"Resistance is lawful:--(1) When a government has become substantially and habitually tyrannical, and that is when it has lost sight of the common good, and pursues its own selfish objects to the manifest detriment of its subjects, especially where their religious interests are concerned. (2) When all legal and pacific means have been tried in vain to recall the ruler to a sense of his duty. (3) When there is a reasonable probability that resistance will be successful, and not entail greater evils than it seeks to remove. (4) When the judgment formed as to the badness of the government, and the prudence of resistance thereto, is not the opinion only of private persons or of a mere party: but is that of the larger and better portion of the people, so that it may morally be considered as the judgment of the community as a whole." 5. Side by side with this we will set the teaching of Leo XIII., Encyclical, _Quod Apostolici_. "If ever it happens that civil power is wielded by rulers recklessly and beyond all bounds, the doctrine of the Catholic Church does not allow of insurgents rising up against them _by independent action (proprio marte)_, lest the tranquillity of order be more and more disturbed, or society receive greater injury thereby: and when things are come to such a pass that _there appears no other ray or hope of preservation_, the same authority teaches that a remedy must be sought in the merits of Christian patience and in earnest prayers to God." The words we have italicized seem to point to conditions (4) and (3) respectively, as laid down by the writer in the _Dublin Review_. For an instance of a king dethroned, not _proprio marte_, but with every appearance at least of an act of the whole nation, see the dethronement of Edward II., as related by Walsingham, _Historia Anglicana_, I., pp. 186, 187, Rolls Series. 6. "We save ourselves the more virulent and destructive diseases of revolution, sedition, and civil war, by submitting to the milder type of a change of ministry." (_Times_, April 7, 1880.) 7. It is not monarchical governments alone that can ever be resisted lawfully: but what is sauce for the king's goose is sauce also for the people's gander. There is no special sanctity attaching to democracy. It might seem that, since resistance requires to be justified by the approval of "the larger and better portion of the people" (n. 4, condition [4]) no just resistance can ever be offered to the will of the democratic majority. But the said majority may be in divers ways coerced and cajoled, a mere packed majority, while the malcontents may be, if not "the larger," clearly "the better" portion of the community. (s. iv., n. 5, p. 321.) _Readings_.--St. Thos., _De Regimine Principum_, i., 6; 2a 2æ, q. 42, art. 2; 2a 2æ, q, 69, art. 4, in corp.; Locke, _Of Civil Government_, nn. 200, 201, 203, 204, 208, 209, 223, 224, 225, 227, 229, 230, 232. SECTION VIII.--_Of the Right of the sword_.