Pantisocracy

“ Whether men realize it or not, when they say, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," it is as much as to say, "O God, sweep away all the falsehood and abuses of power there are in the world, whether religious or political; down with the tyrants, down with the abuses, down with the false nobility, down with the pride, extravagance, and idleness of the one class, and down with the hard trials, want, oppression, and poverty that are heaped upon the other class; do away with all the kingcraft, priestcraft, and republic craft that are in the world. ”

“ Where are we not victorious? Ours is the only despotism that ever smote two-handed,—crushing a monarchy here, and a people there,—proclaiming divine right, or asserting the human inheritance of freedom! ”

“ If the power of government be very extensive, and the subjects of it have, consequently, little power over their own actions, that government is tyrannical, and oppressive; whether, with respect to its form, it be a monarchy, an aristocracy, or even a republic. For the government of the temporary magistrates of a democracy, or even the laws themselves may be as tyrannical as the maxims of the most despotic monarchy, and the administration of the government may be as destructive of private happiness. ”

“ Under a pure despotism, the morals of politics would make but a very short chapter. Mercy in the ruler; obedience in his officers, with, perhaps, an occasional stroke of remonstrance; and taxpaying in the people, would comprehend the whole. Among a self-governing people, who profess to take human equality for their great common principle, and the golden rule for their political vow, a long chapter of many sections is required. ”

“ What horror can their mock-tragedies excite in those who have contemplated the Place de la Revolution? or who can smile at a farce in ridicule of monarchy, that beholds the Convention, and knows the characters of the men who compose it?—But in most of these wretched productions the absurdity is luckily not less conspicuous than the immoral intention: their Princes, their Priests, their Nobles, are all tyrannical, vicious, and miserable; yet the common people, living under these same vicious tyrants, are described as models of virtue, hospitality, and happiness. ”

“ In truth, when certain persons say to the Pontifical government, ‘form an administration which may have for its aim the good of the people,’ the government might reply, ‘look at our acts, and condemn us if you dare.’ The government might ask, ‘not only which of its acts is a subject of legitimate blame, but in which of its duties it has failed?’ Are we, then, to be told that the Pontifical government is a model—that it has no weakness or imperfections? ”

“ They cannot divest themselves of the idea that in the realm of thought there must be government—authority and obedience—laws and penalties—rewards and punishments, and that somewhere in the universe there is a penitentiary for the soul.
In the republic of mind, one is a majority. ”

“ The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.
—Think what we like!—said the divinity-student;—think what we like! What! against all human and divine authority?
Against all human versions of its own or any other authority. At our own peril always, if we do not like the right,—but not at the risk of being hanged and quartered for political heresy, or broiled on green fagots for ecclesiastical treason! Nay, we have got so far, that the very word heresy has fallen into comparative disuse among us. ”

“ Let us despise as unworthy of our cause the tricky manipulations by which, to the detriment of the Republic, political bodies have so frequently been controlled. Let us, in the face of the great things to be accomplished, rise above all petty considerations. ”

“ The cruel tyranny of Pancratius and the mob, is also full of important lessons. From it we gather that despotism does not consist in the fact of the whole power being vested in the hands of one or many, but in the truth that a government is without love for the governed, whatever may be its constitutional form. One or many, an assembly of legislators or a king, an oligarchy or a mob, may be equally despotic, if love be not the ruling principle. ”

“ Our masses—the word comes from your days—you know, of course, that we still have masses—regard you as our actual ruler. Just as a great number of people in your days regarded the Crown as the ruler. They are discontented—the masses all over the earth—with the rule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the old quarrel of the common man with his commonness—the misery of work and discipline and unfitness. ”

“ Under the severe pressure of despotism the people rise in their fury, and snap their chains asunder. A republic follows; degenerating first into a rude and wild democracy; and thence into a cruel and more turbulent anarchy. ”

“ We lift up our hands and say, "Yes, we will receive him." The world say this is despotism, being governed by one man. Is it despotism for every man and every woman to have a voice in the selection of those who rule over them? ”

“ Shall we follow our old plan, which we adopted with a view to clearness, of taking the State first and then proceeding to the individual, and begin with the government of honour?—I know of no name for such a government other than timocracy, or perhaps timarchy. We will compare with this the like character in the individual; and, after that, consider oligarchical man; and then again we will turn our attention to democracy and the democratical man; and lastly, we will go and view the city of tyranny, and once more take a look into the tyrant's soul, and try to arrive at a satisfactory decision. ”

“ Does it conduce to the welfare of those whom it pretends to bind or to rule? Is it in consonance with right reason that men should impose upon themselves the despotism of those laws and of the beliefs sanctioning them? ”

“ We hear of people being spoilt by their prepossessions, their party, their prejudices, the necessities of their political and ecclesiastical position; Mr. Pattison is a warning that a man may claim the utmost independence, and yet be maimed in his power of being just and reasonable by other things than party. ”

“ And yet this government is to be resisted, betrayed, and overturned; while a government founded upon the chance of blood, upon the hereditary sufficiency of men, and successive chastity of women, and which acts by discretion, cruelty, or folly, is of divine appointment, and irresistible. What can be more monstrous! ”

“ How the heart-burnings in a shepherd's family drove a minister of state to the foot of Pharaoh's throne. And how, for purposes still more important, a shepherd-boy was enabled to govern a mighty kingdom.
From the same pure Fountain of Wisdom we learn that vice destroys freedom; that arbitrary power is founded on public immorality, and that misconduct in those who rule a republic, necessary consequence of general licentiousness, so disgusts and degrades the nation, that, dead to generous sentiment, they become willing slaves. ”

“ Dispossess yourselves, if you can, of the spirit of faction, and of groundless displeasure and revenge; and then try if you can find any divine, any unalterable right in the Pretender. He has in truth no right, but what your own unruly and restless passions give him. We all know what would cure you of your opinion of his title, of your fondness for his person. The constitution will not stoop to you; the government will not be governed by you; you have not the power ”

“ Submission, whether to a government, to the dogmas of ecclesiastics, or to that code of behaviour which society at large has set up, is essentially of the same nature; and the sentiment which induces resistance to the despotism of rulers, civil or spiritual, likewise induces resistance to the despotism of the world's opinion. Look at them fundamentally, and all enactments, alike of the legislature, the consistory, and the saloon—all regulations, formal or virtual, have a common character: they are all limitations of men's freedom. ”

“ But He who ordains the destiny of man, conceals his purposes until the completion of the deigns of divine government. This should teach mankind the lessons of humility and candor, instead of an indulgence of that fierce, vindictive spirit that aims at the destruction of its own species, under the imposing authority of obtrusive despotism. ”

“ Truth will be made to patronize imposture, and meekness to support tyranny: Obedience to equal laws, and submission to just authority, shall be turned into a servile and crouching subjection to blind rage and inhuman fury; complaisant and respective behaviour into slavish flattery, and supple homage to power; meekness and humility into dejection, poorness of spirit, and bodily prostrations; charity, benevolence, and humanity, into a fiery and outrageous zeal to propagate fashionable and gainful opinions: Christian courage shall be changed into cruelty and brutish violence ”

“ Pantheism, firstly, destroys individualities, or, as the Germans call them, subjectivities; it sweeps them away, and causes them to disappear in the Great Whole. Do we not likewise see personality, simple or associated—that is to say, individual liberty, associations, and corporations—little by little reduced to annihilation by the modern idea of the state? Does not modern theory make also of the state another grand whole, beside which nothing private can exist? ”

“ And if we call the management of violent rulers tyranny, and the voluntary management of herds of voluntary bipeds politics, may we not further assert that he who has this latter art of management is the true king and statesman? ”

“ Last night I had beheld the council of the Plutocracy. Here was the council of the Proletariat. The large heads at one end of the line were matched by the large heads at the other. A great injustice, or series of wrongs, working through many generations, had wrought out results that in some sense duplicated each other. Brutality above had produced brutality below; cunning there was answered by cunning here; cruelty in the aristocrat was mirrored by cruelty in the workman. High and low were alike victims--unconscious victims--of a system. ”

“ We have grumbled about our political institutions, sometimes we have sought by certain magical legislative devices to exercise and expel the evil spirits that possessed them. On the whole we have been inclined to regard them as sacred and to treat any fundamental criticism of them as a sort of blasphemy. If things went wrong, it was not the institutions but the persons we elected to conduct them, and an incorrigible human nature, who were at fault. ”

“ The favourite Subject of its Clamours will be the Misconduct of Those who govern. And in a Country where Liberty is justly ranked among the greatest national Blessings, the most plausible Pretence of Faction will be, "to load the executive Power with the Charge of Despotism." ”

“ In a Republic the Sovereign Power is vested in the people, and the main principle is that all things should be determined in accordance with the desires of the majority. These desires may be embraced by two words, namely, existence and happiness. I, the President, came from my farm because I was unable to bear the eternal sufferings of the innocent people. I assumed office and tried vainly to soothe the violent feelings. The greatest evil nowadays is the misunderstanding of true principles. ”

“ And no doubt both forms of despotism have been necessary in the appropriate stages of human development. But, at the time our republic was born, it had become apparent to the dullest, as it had long been to prophetic minds, that the hour had arrived when political control must concern itself not only with its first great task, viz., the development of social order, but must set itself at work also on its second great effort, viz., the definition and defense of personal rights inside of this social order. ”

“ Such a law would show them to be but servants, and servants who had shamefully abused their trust. In such a case, every man for himself would lay his hand upon his sword, and the authority of the supreme power of the state would be annihilated. ”

“ But they saw clearly, that popular powers must be placed as a guard, a control, a balance, to the powers of the monarch and the priest, in every government, or else it would soon become the man of sin, the whore of Babylon, the mystery of iniquity, a great and detestable system of fraud, violence, and usurpation. ”

“ But I trust, also, that those who are sincerely devoted to great ends of public good, will not let mere party dictation, which in our days has so frequently developed a despotic tendency, or an artful revival of the old warcries without sufficient occasion, deter them from following the course pointed out by their sense of duty, nor permit themselves to be used as mere tools for purposes of which their consciences do not approve. ”

“ But that which in an age of good government is an evil, may in an age of grossly bad government be a blessing. It is better that men should be governed by priest craft than by brute violence; by such a prelate as Dunstan, than by such a warrior as Penda. ”

“ Do you not see already that the régime of authority, of inequality, of predestination, of eternal salvation, and of reasons of State, is daily becoming still more intolerable for the well-to-do classes, whose conscience and reason it tortures, than for the mass, whose stomach cries out against it? ”

“ The test of a political system is not how it operates in a state of equilibrium, but how it shows itself in the face of changes. Condescension and indulgence are no less the marks of tyranny than persecution and confiscation, and its essential nature is revealed when the inferior asks to be permitted to think and act for himself. ”