property-right is a fact which admits of Httle denial;*^ but it 
 does not fit the facts of the modem situation. The hereditary, 
 butler was, after all, a household servant of the crown, and 
 the concept of property is, in that aspect, intelligible enough. 
 But the modem civil servant owes service to the head of the 
 state in his official" and not his personal" capacity. The feudal 
 lord gave to his tenant a portion of sovereignty; and certainly 
 where, as in modem French law, the inalienability of sover- 
 eignty has been, since the Revolution, httle less than a rehgious 
 dogma, such indivisibility cannot be equated with a property- 
 concept.'^ Nor is M. Lamaude's theory that the situation is 
 entirely specialised and can be explained, like the bond created 
 by naturalisation, by a presumption of lex spedalis.^*^ For 
 lex impUes statute, and the idea of a statute is the merest fic- 
 tion. Nor is the analogy of naturalisation very happy; for 
 if ever there was a legal relation in which contract was imphed, 
 it is surely the relation created by the adoption of citizenship. 
 To explain the problem by insisting that it is exceptional is, 
 in reahty to urge that it cannot be explained at all. Such a 
 mystery might well account for the advent of administrative 
 syndicalism, but it would hardly meet its problems. 
 
 M. Duguit explains the situation in a fashion which, while 
 analogous, at the same time attempts to meet the difficulties 
 involved in the hypothesis of exceptionahty.'** In his view, 
 the whole field of administration is settled by statute or by 
 general ministerial regulations which are akin by nature to 
 
 '«Strejr, 1899,3,6. 
 
 '" My friend Prof. Mcllwain will shortly publish a paper ia which this 
 fact is demonstrated for the whole of medieval English history. He has 
 already hinted at it in his paper on judicial tenure in the American Pol. Sci. 
 Rev. for May, 1913. 
 
 '" Cf. Duguit, "L'Etat, les Gouvemants et les Agents," p. 392, for a 
 very complete criticism. 
 
 '« Beove P&nUenUdre, 1906, p. 830. 
 
 >« Duguit, "L'Etat, les Gouvemants et les Agents," p. 4, 13 ff. 
 Cf. "BertheMmy, Revue de Droit Pubhc," 1904, p. 20 f, and J^ze, ibid., 
 p. 517, esp. the latter for a very clear exposition of this attitude. 
 
2 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 atute. We have, in fact, a purely objective law which settles 
 le whole relationship with regard to the general end that 
 Iministration is to serve. Nomination is a power of bringing 
 me citizen within the purview of this law in order that he 
 ay fulfil its purposes. The act of nomination derives its 
 bole force therefrom; and the acceptance of nomination sim- 
 y completes the process. Yet it must surely be admitted 
 :at the theory is far less satisfactory than appears on the 
 rface. If the nominee may reject the preferred position it is 
 rely therein implied that whatever takes place has about it 
 contractual nature. The nominee is agreeing to submit him- 
 If to the regulations of the service in return for the enjoyment 
 a position he desires. He may not have named the conditions 
 his employment. The contract, that is to say, may be uni- 
 teral in character. But it still remains a contract; and it is 
 fficult to see how this element can, in the circumstances be 
 plained away. 
 
 For the simple fact is that all these legal theories are, from 
 e standpoint of administrative syndicahsm, vitiated by one 
 ave defect. They are all built exactly upon that conception 
 the state against which the fonctionnaire has made his vehe- 
 ent protest. They do not take account of the psychological 
 ct that if the situation of the civil servant has a certain spe- 
 ilised character, it is yet a character from which the concep- 
 m of a contract can hardly be excluded. The state may say 
 at it makes no contract; but if it fails to provide what its 
 rvants deem reasonable conditions of labour they will not 
 3rk for it. It may theoretically demonstrate that its wiU 
 iminates the situation, but the fact will still remain that the 
 11 of its servants is not less relevant. For while they identify 
 emselves in a special sense with the state, they do not so 
 lally merge their personalities with its own as to be incapable 
 active opposition to it. The state may make its laws for their 
 ivernance; but if it finds that they refuse obedience to its laws 
 ey will prove of no avail. It may proclaim its sovereignty; 
 it a sovereignty that cannot win the assent of those who are 
 be the subjects of its control is not impressive. 
 And the change in the status of the civil servant is surely 
 dicative of an important innovation. More and more the 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 363 
 
 tatus is coming to be settled as the result of discussioa and 
 )argaining in which the civil servant takes his full share. The 
 Trench Railways are governed by an agreement which is the 
 esult of joint dehberation between the poUtical and adminis- 
 rative personnel."' That is the beginning of an evolution of 
 rhich the end may well be the erection of self-government 
 nthin each department. It is perfectly true that the status 
 10 determined must receive the official sanction either of the 
 ninister or of ParHament. It draws its sustenance from an 
 snabUng statute. But that enabhng statute is itself based 
 ipon a prior agreement. It does not create so much as regis- I 
 ;rate. A sovereignty that merely accepts what has been agreed | 
 ipon outside of itself is, it may be suggested, a sovereignty that 
 las been deprived of its sting."* ' 
 
 The truth is that the character which the lawyers attempted 
 ;o attach to the state dates from a time anterior to the advent i 
 )f democracy. It is impotent in the face of administrative 
 ;oalescence. It might work when the right of association had 
 lot yet so far advanced as to give the civil servant the oppor- 
 iunity to organise his corporate interests. But immediately 
 le had discovered what had been released by the law of 1901, 
 ;he concept of a sovereign state which determined his situation 
 irithout reference to his wishes and without the recognition 
 ;hat he had rights it could not infringe became impossible. It 
 ivas exacting from him the surrender of exactly that which he 
 iiad combined in order to attain. The sanction of law is not 
 ^ts existence but its abiUty to secure assent."^ The civil servant 
 refuses to admit the vast authority which is claimed by the 
 state simply because he has suffered too greatly from the 
 jffects of its exercise. He finds himself in a position to bargain 
 ivith the government. Whether the result of their joint de- 
 iberation affects him only, or involves also the rest of the com- 
 
 "'Cf. Duguit, "Les Transformations du Droit Public," p. 114. The 
 lystem of self-government instituted in 1896 for the French universities is 
 'ull of fascinating suggestion in this regard. Cf . Hauriou, "Principes de 
 Droit Public" (ed. of 1916), p. 745 f. 
 
 "' The similar relation of Congress to the railway situation of 1916 is of 
 nterest. 
 
 "' Cf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," p. 12 f. 
 
1 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 unity, the relation that is slowly being established is, clearly 
 ough, no longer unilateral. Certain states of fact are arrived 
 
 by agreement. They are deferred in regulations. If in 
 eory the state retains the power to alter those regulations in 
 actice that power is as valuable as the sovereignty of the 
 ighsh king. It is a tribute to a great tradition rather than 
 
 admission of its present operation. 
 
 And that, after all, is only to say that' the legal theory which 
 ects the notion of contract is, by that definition, an inade- 
 ate theory. Law cannot persistently neglect the psychology 
 those it endeavours to control. So long as the fonctionnaire 
 uses to be at the mercy of the government, it is useless for 
 •isprudence to evolve a theory which imphes his subjection. 
 )r does it matter in what kind of subtleties that subjection is 
 icealed. We may talk of an objective law -that is removed 
 im the clash of personalities and securely grounded in the 
 its themselves.!^" But that, in the end, is to do no more than 
 ,nsfer the discussion to the nature of the objective law. 
 lyone, for instance, who reads the history of the postal strike 
 
 1909 will not doubt that M. Simyan's conception of the 
 iective law by which the service should be governed would 
 fer very markedly from that of M. Pouget. Whether wei^ 
 md our demands on the desire or the duty that hes before 
 
 we cannot escape the problem of rights. The civil servant 
 •y clearly feels that he can make certain demands which the 
 ,te ought not to refuse. In the eighteenth century they were 
 leductive claim; today they are an induction from the expe- 
 nce of a bitter illusion. But the fact still remains that they 
 i rights and, as such, they evade the categories in which 
 thority would enshrine them. No legal argument against 
 ! claims of administrative syndicahsm can therefore be vaUd 
 it is based upon the theory of the state as it presents itself 
 the orthodox currency of today. For, in the first place, the 
 idicahst would deny its vahdity, and, in the second, it is 
 arly a theory that is passing away. The task that confronts 
 ! jurist is still the same. He has still to reconcile adminis- 
 tive autonomy with a state of which the authority is made 
 )ject to the strictest hmitations. He has to show how law 
 '' Cf. my note on M. Duguit in the Harvard Law Review for Nov., 1917. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 365 
 
 m maintain responsibility while it admits a reasonable inde- 
 sndence. But it is with new weapons that he must come to 
 is task. 
 
 VI. THE ATTACK OF THE POLITICIANS 
 
 r was hardly to be expected that so novel a phenomenon as 
 dministrative syndicalism could meet with approval from the 
 olitifians. It was, in the first place, too alien from their tra- 
 itional theories of politics to be acceptable. The very griev- 
 nces of which it made complaint were the outcome of the 
 arliamentary system. Their approval of it would have in- 
 olved self-condemnation; it would have been the tacit admis- 
 Lon that the criticisms, passed upon the system of which they 
 re at once the founders and protectors, were firmly rooted in 
 sality. Yet a curious distinction is to be noted in the political 
 ttitude. In principle, it has proved adamant against the 
 itroduction of novelty. When the resources of argument were 
 xhausted, resort was had to the copious reservoir of rhetoric; 
 nd there have been few more brilliant debates in the chamber 
 han those in which MM. Clemenceau and Briand have vin- 
 icated the sovereign state from the pitiful assault of its an- 
 rchist detractors. Yet alongside this immovable determina- 
 ion in theory, there has gone a consistent pUabihty in practice. 
 ?he statesmen of France have never dealt with fonctioiftiarisme; 
 lut they have always been careful to reckon with it. They 
 ave been consistently gentle at election-times; and their ear- 
 est eagerness to find a basis for compromise with principles , 
 hey have steadfastly declared impossible has not been without 
 ;s pathos. It is a noteworthy distinction ; for it is the expression 
 f a genuine effort on the part of the state to find ways and 
 leans of admitting in practice the advent of a fundamental 
 ransformation in its nature even while the terminology of the 
 ast is preserved. How far it is likely to prove a successful 
 ffort is dubious matter for the most dangerous kind of proph- 
 cy. The war intervened exactly at the point where it was 
 eginning to be possible to catch the first clear signs of the 
 ew evolution; and the clouds have not yet sufficiently drifted 
 D make again visible the rays of the poHtical sun. 
 
36 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 Yet the theory upon which this political antagonism has 
 een founded is, throughout its history, unmistakably clear, 
 'he nation, in their view, enjoys a sovereignty which is com- 
 lete and in no degree subject to limitation. Its personahty is 
 t every point superior to that of its constituent members, 
 'he nation, in its political expression, is the state; and thus, 
 bviously enough, upon the institutional organs of the state, 
 le majesty of the national sovereignty descends by delegation, 
 'o threaten the state, is thus to strike at the heart ^f the 
 ational existence. And this is even more truly the case with 
 le civil servant whose very powers are derived from his posi- 
 on as a state-instrument. He negatives the whole purpose 
 f his existence once he rebels against that from which he derive 
 1 that makes him different from the ordinary citizen. Admin- 
 trative syndicalism thus becomes a particularly reprehensible 
 ariation upon an anarchic theme. To make concessions to it 
 
 to derogate from the national power. A refusal to bargain 
 ith it thus becomes the preservation of all that makes the 
 ition a self-governing instrument. Once concede internal 
 itonomy and the national unity is at a stroke destroyed. 
 
 It is a simple theory, upon which every conceivable variation 
 IS been made. It seems to have been born in 1887 with 
 [. SpuUer who, in a famous circular, '^i insisted that it was 
 conceivable that a group of public officials could enjoy a 
 )rporaDfe personality outside their membership of the state, 
 wenty years later the argument is in nowise different. "Offi- 
 als," said M. Rouvier,!^^ ^^j^g^ pj-jme Minister, "who exercise 
 ly portion of sovereign power, are members only of one 
 )rporation — the state; and the state is the nation itself." 
 [. Briand drew the obvious inference from that attitude. 
 What," he asked,i*' "is the democratic state? . . . Is it 
 le government? . . . That cannot be because government 
 only an agent which executes orders. . . . The civil service 
 IS against it the national representatives, that is to say the 
 ition itself." M. Clemenceau has pointed what he regards 
 
 1" Cf. Cahen, "Les Fonctionnaires," p. 59., M. Spuller was then Minister 
 
 Public Instruction. 
 
 '52 Journal Officiel, May 23, 1905. 
 
 "s Journal Officiel, May 12, 1907. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 367 
 
 i the moral of the argument. "Government," he said/** "is 
 ader the control of the chamber; the chamber is controlled 
 y universal suffrage; but neither government nor the chambea 
 
 under the control of the civil service." The great postal 
 ;rike of 1909 did not suggest any new synthesis to M. Barthou, 
 le minister most concerned. "The postmen," he told the 
 hamber,"* "are in revolt against you, gentlemen, against the 
 Qtire nation, . . . what we have to determine is whether 
 
 government which represents the sovereign nation can 
 bandon the care of general interests before a rebellious civil 
 ervice." M. Ribot has insisted that while the ordinary citizen 
 an plan the transformation of the state, the duty of the public 
 ifficial is at all costs to defend its present organisation."^ ' 
 A. Deschanel seems to regard the civil servant as the delegate of 
 he nation for the performance of certain functions; clearly, 
 herefore, anything that does not involve their performance 
 3 a transgression of his powers."' And M. Poincar^ has again 
 md again uttered the warning that a new power, irresponsible 
 n its nature, confronts the sovereign nation. He seems to 
 ionsider its advent as nothing less than an attack on the life 
 )f the French repubUc."' 
 
 All this, of course, is a purely theoretical argument. It 
 limply insists that the authority of the state is final without 
 it any point examining the basis upon which that insistence is 
 'ounded. It does not, therefore, meet the argument of ad- 
 ninistrative syndicahsm; what it rather does is to lay down 
 certain counter-assumptions of which the truth is still de- 
 Dateable. It does not seem to have realised that the fonction- 
 lariste movement is nothing if not a challenge to these con- 
 3eptions; and it is not, to say the least, particularly helpful 
 to have the whole discussion shelved in this facile manner. 
 Far more important is the argument derived from the needs 
 jf practical administration. Here, at least, the politicians have 
 iiad a real case to urge and they have put it with no small skill. 
 
 ■"/bid., March 13, 1908. 
 i»/62U, March 19, 1909. 
 i»/Md., Mayl4, 1907. 
 ■"/fcid., May 12, 1907. 
 '» Speech of April 27, 1907. 
 
368 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 This, they point out, is pre-eminently a period in which the 
 functions of the state are undergoing continuous extension. 
 More and more it is coming, if not to take actual charge, at 
 least to regulate, the conduct of great departments of public 
 life. In that aspect, the main problem by which it is con- 
 fronted is to ensure to its constituents the regular and continu- 
 ous operation of the services under its control. Whether it 
 purveys railway or postal facilities, whether it sells matches 
 or procures an adequate pohce, obviously the one thing the 
 public has a right to demand is their efficient operation. For 
 where these services are managed as pubUc utilities by com-- 
 panies or individuals working for gain a special system of law 
 is instituted of which the cardinal point is the guarantee of 
 continuity. 
 
 It is at least partly in the light of this attitude that the 
 political opposition must be interpreted. "I am here to af- 
 firm," said M. Sarrien,^^^ "that no government, even if it 
 were formed of the very persons who now beg us to permit 
 freedom of association to teachers, to postal officials, and other 
 civil servants, could possibly consent without conmaitting sui- 
 cide, without imperilling the very existence not merely of the 
 Republic, but any regular and normal political regime." M. 
 Clemenceau has again and again insisted that the first task of 
 a minister is to compel the civil servant to accomplish his duty 
 to the state.^^" M. Briand has affirmed that the operation of 
 government does not permit the constitution of a privileged 
 nation within the ranks of the nation itself. ^'^ Their attitude 
 was the more interesting since both they, and some of their 
 colleagues had, before taking office, urgently upheld the right 
 of the fonctionnaire to enjoy the benefit of the law of 1884.^^^ 
 But it is to be assumed that the experience of office has dissi- 
 pated these idle dreams. 
 
 The real difficulty in the analysis of this argument is to know 
 exactly where a beginning of criticism should be made. It im- 
 
 ^^' Journal Officiel, Nov. 8, 1905. 
 iM/bid., March 14, 1906. 
 «i Ihid., July 12, 1906. 
 
 ^'^ Cf . the speech of M. Wilhn, in Ibid., May 11, 1909, and of M. Sembat, 
 May 14, 1909. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 369 
 
 plies that there is a golden rule of administration which succes- 
 sive governments have laboured earnestly to follow; and the 
 cardinal principle in that rule would seem to be the refusal of any 
 minister to permit for one moment the organisation of the civil 
 service within his department. Yet, in fact, no such policy has 
 ever been followed. M. Benoist has justifiably complained of 
 the alternation of strength and weakness in the governmental 
 attitude.^'' It is a matter of common notoriety that the defiant 
 challenge to administrative syndicalism undergoes a sensible 
 diminution at election time. What is legitimate in the Ministry 
 of PubUc Works is fraught with grave danger in the Ministry of 
 Public Instruction."* The ministers dismiss civil servants in 
 order to emphasise their authority, but, sooner or later, they 
 always take the vast majority back. And it is difficult to dis- 
 cover whether this high degree of control is necessary to main- 
 tain the service as it now is; or, on the other hand, whether it is 
 the basis of a future improvement. If the first hypothesis be 
 the correct one, it is difficult to reconcile with expert opinion 
 that the condition of the civil service is simply lamentable."^ 
 If the second interpretation be correct, it is still more difficult 
 to see why the government should be preparing to abandon 
 that control in order to institute a general status which shall 
 put the majority of these problems beyond the reach of the 
 ministerial whim;"^ and it is not less hard to know why the 
 government is prepared to admit the jurisprudence of the Coun- 
 cil of State which is more and more tending to give the civil ser- 
 vant and his associations protection against arbitrary treat- 
 ment."' 
 
 But the greatest irony remains. Those who thus profess 
 themselves so anxious for the quaUty of the civil service are the 
 persons most responsible for its corruption. Even if it be true 
 that their responsibility is mainly weakness in the face of parha- 
 
 ™ lUd., March 26, 1909. 
 
 "*Cf. Paul-Boncour, "Syndicats de Fonctionnaires," p. 20 f. 
 
 «» Cf. Cahen, "Les Fonctionnaires," Ch. IV. 
 
 '" The government has several times introduced proposals towards this 
 end and the whole problem, seemingly with ministerial approval, has been 
 discussed often in the Chamber. 
 
 '•' a. Cahen, p. 317 f . 
 
570 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 mentary pressure, the fact still remains that it was in their power 
 to remedy these grievances and that they have dehberately ab- 
 stained from so doing. No one denies that the business of gov- 
 ment must be carried on; but it is at least open to the gravest 
 doubt whether the different ministers have ever tried so to 
 organise the civil service as to assure the absence of the griev- 
 ances which might, above all things, interrupt it. It is not a 
 solution to take refuge in the necessity of a rigid authoritarian- 
 ism. The position of the civil servant in the modern state may 
 be a specialised one; but he does not surrender his human impul- 
 ses in becoming a civil servant. That the grievances of which 
 he complained were real the government tacitly admitted on the 
 different occasions when it embarked upon the task of reform; 
 but even when the difficulty of its accomphshment has been 
 admitted, no impartial observer can doubt that there has never 
 been any genuine intention to give effect to the reforms pro- 
 posed. For the real doubt must remain whether, in the present 
 situation of French parliamentarism, the reforms so postulated 
 can in fact be achieved. Any system in which the executive is 
 at the mercy of the legislature is, in the nature of things, bound 
 to search for means whereby it can control its master. That is 
 the secret of the corruption of EngUsh pohtics in the eighteenth 
 century. Sir Robert Walpole only did more' crudely what the 
 average French minister is compelled to attempt in a more deU- 
 cate fashion if his government is to remain in office. So long as 
 no single party dominates the chamber it is necessary to buy the 
 support of groups numerous enough to constitute a majority; 
 and patronage is the obvious means to that end. So that, in 
 practice, the real imphcation of the vast authority the minister- 
 tends to demand as essential, has, as its object, not the efficient 
 operation of the pubhc departments, but the retention of a con- 
 venient means to power. In that light, the anxiety for the regu- 
 lar conduct of pubhc business appears a less noble aspiration. 
 A minister naturally dislikes the dislocation that follows upon 
 the assertion of grievances simply because its consequences in 
 the Chamber are, as a rule, inconvenient. He can be certain at 
 least of an interpellation; and of a French interpellation no one 
 dare prophesy the outcome. But it is in the highest degree 
 difficult to see that an analysis, not of governmental pretensions, 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 371 
 
 but of the steps actually taken by government towards the ame- 
 lioration of the actual state of affairs, could lead to the conclu- 
 sion that control has as its purpose the end that rhetoric impUes. 
 Nor, after aU, is it possible to feel that the psychology of ad- 
 ministrative control is so simple as governmental theory would 
 make it. It is, of course, undeniable that the continuous func- 
 tioning of the civil service is fundamental to the modern state. 
 It is as obvious as can be that inefficiency in a government de- 
 partment, hardly less than, actual dislocation of service itself, has 
 evil consequences that reverberate throughout the body politic. 
 Yet the doubt must remain whether the way in which the civil 
 service in France is organised can secure the results that modern 
 government must achieve. No one who reads the literature of 
 the French fonctionnaires can doubt that the authority of the 
 minister is too overshadowing. The motives it leaves to the 
 official are simply not adequate. The reports that either no one 
 ever sees, or that lie buried amid the official archives, do not 
 call forth the best quahties of which the official is really capable. 
 He does not come into contact with the chamber, or, if he does, 
 it is only to persuade some friendly deputy to use his influence 
 for his promotion. The whole effort is towards making thought 
 a routine instead of an invention. There is too little certainty 
 that effort will obtain its reward. There is too Uttle opportunity 
 for the exercise of those creative faculties which responsibility 
 alone will call into play. There is too httle chance that the 
 official will be able, if not to decide, at any rate to deliberate, 
 those great pubhc questions which, from their very nature, must 
 serve to quicken the imagination. Too much energy is occupied 
 in the writing of minutes upon the minutes of other people, and 
 too httle upon the defence, in the verbal interchange of thought, 
 of the ideas which those minutes contain. If the civil servant 
 knew that to make himseff an authority upon some public ques- 
 tion was bound to result in bringing him into direct relationship 
 with those who frame the answer to it, the general picture of the 
 civil service would not be that which the curious can find in the 
 novels of Balzac and de Maupassant. He can do none of these 
 thiugs simply because they in reality make him essentially an 
 expert who must, because of his expertness, be given the right 
 to at least a measure of independence. That independence, 
 
372 
 
 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 from the nature of his position, will tend to grow until it absorbs 
 the group to which he belongs. But where that is once achieved, 
 not only is the main demand of administrative syndicalism con- 
 ceded, but at the same time, the future of parliamentary govern- 
 ment in France becomes even more problematical than it is at 
 the present time. 
 
 And this, in fact, is the real crux of the governmental attitude. 
 Safety and permanence are not the distinguishing features of 
 French ministries; but at any rate the minister knows the tech- 
 nique at present in vogue. To change it is virtually to set him 
 out on an uncharted sea. He wiU have to discover new methods 
 of manipulation in the Chamber. His relations to his depart- 
 ment will undergo a total reconstruction. He will retain the 
 direction of its activities. He will still be able to say what he 
 wants, to determine the large outlines of policy. But he will 
 suggest administration rather than actually operate it. It is a 
 break with tradition so large that everyone can understand why 
 he should feel suspicious of the readjustment. And he is moved 
 by another consideration. At present he is responsible for his 
 department. For whatever the humblest of his officials may do, 
 he, and he only, must answer to the chamber. That, in his view, 
 is not the least reason why he has the right to autocratic control. 
 For if the policy of the department may result in his downfall, 
 clearly he has the right to demand that, in, principle and in 
 detail, it shall be his own pohcy. To make the civil service inde- 
 pendent of him is to make him suffer for faults that will not be, 
 even in theory, his own. 
 
 Certainly, to an EngUshman who has been brought up to see 
 the ample cloak of ministerial charity cast around the erring 
 official on every occasion, there is much plausibihty in such an 
 attitude. But, equally certainly, it is a meritricious plausibility 
 simply because it ignores the essential factors involved. There 
 are obviously two kinds of fault of which the civil servant may 
 be guilty. His fault may be due to the inherent nature of the 
 work he is called upon to execute; or it may, on the other hand, 
 be due simply to some blunder of his own. In the first case, it is 
 clear that the minister is responsible. If a minister should order 
 the police to tear down a Homan Catholic Church, the resultant 
 noting is surely to be ascribed to the stupidity of the minister. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 373 
 
 But it is not less clear that no one could hold the minister respon- 
 sible for a personal blunder of an official. If, for instance, a 
 teacher in a school should deliberately go out of his way to break 
 the regulations which deal with educational neutrality upon 
 religious questions, that would in no way affect the minister's 
 position. It would, perhaps,"' be his business to see that dis- 
 cussion of the teacher's act was made by the proper authorities 
 concerned. But there his functions would end. Personal fault, 
 that is to say, would involve on the part of a minister nothing 
 more than the duty of seeing that the regular disciplinary proce- 
 dure was at every point observed. Faults that are derived di- 
 rectly from a poUcy which the minister has conceived must be 
 laid no less directly at his door. Now it is true that, again and 
 again, difficulties will arise in interpretation, no classification 
 can pretend even to be perfect. But, in such a division of re- 
 sponsibiUty as this, it is surely evident that an adequate safe- 
 guard exists for protecting ministerial interests. It is not diffi- 
 cult to imagine that the average statesman would even feel 
 relieved if he did hot bear the burden of every departmental 
 care. Undeniably, the result of such a change upon parha- 
 mentary life would be far-reaching. Not less clearly, if minis- 
 terial responsibiUty is divided, means must be created for the 
 adequate protection of the public against the faults of the 
 official. That, however, is in no sense an impossible task. 
 
 In such an interpretation the poUtical answer to administra- 
 tive syndicaUsm is at no point an answer at all. What, un- 
 doubtedly, it has effectively done is to show the determination 
 with which the upholders of the present system will maintain 
 their defences. But there is an implication in the argument that 
 is put forward that cannot be too strongly denied. " The state," 
 writes M. Fernand Faure,"' "cannot, .... in the measure 
 of its functions, be too strong." It must act, that is to say, at 
 every instant as a sovereign authority whose demands can brook 
 no question. "The state alone," says M. Larnaude"° "can re- 
 
 1(8 "Perhaps,"- because it is possible to envisage an organisation of the 
 civil service in which even this intervention is unnecessary. 
 
 '" Cf. his long attack in the Betme Politique et Parlementaire, March, 
 1906. 
 
 "° Reime PenitmMare, 1906. 
 
374 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 main master of the event," and M. Berthelemy seems"^ to 
 regard the whole movement as nothing more than an unworthy 
 effort, clearly deserving only of suppression, to exploit the -state 
 for private purposes. But, surely, in criticism such as this it is 
 not really the state that is in question. What the civil servant 
 attacks is the group of men who, at the moment, possess the 
 fused power the state possesses. It is a revolt against govern- 
 ment of which they are complaining. The transition from state 
 to government, is, of course, a fatally easy one; but it is a transi- 
 tion of which each step demands the closest investigation. No 
 one would object to a strong state if guarantees could be had 
 that its strength would be used for the fulfilment of its theoretic 
 purposes. The real problem involved is the suspicion of those 
 who watch the actual operation of its instruments that they 
 have been, in fact, diverted from the ends they were intended 
 to serve. To admit the sovereignty of the state, in the sense 
 in which statesmen understand that concept, is simply to give 
 added power to the government. It is, that is to say, to mistake 
 the private wiU of a constantly changing group whose interests 
 are at no point identical with those of the nation, for the inter- 
 3sts of the state as a whole. A strong state does not mean a 
 state in which no one resists the declared will of government; 
 3r, if it does, we need new political terms. For, in that event, 
 3hange would never be justified except insofar as it met with the 
 approval of those who held the reins of power; and it is his- 
 torically obvious that any general acceptance of such an atti- 
 tude is entirely subversive of progress. 
 
 A state, after all, is no mysterious entity. It is only a terri- 
 torial society into which, from a variety of historical causes, 
 I distinction between rulers and subjects has been intro- 
 iuced.1'2 The only justification for a claim by government 
 3f its obedience is the clear proof that it satisfies the material 
 md moral claims of those over whom it exercises control. We 
 
 "1 Revue de Pans, Feb. 15, 1906. 
 
 '" I owe this conception to M. Duguit, but I think that he has never 
 jmphasised suflSciently the territorial character of the state as opposed to 
 jther societies. I have tried to suggest the imphcations of this distinction 
 n the first chapter of this book. It is impUedly present in the first chapter 
 )f my "Problem of Sovereignty." 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 375 
 
 cannot wander on blindly with seK-shut eyes, merely because 
 order is convenient and rebellion attended by the gravest 
 dangers. The whole case for administrative syndicalism goes 
 most clearly to show that government has not been able to give 
 proofs of that satisfaction. So widespread a movement must 
 have had causes more profound than the antagonism of its 
 opponents would suggest. It is, above all, a problem in organisa- 
 tion. What it suggests is inherent error in the mechanism of 
 the modern state. It suggests a redistribution of .power. It 
 iniUcates a conviction that certain of the demands now made 
 by government are in fact unnecessary to the fulfilment of its 
 purposes, cannot, further, be made if the purposes of govern- 
 ment are to be fulfilled. It is in the highest, degree difficult to 
 understand what exactly is gained by the empty insistence that 
 the state must be strong without giving the valid demonstra- 
 tion of the purpose for which that strength is to be used. Gov- 
 ernment is only a convention which men, on the whole, accept 
 because of a general conviction that its effort is for good. Where 
 the machine breaks down, where the purpose of those who drive 
 it becomes to an important class sinister, it is humanly inevitable 
 that an effort towards change should be made. 
 
 To those who hold the reins of power it was perhaps inevita- 
 ble that such an effort should be regarded as the coronation of 
 anarchy. To oppose the government is, for them, to destroy 
 the state. But it is, in fact, anarchy only in the sense in which 
 the replacement of the nobihty as the governing power at the 
 E«volution was anarchy. The seat of authority therein passed 
 to the middle classes. But government remained at once a 
 narrow and irresponsible power. It has been attacked at two 
 points since that time. Economically, the workers show in- 
 creasing sign of dissatisfaction with the fulfilment of its pur- 
 poses; administratively, the civil service rejects the notion of 
 its authority. The change that is implied in this impatience 
 is not less profound than that of a century and a half ago. 
 Whether the change that accompanies every great transforma- 
 tion in the seat of authority can be accomplished without vio- 
 lence is a problem to which the answer has still to be discov- 
 ered. Certainly there is no need to becloud the question by 
 representing revolution as a rare exception in historical pro- 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 ure. Aristotle realised that well enough when he devoted 
 ook of the "Politics" to its discussion. If we endeavour to 
 tid outside the historic process it is not difficult to see that 
 3, Uke so many of his general maxims, remains not the less 
 e two thousand three hundred years after his time.™ 
 
 VII. THE MOVEMENT TOWARDS REFORM 
 
 viousLY enough, a movement so widespread as this must 
 ^e swept some effort at reform into the eddies of its current, 
 1 both in pohtics and in jurisprudence it is possible to find 
 as of a changing temper towards the civil service. A serious 
 empt was in process, at least before the outbreak of war, of 
 ich the general purport was to hmit the arbitrary character 
 ministerial discretion. That, after all, is the fundamental 
 nt; for ministerial discretion was essentially an inheritance 
 the ancien rigime which stamped the whole system with its 
 ;uliar and vicious character. It was an assertion that the 
 nister, as an agent of the state, partook of its sovereign 
 bure; assault upon his powers was therefore a priori fruitless, 
 rhat attitude is already dying. The courts have shown 
 ns of an important eagerness to insist on regarding as ultra 
 es any infraction of the departmental regulations. The 
 nister might make his own rules, but, until he changed them 
 was at every point bound by the clear purpose they had in 
 :w. The government itself was proposing perhaps, indeed, 
 ih a heart less determined than the situation made desirable, 
 bring the position of the civil servant within the scope of 
 ,tute within the civil service itself. The faint and fitful de- 
 opment of a new autonomy has not as yet been sufficiently 
 ar to be suggestive. It was, it is true, an auto-limitation, 
 did not involve derogation from the sovereign power of the 
 ,te. No one was bound by the action tha;t has been taken. 
 
 " "Politics," Bk. V. 1301 a. "All these forms of government have a kind 
 ustice, but tried by an absolute standard, they are faulty and therefore 
 .h parties, whenever their share in the government, does not accord with 
 ir preconceived ideas, stir up revolution." The plea of administrative 
 idicaUsm would seem to be that the absolute standard of justice cannot 
 n be approached without a radical change in the distribution of the 
 .re in government. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 377 
 
 he effort that has been made is in every event indicative of 
 le advent of a new epoch rather than the actual inauguration 
 [ it. But auto-Hmitation has an historical habit of giving way 
 ) an objective law. Administrative admission becomes admin- 
 trative practice; sooner or later the convention becomes strong 
 nough to resist the force of pressure. Those who have wit- 
 essed the substitution of rule for discretion will not easily go 
 ack to the chaos of an earlier time. 
 
 Parhament has discussed proposals which have endeavoured 
 3 give a definite status to the fonctionnaire. None, as yet, 
 as reached the statute-book; but the mere fact of their pro- 
 osal, and the wealth of superlative discussion they have 
 voked, are in themselves indicative of much. The two projects 
 erived from government sources had not, indeed, high value, 
 'hey were not based on adequate consultation with the fonc- 
 Lonnaires themselves; and the attempt to make the Council 
 f State an advisory, but not a compulsive body, was a clearly 
 opeless one."^ The denial of the right of federation meant 
 he retention of the hierarchical system and of departmental 
 eparatism."^ Defects Uke these struck at the root of any 
 iossible concord; and, in fact, they only produced the famous 
 •pen Letter to M. Cl^menceau which brought clearly into the 
 ght the inabihty of his ministry to appreciate the real facts 
 t issue. The government proposals aggravated a schism rather 
 ban healed it. They made clear the certainty that sooner or 
 iter the movement must be dealt with; but they made it also 
 ot less evident that it was already too strong to be deceived. 
 
 Far more serious in character, because far more comprehen- 
 ive, have been the efforts of the chamber itself. The commis- 
 ion of which M. Jeanneney was the reporter has, at any rate, 
 nderstood the significance of the movement. If its report 
 fas, on the whole, a somewhat unsatisfactory compromise,"^ 
 hat was less from the spirit it displayed than from the fact 
 bat between the aim of the government and the ideal of the 
 mctionnaire there is no possible compromise. No solution 
 an be satisfactory which does not take account of the unity 
 
 "<Cf. Leroy, "Syndicats et Services PubUcs," p. 267. 
 '" Cf . M. Leroy's acute comment, Ibid, p. 269. 
 "' It has been published separately by Hachette. 
 
78 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 f the civil service; and from the fact of that unity alone, any 
 ttempt to insist on departmental separatism is doomed to 
 lilure.i" No prohibition of the strike can be effective which 
 oes not envisage the cause of recourse to such a weapon. It 
 3 true enough, as M. Jeanneney reminds us,^^^ that the object 
 f the civil servant is to ensure the operation of the service 
 dth which he is charged; but equally fundamental is the con- 
 lition under which he is to perform his duty. The Commission 
 eems to have grasped this fact; and it was yet prevented from 
 lealing firmly with the obvious implications of its admission 
 ly the fear of government opposition. The chamber, in any 
 ase, has not been able to take up the project, and later dis- 
 ussion, while it has clarified the problem, has not advanced 
 he answer to it. 
 
 But it has served to make two things clear. It is obvious, 
 a the first place, that the problem of the civil service is only 
 part of the far wider problem of govermnental reform. In 
 very aspect, the instruments of the state are in need of re- 
 onstruction. Some of its mechanisms are expensive and out- 
 rorn. Others demand autonomy or decentrahsation for their 
 .dequate operation. The sovereign state, as M. Duguit has 
 epeatedly emphasised, is becoming a great pubHc service cor- 
 poration; and its organs demand readjustment to the new 
 purposes it is to serve. It is, moreover, clear, that, in such a 
 )^rspective, the first demand to be made of government by its 
 ubjects will be the continuous and undisturbed performance 
 if its functions. That, it can hardly be doubted, involves 
 omething in the nature of a status for those who are employed 
 )y government. They may see the element of contract in their 
 ituation; but the element of duty will be not less sharply 
 lefined.i" 
 
 The problem, in such an aspect, becomes very largely a 
 )sychological one. It is the problem of translating a psy- 
 ihological satisfaction into definite legal terms. It will be 
 iseless to prohibit strikes by statute'^" so long as the mass of 
 
 "' Rapport, p. 98. 
 
 1™ Ibid, p. 109. 
 
 "» Cf. Duguit, "Transf. du Droit Public," p. 156 f. 
 
 "» Or by injunction as, impliedly, in the Adamson decision. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 379 
 
 ; civil service feels itself sufficiently oppressed by its griev- 
 ces to refuse obedience to the law. The history of the last 
 ir years has notably demonstrated the powerlessness of . 
 itute in the face of great popular movements.'^i That is 
 t because of any inherent or growing disrespect for law.*^'' 
 is simply that we are living in an age of change so vast that 
 ministration can not keep pace with its demands. Law fol- 
 vs popular sentiment rather than creates it; and the modern 
 sparity has been notably widened simply because our jurists 
 ve been working with the instruments of an earlier time, 
 theory of law which endeavours, in such a synthesis as this, 
 frame its solution in the pragmatic terms of the conflicting 
 ;erests involved has alone the opportunity to make a con- 
 nient unity out of this multipHcity of principles. ''' It will 
 irt from the acceptance of what is, in theory at least, per- 
 ps a fundamental novelty — the notion that the interests of 
 vernment are in no instance paramount. It will not deceive 
 elf by the too-facile beUef that the primary interest of law - 
 in the preservation of order. There are times when the 
 tsiness of law is not the maintenance of an old equilibrium 
 it the creation of a new one. It is to that task that our 
 'orts must today be directed. 
 
 And what is here significant is the perception by the supreme 
 ministrative tribunal of France of the implications of this 
 w orientation. The time has already passed when adminis- 
 itive jurisdiction could be regarded as distinct from the or- 
 aary judicial power, when it could be regarded as simply 
 ecutive justice by act of grace. It is coming to be nothing 
 much as an organ of protection for such non-governmental 
 berests as are affected by ultra vires acts. It is coming to 
 sist on the responsibility of the state for its acts as a dogma 
 it less necessary to our own time than state-irresponsibiUty 
 uld be regarded as essential by the nineteenth century. It 
 modifying, gradually, it is true, but also with a steady and 
 
 "iJCf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," p. 27. 
 
 "2 As Professor Dicey seems to think, "Law of the Constitution" (8th 
 
 ..), p. xxxvii. 
 
 '»' Cf. Pound, Address to the New Hampshire Bar Association, June 30, 
 
 L7, p. 14 f . 
 
380 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 ilmost marvellous persistency, the relations of the state with 
 ts officials on the one hand and private citizens on the other. 
 [t is no longer possible for the state to defend its acts on the 
 ;round that they are clothed with the mystic power of sover- 
 eignty. Not only the form, but the contents also, of an act 
 nay be impugned. The state, in short, has become a private 
 jorporation which must act in accordance with its fundamental 
 md general purpose on the one hand, and its special instruc- 
 ions for each immediate situation on the other. Its law, that 
 s to say, is no longer the subjective command that issues from 
 ts sovereign will; it is an objective interpretation of necessity 
 Irawn from the study of the facts of each issue that may 
 i.rise.^^ 
 
 This evolution is likely, within certain well-defined Kmits, 
 iompletely to revise the time-honoured relation between the 
 tate and the fonctionnaire. It is not in any sense a final 
 evision. So long as the power of regulating civil service con- 
 litions belongs to the minister as the head of his department 
 t is a revision at each stage Kable to reversal. The time, of 
 ourse, will come when this auto-limitation will no longer be 
 leemed adequate, and the minister will then, no less than his 
 lumblest official be subject to the rule of law. But, for tem- 
 lorary purposes, it is an advance; and it points the way to 
 , time when the scope of sovereignty will be limited by a 
 ystem less Hable to interruption than the regime of whim and 
 aprice. Since 1903, at any rate, it has been impossible to 
 phold an irregular nomination. So long as there are rules the 
 'ouncil of State will enforce them. It has been admitted that 
 hose who are technically qualified to fulfill certain functions 
 ave sufficient interest in appointment to them as to prevent 
 len who are not qualified from nomination.i^^ It was no 
 lore than a natural deduction from that advance to prevent 
 
 '" On this general evolution of. Duguit "Les Transformations du Droit 
 ublic," Chaps. V and VII, and for details, G. Teisser "La ResponsabiUti de 
 I Puissance Publique." I have dealt with its implications in the first 
 lapter of this book. 
 
 i» Arret Lot et Molinier, II, Dec, 1903, cf. Duguit, "Traits de Droit 
 onstitutionnel," I, 474. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 381 
 
 regular promotion and dismissal.'** It was clearly wise to 
 isist upon the observance of the rule that a civil servant must 
 e informed of the grounds upon which any discipUnary meas- 
 re is taken against him.'*' Before 1907, it was by individual 
 ction that these rights were guaranteed. Since that time a 
 reat step forward has been taken by the permission given to 
 ivU service associations to appear as parties in actions where 
 hey can prove that they are directly interested.'** Nor is it 
 idthout significance that one court at least should have been 
 idlling to receive the plea of a federation of teachers against 
 n alleged Ubel of the Archbishop of Rheims;'*' and even 
 rhere other courts have hesitated to admit such a plea the 
 xistence of corporate prejudice has been recognised."" Eng- 
 ish experience suggests that the further step is inevitable;"' 
 ,nd it is hardly too much to say that these decisions mark 
 m epoch in the history of administrative law. 
 
 Nor is the organisation of private citizens less important in 
 ts ultimate consequences. Alongside the growth of these pro- 
 lucers' organisations we have an evolution of consumers' con- 
 rol. Its effort is directed towards almost every conceivable 
 ibject of governmental activity. The subscribers to the na- 
 ional telephone system have organised a society which not 
 inly protects its members in their complaints against inade- 
 [uate operation, but also insists that the government pay 
 egard to the most modern scientific improvements. The 
 ;!athoHc church has welded into a formidable organisation the 
 athers of famihes who belong to that rehgion to insist upon 
 he due observance of scholastic neutrality. The taxpayers 
 lave grouped themselves together with the object, among 
 
 '"Arret Warmer, Jiily 7, 1905, (promotion); ArrSt Fortin (Aug. 6, 1908) 
 ismissal. 
 
 '" Arret VUar, Aug. 6, 1909. 
 
 "'Arrgt of Dec. 11, 1908. "Association Professionnelle des Employes 
 !iviles du ministfere des colonies," Sirey, 1909, III, 17, with note of M. 
 [aurion. 
 
 '" Cf. Cahen, op. cit., p. 325. 
 
 "« Ihid., p. 326. 
 
 "' Brown v. Thomson & Co. (1912) S. C. 359. Cf. my article in Harvard 
 aw Review Vol. xxix p. 242f. 
 
i82 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 )thers, of insisting upon due economy in the performance of 
 governmental functions. The League of the Rights of Man 
 indertakes the most laborious inquiries into alleged miscar- 
 riages of justice. Nor is this all. On every hand the govern- 
 ment is beginning, tentatively, indeed, and without evident 
 understanding of its ultimate significance, to associate the pri- 
 irate citizen with the business of administration.i'^ The Supe- 
 rior Council of Agriculture is a board of expert council. The 
 Consultative Committee on Railways, instituted by the min- 
 ister of pubhc works, comprises within its membership repre- 
 sentatives of most of the great industries by which the railways 
 profit. Itis a committee with genuine functions and a growing 
 power. It speaks with a representative suggestiveness that is 
 "ar too powerful to be ignored. Nor is this less true of com- 
 merce or of charity. On all hands there are growing up asso- 
 ciations of every kind which aim directly at supplementing the 
 (vork of parties on the one hand, and directly controlling the 
 business of administration on the other.^'^ They in nowise 
 supplant the ordinary mechanisms of party; but they are often 
 3nough important in the direction they can give to the forces 
 3f public opinion. They are the beginning of what will event- 
 ually be the definite organisation of every interest that is af- 
 fected by the action of the state. They are the admission of 
 3lements within the national life that refuse to find their ordi- 
 nary satisfaction in the accepted methods of pohtics. They 
 represent the growing emphasis upon the diverse elements that 
 50 to make up citizenship, and, in particular, the insistence 
 upon the importance of function. They are at the begiiming 
 of their evolution and not at the end of it; for the definite 
 organisation of the consumer's interest in the state has a sig- 
 nificance scarcely capable of exaggeration."* 
 Ultimately, indeed, what such a movement implies is the 
 
 "^ It is, of course, profoundly suggestive to compare this tendency with 
 bhe organisation of the Council of National Defence instituted by Congress 
 after the outbreak of war. 
 
 "3 On all this cf. Cahen, op. cit., pp. 266-95. 
 
 "^ Its beginnings in England and the United States in such organisa- 
 tions as the Navy League, the Housewives' League, etc., are of course, 
 Brell-knowu. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 383 
 
 rent of a consumers' syndicalism — the organisation of thai 
 isumer's interest in the product of an industry exactly asj 
 ;re is today the organisation of the producers' interest. It! 
 unquestionable that a public opinion so created would tend r 
 assist the claims of the civil service. It would, in the first 
 ice, be obvious that the abuses of which the fonctionnaire 
 mplains are productive of waste and inefficiency. It is 
 rdly less clear that the whole basis of good administration 
 the possession of a contented civil service. It is difiicult to 
 Y whether a public opinion would today admit f onctionnariste 
 tonomy; the probability is that a long process of education 
 )uld be needed before that end could be achieved. But it is 
 ,rdly possible to doubt that the organisation of opinion upon 
 e problems of the civil service would lead to striking reform, 
 jrtainly this has been the lesson of EngHsh experience in thi^ 
 gard."* No large step could be taken which would not in- 
 )lve its freedom from the control of political interests; and 
 at is likely to prove a first step on the road to the autonomous 
 scentraUsation that is claimed. 
 
 It is impossible to prophesy in the face of a cataclysm. ^ 
 Tiat alone emerges as immediately certain is the growing im- 
 )rtance of the administrative function. It is certain that for 
 ng to come the state must burden itself with a far fuller con- 
 ol of the social life than it has ever before assumed. Obvi- 
 isly enough, in such an analysis, the position of the civil 
 rvice becomes one of the greatest significance. It will be 
 ndamentally impossible to go back to the epoch before the 
 itbreak of war; the only question will rather be what measure 
 satisfaction the fonctionnaire wUl obtain. Never before will 
 16 need of efficient administration have been so great; never 
 ifore will the penalty of discontent have been so heavy. The 
 solution of administrative syndicalism in modern France 
 innects itself logically with this outlook. For the task of 
 )vernment is likely to prove far too vast to make possible an 
 ficient and centralised control. In administration, not less 
 lan in economics, a law of diminishing returns is appUcable. 
 here comes a point in the business of government when the ^ 
 
 "' Cf. the report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service (1915), 
 peoially the separate memoranda signed by Mr. Graham Wallas. 
 
384 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 further burdening of the central authority does not produce an 
 adequate return for the outlay it involves. Decentralisation 
 becomes at that point essential. It is the only way in which 
 the congestion by which all unitary governments are oppressed 
 can be relieved. It provides the only method by which the 
 necessary attention can be given to special and local needs.''^ 
 That is true not less of special occupations than of special 
 areas. No one, for instance, can study the problem involved 
 in the fixation of railroad rates without feeling at once the 
 immense difficulties that are involved in the assumption of 
 any necessary desirability in a uniform system.^'' We are on 
 all hands faced by the questions of diversity and deUmitation. 
 The erection of distinct and autonomous authorities is the 
 logical outcome of that recognition. 
 
 The mistake we have made in the past is to think of federal 
 government in terms simply of area and of distance. Federa- 
 tions in the past have been so naturally the outcome either of 
 vast size on the one hand or of the coalescence of historically 
 separate communities on the other, that it has been difficult 
 not to translate our federal thought immediately into spatial 
 terms. We must learn to think differently. Even in America, 
 the classic ground of federal experiment, it is a new federalism 
 that is everywhere developing.^'* If, as Avith the districts of 
 the Federal Reserve System, and of the Rural Credits Board, 
 it is at least partly a matter of area, it is not less obvious that 
 a federahsm of functions is at hand — that is to say that exactly 
 as in the past we attempted delimitation by area, so, today, 
 we are attempting the delimitation of purposes. There is a 
 clear tendency upon the part of industrial and professional 
 groups to become self-governing. Legislation consecrates the 
 solutions they evolve. They become sovereign in the sense — 
 (vhich, after all, is the only sense that matters— that the rules 
 they draw up are recognized as the answer to the problems 
 they have to meet. They are obtaining compulsory power 
 
 "« Cf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," Appendix B. 
 
 "' Cf . the remarkable evidence of Mr. Justice Brandeis before the inter- 
 state Commerce Commission of the U. S. Senate, Sixty-Second Congress, 
 1911-12, pp. 1267-72. 
 
 "« Cf. Mr. Croly's article in the "The New Republic," Vol. IX, p. 170. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 385 
 
 er their members; they demand their taxes; they exercise 
 iii discipUne; they enforce their penal sanctions. They raise 
 Bry question that the modern federal state has to meet and 
 ;ir experience is, governmentally, a valuable basis for national 
 terprise.i^' 
 
 But their assumption of sovereign powers is important in 
 other aspect. To make the state omnicompetent is to leave 
 at the mercy of any group that is powerful enough to exploit 
 That has been, indeed, one of the main historical causes 
 social unrest. It transforms every political struggle into an 
 Dnomic conflict. It inevitably introduces the bitterness of 
 fight between interests which, in such an aspect, dare not 
 er compromise with their antagonists. The only way out of 
 ch an impasse is the neutraUsation of the state; and it cannot 
 neutralised saved by the division of the power that is today 
 acentrated in its hands. For to proclaim, to take a single 
 ample, the supreme interest of the state in preserving order 
 times of strikes, is already to make it take sides. The su- 
 eme interest of the state is in justice, and it does not neces- 
 rily follow that justice and order are in perfect correlation. 
 J one who has studied the relation between the state's interest 
 the preservation of order and the exploitation of that interest 
 Colorado will find room for serious doubt in this regard. To 
 ike the state universal and paramount is to make it the 
 iature of those who can possess themselves of its instruments, 
 hat obviously must be done is to secure the limitation of its 
 tivities, on the one hand, and the independence of its instru- 
 cts on the other. But the functions so delimited demand, 
 their turn, their organisation and we are thus driven back to 
 leral government.'^'"' 
 
 It is in such an aspect as this that the movement towards 
 ministrative syndicalism must be interpreted. It is not a 
 ^olt against Society but against the state. It is not a 
 rolt against authority but against a theory of it which 
 
 °' Not the least powerful argument against direct government, for 
 •mple, is the experience from early trade-union history, cf. Webb, "In- 
 itrial Democracy," pp. 1-71. ^HV 
 
 ''"' On all this M. Paul-Boncour's "F6d&alisme EcoSBaue" is an ad- 
 •able mine of information. 
 
386 AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 
 
 is, in fact, equivalent to servitude. For the obvious fact is 
 that men will not peacefully endure a situation they deem in- 
 tolerable; and any theory of politics which denounces their 
 action out of hand at once stamps itself as inadequate. The 
 truth obviously is that the state must organize itself on hues 
 which admit to the full the opportunity for the realisation of 
 personal and corporate initiative; and it is simply an induction 
 from the experience of the last century that a sovereign state 
 can be driven so to organize itself only by compulsion. That 
 is the real importance pi the theory of this movement. The 
 federalism and the decentraUsation it implies^"^ are, in fact, the 
 basis upon which the state of the future can be erected. They 
 are the sign-posts of its new orientation. They take account 
 of the obvious fact that the sovereignty of the state is a power 
 to will; but they insist upon the limitations of that power. 
 For a study of the processes of the state convincingly demon- 
 strates that without such hmitation there is no real security 
 for hberty. The purpose of the state may be good; but more 
 important than the doctrine that it inculcates is the actual hfe 
 that it leads. It is the experience of its Hfe, the contact with 
 its personahty, that has made the fonctionnaire refuse absorp- 
 tion by it. He is unwilling, even in theory, to leave it as Levia- 
 than. For sovereignty, it cannot too often be emphasised, 
 impUes the possession of legal rights; and by its legal rights — 
 in theory limitless — the state will define its moral powers.^""" 
 The individual gets caught in a complex web of rights and 
 duties where morality is confounded by the ambiguity of terms. 
 To limit state-power is to suggest at once that its action is 
 capable of judgment. It is to exalt the importance of indi- 
 vidual personality and thus to give to citizenship a prof ounder 
 value. It is to make the use of power at every moment a 
 moral question by demanding enquiry into the end it is to 
 serve. It is, in Mr. Figgis' phrase, to replace the study of 
 rights by the study of right; and if that attitude is frankly 
 medieval, it is none the worse for that.^"^ 
 
 ^'"- Though related they are different things, cf . Duguit, "Manuel de Droit 
 Constitutionnel," p. 77 ff. 
 
 ">^ Cf. my "Problem of Sovereignty," p. 20. 
 "' Figgis, "From Gerson to Grotius," p. 153. 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 387 
 
 For authority, after all, must depend upon internal roots if 
 it is to be of any avail. We too rarely consider how difficult is 
 the decision to combat the state. The presumption in general 
 opinion is, for the most part, on its side. Order is the accus- 
 tomed mode of life, and to betray it seems like enough to social 
 treason. There is probably no epoch in social history where 
 organised resistance to state-decision has not its root is some 
 deep grievance honestly conceived. It was so in 1381; it was 
 so in 1642; in 1688 and in 1789. "Reform that you may pre- 
 serve" is, as Macaulay said,^"^ "the voice of great events." 
 The state has barely heeded that constant warning; and the 
 beatification of the status quo is ever its main source of danger. 
 Administrative syndicaUsm is simply a step towards translating 
 into effective terms the programme of democratic government. 
 It is its statement as a process instead of as a claim. Above 
 all, it has realised that to preserve the play of mind, whether 
 in the government of the state or of more private enterprise, 
 its active exercise is the one sure path of safety. The real 
 danger in any society is lest decision on great events secure 
 only the passive concurrence of the mass of men. It is only 
 by intensifying the active participation of men in the business 
 of government that hberty can be made secure. For there is 
 a poison in power against which even the greatest of nations 
 must be upon its guard. The temptation demands resistances; 
 and the solution is to deprive the state of any priority not fully 
 won by performance. That is what is impHed in the fonction- 
 naire's demand. He can, as he thinks, make the state a fuller 
 and richer thing by the dispersion of its sovereignty. He can 
 preserve his own respect by securing an effective voice in the 
 determination of events. He can prevent the exploitation of 
 the administrative services by making their processes objective 
 in character. It is a movement that is as yet but at its begin- 
 ning; and it is as dangerous as it is fascinating to depict its 
 end. Of this only we may be certain, that there is no phase 
 d social life in which its motives are not, however dimly mani- 
 festly penetrating; and it will one day mean, perhaps for the 
 irst time, a state wherein the basis of citizenship will be the 
 ictive inteUigence of enlightened men. 
 
 '" "Trevelyan's Life," I, 149 n. 
 
APPENDIX 
 NOTE ON THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF LAMENNAIS 
 
 Any full list of the books on Lamennais would itself make a 
 small volume. All I propose to do here is to suggest the most 
 valuable sources for the period covered by the preceding essay 
 (A). For his actual works I have used the quarto edition in 
 two volumes published just after his excommunication. This 
 contains everything of importance up to that time, including 
 his articles in L'Avenir. Hardly less important is the corre- 
 spondence of which there are several volumes. (I) Those edited 
 by M. Forgues. (II) Those edited by his nephew, A. Blaize. 
 
 (III) The "Letters to the Baron de VitroUes" ed. Forgues. 
 
 (IV) The "Letters to Montalembert" ed. Forgues. (V) "Un 
 Lamennais inconnu." ed. Laveille; (the letters to Benoit d'Azy.) 
 (VI) "Lamennais d'apres des documents in^dits" ed. Roussel, 
 contains many unpubhshed letters, but the commentary by their 
 collector is ignorant and prejudiced. (VII) "Lettres a la baronne 
 Cottu" ed. d'Haussonville. Those volumes edited by M. Forgues 
 are by far the most valuable, though the correspondence edited 
 by Blaize has much significance for the early years; the rest 
 of what has been pubhshed has, except for odd letters, mostly 
 a literary or psychological interest (B). The most complete 
 life of Lamennais is that by the Abbe Charles Boutard in three 
 volumes (1913). It is, however, severely hampered, as a critical 
 study by the necessary theological Umitations. The life by 
 Eugene SpuUer (1892) errs almost as much on the side of anti- 
 clericahsm, but it is the best brief study we have. On the early 
 years the full study by M. Charles Marechal is admirable. On 
 the conflict with Rome I have used the essay by Pere Dudon, 
 "Lamennais et It Saintrf Siege," as it collects all the relevant 
 documents, but its polemical object is obvious throughout. The 
 best philosophic criticism is still that of Janet, "La Philosophic 
 de Lamennais" (1890), but there are good studies by M. Faguet 
 in the second volume of his " Politiques et Moralistes," and 
 
AUTHORITY IN THE MODERN STATE 389 
 
 by M. Ferraz in the second volume of his "Histoire de la 
 Philosophie en France." That by Renan, in his "Essais de Mo- 
 rale et de Critique" is by far the most sympathetic psychological 
 analysis; though the more famous essay of Sainte-Beuve in 
 the Revue des Deux Mondes for May 1834 was one of the first 
 to seize the real significance of his fife; see also the essay re- 
 printed in Portraits Contemporains. I have seen no adequate 
 study in EngUsh, though there exists a book by the Hon. W. 
 Gibson on "Lamennais and Liberal Catholicism" which I have 
 been unable to procure. 
 
INDEX 
 
 .cton (Lord), on states-general, 39; 
 definition of-liberty, 55; nature 
 of good in politics, 121. 
 
 jistotle, sets the perspective of 
 political science, 19; on the pur- 
 pose of the state, 20; on separa- 
 tion of powers, 70; value of his 
 definition of citizenship, 73; on 
 secret of happiness, 89. 
 
 jnold (Dr.), on Jewish emancipa- 
 tion, 38. 
 
 luthority, justification of, 32 f . ; 
 limitations of, 42 f.; perversions 
 of, 49 f . ; problem of, often un- 
 known to government, 51; must 
 be divided, 69 f . ; judged by pur- 
 poses, 74; danger of, where cen- 
 tralised, 78 f . ; should be divided 
 for sake of ethical achievement, 
 107 f . ; Bonald derives from God, 
 141 ; necessary in Bonald's theory, 
 148; division of rejected by 
 Bonald, 150; not justified by 
 mere existence, 224; cannot have 
 impUcit obedience, 266; mis- 
 taken use of, by Rome, 271 f.; 
 relation to liberty, 274; must be 
 democratically interpreted, 279; 
 must be widespread, 305; de- 
 rives from individual personaUty, 
 311; dependent on popular ac- 
 ceptance, 336. 
 
 B 
 
 aeon (Francis), definition of trust 
 quoted, 102. 
 
 Bagehot (Walter), on danger of 
 labor combination in politics, 36; 
 criticism of reform, 40. 
 
 Bentham (Jeremy), sneers at natu- 
 ral rights, 63. 
 
 B6ranger, prosecution of, 214. 
 
 Berryer, denies that the articles of 
 1682 are a part of French law, 
 226. 
 
 Bismarck, failure of his attack on 
 Roman CathoUc church, 45; his 
 canons of conduct, 69. 
 
 Blackstone, on sovereignty, , 24; 
 attitude to corporations, 84. 
 
 Bodin, on sovereignty, 24; on 
 separation of powers, 70. 
 
 Bonald, character, 128 f . ; theories 
 derived from 17th century, 130; 
 his political theory, 130 f.; at- 
 tack on individualism, 136 f.; 
 implications of his attack, 143 f ; 
 his reUgious philosophy, 147 f.; 
 on danger of discussion, 151 f.; 
 on importance of religion in state, 
 157 f.; criticism of his views, 
 161 f.; later influence, 166 f.; 
 debt of Lamennais to, 205. 
 
 Bossuet, the inspiration of Bonald, 
 130-1; his attack on the reforma- 
 tion, 143. 
 
 Bourget (P.), a reincarnation of 
 Bonald, 170; his traditionalism, 
 177 f.; conception of aristocracy, 
 180; attack on parliamentary 
 regime, 183; wants a monarchy 
 in France, 185. 
 
3m 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bradley (F. H.), defect of his ideal- 
 ism, 67. 
 
 Brandeis (Mr. Justice), significarice 
 of, 116. 
 
 Briand (A.), on lack of initiative in 
 State, 357; vindicates sovereign 
 state, 365; on nature of state, 
 366; on significance of govern- 
 ment, 368. 
 
 Bright (John), opposition to factory 
 acts, 38; Queen Victoria's view 
 of, 51. 
 
 Bruneti^re (F.), on need for religious 
 revival in France, 114; accepts 
 Bonald's theories, 169; his politi- 
 cal philosophy, 171 f.; accepts 
 the authoritarianism of Bossuet, 
 173; on value of orthodoxy, 175. 
 
 Bryoe (Viscount), corruption in 
 American politics, 48. 
 
 Butler (Charles), on civil service, 50. 
 
 Burke (Edmund), disUke of atheists, 
 40; on danger of examining the 
 state, 51 ; on property, 52. 
 
 Carlyle (T.), epic theory of history, 
 19; on consequences of bureau- 
 cracy, 50. 
 
 Cecil (Lord Hugh), defends laissez- 
 faire, 111. 
 
 Chalmers (T.), on church and state, 
 85. 
 
 Charles X, character of, 215; nature 
 of his rule, 283. 
 
 Chateaubriand, relations with 
 Lamennais, 208. 
 
 Church (Roman), limits power of 
 state, 45; history of, during 
 Revolution, 125 f . ; value of, to 
 statesman, 158; virtue of its 
 unity, 176; under Napoleon, 
 191 f.; during Restoration, 199 f. ; 
 
 Lamennais argues that all other 
 churches are illogical, 203; glori- 
 fication of, by Lamennais, 205 f.; 
 entirely separate from French 
 state, 210 f.; needs unity for its 
 existence, 220; as a world-state, 
 223; as a voluntary society, 231; 
 appeal of Lamennais to, 241 f.; 
 condemns Lamennais, 243 f.; 
 meaning of her expulsion of 
 Lamennais, 260 f . ; dissent in, 
 261; conditions of its internal 
 life, 264; what loyalty to, means, 
 268; TyrreU's analysis of, 270 f. 
 
 Civil Service, experience of, in 
 relation to power, 50; grievances 
 of, 95; demand for autonomy in 
 France, 326; complaints of ,327 f.; 
 favouritism in, 328; control of 
 opinion in, 330; physical condi- 
 tions in, 331; disciphne and pro- 
 motion in, 332; direction of its 
 ideas, 334; claims of,- 336 f.; 
 class-structure in, 337; revolu- 
 tionary spirit of, 340; methods 
 of organising, 342-3; attack of 
 jurists on syndicahsm in, 353 f.; 
 nature of office in, 360-1; attack 
 of politicians on syndicalism in, 
 365; weakness of this attack, 
 368 f. ; attempts at reform of, 
 376 f. 
 
 Clarke (Mr. Justice), on control of 
 administration, 100. 
 
 Clemenceau (G.), on overstaffing of 
 French departments, 331; power 
 to remain in office, 345; on law 
 of 1884, 357; vindicates sovereign 
 state, 365; on nature of state, 
 367; on power of goverimient 
 over civil service, 368. 
 
 Comte, influence of Bonald on, 168. 
 
 Conscience, denies sovereignty of 
 
INDEX 
 
 state, 45; controls the exercise 
 of power, 55; the root of indi- 
 vidualism, 59; attack by Rome 
 on freedom of, 248; supremacy 
 of, in last instance, 251; de- 
 termines right and wrong, 254; 
 significance of, as reservoir of 
 right, 265 f.; Royer-Collard in- 
 sists on value of, 311; cannot be 
 surrendered, 319. 
 Courier (P. L.), prosecution of, 214. 
 
 D 
 
 Dicey (A. V.), on penal code of 
 nineteenth century, 49; on state 
 and individual, 53; attacks 
 French administrative law, 64; 
 on judicial legislation, 72; on 
 administrative law in England, 
 98; on the characteristics of the 
 age, 112. 
 
 Dollinger (I.), kindred ideas to those 
 of Lamennais, 236; with Lamen- 
 nais at his condemnation, 247. 
 
 Duguit (Leon), importance of juris- 
 prudence in new state, 89; on 
 dechne of the sovereign state, 
 114; denies right of civil servant 
 to strike, 335; on passage of era 
 of rights, 349; on nature of public 
 office, 361; on nature of state, 
 378. 
 
 Dupanloup (Bishop), intrigues 
 against Lamennais, 243. 
 
 Durkheim (E.), on rights as classi- 
 fied by state, 115. 
 
 E 
 
 England, development of state in, 
 23-4; development of adminis- 
 strative law in, 72; problem of 
 colonial relations, 75; problem 
 of industrial groups in, 77; cor- 
 porations in, 84; irresponsibility 
 
 of state in, 97; growth of admin- 
 istrative law in, 99 f . ; recent 
 poUtical change in, 109 f.; dechne 
 of ParMament in, 300. 
 Esmein (A.), on relation of execu- 
 tive to sovereignty, 31; stands 
 alone in French pohtical theory, 
 114. 
 
 Figgis (J. N.), importance of char- 
 acter, 106; on anti-theocratic 
 character of politics, 225; on 
 right and rights, 386. 
 
 France, development of state in, 
 24; decentraUsation in, 79; re- 
 sponsibility of state there de- 
 veloping, 97; recent pohtical 
 change in, 113 f.; need of new 
 institutions in, 185; Restora- 
 tion in, 281 f. ; power of Chamber 
 of Deputies in, 305; right of 
 association in, 321 f . ; civil service 
 in, 321-85. 
 
 Freedom, definition of, 37, 55, 310; 
 of thought must be absolute, 56; 
 significance of, 90 f.; reasons for 
 emphasising, 121 f.; dangers of, 
 156; essential to progress, 231; 
 place in organised life, 268; rela- 
 tion to individual conscience, 
 275; in practical terms, 293 f.; 
 of press, 294; of rehgious belief, 
 295. 
 
 French Revolution, attack of 
 Bonald on, 128; main evU of, 133 ; 
 as an attack on Catholicism, 189; 
 as an epoch in poUtical thought, 
 281 f.; attacked by thinkers of 
 Restoration, 283. 
 
 G 
 
 Gladstone (W. E.), on power of 
 property, 52. 
 
S94 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Godwin (William), denies need for 
 political authority, 88. 
 
 Government, differentiated from 
 state, 28 f . ; who really control it, 
 36; economic aspect of, 38; does 
 not possess sovereighty, 65; dis- 
 tribution of its powers, 70 f.; 
 irresponsible as agent of state, 
 96 f.; as a trust, 102; depends on 
 religion for its stability, 157 f.; a 
 chimera to Brunetifere when 
 democratic, 175; parHamentary 
 government criticised, 183 f . ; 
 Lamennais attacks democratic, 
 218; main problem of, 239; value 
 of parliamentary, 298; distinc- 
 tion between representative and 
 parliamentary, 299; must be 
 reconciled with liberty, 313; par- 
 liamentary, declining, 348. 
 
 Green (T. H.), on nature of rights, 
 43; value of constitutional 
 methods, 44 ; definition of liberty, 
 55; on the basis of the state, 66. 
 
 Gregory XVI, issues encyclical 
 against Lamennais, 248; feeling 
 of Lamennais about, 249; pro- 
 tests against Lamennais' refusal 
 to submit, 251; excommunicates 
 Lamennais, 257. 
 
 Grey (Lord), mistaken colonial 
 policy, 76. 
 
 Guerin (M. de), influence of Lamen- 
 nais on, 233; indignation at 
 sufferings of Lamennais, 253. 
 
 Guizot (F.), forbidden to lecture, 
 214; indignation against Lamen- 
 nais, 256; relations with Royer- 
 CoUard, 288. 
 
 H 
 
 Hadley (A. T.), on purpose of 
 American constitution, 117. 
 
 Hamilton (W. H.), on price-system, 
 117. 
 
 Hanna (Mark), obsolete character 
 of his ideas, 116. 
 
 Harrington, on relation of political 
 to economic power, 38; on politi- 
 cal discussion, 47; significance of 
 economic power, 88. 
 
 Hauriou (M.), on strikes in the civil 
 service, 353 ; on types and powers 
 of civil service, 360. 
 
 Hegel, on state and society, 21. 
 
 Hobbes, his theory of the despotic 
 state, 23; necessity for unlimited 
 power, 32; on fear as basis of law, 
 33; fear of group-persons, 84. 
 
 Holmes (Mr. Justice), on fourteenth 
 amendment, 39; on relation 
 between liberty and equaUty, 54; 
 significance of, 116, 118; on 
 bargaining power of labor, 356. 
 
 Hume (D.), on power of pubUc 
 opinion, 27; on obedience as the 
 necessary basis of society, 32. 
 
 Ingram (J. K.), on inadequacy of 
 self-interest as basis of the state, 
 37. 
 
 James I, on the political aspect of 
 
 Presbyterianism, 23. 
 Jaurfes (Jean), sjnmpathises with 
 
 the proletarian revolution, 114. 
 
 Lacordaire, friendship for -Lamen- 
 nais, 233; leaves Lamennais at 
 Rome, 245. 
 
 Lamennais (F.), Tragic interest of 
 his life, 127; problem of, 189 f.; 
 early life, 193 f.; difficulties with 
 
INDEX 
 
 396 
 
 Catholicism in his early years, 
 194; attack on Gallicanism, 196; 
 in exile, 198; early ultramontan- 
 ism, 199 f.; sudden rise to fame, 
 201; danger of religious indif- 
 ference, 202 f.; glorification of 
 Rome, 205 f.; accuses French 
 state of atheism, 209 f . ; urges 
 absolute power of pope, 211 f.; 
 attack on philosophy, 212; sepa- 
 ration from the Royalists, 214; 
 attack on the secular state, 217 f . ; 
 need of unity in the church, 220 f . ; 
 declares Rome a world state, 
 223 f.; transition to liberalism, 
 225 f.; distrust of the state, 228; 
 new confidence in the masses, 
 230 f.; foimdation of L'Avenir, 
 232 f.; its programme, 234 f.; 
 statement of the problem of 
 authority, 239; appeal to Rome, 
 241 f.; visit to Rome, 243 f.; 
 sense of the ills of the chiirch, 246; 
 his condemnation, 247 f.; accusa- 
 tions against him, 250 f.; his 
 protest, 253; the break with 
 Borne, 255 f.; his excommimica- 
 tion, 257 f.; implications of his 
 attack on the church, 259 f . ; 
 causes of his quarrel with Rome, 
 263; results of his teaching, 267 f.; 
 later career of, 280. 
 
 Lemattre (Jules), converted to 
 traditionalism, 170. 
 
 Law, natural, revival of, 63 f . 
 
 Leroy (M.), on rule of law in Eng- 
 land, 64; on the decline of the 
 sovereign-state, 114; on state as 
 employer, 338; on need for 
 federal organisation, 352. 
 
 Local Government, value of, 76 f . 
 
 Locke, on the limitation of power, 
 24; on separation of powers, 70. 
 
 Lowell (A. L.), on problem of public 
 opinion, 29. 
 
 Luther, the founder of the modem, 
 state, 21; on right and expedi- 
 ency, 41; attack of Bonald on, 
 139 f. 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay (Lord), on importance 
 of middle-classes, 110; on value 
 of reform, 387. 
 
 Machiavelli, on history as a cycle, 
 19. 
 
 MacTaggart (J. E. M.), on society 
 as an organism, 35. 
 
 Madison (James), relation of fac- 
 tions to property, 39; on separa- 
 tion of powers, 71. 
 
 Maine (Sir Hemy), on habit, 33. 
 
 Maistre (Joseph de), his literary 
 power, 127; affinity with Bonald, 
 152; part in ultramontane revival, 
 192 f.; praise of Lamennais, 201, 
 207; the fruit of his work, 248. 
 
 Maitland (F. W.), on dangers of 
 centralisation, 84; need for re- 
 sponsible state, 97. 
 
 Maurras (Charles), his significance, 
 170. 
 
 Metternich, intrigues against 
 Lamennais, 244, 256. 
 
 Mill (J. S.), definition of Uberty, 55; 
 on rights of property, 102; on 
 inability of House of Commons to 
 understand workers, 112; on 
 value of variety, 188. 
 
 Montalembert, joins Lamennais, 
 234; his visit to Rome, 245; 
 translates hymn to Polish Uberty, 
 250; desertion of Lamennais, 
 258. 
 
 Montesquieu, on separation of 
 powers, 70; attack on his doc- 
 trine by Bonald, 150. 
 
396 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Montlosier, significance of his doc- 
 trine, 222. 
 
 Paley, on nature of sovereignty, 26. 
 
 Peel (Sir R.), on right and expe- 
 diency, 41. 
 
 Pitt (William), his poUtioal train- 
 ing, 47. 
 
 Plato, on the nature of virtue, 20. 
 
 Pound (Roscoe), law in books and 
 law in action,. 42; on decline of 
 natural law, 64. 
 
 Protestantism, attack of Lamennais 
 on, 203; counter-extravagance 
 of Jesuitism, 274. 
 
 Proudhon, the genius of French 
 labour movement, 114. 
 
 R 
 
 Reformation, source of modem 
 state, 21; Bonald's view of, 139. 
 
 Renan (E.), significance of his 
 scepticism of democracy, 168; 
 estimate of Lamennais, 190. 
 
 Rights, defined, 43; significance of, 
 46 f.; origins of, 61 f.; relation 
 to right, 225; value of the right 
 to be wrong, 312; relation to 
 duties, 349; new methods of 
 defending, 381 f. 
 
 Rhodes (Cecil), disregard of moral- 
 ity in poUtics, 49. 
 
 Root (Elihu), obsolete character of 
 his ideas, 116. 
 
 Rousseau, on freedom in England, 
 24; on residence of sovereignty, 
 28; difficulty of his view, 29; on 
 consent as basis of state, 34; on 
 the paradox of freedom, 108; 
 attack of Bonald on, 137 f.; in- 
 fluence on Lamennais, 193; 
 raises fundamental question of 
 poUtics, 223; and Savigny, 285; 
 
 on associations, 321; on mutual 
 character of social contract, 351; 
 view of citizenship rejected, 360. 
 Royer-CoUard, early life of, 287; 
 character of, 288; fimction of his 
 party, 289; denies the existence 
 of sovereignty, 290 f . ; on the 
 Charter, 291; its history and 
 objects, 292 f.; on freedom of 
 press, 294; of religious behef, 
 295; on independence of magis- 
 tracy, 297; on value of parlia- 
 mentary government, 298; on 
 danger of Chamber of Deputies, 
 300; danger of power, 301; in- 
 fluence of Montesquieu on, 302; 
 on value of defining rights, 305; 
 defects of his outlook, 309; on 
 moral inadequacy of state as 
 mere agent of survival, 314; 
 estimate of, 320. 
 
 S 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, influence of Lamen- 
 nais on, 233; on the "Paroles 
 d'un Croyant," 255. 
 
 Seeley (J.), on federal government, 
 74. 
 
 Smith (Adam), on education as a 
 state-activity, 59; on natural 
 law, 61; attacked by Bonald, 
 146 f. 
 
 Smith (F. E.), on Welsh Disestab- 
 lishment Bill, 58. 
 
 Sovereignty, denied to state by 
 churches and trade imions, 27; 
 meaning of, 29; implication of, 
 41 f.; theory of, rejected, 89; 
 needs new definition, 119-120; 
 of nation as individualistic, 138; 
 must be unified, in Bonald's view, 
 150; why it needs distribution, 
 177; and government, 265; in- 
 dividual is beyond, 276; exist- 
 
INDEX 
 
 397 
 
 ence of, denied by Royer-CoUard, 
 290 f . ; legal theory of, invalid in 
 actual life, 308; checks on, 309. 
 
 Stammler (R.), on natural law with 
 changing content, 64. 
 
 State, character of its history, 19; 
 origins of modem, 21; inherits 
 papal prerogative, 23; differen- 
 tiated from government, 25 f . ; 
 real nature of, 31 f.; relation to 
 individual will, 47 f . ; possible 
 perversion of, 48 f.; significance 
 of resistance to, 63; necessary 
 units of, 54 f . ; different from 
 society, 65; realistic analysis of, 
 66 f.; is basically federal, 74 f.; 
 cannot absorb individual alle- 
 giance, 83; primarily a body of 
 consumers, 85; must be based on 
 representative government, 91; 
 relation of, to criticism, 93; rela- 
 tion to industry, 94 f . ; extension 
 of powers, 98; should be made 
 responsible, 105; its modern 
 direction, 109 f.; must be moral- 
 ised, 122; religious aspect of, in 
 Bonald's theory, 147; must 
 choose between atheism and 
 supremacy of Rome, 210; attack 
 on its sovereignty by Lamennais, 
 217 f.; Lamennais' distrust of, 
 228; Royer-Collard's view of, 
 289; must not establish a church, 
 296; must divide power, 303; is 
 pluralistic, 304; rights not de- 
 rived from, 312; nature of its 
 ethics, 315; worth of, consists 
 in its individual members, 318; 
 as an industrial instrument, 325; 
 reconstruction of, by civil service, 
 341; centralisation in the modem, 
 343 f.; civil service desires re- 
 sponsible power in, 347; im- 
 
 possibiUty of sovereign, 363; 
 French defence of, 373 f . ; rights 
 of, 374; as pubUc service cor- 
 poration, 378; responsibiUty of,' 
 380; federalism developing in, 
 384; significance of change in its 
 direction, 385. 
 
 Taine (H.), significance in tradi- 
 tionaUsm, 167; his pessimism, 
 168; on origins of centraUsation 
 in France, 343 f . 
 
 Taylor (Sir H.), on process of ad- 
 ration, 50. 
 
 Theocracy, decUne of, 123; value 
 of, 124. 
 
 Thomas (Albert), on consumers' 
 representation, 352. 
 
 Thucydides, on history as a store- 
 house of political wisdom, 19. 
 
 TocqueviUe (A. de), on right of 
 association in ^nglO'Saxon coun- 
 tries, 322; on centralised ad- 
 ministration, 323. 
 
 Trevelyan (Sir C), on cause of 
 civil service reform, 50. 
 
 Tj^eU (Greorge), as successor of 
 Lamennais, 267; on loyalty to 
 church, 268; on limitations of 
 authority, 269; nature of his 
 problem, 272 f.; insistence on 
 freedom, 275; on weaknesses of 
 Rome, 277; on nature of social 
 will, 278. 
 
 U 
 
 United States, development of 
 state in, 25; involves decentralisa- 
 tion by its size, 75; problem of 
 industrial groups in, 78; irre- 
 sponsibility of state in, 97; ad- 
 ministrative law in, 99 f . ; recent 
 political change in, 115 f.; sepa- 
 
INDEX 
 
 ration of powers in, 303; growth 
 of executive power in, 307. 
 Unity, Medieval worship of, 23; of 
 state demands absolutism, 149; 
 achieved by religion, 157 f . ; why 
 rejected, 187 f . ; conditions of, 
 204; Lamennais learns danger of, 
 243; search for principles of, 
 283; juristic attitude to, 354. 
 
 Ventura (Father), attack on La- 
 mennais, 241. 
 
 Vitrolles (Baron), feeling against 
 the "Paroles," 255. 
 
 Vogu6 (M. de), on importance of 
 tradition, 166. 
 
 Voltaire, identifies king and state, 
 24; influence on Lamennais, 193. 
 
 W 
 
 Wallas (Graham), on leadership of 
 men, 32; on importance of 
 workers' interest in education, 
 59; on syndicalism, 88, 352; on 
 happiness in work, 90; on politi- 
 cal trades, 107; on need for new 
 institutions. 111; on lack of 
 interest in the administrative 
 process, 324. 
 
 Whitgift, on Presbyterianism, 23. 
 
 Yates (Edmund), experiences in 
 postoffice, 50. 
 
 Zimmem (A.), on danger of dis- 
 unity, 93. 
 
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