Absolutism

“ In the constitutional state absolutism itself has at last come in conflict with itself, as it has been shattered into a duality; the government wants to be absolute, and the people wants to be absolute. ”

“ That is why, says the philosopher, all parties, without exception, as they affect power, are varieties of absolutism, and there will only be liberty for the citizens, order for society, union among the workers, when the renunciation of authority will have replaced in the political catechism faith in authority. ”

“ In this respect it is no doubt a critical fact, that in certain quarters of European life, nay even in some entire countries, parties and governments should be more and more carried away by the spirit of absolutism. ”

“ Our absolutism will in all things be logically consecutive and therefore in each one of its decrees our supreme will will be respected and unquestionably fulfilled: it will ignore all murmurs, all discontents of every kind and will destroy to the root every kind of manifestation of them in act by punishment of an exemplary character. ”

“ It is hostile to all absolutism, and people who are well-trained in the traditions of civil liberty are quick to detect absolutism in all its new forms. Those who have lost the traditions of civil liberty accept phrases. ”

“ But behind these judicial expedients lay great principles of absolutism, which, partly from the example of foreign monarchies, partly from the sense of social and political insecurity, and yet more{210} from the isolated position of the crown, were gradually winning their way in public opinion. “These notions,” he goes boldly on, “are fostered by the maxim that the king can do no wrong, however much he may wish to do it; that not only the property but the persons of his subjects are his own; and that a man has a right to no more than the king’s goodness thinks fit not to take from him.” ”

“ Either Cæsar is in the place of God, or the people; and the only religion this nineteenth century tolerates is either monarchical absolutism or popular absolutism; and European society, as we see, only swings like a pendulum from the one to the other, and finds no liberty or chance for free development under either. ”

“ Without demanding absolutism I do desire a predominant democratic character in our national enterprises, rather than a confused muddle or struggle of interests where nothing really emerges except the egoism of those who struggle. ”

“ In the few years that elapsed between his disgrace and death, he came to understand that excellent as absolutism may be in theory, it has certain disadvantages in fact: and that for one monarch who is found to satisfy the standard of sovereign virtue, there are twenty who fall immeasurably beneath it. ”

“ Wherever the will of the power holder operates directly upon the subject or object, there is absolutism. Interpose a medium between the two, separate the law maker from the law executor, make both the subjects or servants of the law, and then, if the people are virtuous, you can harmonize private liberty with public order. ”

“ English nobility has always opposed the absolutism of its kings, in common cause with the people, whose rights it sustained as identical with its own, while the noblesse of France, on the contrary, always yielded to royal authority—auf Gnade und Ungnade—in favour or in disgrace. ”

“ The personal absolutism of the period before 1800 has been shaken off in the nineteenth century, but experiments in constitutional government under monarchs of various families and even under a republic, have not succeeded in bettering conditions greatly. ”

“ The passage of a State from absolutism to constitutionalism involves a great alteration in its position towards the Church, and the manner in which her rights are respected is the test by which we may determine whether the Constitution is a step towards liberty, or a new and popular form of absolutism. For the Church is affected not by the form of government, but by its principle. ”

“ Thus, in the great triad of the religious world—God, the Mediator, and Man-God is to the God-Man as the God-Man is to Man. On this basis he constructed a system of political absolutism which lacks two things only:—well-grounded premisses instead of baseless hypotheses, and the acquiescence of those who were to be subjected to it. ”

“ The necessity there has been for absolutism is best seen on observing that, in the struggles for existence among societies, those have conquered which, other things equal, were the more subordinate to their chiefs and kings. And, since in early stages military subordination and social subordination go together, it results that, for a long time, the conquering societies continue to be the despotically governed societies. ”

“ The champions of liberty and the supporters of absolutism apply their principles to an unstable republic; they legislate for a {202} democracy devoid of passions and inimical castes; they build the future state by means of syllogisms. ”

“ Had the apostles or the Scriptures openly denounced all absolutism, whether civil or domestic, it would have aroused unnecessary prejudice and opposition, and diverted the attention of men from the grand object aimed at in giving the world a written and preached gospel. God deemed it wiser to reach these evils through the slow but sure progress of certain great principles laid down in his Word, than through the medium of specific prohibitions. ”

“ All we need say here is that the democratic conception of the principle of authority is a purely ethical one. The sovereignty of the people must not be conceived in the sense of the monarchical sovereignty of absolutism ”

“ In a certain sense, the civilizing current, coming from without, has favoured the development of absolutism in this country, by endowing the personal power with resources and means of action it could never have drawn from the heart of a barbarous society. ”

“ The everlasting arms are beneath, whether in the world of finite appearance you seem to fail or to succeed.' There can be no doubt that when men are reduced to their last sick extremity, absolutism is the only saving scheme. ”

“ In cases where his whole external conduct has been absorbed by one such power we have absolute rule, religious or military, and a uniform population. If there be a single predominating power which has not yet completely conquered, we have in some form or another a record of its growth by a tendency toward absolutism. ”

“ Unfortunately, all history shows how feeble are barriers of paper or lambskin, even when hallowed with a monarch's oath, against the torrent of regal and ecclesiastical absolutism. ”

“ To get justification for positive law, he takes us back to the absolute sovereignty of the power imposing it—a monarch, an aristocracy, or that larger body of men who have votes in a democracy; which body he also styles the sovereign, in contrast with the remaining portion of the community, which, from incapacity or other cause, remains subject. And having affirmed, or rather taken for granted, the unlimited authority of the body, simple or compound, small or large, which he styles sovereign, he, of course, has no difficulty in deducing the validity of its edicts, which he calls positive law. ”

“ It was a great effort—mainly unconscious—in favour of the direct government of each State by itself, of the whole people by the whole people; a national protest against Theocracy, the subordination of man in religious affairs to the accident of his history; Monarchy, the subordination of the mass of men to a single man; Aristocracy, the subordination of the many to the few, of the weak to the strong; yes, in part also against Despotocracy, the subordination of the slave who toils to the master that enjoys,—in their rights they were equal. ”

“ For when the men that be in that office please, they are called an aristocracy, or otherwise an oligarchy, wherein those, the major part of which declare the wills of the whole multitude being assembled, are the sovereign, and every man severally a subject. Lastly, if their consent be such, that the will of one man, whom they name, shall stand for the wills of them all, then is their government or union called a monarchy, and that one man a sovereign, and every of the rest a subject. ”

“ The kingdom of Saturn was the good time, which they also called the Golden Age. But Justice is paramount only in a Monarchy, and therefore a Monarchy, that is, the Empire, is needed if the world is to be ordered for the best. For better proof of this assumption it must be recognised that Justice, considered in itself, and in its proper nature, is a certain rightness or rule of conduct, which rejects on either side all that deviates from it. ”

“ Men were not ashamed of, did not suffer from, their dependence on authority, when they felt that they owed an obligation to it. The authority of the family, the authority of society, the authority of the state (long synonymous with the will of the despotic ruler) gradually asserted themselves, and supported themselves, one and all, upon a still higher authority, the authority of religion. In it the principle of authority reaches the absolute stage. The will of the Almighty becomes the supreme law, to which all must bow and which must be blindly obeyed. ”

“ The divinity of kings, the God-given right to rule, was shattered for all time. The giant at last knew his strength, and with head erect, and the light of freedom in his eyes, he dared to assert the liberty, equality and fraternity of man. ”

“ If the power of an emperor, or of a king, be limited by law, the government is called a limited monarchy; if there be no legal restraint to the will of the sovereign, it is called an absolute monarchy. ”

“ I answer, it is the rule and government of God, whether on earth or in the heavens; and it is the only legitimate power, the only authority that is acknowledged by Him to rule and regulate the affairs of His kingdom. When every wrong thing shall be put right, and all usurpers shall be put down, when he whose right it is to reign shall take the dominion, then nothing but the Priesthood will bear rule; it alone will sway the sceptre of authority in heaven and on earth, for this is the legitimacy of God. ”

“ Before I examine or refute these Doctrines, I must a little make some Observations upon his Words.
10First, He saith, that by the law of God, Power is immediately in the People; hereby he makes God to be the immediate Author of a Democratical Estate; for a Democrasy is nothing else but the Power of the Multitude. If this be true, not only Aristocracies, but all Monarchies are altogether unlawful, as being ordained (as he thinks) by Men, whenas God himself hath chosen a Democracy. ”

“ The laws are the determining principles, according to which the dominant body governs and restrains those who would, and punishes those who do, transgress them. He defines three kinds of constitutions, each of them having a corresponding perversion:—a republic, arising from the principle of equality; this at times degenerates into democracy; monarchy, and aristocracy, which arise from principles of inequality, founded on the preponderance of external or internal strength and wealth, and which are apt to degenerate into tyranny and oligarchy. ”

“ Now as for what is called absolute monarchy, that is to say, when a king governs all other men according to his own will, some people think that it is not in accordance with the nature of things for one man to have absolute authority over all the citizens; since those who are by nature equal must necessarily have the same rights. ”

“ The extreme section of absolutists, with their idea of divine right, began to die out, and the process was so continuous and rapid that, if not as a theory, at least as an element of English politics, it has become a mere rudimentary survival, an embryotic function, representing an instrument which in earlier times society was able to oppose to the dreaded evils of lawlessness and anarchy. ”

“ If the Lord had not appointed you to be sovereign over the body as over a kingdom, if he had not confided to you the affairs of its government, and had not given you this brief copy as a model, how would you have been able to comprehend the sovereign, who is independent of reasoning and of place, and who cannot be known by argument or hypothesis or in any other way? ”

“ But because the universal will is made to reside in the will of one monarch, there nevertheless proceeds from this point of view, which is really correct, a condition of absolute rule, of perfect despotism. ”

“ For if sovereign authority is derived formally from the consent of the people and not from God, who is the supreme and Eternal Principle of all power, it loses in the eyes of the governed its most august characteristic and degenerates into an artificial sovereignty which rests on unstable and shifting bases, namely, the will of those from whom it is said to be de- rived. ”

“ I've always wondered whether the theory of the divine right of kings was invented by the kings, to establish their authority over the people, or by the priests, to establish their authority over the kings. ”

“ Often enough attempts have been made to organize the powers of priests, kings, nobles, in a theocracy, monarchy, oligarchy, powers which had no foundation in human duties or human rights, but solely in the selfishness of strong men. ”

“ This claim, wild as it may seem, this claim, which supposes dominion without authority, and subjects without subordination, has found among the libertines of policy many clamorous and hardy vindicators. The laws of Nature, the rights of humanity, the faith of charters, the danger of liberty, the encroachments of usurpation, have been thundered in our ears, sometimes by interested faction, and sometimes by honest stupidity. ”

“ Therefore it is best for the human race to be governed by one man; and Monarchy is necessary for the welfare of the world.
XV.—I say also that Being, and Unity, and the Good come in order after the fifth mode of priority. [193] -207- For Being comes by nature before Unity, and Unity before Good. Where Being is most, there Unity is greatest; and where Unity is greatest, there Good is also greatest; and in proportion as anything is far from Being in its highest form, is it far from Unity, and therefore from Good. ”