Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty

Harold Joseph Laski, "Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty"
English | ISBN: 1230348697 | 2013 | 72 pages | EPUB | 278 KB
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL1 ▼ ▼ Relief Act of 1829, a body of men who had been for too long excluded from political privilege became once more citizens of the State.8 The grounds for their exclusion had been, for the most part, based upon a single fact. 'The modern theory,' writes Lord Acton,8 'which has swept away every authority except that of the State, and has made the sovereign power irresistible by multiplying those who shared it, is the enemy of that common freedom in which religious freedom is included. It condemns, as a State within the State, every inner group and community, class or corporation, administering its own affairs; and, by proclaiming the abolition of privileges, it 1 The best general work on the Catholic Revival in England is that of M. Thureau-Dangin: 'La Renaissance Catholique en Angleterre au XIXme siecle.' This has been translated. To M. Thureau-Dangin, however, the movement is entirely non-political. 2 The story of the emancipation may now be consulted in Monsignor Bernard Ward's Eve of Catholic Emancipation. It is, however, weak on the non-religious side. s History of Freedom, p. 151. I Roman Catholic emancipates the subjects of every such authority, in order to transfer them exclusively to its own.' The divine right of kings, was, in fact, replaced by a right divine inherent in the State; and it was argued that men owed to it an allegiance that should be undivided. But the Pope was a temporal sovereign, and to him, as the head of their Church, the Catholics owed a full allegiance. They were a close and united body, the typical imperium in imperio of which Lord Acton wrote; and it was perhaps logical, even if it was ungenerous, that men should deem it impossible for...