CHAPTER V

FORMS OF GOVERNMENT

1.-GOVERNMENTS

St. Thomas' classification of governments is based on Aristotle's. The Philosopher views polities as consulting the common weal or not, and accordingly they are either good or bad. But as to power, he finds it in the hands of one, the few,or the many: and, from this aspect, governments are monarchical, arstocratic, and political or democratic. These forms have their opposites: tyranny, oligarchy, ochlarchy.405

Aristotle uses the word "polity" to express our word "democracy;" a name which, as he himself observes, is common to all other fair governments. He apparently sees the true democratic spirit present in each and every just régime, and, indeed, as the basis of all; resulting in an organized pursuit of the general welfare and, consequently, a decent and consistent general regard for the good of the individual. Both Aquinas and the Philosopher consider a man to be as much a man under a king as in a republic; and neither of them finds any reason why he should be treated as less.

Both of these superior minds manifest a degree of indifference to the type of government, so long as the purpose of the

405 See Politics, I, 2, and the De Reg., I, 1. (Cf. Plato's classification Repub., VIII, 1, 2: Aristocracy, the best form, and its corruptions. The latter are: timocracy, wherein property was a condition of citizenship; oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny.)

But in the 4th book, ch. 7th, of the Politics, Aristotle classifies governments as monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, and aristocracy; which is slightly different from St. Thomas' classification. He mentions, too, the polity. (For an explanation of this particular form of government, see Thirwall, History of Greece, I, ch. X, p. 158.) It seems that the Philosopher takes liberties with his original classification, which is the one adopted by Aquinas, and quotes democracy and oligarchy as good forms; though he considered aristocracy and polity the better.

people is achieved.406 Aristotle in his Politics, III, 7, and Aquinas in his De Regimine, I, 1, present the list of polities and expose the forms into which they may deteriorate. The king who seeks his own interest and not the people's, says St. Thomas, turns the government into a tyranny, oppressing by power instead of ruling by justice. The aristocracy which honors opulence more than ethics, is no aristocracy at all, but a base bureaucracy, differing from a tyranny only numerically. Finally, a people, rising up in defiance of conscience and overwhelming justice with numbers, is a mammoth despot and most undemocratic. Aquinas believes injustice to be injustice, whether it is committed by one or many. Differently from such as Hegel, Ruemelin, Treitschke, and Bernhardi, he does not lift the State above the moral law. Nor does he place civil, or any other species of morality, on a shaky Bentham basis of the "greatest good for the greatest number." For him, the many are as obliged to the simple dictates of conscience as the one. The wrongs which the few do them, cannot be righted by wrongs on their own part. When the State requires reconscruction, radicalism rather than justice is destruction rather than relief. The facility with which unjust governments often turn into each other instead of into their betters, is a lesson of Thomistic politics. The tide of reckless and ruthless revolt may sweep away an autocrat, only to throw up another or others into his place. And blood, profusely shed, calls to heaven in weary perplexity: when an obtuse people change their rulers and delude themselves that they have changed their rules.407 For a modern instance, Nicholas was only palely imperial besides some of the present Russian personalities who are supposed to represent the total departure of the old order.

406 Cf. Woodrow Wilson's "The State," p. 598. See Montagne, Revue Thomiste, Vol. 8, 1900, art. La pensé de saint Thomas sur les formes, de government "Le saint Doctour n'est pas une adversaire prevenu, mais une juge clairvoyant et impartial. Il examine avec attention, il prononce sans parti pris, il parle sans amertume; mais il s'exprime aussi sans flatterie, sans reticences, sans déguisement, avec le calme, la serenité, et la noble indépendence du philosophe consciencieux qui n'a cure de l'opinion des hommes et que préoccupe seulement la recherche de la vérité."

407 See De Reg., Lib. I, ch. 5.

The Philosopher and the Doctor's classification of governments has passed into a tradition and is generally accepted. Still it has had to encounter much criticism some of which is mentioned by Crahay.408 Passay repudiates the principle of such a division, believing that the ancients wrongly judged power to be sovereign and that those who possessed it had the right to impose their will on everybody else.409 He declares that the difference among governments consists rather in their relations with the governed; and, on this ground, he finds two kinds of polity, republican and monarchical, according as the people exercise, or not, the fullness of civil power.410 But this classification is fundamentally Aristotle's and St. Thomas', only that theirs is more thoughtful. He makes the relation between governors and governed the point of differentiation; but such relation is occasioned and characterized by the transfer of power, as he himself admits. Now the transmission must be made to the one, the few, or the many, in greater or less degree; and, if so, Passy agrees with Aquinas and the Philosopher. It is evident, we shall see, that they did not deem the alienation of power invariably as total.

De Laveleye believes that the line of division may be better determined by the asking "Who actually exercises the sovereignity and enacts the laws-the king or the nation?"411 If the former, the régime is autocratic, even though there is a parliament; if the latter, the rule is democratic, even though there is a king. One can see the inadequacy of such a criterion, and appreciate that of Aquinas all the more by comparison. De Laveleye seems to forget that in every good government the people are ultimately the ruling power; for from and by them the rulers are empowered, and act in justice and prudence only when they are directed by the best of public opinion, since their own thought would be inadequate, not only in itself but in its efficacy.412 It is only in virtue of their public office that

408 Op. cit., pp. 70-72.

409 Des formes de gouvernement, p. 11.

410 Idem, p. 7. Cf. Montesquieu's division of governments into republics, monarchies, and despotisms; and de Haller's, into monarchies and polyarchies.

411 Le gouvernement dans la démocratie, t. I, p. 197.

412 Summa Theol., la 2ae, qu. XC, a. 3.

they are potent at all. They are the servants of the commonwealth, and a means by which it secures the blessings of civil existence to itself: at least, in the thoroughly democratic Thomistic sense.413 And, therefore, what Laveleye would call autocracy, St. Thomas would likely denominate tyranny. Besides, Laveleye's classification is too general, and is almost as unsatisfactory as that of St. Thomas would have been, had he contented himself with mentioning that politics are of two kinds, excellent and evil. The Angelic Doctor gives the species as well as the genera.

The question is, should the quanity of rulers or the quality of the rule determine the nature of the State? Those who think that Aquinas considered numbers the only determinant, disregard that he mentions also merit. For him, polities must be primarily marked off as just or unjust; and only then are they differentiated by the number of their rulers. Blunchli observes that difference in number is in relation to difference in character 414 This may be so. But Aristotle and Aquinas realize that the truest test of a polity is its promotion of the public good; and this is not so dependent on the number of rulers as on the supremacy of right. Wherever they speak of a good polity as a monarchy, an aristocracy, or an out-and-out democracy, they always mean one in which the good of the people is paramount, equity prevails, and a popular interest is awake.

2.-MONARCHY ACCORDING TO ST. THOMAS

Aquinas does not seem explicitly to choose any government, since considerations are so many and cases so diverse. But in his distinctive work De Regimine he writes mostly on monarchy; because this purely political piece is addressed to a king. It is necessary to view his thoughts on sovereigns without prejudice. He offers no apology for the rulers who wrapped royalty in opprobrium. His denunciation of them, is forceful and fiery

413 De Reg., Lib. I, cap. 3.

414 Th. génér. de l'État, Liv. VI, ch. 1, p. 295. Antoniades, Die Staatslehere des Thomas ab Aquino, p. 21.

with philosophy and Scripture. But he believes that there should be a central personality in a polity to give it consistency and unity: a theory to which we ourselves today certainly subscribe, with our President, governors, and mayors. Translated into modern thought, St Thomas says that the State must not be all body and no head. Contrary to modern conception, he does not teach that monarchy is exclusively the rule of an hereditary dynasty.415 As Crahay notes in the Doctor's teaching: the hereditary monarchy is only a type, and, at that, not the most characteristic. According to St. Thomas, the monarchy is the rule of one who owes his authority not only to merit but to the election of the citizens. A search for any sanction of evil historical absolutism in the politics of St. Thomas, is futile. He indicates that monarchies should be elective. Which is the teaching also of his Commentary. The chief objection of history to dynasties is that they foisted inefficiency and depravity on the State. The main demur of psychology is that the rational nature of the people is contemned, when no word in the selection of those whom they are supposed to obey, is conceded them. Aquinas honors both these attitudes, by affirming that election is superior to succession. It is better, he says, that a ruler be appointed in the way in which per se it happens that the better man is found; but by election the better man is more surely secured than by succession; for here there is a field for choice. Besides, election is more consistent with the rational appetencies of the people.416 Nevertheless, as elsewhere noted, he teaches that per accidens the hereditary monarchy may not be such an evil after all, when compared with the commotion and base politics which a frequent change of rulers can occasion: conditions of which we ourselves are painfully aware, in our own country.417 Again, Aquinas notices the incongruity which arises when my equal of today becomes my superior of

415 See Crahay, op. cit., p. 73.

416 Com. Polit., Lib. III, lec. 14.

417 Such a writer as Lecky says. "In my own opinion, the ballot, in any country where politics rests on a really sound and independent basis, Democracy and Liberty, I, p. 89. St. Thomas refuses to go so far. For him the ballot may be accidentally an evil, but is not essentially such.

is essentially an evil.”