Any of these forms and systems, and many
others besides, are or may be legitimate, if established and
maintained by the national will. There is nothing in the law of
God or of nature, antecedently to the national will, that gives
any one of them a right to the exclusion of any one of the others.
The imperial system in France is as legitimate as the federative
system in the United States. The only form or system that is
necessarily illegal is the despotic. That can never be a truly
civilized government, nor a legitimate government, for God has
given to man no dominion over man. He gave men, as St. Augustine
says, and Pope St. Gregory the Great repeats, dominion over the
irrational creation, not over the rational, and hence the
primitive rulers of men were called pastors or shepherds, not
lords. It may be the duty of the people subjected to a despotic
government to demean themselves quietly and peaceably towards it,
as a matter of prudence, to avoid sedition, and the evils that
would necessarily follow an attempted revolution, but not
because, founded as it is on mere force, it has itself any right
or legality.
All other forms of government are republican in their essential
constitution, founded on public right, and held under God from
and for the commonwealth, and which of them is wisest and best
for the commonwealth is, for the most part, an idle question.
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