From Whence Government?
Origins and Ends, from Aquinas to Otis
I tuned in to the livestream of Thomas West and Bradley Thompson debating, from the vantage point of their dueling books, the character and meaning of the founding period and its documents. At one point in the opening volleys, Thompson confidently declared that the emphasis or orientation of the “founders”—he really means Adams, Paine, and Jefferson and not many more besides—was the individual. In other words, in typical libertarian flair, Thompson claims that the purpose of government for that generation, for the American “Revolutionary Mind,” was the preservation of individual liberty according to individual natural rights. Apart from this, government had no other duty (hence, why Thompson droned on about welfare policy for a bit). He also claims, in support of his prior claim, that the late eighteenth century represented a radical break from the socio-political thought patterns of both Britain and the Continent, and all prior centuries in western Christendom, for that matter. When he says they were “revolutionary,” he means it! He even went so far as to say that the “general welfare” clause in the Constitution was a mistake, an example of how the founders weren’t perfect, or something.
Someone sent me the Barry Allan Shain review of Thompson’s book today and it couldn’t be more spot on. It might just be the best short book review I’ve ever encountered and its devastating! I won’t provide any spoilers; basically, Shain says Thompson hasn’t read any real source material, which seems like a fair if harsh critique given what I heard today. Providentially, I just so happened to be reading James Otis some this week and consider the following in light of Thompson’s claims outlined above.
From The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, the first chapter being, “Of the Origin of Government,” (n.b., this is not a secretive, unknown text and neither should any historian of the period be unaware of Otis):
“What shall we say then? Is not government founded on grace? No. Nor on force? No. Nor on compact? Nor property? Not altogether on either. Has it any solid foundation? any chief corner stone, but what accident, chance or confusion may lay one moment and destroy the next? I think it has an everlasting foundation in the unchangeable will of God, the author of nature, whose laws never vary. The same omniscient, omnipotent, infinitely good and gracious Creator of the universe, who has been pleased to make it necessary that what we call matter should gravitate, for the celestial bodies to roll round their axes, dance their orbits and perform their various revolutions in that beautiful order and concert, which we all admire, has made it equally necessary that from Adam and Eve to these degenerate days, the different sexes should sweetly attract each other, form societies of single families, of which larger bodies and communities are as naturally, mechanically, and necessarily combined, as the dew of Heaven and the soft distilling rain is collected by the all enliv’ning heat of the sun. Government is therefore most evidently founded on the necessities of our nature. It is by no means an arbitrary thing, depending merely on compact or human will for its existence.”
Otis continues with an analogy between parental love and government and then adds,
“We have a King, who neither slumbers nor sleeps, but eternally watches for our good; whose rain falls on the just and on the unjust: yet while they live, move, and have their being in him, and cannot account for either, or for any thing else, so stupid and wicked are some men, as to deny his existence, blaspheme his most evident government, and disgrace their nature.”
And,
“Let no Man think I am about to commence advocate for despotism, because I affirm that government is founded on the necessity of our natures; and that an original supreme Sovereign, absolute, and uncontroulable, earthly power must exist in and preside over every society; from whose final decisions there can be no appeal but directly to Heaven.”
Whilst Otis denies the divine right of kings as mere flattery concocted by self-interested oligarchs, and further affirms popular sovereignty, he embraces the natural necessity of government, and is evidently content with a monarchical model—even though he, quite conventionally, maintains agnosticism as to governmental form generally. Otis’ roots original popular sovereignty in the fact of government’s and society’s development even as he does not advocate democracy—the possibility of reverter is purely insurance against tyranny and, more so, commentary on socio-political origins.
What Otis is more interested in is the ends of government, not its beginnings.
“[L]et the origin of government be placed where it may, the end of it is manifestly the good of the whole. Salus populi supreme lex esto, is of the law of nature, and part of that grand charter given to the human race, by the only monarch in the universe who has a clear and indisputable right to absolute power; because he is the only One who is omniscient as well as omnipotent.”
Indeed, “There is no one act which a government can have a right to make, that does not tend to the advancement of the security, tranquility, and prosperity of the people.”
Notice that Otis speaks of “the people,” in the plural. He has already established the sociability of man and that government coincides with that natural impulse.
In case you’re still convinced that Otis is primarily concerned with the individual citizen here, consider:
“If life, liberty, and property could be enjoyed in as great perfection in solitude, as in society, there would be no need of government. But the experience of ages has proved that such is the nature of man, a weak, imperfect being; that the valuable ends of life cannot be obtained without the union and assistance of many. Hence ‘tis clear that men cannot live apart or independent of each other: In solitude men would perish.”
And yet, conflict may arise, and this conflict requires an arbitrator for the sake of peace and prosperity. Now, all of this is not far off from Thomas Aquinas in his De Regno, not far off at all.
The Angelic Doctor begins his advice to the King of Cyprus with the basics. Anything ordered to a particular end must be governed by a directive principle. For man, as an intelligent being, the light of nature is that principle such that
“if man were intended to live alone, as many animals do, he would require no other guide to his end. Each man would be a king unto himself, under God, the highest King, inasmuch as he would direct himself in his acts by the light of reason given him from on high.
Yet it is natural for man, more than for any other animal, to be a social and political animal, to live in a group.”
This requires government to direct society toward its proper end which coincides with man’s proper end given that he is meant to live with others in harmony. Since a range of reasonable options usually exist in the pursuit of necessities and particular goods, someone has to be the final arbiter of disagreement and diversity.
Further, not only is man sociable in that it is not good for him to be alone, but he requires the help of others to acquire all that he needs to survive.
“[O]ne man alone is not able to procure them all for himself, for one man could not sufficiently provide for life, unassisted. It is therefore natural that man should live in the society of many… it is not possible for one man to arrive at a knowledge of all these things by his own individual reason. It is therefore necessary for man to live in a multitude so that each one may assist his fellows, and different men may be occupied in seeking, by their reason, to make different discoveries—one, for example, in medicine, one in this and another in that.”
Again, this necessitates government such that it can be said that man cannot and should not live without it—something not necessitated by sin, mind you:
“If, then, it is natural for man to live in the society of many, it is necessary that there exist among men some means by which the group may be governed. For where there are many men together and each one is looking after his own interest, the multitude would be broken up and scattered unless there were also an agency to take care of what appertains to the commonweal. In like manner, the body of a man or any other animal would disintegrate unless there were a general ruling force within the body which watches over the common good of all members. With this in mind, Solomon says [Eccl. 4:9]: “Where there is no governor, the people shall fall.””
In these general statements, compared to the equally foundational and general quotes from Otis above, where can disagreement be found? So much for the radical break of the American revolutionary mind.
The bottom line and normative point is that government is not optional. Government form or mode may be settled by compact but not government qua government. Otis, again:
“Government is founded immediately on the necessities of human nature, and ultimately on the will of God, the author of nature; who has not left it to men in general to choose, whether they will be members of society or not, but at the hazard of their senses if not of their lives.”
Again, Otis, like Aquinas, is fairly indifferent as to the form of government selected so long as it is prudently selected. (Of course, Otis praises the “The British constitution in theory and in the present administration of it, in general comes nearest the idea of perfection, of any that has been reduced to practice.”)
Just as the end of government is more important than its genesis, so too is the nature of government more important than its form, viz., that it be governed in its operations by the law of nature. “Tyranny,” then, is deviation from “truth, justice, and equity.” All three classical forms of government are obviously capable of this devolution.
But before moving on, don’t miss how Otis equates pure democracy with perpetual regime change (an important point):
“Deposing the administrators of a simple democracy may sound oddly, but it is done every day, and in almost every vote. A. B. & C. for example, make a democracy. Today A & B are for so vile a measure as a standing army. Tomorrow B & C vote it out. This is as really deposing the former administrators, as setting up and making a new king is deposing the old one. Democracy in the one case, and monarchy in the other, still remain; all that is done is to change the administration.”