Conclusion

Thomas, he is also influenced by Polybius and Pliny.l The point he wants to make is that legitimate governments were not formed by conquest but hy voluntary agreement. Although our author has not clearly elahorated his views concerning the creation of political power, it would never theless he wrong to classify him with writers like Locke and Rousseau who hold that all power is created by voluntary agreement or convention. It had always heen the clear teaching of the scholastics that all legitimate power comes 1 Cf. W. A. Dunninli:", A History of Political Theories from Luther to Montesquieu, pp. 68, 70. 235 MARIANA:-POLITICAL ECONOMY directly from God, the source of all power, and. that it is a necessary sequence of the natural law. As the father is by natural law the head of the family, so the State, once en tered into by voluntary agreement, has with necessity politi cal power. This is, above all, the clear teaching of Suarez.

Both Suarez and Mariana hold that the State comes into existence only by voluntary agreement and that it receives political power at that very moment. Hence it follows that this power resides directly in the whole social group and that democracy is the most natural form of government. Here, the Spanish Jesuits differ from the writers of the time who defended the divine right of kings. These writers maintained that God immediately communicated political power to Adam who transmitted it to his descendants. Ac cording to Suarez, however, no man has either hy nature or by divine ordinance a right to rule over his fellow men. The fact that political power resides primarily with the whole community does not mean that the people must retain it. It may he transferred to one person or to a body of persons. Concerning the character of this transfer Mariana I differs from Suarez. According to the latter it is a real ,~ alienation and gives the king absolute authority, unless pro- ~ vision to the contrary be made in the agreement between I sovereign and suhjects. The people can reclaim their grant .

only in case the king becomes a tyrant. Mariana holds that ordinarily the people will and must retain certain supreme rights, such as, for instance, the right of granting taxes, enacting laws and regulating the succession to the throne in case the king is without an heir. This doctrine of Mariana, though philosophically inferior to that of Suarez, shows at any rate that it is desirable that the people reserve certain rights to themselves. In this way he has contributed tQ the development of constitutionalism and demQCJ;acy. 236 CONCLUSION His ideal of government is a limited monarchy which has the advantage of absolute monarchy without the danger of tyranny. On the question of tyrannicide our author was led astray by his democratic spirit. His hatred of tyranny was so great that he did not realize how dangerous a doctrine he taught. Despite the number of reservations he specified, he went too far in granting that an individual citizen ever has the right to decide whether his sovereign is a tyrant. He did not teach all that his enemies have charged him with, but he erred.

It must have seemed very novel to find Mariana advocat ing the principle that ability more than anything else should recommend a person for high positions, even though here too he upheld class privileges to a certain extent. It was too much for his time to give equal rights to all. More remarkable still are Mariana's contributions to eco nomic thought. He recognizes the social duties of the State but is opposed to an unreasonable State interference. He adheres to the policy of bullionism though he sees its short comings and its impracticability. The teaching of the Physio crats is foreshadowed in the importance he attributes to agriculture. He realizes the importance of commerce and international trade and anticipates the modern tendency to ward international economy. Mariana's greatest contribution to the science of econom ics is his treatise on money. lIe sees the evil effects of instability of currency, and presents a masterly refutation of inflation. His arguments are drawn from history, a source little utilized at the time. He adheres strictly to a metallic standard but also sees the advantages of chartal money. The various effects of Gresham's law are touched upon hut its limitations did not escape his keen observation.

237 MARIANA:-POLITICAL ECONOMY Our author was not instructed in the theory of taxation .hut his Spanish hrethren developed and applied many fiscal principles in a masterly fashion. They clearly distinguished hetween taxes strictly so called and other forms of public payments and they knew most of the modern classifications of fiscal revenues. Molina developed the philosophical hasis of taxation with truly astonishing thoroughness and assigned a much hetter norm for measuring a person's taxa hility than did Adam Smith nearly two centuries later. In so far as modern students of Public Finance read the scho lastic authors, they no longer maintain that the benefit theory was the only one advanced until very recently. The canons of equality and universality were a matter of course to the Spanish Jesuits, and practically all of the secondary canons are found in their three "conditions." Mariana called the attention of his king to the numberless abuses in Spanish administration, touched upon the problem of douhle taxation and adumbrated the modern practice of a graduated tax system. He denounced royal extravagance and insisted on accounting and budgeting in the field of public financing.

The results of our investigation would seem to show that scholasticism is after all not so harren and backward as its adversaries maintain. A careful study of this much neglected and slandered type of learning would doubtless hring forth much good fruit. Mariana was a representative of this school, hut he was also an historian and a political thinker. It is truly astonishing to see how vast an amount of learning he had at his command. This monograph has confined it self in the main to a discussion of his economic ideas, treating his political views only in a summary fashion .. Mariana's contrihutions to economic thought suffice, however, to secure him an honorable place among the early economists. If 238 CONCLUSION Oresme, Copernicus and Gresham are numhered among the great writers on money, it would seem just to rank Mariana in the same category. He treated the prohlem of infl~tion for the first time in a thoroughly scientific fashion, and by employing the new historical method. What his works lack in originality of thought, they certainly make up for by their originality of treatment.

When we finally ask ourselves why it is that Mariana has not received all the credit to which he is entitled, the answer seems to be that he had both Catholics and non-Catholics against him. Non-Catholics eagerly pointed to his doctrine on tyrannicide as characteristic of Jesuit teaching; Catholics, on the other hand, in order to forestall as much as possible these attacks said very little about Mariana. There can, how ever, be no doubt that our author was one of the greatest Jesuits of his day. Had he been great in one field only he might have attracted greater attention; but his greatness lies in his astonishing versatility. He had at his command an enormous amount of learning in the most diverse fields. He is doubtless inferior to Suarez as a philosopher, hut taken aU in all he compares favorahly with this most distinguished Spanish Jesuit. 239 ApPENDIX LATIN TEXT of DE MONET AE MDT ATIONE 1 1. The author has not attempted to present a critical edition of this interesting treatise.