THE DOGMAS OF AUTHORITARIANISM
where in the same pamphlet that the true English Constitu-
tion is that magnificent unique and infallible public spirit,
which is beyond all praise, which leads everything and saves
everything!l
It follows from all this that authority is of Divine origin and
that the most perfect type of authority, its true norm, is the
government of the Church by the Papacy. Small wonder that
Maistre devoted a big book to the championship of the most
absolute Ultramontane claims of the Pope, and to the violent
denunciation of Gallicanism, Jansenism and all their works:
"The liberties of the Gallican Church? There are none; all
that is concealed under that high-sounding name is a con-
spiracy of the temporal authority for despoiling the Holy See
of its legitimate rights and separating it, in fact, from the
Church in France while paying lip-service to its authority." 2
And as to Port Royal, " everything displeases me about these
rebellious divines, even what good things they have written." 3
It is easy from these premises to guess what Maistre's historical
and personal judgments will be. That he detests the Revolution
goes without saying. That he loathed democracy as a ghastly
disease of the body politic is also evident. That he could brook
no kind of dissent, political or religious, is no less obvious:
a propos of the Provinciales and Pascal's attack on Jesuit moral
laxity he remarks that the real moral laxness is disobedience
to authority, " and as for Protestantism, it was the revolt of
individual reason against general reason, and therefore the
worst thing imaginable—the essential enemy of all beliefs
1 Essai sur /e Principe gfafrateur des Constitutions politiqnes^ pans. 9 and ra.
This enthusiasm for English institutions really sprang from his admiration for
Burke, of whom he wrote: " I cannot tell you how Burke has strengthened
my anti-Democratic and anti-Gallican ideas" (letter of January 1793, quoted
by Vermale in his Notes snr J. de Maistre). This seeing England through
Burke's eyes may be the reason for his belief that England, " in spite of a
religion that is as palpably false as the sun is shining, is meant to lead the
world into a new epoch that will be sacred in the annals of mankind—-the
bringing back of unity into Europe, politically through her admirable institu-
tions and religiously through her return to the Catholic faith " (Du P0pe,
Book IV., pars. 4-7).
2 De l*Łgli$e gallicane, II., chap. xiii.
n Entretiens, chap. vi.