218 PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS AND POLITICAL THEORY
between laws and the spiritual needs of the nation, government
becomes disorganized. Such a disorganization impedes the further
development of the country's spiritual potentialities. It is th(~n, Spe-
ransky felt, that a good and clear administrative organization will help
to close the gap and restore the government to its role of effective
guide and teacher of the nation. 1 This argument not only justifies
change (as it did in the case of the proposals contained in the Plan of
1809), but it also sets narrow limits to desirable and possible transforma-
tions. The limits of innovation should be restricted by existing
traditions and historically developed institutions. Quite logically,
Speransky comes very close to Burke's "right of prescription" as
established by the fact of mere historical existence. The "preservative"
character of this approach found illustration in the way Speransky
dealt with serfdom and Russia's social structure in his Plan of 1809.
He also justified some political institutions, autocracy for instance, by
means of this historicist argument. And we need only remember his
admonition that new laws should be introduced only if changes in the
spiritual needs of the country have made them absolutely imperative.
Even then, it is preferable to adapt old laws to the new situation.
For a similar reason, he did not put much stock in written constitutions,
for the political values and moral needs of the nation were better
preserved by the spiritual development of the people.
Any satisfactory theory of politics must take a stand on the question
of how a people or group can counteract and oppose the arbitrary,
tyrannical, and harmful exercise of sovereign power. Following an old
ecclesiastic tradition, Speransky retained a significant silence on the
practical side of this aspect in his sermon of 1791. But in his more
mature political papers of subsequent years he did not say much more.
He never stated specifically that there might be any institutional
limitation or corrective to the power of the sovereign (or government).
Sovereignty, Speransky says, does not rest in the people, as some refer-
ences to Rousseau might lead us to believe, but only in the monarch.
True enough, the sovereign, or his agents, should not violate the
fundamental laws issued by himself, or act in disregard of the nation's
basic concepts of morality, religion, and spiritual tradition. But who
enacts these fundamental laws, who issues them, and who directs
their application? Again the absolute monarch. Aside from the pious
hope that the ruler will not violate the basic values and obligations
imposed on him by nature and by God, there is nothing to prevent
him from changing or abolishing existing "fundamental" laws. Prac-
1 Plan 1809, pp. 27-28.