had been so often repeated—that Louis Napoleon "had saved society and civilization." Now, this is exactly an idea which belongs to the order that has been indicated. It is in the first place founded upon the belief that if civilization perishes in France, it is necessarily lost for the entire world. It would certainly produce a very serious shock; but the French idea of one leading nation is an anachronism. It belongs to ancient times; the French easily fall into this error, because Paris really leads France. Civilization, however, would not be wholly lost even for France, should Paris be destroyed; or, if it were so, what must we think of the whole country? Secondly, those who assert that Napoleon III. saved society, mean, it must be supposed, that had he not taken the reins of absolute power, the socialists would have destroyed property, industry and individuality. The fear which the socialists have inspired must have been very great, and doubtless the power in every individual of doing mischief is immense, compared to that of doing good. Even an insect can cause a leak to a man-of-war; but to say that a single man-such a man and by such means-has been the savior of society, is at once so monstrous an exaggeration, and such an avowal of inability to act, and want of self-reliance, that this hyperbole, if it be not altogether an error, would have led to no such results with any nation less accustomed to centralism, absolutism, and an absorbing government. These were necessary to make a nation so rapidly, and apparently with so much good-humor, bend to all the exorbitant and insulting demands of absolutism, to which, unfortunately at this moment, the French nation seems to bow with a peculiar grace. CHAPTER XXX V. VOX POPULI VOX DEI. THE maxim Vox Populi Vox Dei is so closely connected with the subjects which we have been examining, and it is so often quoted on grave political occasions, that it appears to me proper to conclude this work with an inquiry into the validity of this stately saying. Its poetic boldness and epigrammatic finish, its Latin and lapidary formulation, and its apparent connection of a patriotic love of the people with religious fervor, give it an air of authority and almost of sacredness. Yet history, as well as our own times, show us that everything depends upon the question who are "the people," and that even if we have fairly ascertained the legitimate sense of this great yet abused term, we frequently find that their voice is anything rather than the voice of God. If the term people is used for a clamoring crowd, which is not even a constituted part of an organic whole, we would be still more fatally misled by taking the clamor for the voice of the deity. We shall arrive, then, at this conclusion, that in no case can we use the maxim as a test, for, even if we call the people's voice the voice of God in those cases in which the people demand that which is right, we must first know that they do so before we could call it the voice of God. It is no guiding authority; it can sanction nothing. Were then "The chief priests, and the rulers, and the people," cried out all at once, "Crucify him, crucify him!" "the rulers and the people" not the populus? was assuredly not the vox Dei in this case? 1 St. Luke, 23. their voice If populus means the constituted people speaking through the organs and in the forms of law, the case of Socrates arises at once in our mind. It was the people of Athens, speaking by their constituted authorities, that bade him drink the hemlock; yet it would be blasphemy to say that it was the voice of God that spoke in this case through the mouth of the Athenians. Was it the voice of the people, and, through it, the voice of God, which demanded the sway of the guillotine in the first French revolution? Or was it the voice of God which made itself heard in 1848, when all punishment of death for political offences was abolished in France? Or is it the voice of God which through "the elect one of the people" demanded the re-establishment of capital punishment for high political offences? Or is it the voice of God that used so indefinite a term in law as that of political offences? There are, indeed, periods in history in which, centuries after, it would seem as if an impulse from on high had been given to whole masses, or to the leading minds of leading classes, in order to bring about some comprehensive changes. That remarkable age of maritime discovery which has influenced the whole succeeding history of civilization and the entire progress of our kind, would seem at first glance, and to many, even after a careful study of all its elements, to have received its motion and action from a breath not of human breathing. No person, however, living at that period would have been authorized to call the wide-spread love of maritime adventure the voice of God, merely because it was widely diffused. Impulsive movements of greater extent and intensity have been movements of error, passion, and crime. It must be observed that the thorough historian often acts in these cases as the natural philosopher who finds connection, causes and effects where former ages thought they recognized direct and detached manifestations or interpositions of a superior power, and not the greater attribute of admitting variety under eternal laws and unchanging principles. When the whole of Europe was animated by one united longing to conquer the holy land, it appeared undoubtedly to the crusaders that the voice of the people was the voice of God. It seemed, indeed, as if an afflatus numinis breathed over the European land. Those, however, who now believe that the crusades were a great injury to Europe-and there are such―do not perceive the voice of God in this vast movement. They will perhaps maintain that it was not the people who felt this surprising impulse, but the chivalry, who by their unceasing petty feuds had developed a martial restlessness which began to lack food, and thus engaged in distant enterprises, stimulated by the highly sacerdotal character which pervaded that age. To find out, then, whether it was the vox populi, would first require to find out whether it was the vox Dei, and, consequently, we are no better off with the maxim than without it.1 I am under the impression that the famous maxim first came into use in the middle ages, at a contested episcopal election,2 1 Sir Wm. Hamilton begins the third paragraph, page 770, of The Works of Thomas Reid on the Universality of the Philosophy of Common Sense, in this way: "1.-Hesiod thus terminates his Works and Days: Φήμη δ' οὔποτε πάμπαν ἀπόλλιται ἧι τινα πολλοὶ Of mankind fails not; for in Man speaks God." "Hence the adage?-Vox Populi, vox Dei." It is well the learned sage added the query, for, historically at least, the V. P. V. D., certainly does not come from Hesiod. 2 For many years I was under the impression that I had found this fact when studying the times of Abelard; but I must confess that all my attempts to recover it, when I came to write on this subject, have been fruitless. Sanderson, whom Mr. Hallam calls the most distinguished English casuist, treats of the maxim in his work De Conscientia. I copy from the London Notes and Queries, Nov. 19, 1853, the following passage, which was elicited by the preceding portion of this note: "The earliest known instances of the use of the saying are, by William of Malmesbury, who, speaking of Odo yielding his consent to be Archbishop of Canterbury, A.D. 920, says Recogitans illud Proverbium, when the people, by apparent acclamation, having elected one person, another aspirant believed he had a better right to the episcopate on different grounds or a different popular acclamation. That the maxim has a decidedly medieval character no one familiar with that age will doubt. The middle ages are, indeed, characterized by the fact that all Europe was parcelled out, not in states, but under a political system of graduated and encapsulated allegiance; but where this system failed to reach a sphere with its many ramifications, the same age bore a conclamatory character, especially in the earliest times. When a king was elected it was by conclamation. The earliest bishops of Rome were elected or confirmed by conclamation of the Roman people. Elections by conclamation always indicate a rude or deficiently organized state of things; and it is the same whether this want of organization be the effect of primitive rudeness or of relapse. Now the maxim we are considering has a strongly conclamatory character, and to apply it to our modern affairs is degrading rather than elevating them. How shall we ascertain, in modern times, whether anything be the voice of the people? and next, whether that voice be the voice of God, so that it may command respect? For, unless we can do this, the whole maxim amounts to no more than a poetic sentence expressing the opinion of an individual, but no rule, no canon. Is it unanimity that indicates the voice of the people? Unanimity in this case can mean only a very large majority. But even unanimity itself is far from indicating the voice of God. Unanimity is commanding only when it is the result of digested and organic public opinion, and even then, we know perfectly well that it may be erroneous and consequently not the voice Vox Populi, vox Dei;' and by Walter Reynolds, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, as we learn from Walsingham, took it as his text for the sermon which he preached when Edward III. was called to the throne, from which the people had pulled down Edward II. The reader is farther referred to Mr. G. Cornwall Lewis's Essay on the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion, (pp. 172, 173, and the accompanying notes,) for some interesting remarks upon it." |