To govern
is to direct, control, restrain, as the pilot controls and
directs his ship. It necessarily implies two terms, governor and
governed, and a real distinction between them. The denial of all
real distinction between governor and governed is an error in
politics analogous to that in philosophy or theology of denying
all real distinction between creator and creature, God and the
universe, which all the world knows is either pantheism or pure
atheism--the supreme sophism. If we make governor and governed
one and the same, we efface both terms; for there is no governor
nor governed, if the will that governs is identically the will
that is governed. To make the controller and the controlled the
same is precisely to deny all control. There must, then, if
there is government at all, be a power, force, or will that
governs, distinct from that which is governed. In those
governments in which it is held that the people govern, the
people governing do and must act in a diverse relation from the
people governed, or there is no real government.
Government is not only that which governs, but that which has the
right or authority to govern. Power without right is not
government. Governments have the right to use force at need, but
might does not make right, and not every power wielding the
physical force of a nation is to be regarded as its rightful
government.
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