Section Iv.--_of the Variety of Polities_.

1. One polity alone is against the natural law; that is every polity which proves itself unworkable and inefficient: for the rest, various States exhibit various polities workable and lawful, partly from the circumstances, partly from the choice, of the citizens: but the sum total of civil power is a constant quantity, the same for all States. We proceed to establish the clauses of this statement in succession.

2. If a watch be necessary to a railway guard, and he is bound to have one accordingly, it is also necessary, and he is bound to procure it, that the watch shall go and keep time. A watch that will not keep time is an unlawful article for him to depend upon, being tantamount to no watch, whereas he is bound to have a watch. Otherwise, be his watch large or small, gold, silver, or pinchbeck, all this is indifferent, so long as it be a reliable timekeeper. In like manner, we must have a State, we must have a government, and we must have a government that can govern. Monarchy, aristocracy, parliaments, wide or narrow franchise, centralisation, decentralisation, any one of these and countless other forms--apart from the means whereby it is set up--is a lawful government, where it is a workable one; unlawful, and forbidden by God and nature, where it cannot work. A form of government that from its own intrinsic defects could nowhere work, would be everywhere and always unlawful.

3. You cannot argue from the accomplished fact the lawfulness of the means whereby it was accomplished. Nor do we say that every form of government, which succeeds in governing, was originally set up in justice; nor again that the success of its rule is necessarily due to the use of just means. The Committee of Public Safety in Paris in 1794 did manage to govern, but it was erected in blood, and it governed by an unscrupulous disregard of everybody's rights. All that we say is, that no distribution of civil power as a distribution, or no polity as a polity (s. iii., n. 5, p. 312), is unlawful, if by it the government can be carried on. And the reason is plain. For all that nature requires is that there should be an efficient civil authority, not that this man should have it, or that one man or other should have it all, or that a certain class in council assembled should engross it, or that all the inhabitants of the country should participate in it. Any one of these arrangements that will work, satisfies the exigency of nature for civil rule, and is therefore in itself a lawful polity.

4. Working, and therefore, as explained, lawful polities are as multitudinous as the species of animals. Besides those that actually are, there is a variety without end, as of animals, so of polities, that might be and are not. We can classify only the main types. We ground our classification upon Ar., Pol., III., vii., modernising it so as to take in forms of representative government, whereof Aristotle had no conception.

(1) Monarchy, or the rule of the Single Person, in whose hands the whole power of the State is concentrated, e.g., Constantine the Great.

(2) Aristocracy, or the rule of the Few, which will be either direct or representative, according as either they themselves by their own votes at first hand, or representatives whom they elect, make the laws.

(3) Democracy, or the rule of the Many, that is, of the whole community. Democracy, again, is either direct (commonly called pure) or representative. The most famous approach in history to pure democracy is the government of Athens, B.C. 438-338.

(4) Limited Monarchy.

(a) Monarchy with Aristocracy, the government of England from 1688 to 1830.

(b) Monarchy with Democracy.

5. All civil government is for the governed, that is, for the community at large. The perversion of a polity is the losing sight of this principle, and the conducting of the polity in the interest of the governing body alone. By such perversion monarchy passes into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into ochlocracy or mob-rule. It might appear strange that, where the power rests with the whole people collectively, government should ever be carried on otherwise than in the interest of the entire community, did we not remember that the majority, with whom the power rests in a democracy, may employ it to trample on and crush the minority. Thus the Many may worry and harass the Few, the mean and poor the wealthy and noble: though commonly perhaps the worrying has been the other way about. Anyhow it is important to observe that there is no polity which of itself, and apart from the spirit in which it is worked, is an adequate safeguard and rock of defence against oppression.

6. The wide range of polities that history presents is not drawn out by the caprice of nations. The very fact of a certain nation choosing a certain polity, where they are free to choose, is an indication of the bent of the national character, and character is not a caprice. No North American population are ever likely to elect an absolute monarch to govern them. That polity which thrives on the shores of the Caspian, can strike no root on the banks of the Potomac. The choice of a polity is limited by the character of the electors and by the circumstances in which the election is made. Not every generation in a nation is free to choose its polity: but the choice and institution of the fathers binds the children. Up to a certain point ancestral settlements must be respected, or instability ensues, and anarchy is not far off. Thus the spirit of freedom should always act as Burke says, "as if in the presence of canonized forefathers."

7. The smallest State in the world is the little republic of Andorra in the Pyrenees. Though it be a paradox to say it, there is as much political power in Andorra as in Russia,--one and the same measure of it in every State. In every State there is power for civil good to the full height of the emergencies that may arise. The same emergencies may arise everywhere, and everywhere there is full power to see that the commonwealth take no harm by them. What a great empire can do for this purpose, e.g., proclaim martial law, search houses, lay an embargo on the means of transport, impress soldiers, the same can the tiniest commonwealth do in the like need. And the ordinary functions of government are the same in both.

8. This seems at variance with the theory of some constitutions, according to which there are certain so-called fundamental laws, which the legislature cannot call in question, nor deal with in any way, but must take them in all its deliberations for positions established and uncontrovertible. The British Constitution recognizes no fundamental laws. There is no reform that may not legally be broached in Parliament and enacted there. Parliament is said to be "omnipotent," "able to do everything, except to make a man a woman." But in many legislatures it is not so. At Athens of old there were certain measures which no one could introduce for discussion in the Sovereign Assembly without rendering himself liable to a prosecution [Greek: graphae paranomon]. And there have been many monarchs termed absolute, who yet were bound by their coronation-oath, or by some other agreement with their people, to preserve inviolate certain institutions and to maintain certain laws. It may be contended that such a government as we have in England, which is theoretically competent to pass any law within the limits of the natural law, has a greater range of power than a government whose operation is limited by a barrier of fundamental positive law. But this contention vanishes when we observe that there must remain in the State, which has fundamental laws, a power somewhere to reverse them. They can be reversed at least by the consent of the whole people. Thus at Athens the [Greek: graphae paranomon] could be suspended by a vote of the Assembly. A people can release their monarch from his coronation-oath in such portions of it as are not binding absolutely by divine law. Where fundamental law obtains, a portion of the civil power becomes latent, and only a diminished remainder is left free in the hands of the person or persons who are there said to rule. Such person or persons are not the adequate ruler of the State, as they have not the full power, but the people, with whom rests the latent authority to cancel certain laws, are to that extent partakers in the sovereignty. Where there is agreement of the whole people, great and small, no part of the power remains latent, but all is set free. With us, it may be observed, the omnipotence of parliament has become a mere lawyer's theory. On every great issue, other than that on which the sitting parliament has been elected, it is the practice of ministers to "go to the country" by a new General Election. Thus only a certain measure of available authority is free at the disposal of parliament: the rest remaining latent in the general body of the electorate. Such is our constitution in practice.

9. If in any State the whole power were free in the hands of one man, there we might look to see made good the dictum of the judicious Hooker (Ecclesiastical Polity, bk. i., s. x., n. 5): "To live by one man's will became the cause of all men's misery." In a monarchy untrammelled by senate or popular assembly, it were well that some of the sovereign power should remain latent, and that His Majesty should rule in accordance with certain laws, not within his royal pleasure to revoke.

10. The State and the power of the State, apart from the polity, is of God. (s. iii., n. 14, p. 318.) The State under this or that polity and this or that ruler, is also of God. But, apart from the polity, the State is of God antecedently to any determination of any human will: because, willy nilly, man must live in civil society and God commands him so to do. But the State under this polity and this ruler is of God consequently to some determination of human volition. In this consequent sense we write Victoria Dei gratia.

11. There is little use in the enquiry, Which is the best polity? There is no polity which excels all other polities as man does the rest of animals. We judge of polities as of the various types of locomotives, according to the nature of the country where they are to run. Aristotle tells us that if we meet with a Pericles, we shall do best to make him our king, and hand over all our affairs to him. (Ar., Pol., III., xiii., 25: cf. Thucydides, ii., 65.) Otherwise, "for most cities and for most men, apart from exceptional circumstances, or a condition of ideal perfection, but having regard to what is ordinarily possible," he recommends a moderate republic under middle-class rule. (Ar., Pol., VI., xi., Ed. Congreve.) This he calls par excellence "a polity," [Greek: politeia]. Democracy, [Greek: deimokratia] with Aristotle, always means that perversion of democracy, which we call mob-rule. (Ar., Pol., III., vii., nn. 3, 5.)

12. In the English monarchy the whole majesty of the State shines forth in the Single Person who wears the Crown. The Crown is the centre of loyalty and gives dignity to the government. The Crown is above all parties in the State, knows their secrets, their purposes when in office as well as their acts, and is able to mediate, when party feeling threatens to bring government to a standstill. The British Crown has more weight of influence than of prerogative. [Footnote 21]

Readings.--St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 105, art. 1, in corp., ad 2, 5; Ar., Pol., III., xv.; ib., III., xvi., nn. 5-8; ib., VIII. (al. V.), xi. nn. 1-3.