means by which to attain the loftiest
goals in this good life. Toward this end,
men were authorized to elect and to call
into account magistrates.
Similarly, in this atmosphere of the
society being the outgrowth of a moral
association among men, Plato's Crito
had portrayed Socrates as perhaps the
wisest man of his day, the most rational
and, therefore, among those persons
most capable of verbalizing the will of
the deities in a form applicable to the
conduct of the citizens in an ideal state.
Yet, Socrates did not, in the Lockeian
sense, declare war on his society by ex-
erting his personal will to escape per-
secution. Socrates decided to conform
with the laws to which he had tacitly
consented as well as actively opposed.
He instilled respect for the law by his
obedience thereto while he at the same
time provided a model for political dis-
sent within a legal framework. Although
the writings of ancient times are far
removed chronologically from the Mary-
land Constitution of 1776, the idea that
government is derived from the consent
of the governed, that man's natural
affinity is to associate with one another,
and that man's agreements with one
another are necessarily equally binding
on all contracting parties, were nascent
in Greek literature.
St. Thomas Aquinas departed from
the traditional ideas of the early Middle
Ages which had taught that all society
was but the institution of God's will on
earth and that the truth of His will
could be known by revelation. God's
"plan" was omnipresent in the resulting
government, almost always dominated
by the clerics and the church hierarchy.
The state at that. time was thought to
be of divine origin and was consequently
invariable except through the deeds of
lucid foresight, executed by the "divinely
2
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inspired" monarch. Indeed, St. Thomas
Aquinas innovated through his writ-
ings in 1250 A.D. by suggesting that
political authority was derived from
God, but that this authority might be
wielded by the people, according to their
reason, in an effort to define a form of
government by the means of a consti-
tution alterable at their will.
This theme was discussed further by
Montesquieu in the early eighteenth
century in L'Esprit des Low.4 Having
acknowledged that the notion of sover-
eignty5 results from the consent of a
unified people, Montesquieu asserted
that society is governed in conformity
with the laws of divine origin, but that
this law is generally known on earth
because of human reason and must be
variable to allow for man's inability to
conquer ignorance and error. Through-
out Montesquieu's discussion, the con-
cept of some form of relationship be-
tween the governor and the governed
is maintained.6
In the early Middle Ages this relation-
ship was considered one directly between
a person and his creator. Later, with
the rise of monarchical states, a person's
loyalties were to his king, the representa-
tive of divine will. The House of Lords,
in 1689, agreed that there was an orig-
inal contract between the king and the
people, and that since the king had
violated his part of the contract, the
people were justified in deposing him,
with the result that William and Mary
ascended the throne. The divine right
4 1 C. montesquieu, l'esprit des Lois
(1748).
5 For a further discussion of this issue, see
F. Ralabate, The Nature of Sovereignty (un-
published papers of the Constitutional Conven-
tion Commission, Hall of Records at An-
napolis, 1967).
6 See W. WILLOUGHBY, an examination
of the nature of the state (1896).
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