histofthought1

Absolutist thought in Italy and France 209condemn a priest who had upheld the supreme temporal authority of thepope:Sirs, the authority of the king is sacrosanct, ordained by God, the principal workof His Providence, the masterpeice of His hands, the image of His sublimeMajesty and proportionate to His immense grandeur, so as to bear comparison ofthe creature with the Creator. .. For, just as God is by nature the first King andPrince, so is the King, by creation and imitation, God of all on earth... 16The subjects, according to these Henrician absolutists, owed this quasidivinefigure absolute obedience. These writers developed the Blackwoodiantheme that the king's decrees were ipso facto and necessarily just. JacquesHurault, in his On the Offices of State (1588), developed this doctrine mostclearly. Hurault explained that the prince was guided by the hand of God andtherefore could do no wrong. The ruler was not simply a man but justiceitself, which he dispensed according to the will of God. The constitution ofthe state was subordinated, in Hurault, to two simple points: the prince'snecessarily just commands, and the obedience of his subjects. The rulercommands and the subjects obey. Period. Furthermore, in reaction to theLeaguer emphasis on the people, the royalists counselled the king not toallow naturally restless subjects much liberty.Since the politiques and Henry IV triumphed shortly thereafter, these ultraabsolutistviews of the embattled Henrician pamphleteers inspired and werefollowed fairly completely by the dominant theoreticians of the great age ofabsolutism: seventeenth century France.6.11 Notesl. Joseph A. Schumpeter, History (~l Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1954), pp. 163-4.2. Quentin Skinner, The Foundations (~l Modern Political Thought: vhl. I, The Renaissance(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 138n.3. Ibid., p. 138.4. Ibid., pp. 134-5.5. We shall see in a later volume that the renowned left Keynesian Alvin Henry Hansen, inhis famous 'stagnation' thesis of the late 1930s, forecast permanent stagnation for theAmerican economy partially because of the recent decline in population growth. We shallsee further that Hansen developed this doctrine as the logical outcome of a rigid Walrasianframework. This of course is in stark contrast to the pro-'zero population growth' hysteriaof the left liberals of the 1970s.6. Thus, for the world of the twentieth century, P.T. Bauer notes: 'Indeed, over large parts ofthe Third World the extreme sparseness of the population presents obstacles to the economicadvance of enterprising people, obstacles which are more effective than thosesupposedly presented by population pressure. A sparse population precludes the constructionof transport facilities and communications, and thus retards the spread of new ideasand methods. In this way, it circumscribes the scope for enterprise.' P.T. Bauer, Equality,the Third World and Economic Delusion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1981),p.45.7. Schumpeter, op. cit., note 1, p. 579.