[Footnote 20: "The right of property attaches to things produced by labour, but cannot attach to things created by G.o.d." So Henry George, _Condition of Labour_, pp. 3, 4. How then do we read in _Progress and Poverty_, bk. 7. ch. 1: "The pen with which I am writing is justly mine," and that, in the last resort, on account of "the rights of those who dug the material from the ground and converted it into a pen"? Was not that material, iron-ore, "created by G.o.d," equally with any other portion of the earth"s crust that we may please to call _land_?]
CHAPTER VIII.
OF THE STATE.
SECTION I.--_Of the Monstrosities called Leviathan and Social Contract_.
1. Thomas Hobbes, than whom never was greater genius for riding an idea, right or wrong, to the full length that it will go, was born in 1588: and notwithstanding his twelve pipes of tobacco daily, his vigorous const.i.tution endured to his ninety-second year. The first half of his life fell in with the age of the greatest predominance of Calvinism. In religion he was scarcely a Calvinist, indeed he laboured under a suspicion of atheism: but his philosophy is accurately cast in the mould of the grim theology of Geneva. We may call it the philosophy of Calvinism. It has for its central tenet, that human nature either was from the first, or is become, bad, "desperately wicked," depraved, corrupt, and utterly abominable, so that whatever is natural to man, in so far forth as it is natural, is simply evil.
The remedy for our evil nature Hobbes finds in no imputed merits of a Redeemer, no irresistible victorious grace, but in the masterful coercion of a despotic civil power. But, lest any one should suspect that there was at least this good in man, a propensity to civil society and obedience to the rulers of cities, Hobbes insists that man is by nature wholly averse to society with his kind: that the type of the race is an Ishmael, "a wild man, his hand against all men, and all men"s hands against him:" in fact that the state of nature is a state of war all round. He writes (_Leviathan_, c. xiii.): "Men have no pleasure, but on the contrary a great deal of grief, in keeping company where there is no power able to overawe them all. For every man looketh that his companion should value him at the same rate he sets on himself; and upon all signs of contempt or undervaluing naturally endeavours, as far as he dares (which among them that have no common power to keep them quiet, is far enough to make them destroy each other), to extort a greater value from his contemners by damage, and from others by the example.... Hereby it is manifest, that during the time that men live without a power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man.... In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth: no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea: no commodious building: no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force: no knowledge of the face of the earth: no account of time: no arts, no letters, no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.... To this war of every man against every man this also is consequent, that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power there is no law: where no law, no injustice.... It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety, no dominion, no _mine_ and _thine_ distinct, but only that to be every man"s that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it."
2. Such is what Hobbes is pleased to call "the natural condition of mankind," a condition which man would have every natural reason for getting out of with all speed, were he ever so unhappy as to fall into it. It is true that, apart from civil government, violence would reign on earth. But it is not true that to live apart from civil government is the natural condition of mankind. It is not true that the only motive which draws men into civil society is the fear of violence, as though there were no such facts and exigencies of human nature as sympathy, friendship, intellectual curiosity, art, religion. It is not true that the one reason for the existence of the civil power consists in this, that without the restraining hand of the magistrate men would bite and devour one another. Lastly, it is not true that all rights, notably rights of property, are the creation of the State. A man is a man first and a citizen afterwards. As a man, he has certain rights actual and potential (c. v., s. i., p. 244): these the State exists, not to create, for they are prior to it in the order of nature, but to determine them, where indeterminate, to sanction and to safeguard them.
Natural rights go before legal rights, and are presupposed to them, as the law of nature before that law which is civil and positive. It is an "idol of the tribe" of lawyers to ignore all law but that upon which their own professional action takes its stand.
3. "In considering man as he must have come from the hands of nature,"
writes Jean Jacques Rousseau, "I behold an animal less strong than some, less active than others, but upon the whole in organism having the advantage of them all. I behold him appeasing his hunger under an oak, slaking his thirst in the first brook, finding a bed at the foot of the same tree that furnished his repast, and there you have all his cravings satisfied." (_Discours sur l"origine de l"inegalite _.) This n.o.ble savage--quite a contrast to Hobbes"s ruffian primeval, "nasty, brutish," and short-lived--observes and imitates the industry, and gradually raises himself to the instinct, of the beasts among whom he lives. His const.i.tution is robust, and almost inaccessible to malady.
He attains to old age, free from gout and rheumatism. He surpa.s.ses the fiercest wild beasts in address as much as they surpa.s.s him in strength, and so arrives to dwell among them without fear. Yet withal he is distinguished from brutes by freewill and perfectibility, qualities which gradually draw him out of his primeval condition of tranquil innocence, lead him through a long course of splendours and errors, of vices and virtues, and end by making him a tyrant at once over nature and over himself.
4. Rousseau"s life, 1715-1778, was a continual protest against the formalism, affectation, pedantry and despotism of the age of the Bourbons. His ideal of man was the unconventional, unconstrained, solitary, but harmless and easy-going savage. Hobbes was the growth of a sterner and more serious age. The only reality to him in heaven and on earth was force: his one idea in philosophy was coercion. Human nature to him was an embodiment of brute violence ever in need of violent restraint. Rousseau, an optimist, saw nothing but good in man"s original nature: to the pessimist mind of Hobbes all was evil there. Neither of them saw any natural adaptation to social life in the human const.i.tution. To live in society was, in both their views, an artificial arrangement, an arbitrary convention. But Hobbes found in the intolerable evils of a state of nature an excellent reason why men should quit it for the unnatural condition of citizens. Rousseau found no reason except, as he says, _quelque funeste hasard_. The problem for Hobbes stood thus: how men, entering society, might be "cribbed, cabined, and confined" to the utmost in order to keep down their native badness. Rousseau"s concern was, how one might so become a citizen as yet to retain to the full the delightful liberty of a tropical savage. Hobbes"s solution is the _Leviathan_, Rousseau"s the _Social Contract_. The prize, we think, rests with the Englishman: but the reader shall judge.
5. And first of the Social Contract. Rousseau proposes "to find a form of a.s.sociation which shall defend and protect with all the strength of the community the person and the goods of each a.s.sociate, and whereby each one, uniting himself to all, may nevertheless obey none but himself and remain as free as before." (_Contrat Social_, i. 6.) This proposal is hopeless, it is a contradiction in terms. No man can contract and remain as free as before, but he binds himself either under a _wider_ obligation to do or abstain, where he was not bound before, or under a _stronger_ obligation where he was bound already.
Nevertheless Rousseau finds a means of accomplishing the impossible and the self-contradictory. "Each of us puts into a common stock his person and all his power under the supreme direction of the general will; and we receive in our turn the offering of the rest, each member as an inseparable part of the whole. Instantly, instead of the private person of each contracting party, this act of a.s.sociation produces a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the a.s.sembly has voices, which body receives by this same act its unity, its common Ego, its life and its will." (_ib_.) This awful signing away of all your rights, so that your very personality is merged in that of the community--a self-renunciation going far beyond that of profession in any religious order--ought certainly, as Rousseau says, to be "the most voluntary act in the world;" and he adds the characteristic reason: "every man being born free and master of himself, none can, under any pretence whatsoever, subject him without his own consent."
(_Contrat Social_, iv. 2.) Then you ask: When have I made this large contract by the most voluntary act in the world? Rousseau replies: "When the State is inst.i.tuted, consent is in residing." (_ib_.) But, you reply, my residence is anything but the most voluntary act in the world: it would be awkward for me to emigrate; and if I did emigrate, it would only be to some other State: I cannot possibly camp out and be independent in the woods, nor appease my hunger under an oak. To this plea Rousseau quite gives in, remarking that "family, goods, the want of an asylum, necessity, violence, may keep an inhabitant in the country in spite of himself; and in that case his mere sojourn no longer supposes his consent to the contract." (_ib_.) Then none of us have made the contract, for we have never had the option of living anywhere except in some State.
6. Hobbes, after laying down the necessity of men combining for protection against mutual injustice, observes that a mere promise or agreement not to injure any one will not suffice: "for the agreement of men is by covenant only, which is artificial; and therefore no wonder if there be something else required besides covenant to make their agreement constant and lasting, which is a common power to keep them in awe and to direct their actions to the common benefit." He continues: "The only way to erect such a common power ... is to confer all their power and strength upon one man or upon one a.s.sembly of men, that may reduce all their wills by plurality of voices unto one will: which is as much as to say, to appoint one man or a.s.sembly of men to bear their person; and every one to own, and to acknowledge himself to be the author of, whatsoever he that so beareth their person shall act or cause to be acted in those things which concern the common peace and safety; and therein to submit their wills every one to his will, and their judgments to his judgment. This is more than consent or concord,--it is a real unity of them all in one and the same person, made by covenant of every man with every man, in such manner as if every man should say to every man: I authorise, and give up my right of governing myself to this man or to this a.s.sembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner. This done, the mult.i.tude so united in one person is called a _commonwealth_, in Latin _civitas_. This is the generation of that great Leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal G.o.d, to whom we owe under the immortal G.o.d our peace and defence." (_Leviathan_, c. xvii.) This idea of all the rights and personalities of the individuals who contract to live socially being fused and welded together into the one resultant personality and power of the State, has evidently been borrowed by Rousseau from Hobbes. We shall deal with the idea presently. Meanwhile several points claim our notice.
7. The hideous piece of cynicism whereby Rousseau (_Contrat Social_, iv. 2), after promising you that, if you join his commonwealth, you shall obey none but yourself, then goes on to tell you that you obey yourself in obeying the will of the majority, even when it puts you in irons or leads you to death--because as a citizen you have once for all renounced your own will, and can only wish what the majority wishes,--has its root in the position of Hobbes, that "every subject is author of every act the sovereign doth." (_Leviathan_, c. xxi.)
8. A real and important difference between the _Leviathan_ and the _Social Contract_, is that Hobbes (c. xix.) allows various distributions of sovereign power, but prefers monarchy: Rousseau (l.
ii., c. i.) will have it that sovereignty is vested inalienably in the people: of which doctrine more to follow.
9. _Men are by nature equal_, say Rousseau and Hobbes and many more respectable authors. Yes, in their specific nature, that is, they are all equally men. Similarly you have it that all triangles are equal, if that is a proposition of any value. But men as individuals are not all equal. One is stronger in body, another more able in mind: one predisposed to virtue, another to vice: one born in affluence and honour, another in squalor. Not men in the abstract, but living men, start at different points of vantage, and the distance between them widens as they run the race of life. We may lay it down as an axiom, in diametric opposition to Rousseau, that inequalities are natural, equalities artificial.
10. _Man is born free_: so opens the first chapter of the _Contrat Social_. If free of all duties, then void of all rights (c. v., s. i., nn. 5, 7, pp. 246, 247): let him then be promptly knocked on the head as a sacrifice to Malthas; and with the misformed children born in Plato"s _Republic_, "they will bury him in a secret and unseen spot, as is befitting."
11. Hobbes and Rousseau go upon this maxim, which has overrun the modern world, that no man can be bound to obedience to another without his own consent. The maxim would be an excellent one, were men framed like the categories of Aristotle--substance, quant.i.ty, quality, relation, and the rest--each peering out of his own pigeon-hole, an independent, self-sufficient ent.i.ty. But men are dependent, naturally dependent whether they will or no, every human being on certain definite others,--the child on the parent, the citizen on the State whose protection he enjoys, and all alike on G.o.d. These natural dependences carry with them natural uncovenanted obediences,--to parents, filial duty--to country, loyalty--to G.o.d, piety: all which are embraced in the Latin term _pietas_. (See St. Thomas, 2a 2ae, q.
101, art. 1, in corp.) The fatal maxim before us is the annihilation of _pietas_. In lieu of loyal submission we get a contract, a transaction of reasoned commercial selfishness between equal and equal. This perverse subst.i.tution has called forth Leo XIII."s remark on the men of our time, "Nothing comes so amiss to them as subjection and obedience," _Nihil tam moleste ferunt quam subesse et parere_.
(Encyclical on Christian Marriage.)
12. The common extravagance of the _Leviathan_ and the _Social Contract_ is the suppression of the individual, with his rights and his very personality, which is all blended in the State. (See Rousseau"s words above quoted, n. 5, and those of Hobbes, n. 6.) The reservations in favour of the individual made by Hobbes, _Leviathan_, c. xxi., and by Rousseau, _Contrat Social_, l. ii., c. iv., are either trifles or self-contradictions. But it is not in man"s power by any contract thus to change his nature, so as to become from autocentric heterocentric (c. ii., s. i., n. 2, p. 203; c. v., s. i., n. 1, p.
244), from a person a thing, from a man a chattel, void of rights and consequently of duties, and bound to serve this Collective Monster, this Aggregated Idol, with the absolute devotedness that is due to G.o.d alone. The worship of the new Moloch goes well with the dark misanthropism of Hobbes: but in Rousseau, the believer in the perfect goodness of unrestrained humanity, it is about the most glaring of his many inconsistencies. It is of course eagerly taken up by the Socialists, as carrying all their conclusions. It is the political aspect of Socialism.
_Reading_.--Burke, _Warren Hastings_, Fourth Day, the pa.s.sage beginning, "He have arbitrary power!"
SECTION II.--_Of the theory that Civil Power is an aggregate formed by subscription of the powers of individuals_.
1. The Greeks had a name [Greek: eranos], which meant a feast where the viands were supplied by each guest contributing in kind. If, in a party of four, one man brought a ham, another a rabbit, a third a dish of truffles, and a fourth a salmon, no one would expect that, when the cover was raised, there should appear a pigeon-pie. That would not be in the nature of an [Greek: eranos]. Now not only Hobbes and Rousseau, but Locke and a great mult.i.tude of modern Englishmen with him, hold that the power of the State is an aggregate, the algebraic sum of the powers whereof the component members would have stood possessed, had they lived in what is called, by a misleading phrase, "the state of nature," that is, the condition of men not subject to civil authority.
These powers,--either, as Hobbes and Rousseau virtually say, _all_ of them, or, as Locke and the common opinion has it, only _some_ of them, --men are supposed to resign as they enter into the State. If therefore there appears in the City, Nation, State, or Commonwealth, a certain new and peculiar power, which belongs to no individual in the "state of nature," or, as I prefer to call it, the _extra-civil state_, then what we may designate as the Aggregation Theory breaks down, and another origin must be sought of civil princ.i.p.ality. But there is such a power in the State, new and peculiar, and not found in any of the component individuals: it is the power and authority to punish on civil grounds. It is the right of the rods and axes, that were borne before the Roman magistrate. It is, in its most crucial form, the right to punish with death.
2. We are not here concerned with proving the existence of this right.
It is generally admitted: we a.s.sume it accordingly, and shall prove it later on. Nor are we concerned with _domestic punishment_, inflicted by the head of a family within his own household, for the good of that household, stopping short of any _irreparable harm_ to the sufferer.
(St. Thos., 2a 2ae, q. 65, art. 2, ad. 2.) Leaving this aside, we say, and have proved already, that one private individual has no right to punish another, neither _medicinally_ for the amendment of the delinquent, nor by way of _deterrent_ for the good of the community, nor in the way of _retribution_ for his own satisfaction. He has the right of self-defence, but not of punishment: the two things are quite different. He may also exact rest.i.tution, where rest.i.tution is due: but that again is not punishing. If he is in the extra-civil state, he may use force, where prudence allows it, to recover what he has lost.
This _right of private war_ really is surrendered by the individual, when the State is established: but war and punishment are two totally different ideas. Subjects are punished: war is levied on independent powers. (_Ethics_, c. ix., s. iii., nn. 4-6, pp. 171-174; _Natural Law_, c. ii., s. ii., n. 6, p. 212.)
3. Opposite is the opinion of Locke, who writes:
"The execution of the law of nature is in that state [of nature] put into every man"s hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree as may hinder its violation: for the law of nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world, be in vain, if there were n.o.body that in the state of nature had a power to execute that law." We observe that the punishment of offenders against the law of nature, as such, belongs to the Legislator, who is G.o.d alone. Certainly it is well, nay necessary, that there should be human law to bear out the law of nature: but human law is the creation of human society in its perfection, which is the State. Man is punished by man for breaking the laws of man, not--except remotely--for breaking the laws of G.o.d. Nor would it be any inconvenience, if the law of nature were in vain in a state wherein nature never intended men to live, wherein no mult.i.tude of men ever for any notable time have lived, a state which is neither actual fact nor ideal perfection, but a mere property of the philosophic stage, a broken article, an outworn speculation. Such is "the state of nature," as identified with the extra-civil state by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.
SECTION III.--_Of the true state of Nature, which is the state of civil society; and consequently of the Divine origin of Power_.
1. The State is deemed by Aristotle (_Politics_, III., ix., 14): "the union of septs and villages in a complete and self-sufficient life."
The first and most elementary community is the _family_, [Greek: oikia]. A knot of families a.s.sociating together, claiming blood-relationship and descent, real or fict.i.tious, from a common ancestor, whose name they bear, const.i.tute a [Greek: genos], called in Ireland a _sept_, in Scotland a _clan_, nameless in England. When the sept come to cl.u.s.ter their habitations, or encampments, in one or more spots, and to admit strangers in blood to dwell among them, these hamlets, or camps, gradually reach the magnitude of a _village_. When a number of these _villages_, belonging to different _septs_, come to be contiguous to one another, this mere juxtaposition does not make of them a State. Nor does interchange of commodities, nor intermarriage, nor an offensive and defensive alliance: these are the mutual relations of a _confederacy_, [Greek: xymmaxia], but all these and more are needed for a State, [Greek: polis]. To be a State, it is requisite that these septs and villages should agree to regulate the conduct of their individual members by a _common standard of social virtue_, sufficient for their well-being as one community. This common standard is fixed by common consent, or by the decision of some power competent to act for all and to punish delinquents. The name of this common standard is _law_. (_Ethics_, c. vii., n. 1, p. 126.) The community thus formed leads a life _complete and self-sufficient_, not being a member of another, but a body by itself,--not part of any ulterior community, but complete in the fulness of social good and social authority.
2. Among the ancient Greeks and Italians, and to some extent also in mediaeval Italy and Germany, the city or munic.i.p.ality, with the small country district attached, was the State. With us the nation is the State; and accordingly we say _my country_ where the Greek said _my city_. Bearing this difference in mind, as also the fact that the _sept_ is not known amongst us except to antiquarians, and likewise that the _village_ with us coincides with the _parish_, and that there are town as well as country parishes,--upon these modern data we may amend Aristotle"s definition thus: _The State is the union of parishes and munic.i.p.alities in a perfect and self-sufficient community_.
3. The City State is well ill.u.s.trated in the following narrative of Thucydides (ii., 15):
"In the time of Cecrops and the early kings as far as Theseus, Attica was always divided among several independent cities, with their own town-halls and magistrates; and when there was no alarm of an enemy, the inhabitants did not resort for common deliberation to the King, but severally managed their own affairs and took their own counsel, and some of them even went to war. But when Theseus came to the throne, he abolished the council-chambers and magistracies of the other cities, and centralised all the people in what is now the city [of Athens], where he appointed their one council-chamber and town-hall; and while they continued to occupy their own properties as before, he forced them to recognise this as their one city and State."
Attica before Theseus was a _confederacy_, [Greek: xymmaxia], not a State, [Greek: polis].
4. A _citizen_ is defined: "one who has access to a share in deliberative and judicial functions." (Ar., _Pol_. III., i., 12.) It is not necessary that he actually should share these functions, but the way to them should lie open to him: he should be a person qualified to share in them. There are various degrees of citizenship.
Under a parliamentary government, we distinguish the member of parliament, the elector, and him who will be an elector as soon as he gets a house of his own; and again, the judge, and him who is liable to serve on juries. In an absolute monarchy there are no _citizens_, only _subjects_.
5. "The distribution of power in the State, and especially of the sovereign power, is called the _polity_" ([Greek: politeia], Ar., _Pol_., III., vi., 1),--a word immortalised by the judicious Hooker, and happily recovered recently to the English language. The _polity_ then is the distribution of the sovereignty. The person, singular or collective, in whose hands the full sovereignty rests, is called the _ruler_. Be it observed that what we call _the ruler_ is never one man, except in absolute monarchy. By the theory of the British Const.i.tution, the _ruler_ is King, Lords, and Commons, together.
6. _Nature requires that men generally live in society, domestic and civil, so that the individual be of the family, and families form a.s.sociations, which again conspire to form one perfect community, which is the State_. The requirement of nature may be gathered from the universal practice of mankind. "If it (the word _savage_) means people without a settled form of government, without laws and without a religion, then, go where you like, you will not find such a race."
(Max Muller, in _Nineteenth Century_, Jan. 1885, p. 114.) The same may be gathered from a consideration of what the State is, and of the ends which it serves. The State, as we have seen (n. 2), is a union of septs and villages, or of parishes and munic.i.p.alities. The individual is born and nurtured in the family, and ordinarily becomes in time the parent of a new family. Families must combine to form septs by blood, or villages (or parishes) by locality. Munic.i.p.alities we may leave aside, for a munic.i.p.ality is a potential State. But we must consider the sept, village, or parish, which is the community intermediate between family and State. Among the cogent reasons which require families to enter into this a.s.sociation, we may mention friendship, intermarriage, the interchange of services and commodities, the cultivation of the arts, the preservation of traditions and inventions.
7. But it is further necessary that these septs, villages, or parishes, should band together and combine to form a higher community, self-sufficient and perfect,--for the determining of rights which Natural Law leaves undetermined,--for the punishing of disturbers of the peace, if need be, even with death,--for defence against a common enemy,--for a union of counsels and resources to the execution of magnificent works. This self-sufficient and perfect community, which is not part of any higher community, is the State.
8. We may observe that the whole reason for the being of the State is not mutual need, nor the repression of violence. Main reasons these are, no doubt, but not the whole main reason. Even if men had no need of one another for the supply of their animal wants, they would still desire to converse for the satisfaction of their intellectual curiosity and their social affections. And even if we had all remained as void of guile, and as full of light and love, as our first parents were at their creation, we should still have needed the erection of States. In a State there are not only criminal but civil courts, where it is not wicked men alone who come to be litigants. From sundry pa.s.sages of Scripture it would appear that even angels may disagree as to what is best and proper: angelic men certainly may and do. It is a mistake to look upon civil government, with its apparatus of laws and judgments, simply as a necessary evil, and remedy of the perverseness of mankind. On the contrary, were all men virtuous, States would still be formed, towering in magnificence above the States known to history, as the cedars of Lebanon above the scanty growths of a fell-side in our north country.
9. _There can be no State without a power to guide and govern it_. It has indeed become the fashion to repeat, as the latest discovery in politics, that what a State needs is not government but administration. This saying comes of a theory, to be examined presently, that sovereign power abides permanently with the people at large, and that the sole function of princes, cabinets, and parliaments, is to provide means of giving effect to the popular will.
This however is not quite a repudiation of government, but a peculiar view as to the seat and centre of government. Those who hold it, vigorously maintain the right of the Many to govern, control, and command the Few. The need of some governing authority in a State can be denied by none but an Anarchist, a gentleman who lives two doors beyond Rousseau on the side of unreason.
10. _Every State is autonomous, self-governing, independent_. Either the whole people taken collectively must rule the same whole taken distributively, or a part must rule the rest. The ruler is either the whole commonwealth, or more frequently a part of the commonwealth. An autocrat is part of the State which he governs. Sovereignty whole and entire is intrinsic to the State. A community that is to any extent governed from without, like British India or London, is not a State, but part of a State, for it is not a _perfect community_.
11. We have it therefore that _man is a social animal_. Naturally he is a member of a family. Nature requires that families should coalesce into higher communities, which again naturally converge and culminate in the State. Nature further requires that in every State there should be an authority to govern. But authority to govern and duty to obey are correlatives. Nature therefore requires submission to the governing authority in the State. In other words, Nature abhors anarchy as being the destruction of civil society, and as cutting the ground from under the feet of civilised man. The genuine _state of nature_, that state and condition, which nature allows and approves as proper for the evolution of the human faculties, is the state of man in civil society. That is lost where there is no judge in the land.
12. There are men full of a sentimental deference to authority and professions of obedience, who yet will not obey any of the authorities that actually are over them. These are disobedient men. He is an anarchist in practice, who meditates treason and rebellion against the "powers that be" actually over him in the State wherein he lives. To obey no actual power is to obey no power, as to wear no actual clothes is to go naked. To keep up the comparison,--as a man may change his clothes upon occasion, and thus go through a brief interval of unclothedness without injury to health or violation of decency, notwithstanding the requirement of nature to wear clothes: so it may be or it may not be consonant with the exigency of our nature at times to subvert by insurrection the existing government in order to the subst.i.tution of a new authority; that does not concern us here. We are stating the general rule under ordinary circ.u.mstances. The submission to civil authority, which nature requires of us, must be paid in the coin of obedience to the actual established "powers that be."