46 DiscouriSEs of father hyacinthe. 



organizers of nascent society. Such is an Orpheus or 

 an Aniphion, towering above the multitude by their 

 wisdom and eloquence — a Xuma, commanding them by 

 his piety. From whom do these men receive their 

 power ? From the nation ? But there is no nation. 

 These are the men who form tlie nation by the very 

 exercise of power. They reign by force of sword and 

 battle-axe. They rise by virtue of their wisdom and of 

 the benefits they confer. The sovereignty was like the 

 uninhabited land of which I spoke a week ago. God, 

 from the circle of the heaven, humanity from the depth 

 of its wretchedness — everything — was calling for some 

 master, who with one stroke should make it his personal 

 property, and the salvation of all the rest. 'No vulgar 

 hand might be laid upon it. Make way, then, for the 

 hero ! Let him step in to the unoccupied place, be the 

 instrument of righteousness and peace, and, dying, 

 leave the sovereignty to children and children's chil- 

 dren, an inalienable and uncontested inheritance ! 



[This is the power called absolute, not because it is absolute in 

 its exercise, since, in this respect, it is subject to the same limita- 

 tion as popular power, and extends only to the modality of rights, 

 but because it is such in its origin, and its sovereign holds his 

 right of proprietor only from himself and from God. Father 

 H3'acinthe protested against the injustice of the liberal schools 

 of politics, which aflect to confound absolute power with arbi- 

 trary and despotic poAver. Absolute power, in the sense in which 

 it has just been explained, is one of the two great forms of sover- 

 eignty. It has been the past, it is still the present, of great 

 nations.] 



2. The Sovcn'i(j)i People. 



[The absolutist schools arc no less unjust than the liberal 

 schools, when they make jiwe-dkino monarch}^ to be the only 

 legitimate form of government, and anathematize ever}' constitu- 

 tion founded on national sovereignty.] 



