He and De Maistre are at one on this point. De Maistre says: "Without a Pope no sovereignty, without sovereignty no unity, without unity no _authority_, without authority no faith." He places monarchy beyond the reach of all criticism and investigation by pronouncing it to be a _miracle_. He eulogises brute force as such. In his books he submits military society to the discipline of the corporal's cane, civil society to that of the executioner's axe.[9] This last was the measure which Robespierre took in grim reality, though not until he saw no salvation for the Revolution except in a dictatorship. Thus De Maistre, too, has his points of resemblance to Robespierre. He puts the finishing touch to his work in a eulogy of the Inquisition.
What these writers vindicate is, then, authority and power. In the state authority is overthrown by popular institutions which entail compulsory changes of ministry; in religion it is endangered when the clergy attain to comparative independence of Rome (hence De Maistre's book against Gallicanism), or are made completely independent ("by Presbyterianism," as Bonald has it); in the family it is done away with from the moment that divorce is permitted under any circumstances whatsoever. King, minister, and subject; Pope, priest, and flock; husband, wife, and child--these are to Bonald inseparable triads, formed after the image of the Trinity. And in their inseparability they safeguard the great fundamental principles of authority and order.
By sounding here and sounding there, and everywhere coming upon the same fundamental thought, we have discovered what was the ruling idea of the new period. It may be called by many names. It is the great principle of _externality_, as opposed to that of inward, personal feeling and private investigation; it is the great principle of _theocracy_, of the sovereignty of God, as opposed to the sovereignty of the people; it is the principle of _authority and power_, as opposed to the principles of liberty, of human rights, and of human interdependence. And when we examine the life of the day in all its various developments, we everywhere find the same watchword and the same white flag. The fundamental idea sets its mark upon everything.