By Orestes A. Brownson

As found in The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, edited by Henry F. Brownson. Originally published in Brownson’s Quarterly Review in October 1848 as a single article, it has been here split into two parts for the reader’s convenience. Read Part I here.

The conservative doctrine which we have contended for, and which does not happen to please some of our readers, follows necessarily from this doctrine of the divine origin and right of government. No one particular form of government exists by divine right for every people, but every form so exists for the particular nation of which it is the established order. The established order, the constitution of the state, which God in his providence has given to a particular people, which is coeval with that people, has grown up with it, and is identified with its whole public life, is the legitimate order, the legal constitution, and therefore sacred and inviolable. If sacred and inviolable, it must be preserved, and no changes or innovations under the name of progress or reform, that would abolish or essentially alter it, or that would in any degree impair its free, vigorous, and healthy action, can be tolerated.

This is the doctrine we have maintained, and this is asserted to be hostile to liberty and favorable to despotism. However this may be, the doctrine is not a recent doctrine with us, not one which we have embraced for the first time since our conversion to Catholicity. We held and publicly maintained it during that period of our life when we were regarded as a liberalist, and denounced by our countrymen as a radical, a leveller, and a disorganizer. Thus, in October, 1838, we oppose it to the mad proceedings of the the abolitionists, and maintain that it is a sufficient reason for condemning those proceedings, that they are unconstitutional and revolutionary.* [Brownson’s Works, Vol. XV., pp. 78-81.]

The same doctrine we had inculcated in the Review for the previous July of the same year.

Our government, in its measures and practical character, should conform as strictly as possible to the ideal or theory of our institutions. Nobody, we trust, is prepared for a revolution; nobody, we also trust, is bold enough to avow a wish to depart very widely from the fundamental principles of our institutions; and everybody will admit that the statesman should study to preserve those institutions in their simplicity and integrity, and should seek, in every law or measure he proposes, merely to bring out their practical worth, and secure the ends for which they were established. Their spirit should dictate every legislative enactment, every judicial decision, and every executive measure. Any law not in harmony with their genius, any measure which would be likely to disturb the nicely adjusted balance of their respective powers, or that would give them, in their practical operation, a character essentially different from the one they were originally intended to have, should be discountenanced, and never for a single moment entertained.

We would not be understood to be absolutely opposed to all innovations or changes, whatever their character. It is true, we can never consent to disturb the settled order of a state, without strong and urgent reasons; but we can conceive of cases in which we should deem it our duty to demand a revolution. When a government has outlived its idea, and the institutions of a country no longer bear any relation to the prevailing habits, thoughts, and sentiments of the people, and have become a mere dead carcass, an encumbrance, an offence, we can call loudly for a revolution, and behold with comparative coolness its terrible doings. But such a case does not as yet present itself here. Our institutions are all young, full of life, and the future. Here, we cannot be revolutionists. Here, we can tolerate no innovations, no changes, which touch fundamental laws. None are admissible but such as are needed to pre serve our institutions in their original character, to bring out their concealed beauty, to clear the field for their free operation, and to give more directness and force to their legitimate activity. Every measure must be in harmony with them, grow, as it were, out of them, and be but a development of their fundamental laws.” — (Vol. XV., pp. 86-7.)

Undoubtedly, we here recognize a case in which a revolution would be justifiable; but not a case in which it would be lawful to subvert the constitution; for the case supposed is one in which the constitution has already been subverted, and ceased to be living and operative. The doctrine is nowise different from our present doctrine on the subject, only what we called revolution then we should call by another name now. The movements of a people to depose the tyrant, to throw off the illegitimate and to restore the legitimate authority, are not a revolution in the sense in which we deny the right of revolution. It is essential to our idea of a revolution, that it should involve, in some respect, an effort or intention to subvert the legal authority of a state. If, for instance, it be conceded that Ireland is an integral part of the British empire, or, rather, of the British state, an effort on the part of Irishmen to sever her from the British state, and erect her into an independent nation, would be revolutionary and unjustifiable. But if it be conceded that she is a separate state, that she has never been merged in the British state, and has been bound to it only by a mutual compact, and if it be conceded or established that England has broken the compact or not complied with its conditions, a like effort at separation and independence would involve no revolutionary principle, and, if prudent or expedient, would be justifiable, even though it should lead to a fearful and protracted war between the two nations.

It is clear, however, from these passages, that, as long ago as 1838, we were, in relation to our own country, decidedly conservative. Here is another extract from the same Review, for October, 1841, which proves that we, while still regarded as a radical, generalized it and extended it to all countries :

In this matter of world-reforming, it is our misfortune, to disagree with our radical brethren. The reforms which can be introduced into any one country are predetermined by its geographical position, the productions of its soil, and the genius of its people and of its existing institutions. Any reform which requires the introduction or the destruction of a fundamental element is precluded. All reforms must consist in, and be restricted to, clearing away anomalies and developing already admitted principles.

Here is the conservative doctrine stated as broadly and as distinctly as we state it now, and we could easily show that we entertained it at a much earlier date. Doubtless there are many things to be found in The Boston Quarterly Review not easily reconcilable with this doctrine; for we had not, at the time of conducting it, reduced all our ideas to a systematic and harmonious whole. Moreover, we wrote with less care than we do now; for we wrote more for the purpose of exciting thought than of establishing conclusions. But the discrepancies to be detected are in general more apparent than real; for we, unhappily, adopted the practice of using popular terms in an unpopular sense, which often gave us the appearance of advocating doctrines we by no means intended. Thus, we adopted the word democracy, but defined it in a sense of our own, very different from the popular sense. We did the same with many other terms. There was in this no intention to deceive. But we had a theory, — for in those times we were addicted to theorizing, — that the people used terms in a loose and vague sense, and that the business of the writer was to seize and define it — to give in its precision what the people really mean by the term, if they could but explain their meaning to themselves. But we found by experience that we could not make the people attend to our definitions, and that they would, in spite of them, continue to use the popular term in its popular sense, and that, if we wished to express another sense, or the same sense somewhat modified, we must select another term. The mistake we fell into is fallen into by many who are not so fortunate as to detect it. Some of our friends have tried to find fault with our views on liberty, when their own views were the same as ours. They use the word liberty in relations in which we avoid it; but they in using it, fail to convey their real meaning. The popular mind understands by liberty something very different from what they do. It is necessary to select terms with a view of denying what we do not mean, as well as of expressing what we do mean. Many of the inconsistencies we have been charged with have grown out of our former neglect of this rule, and not a few of the changes we are supposed to have undergone are really nothing but changes in our terminology, made for the purpose of getting our real meaning out to public apprehension. But this by the way. Versatile as we may have been, we have always had certain fixed principles, and what they were may be known by noting what we have cast off in our advance towards manhood, and what we have retained and still retain. The conservative principle is evidently one of these, and as we undeniably held it when nobody dreamed of charging us with hostility to liberty, we cannot see why our holding it now should be construed into proof that we are on the side of despotism.

But let us look at the doctrine itself. People hold it objectionable, because they suppose it commands us to preserve old abuses and forbids us to labor for the progress of civilization. But in this they assume two things : — 1. That the legitimate constitution of a state is, or may be, an abuse; and, 2. That the progress of civilization is denied, if the right to subvert the constitution is denied.

The first involves a contradiction in terms. Nothing legal or legitimate is or can be an abuse; an abuse is a misuse of that which is legal. The abuse is always contrary to the constitution, or at least some departure from it; and consequently conservatism, or the preservation of the constitution, instead of requiring us to conserve the abuse, imperatively commands us to redress it; because, if not redressed, it may in time undermine and destroy the constitution itself.

The second is equally unfounded. The destruction of the constitution is the destruction of the state itself, its resolution into anarchy or despotism, either of which is fatal to civilization. What should we think of the physician who should undertake to restore a man to health, or to increase his soundness and vigor, by destroying his constitution? What we should think of him is precisely what we ought to think of the statesman who seeks to advance civilization by subverting the constitution of the state. The progress of civilization is inconceivable without the progress of the state, and the progress of the state is inconceivable without the existence of the state. How, then, can the subversion, that is, the destruction, of the state tend to advance civilization? If you will listen either to common sense or to the lessons of experience, you will grant that revolutions tend only to throw men into barbarism and savagism. The passions they call forth are the lowest, fiercest, and most brutal of our nature, and your patriot so called, he who seeks to advance his country by destroying its constitution, is usually a tiger for his ferocity.

But it is said that the existing constitution is destroyed only in order to make way for a new and better organization of the state. When you have shown us an instance, in the whole history of the world, in which the destruction of an existing constitution of a state has been followed by the introduction and adoption of a new and better one, — better for the particular nation, we mean, — we will give up the point, acknowledge that we have been in this whole matter consummate fools, and become as mad revolutionists as the best of you. But such an instance cannot be found.

How often must we tell you that a constitution cannot be made as one makes a wheel-barrow or a steam-engine, — that of the constitution we must say, as we say of the poet, nascitur non fit? It is generated, not constructed, and no human wisdom can give to a state its constitution. The experiment has often been tried, and has just as often failed. Shaftesbury and Locke tried it for the Carolinas. They failed. France tried it in her old revolution; she is trying it again. Her former experiment resulted in anarchy, military despotism, and the restoration; her present experiment in four short months has reached military despotism. England has tried it, and sent out from her mills at home, along with her other manufactures, a constitution cut and dried for each of her colonies, and in what instance has the constitution not proved a curse to the colony for which it was made and on which it has been imposed? Who are these men who now come forward and ask us to credit them in spite of philosophy, of common sense, uniform experience, and experiment? Surely they must be prodigies of modesty, or else count largely on our simplicity and credulity. But we are referred to our own country, to the American revolution. Be it so. In reply, we might refer to the Spanish- American revolutions, as a case much more in point. But our own country is the case on which the modern revolutionists chiefly rely for their justification. We do not contest the right of the Anglo-American colonies to separate from the mother country; we are not the men to condemn the congress of 1776; and we cheerfully concede the prosperity which has followed the separation. But what is called the American revolution was no revolution in the sense in which we deny the right of revolution, and in it there was no subversion of the state, no destruction of the existing constitution, and no assertion of the right to destroy it. The colonies were held by compact to the crown of Great Britain. The tyranny of George III. broke that compact, and absolved the colonies from their allegiance. Absolved from their allegiance to the crown, they were, ipso facto, sovereign states, and the war which followed was simply a war in defence of their independence as such states. No abuse of terms can convert such a war into a revolutionary war. Then there was no civil revolution. The internal state of the colonies was not dissolved, and there was no war on the constitution of the American states. They retained substantially the very political constitutions with which they commenced, and retain them up to this moment. We have never undergone a revolution in any sense like the European revolutions which have followed since the war of our independence. Slight alterations have from time to time been, wisely or unwisely, effected in the state constitutions, but none which have struck at essential principles.

Nor was the formation of our federal constitution any thing like what the French national assembly are attempting. It was similar in its character to what the German diet at Frankfort have just done, or are still engaged in doing. It was not making and giving a constitution to a people who had just overthrown an old government, destroyed the old constitution, and resolved the state into its original elements, but was the act of free, sovereign states, already constituted, and exercising all the faculties of sovereign states. Here are vast differences, which are too often overlooked, and which should prevent our conduct in throwing off the crown of Great Britain and forming the federal Union from being regarded as a precedent for those who would destroy an existing constitution for the purpose of reorganizing the state. We never did any thing of the sort, and from the fact that the result of what we did do has been great national prosperity it cannot be inferred that such will be the result of revolutions in the European states. Revolutionists both at home and abroad, especially abroad, do not sufficiently consider the wide difference between colonies already existing as bodies politic, exercising nearly all the functions of government, separating themselves politically, under the authority of their local governments, from the mother country, and setting up for themselves, and the insurrection of the mob against the existing constitution, destroying it, and attempting to replace it by one of their own making. We were children come to our majority, leaving our father’s house to become heads of establishments of our own; the revolutionists are parricides, who knock their aged parent in the head or cut his throat in order to possess themselves of the homestead.

But however this may be, it is clear that the doctrine we put forth is not favorable to despotism; for despotism is as destructive of the legitimate constitution as revolutionism in favor of what is called liberalism. Radicalism and despotism are only two phases of one and the same thing. Despotism is radicalism in place; radicalism is despotism out of place. Both are unconstitutional, and to preserve the constitution requires us to oppose the one as much as the other. Liberty demands the supremacy of the law, and law is will regulated by reason, restrained by justice ; and to preserve law in this sense, we must resist every attempt, come it from what quarter it may, to substitute for it the government of arbitrary will.

Nobody denies the right to correct abuses. The doctrine we set forth not only concedes our right to correct abuses, but makes it, as we have seen, our duty to correct them. All that it forbids is our right to correct them by illegal, and therefore unjustifiable means. We must obey the law in correcting the abuses of the law, the constitution in repelling its enemies. This restriction is just, and good ends are never attainable by unjust means. Needs it be said again and again, that iniquity can never lead to justice, tyranny to liberty? But observing this restriction, you may go as far as you please. The doctrine we contend for does not, indeed, allow you to change a legal monarchy into a democracy, nor a democracy, where it is the legal order, as with us, into a monarchy; but it does allow you to change the individuals intrusted with the administration of the government. Kings, as long as they reign justly, reign by divine right; and in this sense, and in no other we accept the doctrine of the divine right of kings; but when they cease to reign justly, become tyrannical and oppressive, they forfeit their rights, and the authority reverts to the nation, to be exercised, however, in accordance with its fundamental constitution. The nation may depose the tyrant, even dispossess, for sufficient reasons, the reigning family, and call a new dynasty to the throne; for no nation can be rightfully the property of a prince, or of a family, or bound to submit to eternal slavery. Thus far we go; for we hold with the great Catholic authorities, that the king is not in reigning, but in reigning justly.

But we have said enough to vindicate our doctrine from the charge of being hostile to liberty and favorable to despotism. We yield to no man in our love of liberty, but we have always felt that just ends are more easily gained by just than by unjust means, and that the truth is much more effectually defended by arguments drawn from sound than from unsound principles, it is not that we are indifferent to liberty, but that we reject the grounds on which modern politicians defend it, and disapprove of the means by which they seek to secure it. We have shown that those grounds are untenable, and that those means are fitted only to defeat the end for which they are adopted. lie who wants more than justice will give him, wants what he cannot have without injustice to others. Our doctrine will satisfy no such man, and we should be satisfied with no doctrine that would. Be who wishes for liberty without obedience to law wishes for what never has been and never can be. An authority which does not restrain, which is only an instrument to be used when it serves our purpose, and to be cast off the moment it can no longer serve it, is no legitimate authority, is not a government at all. If we have government, it must govern, and we must obey it, even when to obey it may be a restraint on our private feelings and passions, for it is only at this price that we can purchase immunity from the private feelings and passions of others. Nothing is, then, in reality more unwise than to cherish an impatience of restraint and a spirit of insubordination. The sooner we learn the difficult lesson of obedience, the better will it be for us. We cannot, if we would, have every thing our own way; and perhaps it would not be to our advantage, if we could. Life has, and as long as the world stands will have, its trials, and, however impatient we may be, there is and will be much which we can conquer only by learning to bear it. It is easy to stir up a revolution, to subvert a throne or a dynasty; but to reestablish order, to readjust the relations of man with man, of prince with subject and subject with prince, so as to remove all evils and satisfy every wish, — this is labor, this is work, which no mortal man has ever yet been equal to. A man could lose paradise, bring sin, death, and all our woe into the world; only a God could repair the damage, and restore us to the heaven we had forfeited.

Our doctrine, just at this moment, may be unpopular, and we know it will put no money into our pocket, and bring us no applause; but this is not our fault, nor a reason why we should withhold it. Having never yet pandered to popular prejudices, or sought to derive profit from popular passions and fallacies, we shall not attempt to do it now. We love our country, perhaps, as much as some others who make much more parade of their patriotism; and we love liberty, it may be, as well, and are likely to serve it as effectually, as our young revolutionists in whom reason “sleeps and declamation roars.” We have, indeed, a tolerable pair of lungs, and if not a musical, at least a strong voice; we know and could use all the commonplaces of our young patriots, and reformers, — nay, we think we could, if we were to try, beat them at their own trade, grave and staid as we have become; but we have no disposition to enter the lists with them. We have never seen any good come from the declamatory speeches and fiery patriotism of boys just escaped the ferule of the pedagogue, and who can give utterance to nothing but puerile rant about liberty and patriotism. We have never seen good come to a country whose counsellors were young men with downy chins, and we set it down as a rule, that the country in which they can take the lead, whatever else it is fitted for, is not fitted for the liberty which comes through popular institutions.

We can weep as well as our juniors over a nation robbed of its rights, on whose palpitating heart is planted the iron heel of the conqueror, and have the will, if not the power, to strike, if we can but see a vulnerable spot, or a chance that the blow will tell upon the tyrant. But, as a general thing, we have a great distaste for the valor that evaporates in words, though they be great and high-sounding words, well chosen, skilfully arranged, and admirably pronounced; and an equal distaste even for deeds which recoil upon the actor, and aggravate his sufferings, already too afflicting to behold. We believe it wise to bide one’s time, and to take counsel of prudence. In most cases, the sufferings of a people spring from moral causes beyond the reach of civil government, and they are rarely the best patriots who paint them in the most vivid colors, and rouse up popular indignation against the civil authorities. Much more effectual service could be rendered in a more quiet and peaceful way, by each one seeking, in his own immediate sphere, to remove the moral causes of the evils endured. St. Vincent of Paul was a far wiser and more successful patriot than the greatest of your popular orators, declaimers, and songsters. He, humble-minded priest, had no ambition to shine, no splendid scheme of world or state reform. He thought only of saving his own soul, by doing the work that lay next him; and he became the benefactor of his age and his country, and in his noble institutions of charity he still lives, and each year extends his influence and adds to the millions who are recipients of his bounty. O ye who would serve your country, relieve the suffering, solace the afflicted, and right the wronged, go imitate St. Vincent of Paul, and Heaven will own you and posterity revere you.