SOVEREIGNTY

Samuel Johnson defines the natural power of government in his pamplet of 1775 entitled "Taxation No Tyranny" as follows:

"In sovereignty there are no gradations. There may be limited royalty, there may be limited consulship; but there can be no limited government. There must, in every society, be some power or other, from which there is no appeal, which admits no restrictions, which pervades the whole mass of the community, regulates and adjusts all subordination, enacts laws or repeals them, erects or annuls judicatures, extends or contracts privileges, exempt itself from
question or control, and bounded only by physical necessity.

"By this power, wherever it subsists, all legislation and jurisdiction is animated and maintained. From this all legal rights are emanations, which, whether equitably or not, may be legally recalled. It is not infallible, for it may do wrong; but it is irresistible, for it can be resisted only by rebellion, by an act which makes it questionable, what shall be thenceforward the supreme power."

He is denying the Lockean concept of "limited government." He is not endorsing a doctrine of divine right. He is asserting a doctrine on the nature of government.

In the casual conversation below, it becomes clear that his principle of sovereignty rests on an opinion or consensus which gives government its power. This consensus is a form of passive consent inherent in the inherited culture of a nation, buttressed at any given moment by the specific popularity that a regime may then enjoy, but relying ultimately on deeper sources of loyalty and good will and hence able to survive moments of unpopularity. Revolts do happen. Passive consent turns, momentarily, to active rebellion. Then the disease is healed. But the nature of government is not altered. One political arrangement dies and another one takes its place. Sovereignty is unchanged and undiminished, since it is either a whole or else nonexistent. It is restored with a different face. Government is still unlimited.

Boswell records the following conversation from 31 March 1772 between Johnson and Sir Adam Fergus(s)on, (1733-1813) baronet, member of parliament for Ayrshire, and author of An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767).
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JOHNSON. "...I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual. Sir, the danger of the abuse of power is nothing to a private man. What Frenchman is prevented from passing his life as he pleases?"

SIR ADAM. "But, sir, in the British constitution it is surely of importance to keep up a spirit in the people, so as to preserve a balance against the crown."

JOHNSON. "Sir, I perceive you are a vile whig. Why all this childish jealousy of the power of the crown? The crown has not power enough. When I say that all governments are alike, I consider that in no government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. If a sovereign oppresses his people to a great degree, they will rise and cut off his head. There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government. Had not the people of France thought themselves honoured in sharing in the brilliant actions of Louis XIV, they would not have endured him; and we may say the same of the King of Prussia's people."
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So the Americans may indeed rebel. What Johnson disputes is their pretext for the rebellion, a principle of limited government which has been violated, according to their claim. If their rebellion succeeded, then the government erected in the place of the colonial administration would be a new sovereign.

Johnson's view of sovereignty, though briefly articulated, agrees completely with that of Joseph de Maistre. It has nothing to do with Carl Schmitt, who was a modern existentialist seeking a rationalization for totalitarianism, in which the consent of the governed whether passive or expressed is of no relevance. Schmitt claims Maistre as his ideological ancestor much the way that a nouveau riche buys an old portrait at auction and hangs it on his own wall and tells people it's his grandsire. The gentlemen who call themselves "paleoconservatives" hold Schmitt in affection at the same time that they nurse hatred for the American federal government. It appears that they prefer smaller, ethnically pure totalitarian states.

There are other principles for protecting economic and civil freedoms. The foremost of these is subsidiarity, which means allowing the functions of government to be exercised at the lowest practical level, since people know their own affairs, and their character is ennobled by taking responsibility. Subsidiarity means that it is necessary and moral for government at the higher level not to regulate whatever can be regulated at a lower level. The implementation of such a principle depends on consensus and discipline and carefully cultivated habit, just as any Whig constitution built on "limited powers" and "checks and balances" does—which is to say, any constitution sprung against itself like an over-engineered mousetrap. This over-engineered mousetrap is premised on low expectations of human nature: it treats men like mice. In time the citizens sink to the level of those expectations.

The founding fathers, as is often said, believed that virtue was necessary in the citizenry for democracy to work. In other words, virtue was the precondition of democracy, not necessarily its outcome. In their conception, democracy's purpose was to prevent abuses of power, to make sure people were left alone to live their lives and make themselves rich. Not much more than that. The discipline of making a democracy work would only breed in them a habit of following rules. It would not make them saints. Can government do anything better for human character? This was the question implicit in the title of George Will's forgotten book, Statecraft as Soulcraft.

My argument on the Tory-Whig divide and the analogy to American intellectual conservative factions is not made with any completeness in the 1,300-word review-of-a-review below. The point, to be made is that something is missing from American intellectual conservatism, and that it was already missing in 1983, if not in 1955—and the thing missing is the wholeness of a view of man and political existence. The point is that half of a natural cultural dyad was sliced away when a new republic was founded by a divorce from the mother country. Nor was this "other half" , which continued to subsist in England, in good health there. The spirit of Toryism has had its ups and downs in British politics and culture ever since, yet I make no claim that the mentality I describe has anything much to do with the modern politics of a David Cameron.