5000 Year Leap (16 page)

   Even when it was finally acknowledged that Parliament was writing new statutes and dealing with problems not mentioned in the law of ancient times, it was still required that none of the new laws contradict the provisions of divine law. John Locke set forth the principle which carried over into the thinking of the American Founders when he wrote:

   "The law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for man's actions must ... be conformable to the law of Nature -- i.e., to the will of God."
140

   Sir William Blackstone, contemporary of the Founders, wrote:

   "Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator.... This will of his Maker is called the law of nature.... This law of nature, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God, Himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this."
141

   But who will decide? When it comes to lawmaking, the nations of most of the world throughout history have been subject to the whims and arbitral despotism of kings, emperors, rulers, and magistrates. How can the people be protected from the autocratic authority of their rulers? Where does the source of sovereign authority lie?

   The Founders had strong convictions on this point.

   During the 1600's, the royal families of England did everything in their power to establish the doctrine that they governed the people by "divine right of kings." In other words, it was declared a "God-given right."

   King Charles II beheaded Algernon Sidney in 1683 for saying that there is no divine right of kings to rule over the people. Sidney insisted that the right to rule is actually in the people and therefore no person can rightfully rule the people without their consent.

   In responding to the question, "Whether the supreme power be ... in the people," he replied:

   "I say, that they [including himself] who place the power [to govern] in a multitude, understand a multitude composed of freemen, who think it for their convenience to join together, and to establish such laws and rules as they oblige themselves to observe."
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   The very year Algernon Sidney was beheaded, John Locke fled from England to Holland where he could say the same thing Sidney did, but from a safer distance. After the "Glorious Revolution" which he helped in plotting, Locke returned from Holland on the same boat as the new Queen (Mary). In 1890 he published his two famous essays on
The Original Extent and End of Civil Government
. In the second essay he wrote:

   "In all lawful governments, the designation of the persons who are to bear rule being as natural and necessary a part as the form of the government itself, and that which had its establishment
originally from the people
... all commonwealths, therefore, with the form of government established, have rules also of appointing and conveying the right to those who are to have any share in the public authority; and whoever gets into the exercise of any part of the power by other ways than what the laws of the community have prescribed hath no right to be obeyed, though the form of the commonwealth be still preserved, since he is not the person the laws have appointed, and, consequently, not the person
the people have consented to
. Nor can such an usurper, or any deriving from him, ever have a title till the
people are both [page 143] at liberty to consent, and have actually consented
, to allow and confirm in him the power he hath till then usurped."
143

   There was no place for the idea of a divine right of kings in the thinking of the American Founders. They subscribed to the concept that rulers are servants of the people and all sovereign authority to appoint or remove a ruler rests with the people. They pointed out how this had been so with the Anglo-Saxons from the beginning.

   Dr. Lovell describes how the tribal council, consisting of the entire body of freemen, would meet each month to discuss their problems and seek a solution through consensus. The chief or king (taken from the Anglo-Saxon word
cyning
--chief of the kinsmen) was only one among equals:

   "The
chief
owed his office to the tribal assembly, which selected and could also depose him. His authority was limited at every turn, and though he no doubt commanded respect, his opinion carried no more weight in the debates of the assembly than that of any freeman."
144

   In this same spirit, Alexander Hamilton declared:

   "The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of
the consent of the people
. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority."
145

   The divine right of the people to govern themselves and exercise exclusive power of sovereignty in their official affairs was expressed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in its Proclamation of January 23, 1776:

   "It is a maxim that in every government, there must exist, somewhere, a supreme, sovereign, absolute, and uncontrollable power; but this power resides always in the
body of the people
; and it never was, or can be, delegated to one man, or a few; the great Creator has never given to men a right to vest others with authority over them, unlimited either in duration or degree."
146

   James Madison discovered many people frightened by the Constitution when it was presented for ratification because they felt a federal government was being given autocratic authority. Madison declared:

   "The adversaries of the Constitution seem to have lost sight of the
people
altogether in their reasonings on this subject; and to have viewed these different establishments not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be reminded of their error. They must be told that the
ultimate authority
, wherever the derivative may be found,
resides in the people alone
."
147

   But even if it is acknowledged that the
people
are divinely endowed with the sovereign power to govern, what happens if elected or appointed officials usurp the authority of the people to impose a dictatorship or some form of abusive government on them?

   This brings us to the fundamental principle on which the Founders based their famous Declaration of Independence.

   
   Philadelphia, 1776

   The Founders were well acquainted with the vexations resulting from an abusive, autocratic government which had imposed injuries on the American colonists for thirteen years in violation of the English constitution. Thomas Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence therefore emphasized the feelings of the American people when he wrote:

   "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

   "But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."
148

   Once again, we find John Locke setting forth this same doctrine in his classical
Second Essay Concerning Civil Government
:

   "The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.... [Therefore,] whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they [the officials of government] put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence. Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust
they [the government officials] forfeit the power the people had put into their hands
... and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and ... provide for their own safety and security."
149

   However, it is important to recognize that the "government" was established by the
majority
of the people, and only a majority of the people can authorize an appeal to alter or abolish a particular establishment of government. As Locke pointed out:

   "When any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority....

   "And thus every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation to every one of that society to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded by it."
150

   "This being true, Locke pointed out that there is no right of revolt in an individual, a group, or a minority. Only in the majority. As he stated elsewhere:

   "For if it [the unlawful act of government] reach no farther than some private men's cases, though they have a right to defend themselves ... yet the right to do so will not easily engage them in a contest ... it being as impossible for one or a few oppressed men to disturb the government where the body of the people do not think themselves concerned in it....

   "But if either these illegal acts have extended to the
majority
of the people, or if the mischief and oppression has light [struck] only on some few, but in such cases as the precedent and consequences seem to
threaten all
, and they are persuaded in their consciences that their laws, and with them, their estates, liberties, and lives are in danger, and perhaps their religion too,
how they will be [page 150] hindered from resisting illegal force used against them I cannot tell
."
151

   In other words, the majority are then likely to revolt just as the American Founders did when their plight had finally become intolerable. Certainly there was no significant confusion in the minds of the Founders as to their rights and proper recourse when they approached their moment of critical decision in 1776. The Virginia assembly passed the Virginia Declaration of Rights on June 12, 1776, which provided in Section 3 as follows:

   "That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people.... And that, when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes. A
majority
of the community hath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal."
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