From the Relief Society Magazine, 1949 —
Our Political Inheritance
Elder G. Homer Durham
Director, Institute of Government, University of Utah
The twentieth century faces the future with a question: can free societies endure? Our cultural inheritance from the past includes the ideals of a free society. That same inheritance, however, includes absolutism, dictatorship, regimentation, slavery, and control. Freedom and control are twin aspects of any society. As modern men and women face the issue of free society in the twentieth century, it is well to be informed as to the precious nature of the inheritance we have received from the past in order to preserve freedom.
Greek Ideals Regarding Government and Citizenship
About six hundred years before Christ, events took a remarkable turn in the Hellenic world. Political society began to move slowly towards a situation where men could live in freedom and choose their own way of life. During the fifth century B.C., democracy flourished at Athens. From this period we derive the bulk of our ideals regarding government and citizenship today. What is this inheritance from the past? The principal name associated with the establishment of Athenian democracy (510-492B.C.) is that of Cleisthenes. Under Cleisthenes the constitution of Athens was reformed in such a way as to provide for the development of democracy. Athenian democracy reached its peak during the age of Pericles (463-431 B.C.). This Athenian experience has been immortalized in the writings of Thucydides, in the plays and dramas of Aristophanes, and in the great philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle.
Chief among the ideals set forth in Greek experience is that of individual political participation. It is true that Greek democracy rested on a foundation of slavery. The Greeks recognized the existence of slavery as natural. Later societies, rejecting this notion, have undertaken to extend the ideals of Greek citizenship to all their peoples. This is the effort being made in many western countries today, including the United States of America. In ancient Athens every citizen (but not the slave) was a member of the Ecclesia (the Assembly). Public service was looked upon as the highest form of individual expression. The juries of ancient Athens denote the same principle. In modern life too many citizens try to avoid jury service. In Athens, the juries were large, numbering into the hundreds. Service on juries and participation in the discussion of the assembly were eagerly awaited. Not only was the ideal of individual political participation inculcated into the Greek mind but also the ideal of individual responsibility for the welfare of society. Nowadays many people are willing to enjoy rights and privileges. Very few realistically realize that for every right and privilege there may be a great duty and responsibility.
The ideal of individual responsibility for the welfare of society is nowhere set forth more clearly and more effectively than in Plato’s dialogue, The Protagoras In this great dialogue, Plato has one of his characters explain why it is that men are able to live together in society and not destroy themselves. The dialogue dramatically sets forth the concept that man is a child of God, that man shares in the divine attributes. That when “the desire of self preservation gathered them into cities … they evil entreated one another and were again in process of dispersion and destruction. Zeus feared that the face would be exterminated, and so he sent Hermes to them, bearing reverence and justice to be the ordering principles of cities and the bonds of friendship and conciliation.”
Accordingly, to the Greek mind, characteristic in man’s nature are the qualities of reverence and justice. The good citizen should live so that these principles are expressed in his life. In interesting style Plato provides a democratic basis for society in describing how these virtues were distributed by the great Greek gods. As we read further in Protagoras:
Hermes asked Zeus how he should impart justice and reverence among men should he distribute them as the arts are distributed? That is to say, to a favored few only? For one skilled individual has enough of medicine or of any other art. Shall this be the manner in which I distribute justice and reverence among men? Or shall I give them to all?” “To all,” said Zeus, “I should like them all to have a share. For cities cannot exist if a few only share in the virtues as in the arts. And further make a law by my order, that he who has no part in reference and justice shall be put to death as a plague of the state.”
In another of Plato’s dialogues, The Phaedo, Plato discusses the great doctrine of the pre-existence and the immortality of the soul. The Phaedo is actually the description of the death of the great Greek teacher Socrates. Towards the conclusion of the dialogue, Plato places this great speech in the mouth of Socrates as he is about to end his earthly journey:
“But then, oh my friends,” he said, “if the soul is really immortal what care should be taken of her not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity!”
This quotation indicates the great value with which the Greeks in their greatest moments, held the dignity and value of human life. The quest for justice, the stimulus towards training the mind, to be educated, to develop the ability to foresee and to anticipate the problems of the future, the ideals of checks and balances, of limited constitutionalism and government – all these are numbered with our inheritance from the Greeks.
Roman Ideals Regarding Government and Law
“The Roman republic flourished from about 509 B.C. down to the time of Julius Caesar, about 46 B.C. The Roman Republic was inhabited by a hearty yeomanry. The story of the Roman mother, Cornelia, is typical. Cornelia was the mother of the two significant Roman reformers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. Both of the Gracchi eventually lost their lives as the result of their efforts to help their people. The story is told that one of Cornelia’s neighbors called upon her, exhibiting her marvelous collection of jewelry. The noble Roman mother called in her two sons and said, simply, “These are my jewels.”
The Roman Republic evidences the ideals of self-government and popular participation as found also in ancient Greece. The Roman Republic developed the office of the tribune. The persons of the tribunes were inviolable. Acting on behalf of the welfare of the people, they were given power to veto the action of any public officer found harmful to the people. In turn, the tribunes were subject to popular control of the elected assembly. However, it is in the field of law and administration that we derive our greatest inheritance from Roman experience. In Rome developed the great Jus Gentium. Translated, this phrase means simply “law of peoples,” or as it is sometimes called “law of nations.” The Romans had the great capacity in the evolution of their political life to adopt a legal system which provided a basis in principle for equality of treatment to all the people of the Mediterranean world – a marvelous accomplishment. As such the Roman law spread throughout the entire European world. Today it provides the basis for the jurisprudence of Continental Europe. It has also influenced the making and enforcement of law throughout the entire world. Under this great empire with its great Roman law, public administration also flourished. From about 46 B.C. to the second century A.D., a period of virtually unbroken peace existed. This period of time is called the Pax Romana (Roman Peace). Jesus of Nazareth was born into this world that knew the Pax Romana. The contribution that Roman law and administration made toward a safe, secure world in which St. Paul, the great Christian missionary, could deliver his message has had lasting significance for all mankind.
The Ideals of English Liberty
England has been called the “mother of parliaments.” England is the traditional home of government by consent of the governed, majority rule, civil liberty, and representative institutions. It is also the home of the rule of law as developed through an independent judicial system. The net result of our English inheritance is embodied in the phrase “fair play.” On the tomb of one of the barons who forced King John at Runnymede (June 1215) to sign the Magna Charta appears the following inscription: “Magna Charta Is the Law and Let the King Look Out!” Even before Magna Charta, the line of English evolution may be said to have turned towards the development of free institutions and the ideal of liberty under law. When William the Norman conquered England in 1066, he adopted an ancient Saxon practice, expanding the same into the device called, “The Great Council of the Norman King” (magnum concilium). From this Great Council of the Norman kings began to evolve, in the twelfth century, the great system of English law courts. With the English law courts developed the ideals and the practice of jury trial, the idea that public authority may not take private property for public use without just compensation, that life, liberty, and property must receive due process of law. Parliament and representative governmental so evolved out of the Great Council. By 1689ParliamentcontrolledEnglish government. The foundations of modern constitutionalism stem largely from British experience of the seventeenth century.
The American revolution was occasioned in 1776 when George III attempted to revive the powers of monarchy in opposition to the constitutional gains of the preceding century, accomplished in the English Civil War (1630-49) and the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688-89.
What of civil liberty today? The present status of this cultural inheritance will be discussed in an article to follow.
Ok, my history is lacking. He describes Greek society as containing two classes: citizens and slaves. He then tells of the duties and privileges of citizens. Were women citizens? Did they have the same rights and duties?
I have to admit, my mind still boggles that women were constitutionally excludable from the rights and duties of citizenship less than a century ago. That such a scenario seems so fundamentally wrong and unjust as to be unholy (and amazing to me that Goddid not speak out more forcefully against it), bespeaks only of my late twentieth century mindset. Yet here is someone speaking mid twentieth century purportedly to draw lessons on what men and *women* should do, and he is blind to the absence of women from the participatory narrative. It seems so weird to my mind.
Come thou fount of all my knowledge … Wikipedia says: “Only adult male Athenian citizens who had completed their military training as ephebes had the right to vote in Athens. The percentage of the population that actually participated in the government was roughly 20% of the total number of people but this varied from the fifth to the fourth century BC.[4] This excluded from voting a majority of the population, namely slaves, freed slaves, children, women and metics.[6][clarification needed] The women had limited rights and privileges and were barely considered citizens. They had restricted movement in public and were very segregated from the men.”
The obliviousness of audience IS mind-boggling, isn’t it? Sort of like a not-so-long-ago conference where a speaker declared that every member of the Church needed to treat his wife in thus-and-such manner.
So, the lack of female participation in the political process is a well-founded tradition of human society from before recorded history.
And there is this admission that “[t]he Greeks recognized the existence of slavery as natural.” Rome and the British Empire (not to mention Dark Ages Britain) had their forms of slavery well-established as a traditional values of society.
As I was saying to you, Ardis. The Law is conservative as it protects traditional societal values (mainly property). But what happens when those traditional values change in society? Then what is the law supposed to do?