Major et Sanior Partes, or on Toleration and Political Adhesion

The constitution of modern states is founded on the principle of the major pars, i.e., of the majority. Once citizens have cast a free and secret vote and have thus declared, with a majority of fifty per cent plus one, that they wish to have some particular man as head of the government, and once this principle has been enshrined in the body of laws, observe that a policy of peace or of war has been implemented, a given industry has been nationalized or restored to private initiative, the choice has been made between an economic plan commanded from on high versus a plan worked out by the market, preference has been given to freedom of education rather than state monopoly over schooling or vice versa, the single obligatory trade union is preferred to free and multiple trade unions or else the contrary, and, last but not least, the majority of citizens have voted in one direction or the other either directly or through their representatives — then it’s all over. Vox populi vox Dei. The question has been decided and there is nothing left for the minority to do but to bow their heads and obey. Even if the minority is composed of forty-nine per cent and the difference compared to the majority of fifty-one is minimal, the major pars has spoken. If the voice of the major pars were disobeyed, the minority would be in command over the majority; the forty-nine would prevail over the fifty-one. And it is certainly more irrational to have the forty-nine commanding over the fifty-one than for the will of the fifty-one to prevail over that of the forty-nine.