faith, just as the French sometimes use that favorite expression of theirs: The instinct of the masses, without reserve; but generally I think Vox populi vox Dei is used either hypocritically or when people have misgivings that all may not be right, pretty much in the same manner as persons say that an argument is unanswerable, when they have a strong foreboding that it may be very answerable. Vox populi vox Dei has never been used in France so frequently as after the second of December, yet there are unquestionably thousands in that country who would find their religious convictions much bewildered, if they were obliged to believe that it was the voice of God which spoke through ballot boxes under the management of the most centralized executive in existence; and that the voice of the Deity requires a thousand intrigues among men to be delivered. The doctrine Vox populi vox Dei is essentially unrepublican, as the doctrine that the people may do what they list under the constitution, above the constitution, and against the constitution is an open avowal of disbelief in self-government. The true friend of freedom does not wish to be insulted by the supposition that he believes each human individual an erring man, and that nevertheless the united clamor of erring men has a character of divinity about it; nor does he desire to be told that the voice of the people, though legitimately and institutionally proclaimed and justly commanding respect and obedience, is divine on that account. He knows that the majority may err, and that he has the right and often the duty to use his whole energy to convince them of their error, and lawfully to bring about a different set of laws. The true and stanch republican wants liberty, but no deification either of himself or others; he wants a firmly built selfgovernment and noble institutions, but no absolutism of any sort-none to practise on others, and none to have practised on himself. He is too proud for the Vox populi vox Dei. He wants no divine right of the people, for he knows very well that it means nothing but despotic power of insinuating leaders. He wants the real rule of the people, that is the institutionally organized country, which distinguishes it from the mere mob. For mob is an unorganic multitude, with a general impulse of action." Woe to the country in which political hypocrisy first calls the people almighty, then teaches that the voice of the people is divine, then pretends to take clamor for the true voice of the people, and lastly gets up the desired clamor. The consequences are fearful and invariably unfitting for liberty. Whatever meaning men may choose, then, to give to Vox populi vox Dei, in other spheres, or, if applied to the long tenor of the history of a people, in active politics and in the province of practical liberty, it either implies political levity, which is one of the most mordant corrosives of liberty, or else it is a political heresy, as much so as Vox regis vox Dei would 7 The subject of Mobs has been enlarged upon in the Political Ethics. be. If it be meant to convey the idea that the people can do no wrong, it is as grievous an untruth as would be conveyed by the maxim, the king can do no wrong, if it really were meant to be taken literally. However indistinct the meaning of the maxim may be, the idea intended to be conveyed and the imposing character of the dictum, have, nevertheless, contributed to produce in some countries a general inability to remain in opposition-that necessary element of civil liberty. In them a sort of shame seems to be attached to him that does not swim with the broad stream. No matter what flagrant contradictions may take place, or however sudden the changes may be, there seems to exist in every one a feeling of discomfort, until he has joined the general current. To differ from the dominant party or the ruling majority, appears almost like daring to contend with a deity, or a mysterious, yet irrevocable destiny. To dissent is deemed to be malcontent; it seems more than rebellious, it seems traitorous; and this feeling becomes ultimately so general, that it seizes the dissenting individuals themselves. They become ashamed, and mingle with the rest. Individuality is destroyed, manly character is lost, and the salutary effect of parties is forfeited. He that clings to his conviction is put in ban as unnational, and as an enemy to the people. Then arises. a man of personal popularity. He ruins the institutions; he bears down everything before him; yet he receives the popular acclaim, and the voice of the 120 ON CIVIL LIBERTY AND SELF-GOVERNMENT. people being the voice of God, it is deemed equally unnational and equally shameful to oppose him." 8 The Paris journal, called The Country, informed the public at the time the present empire was established, that it had been raised to the dignity of an official paper to the imperial government. The announcement is made in that proclamatory and sententious style so much relished by the French, and in one of the paragraphs, standing by itself, "breaks" dividing it from the preceding and succeeding parts, it offers with a naiveté, which surpasses anything the writer can remember, this comforting assurance: "In approaching power more closely, we shall not cease to have opinions." The fact that it is the "journal of the empire," that the whole article is short, that every sentence seems to be well weighed by the editor, a writer of note, and that the declaration was made on a very important occasion, give to the whole a character which entitles us to take it as something more than a passing newspaper sentence. When the maxim Vox populi vox Dei prevails, and governments change in rapid succession, it is a necessary result that there are hosts of turncoats. The French published in 1826, or thereabouts, a bitter satire on this herd of politicians, consisting of a work called Dictionnaire des Girouettes-literally translated, Dictionary of Weathercocks; but Anglicized, Dictionary of Turncoats. The names which headed the biographies in the book were succeeded by a number of symbolical weathercocks, equal to the number of political somersets of which the respective persons could boast. There was a fearful row of hieroglyphical vanes after some names. But in reading this droll and bitter account relating to a foreign nation, let us remember a certain passage in the bible where something is said about a mote in the eye. |
