CIVIL SOCIETY AND CHKISTIANI'IT. 27 



these two crowns., oi" })riest and of king, liavc fallen off. 

 The priestly crown has i)assecl, in part at least, in the 

 constitution of religious society, to the Catholic hierar- 

 chy. The royal diadem has passed altogether, in the 

 organization of civil society, to the chiefs of the State. 

 To civil society, Avliatever the form of it, republic or 

 empire, belong now the sceptre and the sword. But the 

 father of the family still retains all his rights, except- 

 ing that one which consists in regulating and guarding 

 all the rest, and which constitutes the sovereign jiower. 

 One of the acutcst and exactest thinkers of our day, 

 whom I desire to mention by name on account of the 

 obligation I am under to him in my own studies, the 

 illustrious Abbé lîosmini-Serbati — a genuine Italian to 

 the very marroAV of his bones, and at the same time a 

 Catholic to the very core of his heart — has helped me 

 to the best conception of civil society. According to 

 him, civil society has for its object, not, like the family 

 in the natural order, or the Church in the supernatural 

 order, the substance of rights, but simply the modalily 

 of rights. It does not create rights. ]\Ian exists before 

 the State, with all those essential and inalienable rights 

 which he holds directly from God, by virtue of reason 

 and moral liberty. The family, also, exists before the 

 State, with rights equally essential, equally inalienable, 

 exercised in its bosom by the human person raised to 

 his fullest dignity and felicity. It is not for the State 

 to create those rights which are antecedent to it, and 

 which come, I am bold to say, from a far higher source ; 

 it is only for the State not to destroy them nor encroach 

 upon them. Its mission extends no further than to 

 })rotect them, and to establish over them the sway of 

 what the English, in their noble language, call '•' the 

 queen's peace" — what Saint JPaul bids us ask for when 



