Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/92

tives to be limited by the representatives of the people, ordinary men, and yet these prerogatives are the direct gift of God! Does he thus acknowledge that ordinary men have a right to interfere with God's will as manifested in him? Is such a thing possible? Is it not an insult to God, a crime? And can a God-fearing monarch decree that a crime of blasphemy, such as this amounts to, is to become one of the laws of the realm? This is the way such a constitutional monarchy appears from the stand-point of the monarchy "by the grace of God." Viewed from the standpoint of the sovereign people, the constitutional monarchy appears fully as unreasonable. Constitutionalism is founded upon the theory that the people has the right to decide its own destiny. From whence did it obtain this right? From Nature herself. It is one form of man's vital energy. The people has the right to govern itself, because it has the strength to do so, just as an individual has the right to live, because and as long as he has the strength to do so. But if this idea is correct how came man then to yield to a monarch who had inherited his authority, whose single will has as much power as the will of the entire people, who even has the right to oppose the will of the people, as the people have the right to oppose his will? If the people should rise in their sovereignty and depose the king, or do away with the institution of monarchy altogether, would the king submit? If the king should rise in his sovereignty and abolish the Parliament altogether, would the people submit? If not, what does the sovereignty of either amount to? Two sovereignties in one state are as impossible as two Gods in nature, that is, two Gods with the attributes which Christians ascribe to their single God. The prerogatives of the people must appear to the king "by the grace of God," as an infringement upon the omnipotence of God,