"6. The revolution must be one conducted or approved by the community
at large ... the refusal of a small party in the State to join with
the overwhelming mass of their countrymen would not render the
resistance of the latter unlawful." (_Essays, Chiefly Theological_;
see also Rickaby, _Moral Philosophy_, Chap. 8, Sec. 7.)
Some of these conditions are drawn out at much length by Dr. Murray. I
give what is outstanding. How easily they could fit Irish conditions
must strike anyone. I think it might fairly be said that our leaders
generally would, if asked to lay down conditions for a rising, have
framed some more stringent than these. It might be said, in truth, of
some of them that they seem to wait for more than a moral certainty of
success, an absolute certainty, that can never be looked for in war.
IV
When a government through its own iniquity ceases to exist, we must, to
establish a new government on a true and just basis, go back to the
origin of Civil Authority. No one argues now for the Divine Right of
Kings, but in studying the old controversy we get light on the subject
of government that is of all time. To the conception that kings held
their power immediately from God, "Suarez boldly opposed the thesis of
the initial sovereignty of the people; from whose consent, therefore,
all civil authority immediately sprang. So also, in opposition to
Melanchthon's theory of governmental omnipotence, Suarez _a fortiori_
admitted the right of the people to depose those princes who would have
shown themselves unworthy of the trust reposed in them.
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