Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/568



562 REVIEW OF HIS PONTIFICATE.

tution of divorce. All know the result of these attacks. More than words can tell they have multiplied marriages which are prompted only by shameful passions, which are speedily dissolved, and which, at times, bring about bloody tragedies, at others the most shocking infidelities. We say nothing of the innocent offspring of these unions, the children who are abandoned or whose morals are cor- rupted on one side by the bad example of the parents, on the other by the poison which the officially lay State constantly pours into their hearts.

Along with the family, the poHtical and social order is also endangered by doctrines which ascribe a false origin to authority, and which have corrupted the genuine conception of government. For if sovereign authority is derived formally from the consent of the people and not from God, who is the supreme and Eternal Principle of all power, it loses in the eyes of the governed its most august characteristic and degenerates into an artificial sovereignty which rests on unstable and shifting bases, namely, the will of those from whom it is said to be de- rived. Do we not see the consequences of this error in the carrying out of our laws? Too often these laws in- stead of being sound reason formulated in writing are but the expression of the power of the greater number and the will of the predominant political party. It is thus that the mob is cajoled in seeking to satisfy its desires; that a loose rein is given to popular passion, even when it disturbs the laboriously acquired tranquilhty of the State, when the disorder in the last extremity can only be quelled by violent measures and the shedding of blood.

Consequent upon the repudiation of those Christian principles which had contributed so efficaciously to unite the nations in the bonds of brotherhood, and to bring all humanity into one great family, there has arisen little by little, in the international order, a system of jealous egoism, in consequence of which the nations now watch each, other, if not with hate, at least with the suspicion of