[xxxvi. 56]

1821. April 9.

Constitut Code

First Lines

Constitutional Law

/Supreme Operative/

They obtain land for munificence: munificence is depradation

\PS\ To every Monarch, the people are an object of hatred and contempt.

In the view taken of the field of legislation by the scribe of the absolute Monarch, it swarms in every part with rebels. To afford security to him against the enterprises of adversaries in this shape is the most anxious of his cares. He is encompassed with enemies on all sides and at all times: the very form of his Government - the objects and designs so undisguisably evidenced by it suffices to convert into adversaries to him all men who are not so to their fellow countrymen and themselves. Of their hatred, he assures himself: of the justness of it, as well as of the impossibility of keeping it from coming into existence, he is fully conscious. The utmost he can hope for is to guard himself against that part of its effects which is most formidable to him. In this view, he scruples not to appoint punishment for the manifestation of it: punishment for all those who, seeing what he is, make known to others what they see\; punishing all who, on any occasion on which their sentiments are other than favourable to him make known those sentiments. If there be any sure methods of creating hatred, this is one of them: but seeing love hopeless, seeing every affection better than hatred inconsistent with every rational view of the case, he is content thus to draw upon himself hatred, for the additional chance which he thus thinks to give himself of escaping from the effects of it.

Thus in the case of the absolute Monarch. And in this respect the case of the limited Monarch is not materially different.

Turn now to the case of representative democracy. In the Representative Democracy, there are no rebels. In the penal code of the representative Democracy there is Government: there may therefore be resistance to Government. In the representative Democracy there are rulers: there may, therefore, be resistance to rulers. Under one Government as well as under another, resistance to rule must be punished or there is no rule. But it is punished as such and only as such, and not as rebellion. Suppose even a conspiracy to overturn the Government, and substitute to it an absolute Monarchy: for under every such democracy the supposition may be made, though under the only established democracy as yet exemplified the fact is morally impossible.