may be limited to a part; and (c) Natural Rights are prior to the existence of society, in the sense that society does not confer them, but has for its function the protection of them; Political Rights are conferred by society.

In homely phrase, we may compare society to a machine. The products--the benefits of it-belong impartially to all; but not the right to work it.

Natural Rights, in the concrete, are to be ascertained by a study of the destination of man, (the lebens-zweck, the Germans term it,)—the divine idea of man and design concerning him; the maxim of the natural equality of the human race (which is implied in the golden rule) being taken for granted, so that the rights of one are the rights of every other.

Utterly antagonistic to the principles and the spirit of Burke, is the famous treatise of Rousseau, the Social Contract, which more than any other work was the text-book of the French Revolution. It is significant that the whole discussion is reared upon speculations relative to the origin of civil society. Rights and obligations must all be inferred with mathematical exactitude from the fundamental theory adopted at the start. This theory assumes that the existence of society is optional with men, and is due to their voluntary consent. Individuals are bound by the social bond only because, and so far as, they have agreed to be bound. This false dogma of a mutual contract is laid at the foundation of the edifice. It is further held that the individual in entering society surrenders all his rights to the community, and through this common act of all, there instantly arises the body politic. To the community thus formed, belongs sovereignty. The general will is now the supreme law. To this general will the entire frame-work of government is subject. The idea of " institutional" freedom, of freedom secured and assured to the individual by constitutional safeguards, against the haste or deliberate tyranny of majorities, is discarded. Representative government itself is derided as a product and sign of the decay of public spirit.*

*Rousseau explicitly says that every law which is not expressly ratified by popular vote, is no law; and that the English, through their adherence to Rep

Of course the State must be restricted to narrow territorial limits. But what is this general will which is omnipotent in the State? It turns out to be merely the majority of suffrages. When the vote of a citizen upon any measure is called for, the question really answered by him is, what in his opinion is the general will in reference to this measure. The result of the ballot decides the point, and thus if he finds himself in the minority, he is not really overruled, but simply mistaken in his judgment as to what the general will is.* It is impossible to imagine a more frightful despotism than Rousseau's sovereignty of the people, under which the individual has literally given up everything to the unchecked will of the majority. Equality, which more than liberty is the idol of Frenchmen, is the key-note of Rousseau's entire work. Views akin to those expressed in this ingenious but superficial essay, have fascinated the French mind, and led to the sacrifice of both stable government and substantial freedom. On the warrant afforded by a popular vote, (called for, according to the more approved practice, after the deed has been done), one government is overthrown and a new one set up, and the entire community, perhaps, brought, as at present, under the uncontrolled sway of an Imperial Despot. This terrible price is paid for the sake of having a government which is (in theory) of their own making. The protection of Natural Rights, the prime object of society, is, in fact, given up, in consequence of the eager strife for Political Rights; and even these are not attained.†

resentative government, are slaves. "Toute loi que le peuple en personne n'a pas ratifiée est nulle; ce n'est point une loi. Le peuple Anglois pense être libre, il se trompe fort: il ne l'est que durant l'élection des membres du parlement: sitôt qu'ils sont élus, il est esclave, il n'est rien." Livre III., ch. xv.

* This curious, though puerile, subterfuge for saving (theoretically) the freedom of the individual, when overborne by the vote of the majority, is found in Liv. IV. ch. ii. (Des Suffrages). “Quand done l'avis contraire au mien l'importe, cela ne prouve autre chose sinon que je m'etois trompé, et que ce que j'estimois être la volonté générale ne l'étoit pas."

Burke has left on record his opinion of the Social Contract and its author. In a letter to a French correspondent, (in 1789), quoted in Prior's Life of Burke, (Am. Ed. 1825, p. 313), he says: "I have read long since the Contrat Social. It has left very few traces upon my mind. I thought it a performance of little

We are more apt to connect the theory of the Social Compact with the name of a true lover of liberty, John Locke-a man, in all that constitutes human excellence, immeasurably elevated above Rousseau. The negative part of Locke's treatise on government, wherein he demolishes the arguments of Filmer in favor of absolute monarchy as a legitimate inheritance from Adam and from the dominion of the Patriarchs, is fully successful. His task was here comparatively easy. So the Second Book of Locke's treatise is marked by signal merits. The sentiment of hostility to tyranny that inspires the work, is characteristic of the author. The Natural Rights of men, as the right of property, are declared to be not the creatures. of civil society, but the end of society is properly defined to be the protection of them-though the error is committed of making the prime object of the commonwealth to be the security of property. The function of government, also, is limited to the furthering of the end for which government is established. The state, however it may be constituted, must keep to its design. There is no general will omnipotent over the individual. But Locke falls into the great error of supposing that the consent of the individual is necessary in order to his

or no merit; and little did I conceive that it could ever make revolutions and give law to nations. But so it is." In Burke's "Letter to a Member of the Na tional Assembly,” (1791), we find a dissection of Rousseau, whom he calls "the great founder and professor of the philosophy of vanity." Burke's satire upon the sentimental philanthropy which tramples under foot particular duties, is excellent. Rousseau is the father of the sentimental school of poets (not excepting Byron and Goethe) and novelists, who seek to make a criminal interesting by weaving round him a veil of sentiment-aiming to excite sympathy where reprobation is the proper feeling. There is a very curious fact concerning Rousseau, which Burke brings forward in the "Reflections." "Mr. Hume told me that he had from Rousseau himself the secret of his principles of composition. That acute, though eccentric observer, had perceived that to strike and interest the public, the marvelous must be produced; that the marvelous of the heathen mythology had long since lost its effect; that giants, magicians, fairies, and heroes of romance which succeeded, had exhausted the portion of credulity which belonged to their age; that now nothing was left to a writer but that species of the marvelous, which might still be produced, and with as great an effect as ever, though in another way; that is, the marvelous in life, manners, in characters, and in extraordinary situations, giving rise to new and unlooked for strokes in politics and morals."

transference from the state of nature within the fold, and under the obligations of civil society. Every man, says Locke, is naturally free, and nothing is "able to put him into subjection to any earthly power but only his own consent."* "Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent."+ Compelled by his theory, Locke affirms that every one actually, though tacitly, gives his consent to the social compact when he comes of age, by the very act of inheriting property in a country! Every generation, by these separate acts of individuals, renews the compact,-otherwise society would be dissolved! Moreover, Locke assumes (for he fails to prove) that the assent to the social compact implies a promise to be governed by the majority. "When any number of men, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of

Ib. p. 394. The sentence

* Locke's Works, (London, 1794), Vol. IV., p. 409. quoted above is an example of similarity in thought and phrase between the theoretical part of the Declaration of Independence and passages in Locke's treatise. Locke and Sidney were favorite authors with John Adams and the other young lawyers who led in the movement for Independence. Jefferson wrote at first"that all men are created equal and independent,”—afterwards erasing the last two words. Compare also the following passages, the first being from the Decla ration: " Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." Locke writes, (p. 472): "Revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty, will be borne by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going; it is not to be wondered that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavor to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was first erected."

the majority." Instead of founding society with Burke, upon a divinely ordained, "predisposed order of things," with which the will of every rational being is assumed to agree, Locke makes the mistake of requiring, as a condition of the validity of government, an explicit act and the voluntary consent of every one who is born in a country. In taking this ground, he advances beyond any statements of Hooker, whose authority he is able to bring in support of the principle that society owes its origin to an express or secret agreement, and that no human government is binding without the previous consent of the governed. Hooker avoids the neces sity of getting the consent of every new generation to the existing form of society, by falling back upon the notion of the continued life of a corporation. We lived, he says, in our remote predecessors, and they live in us their successors; so that the original agreement is binding until it be revoked.† The motive of Locke, we may add, was the honorable one of defending the rightfulness of the change of dynasty, by which the Stuarts were expelled and the Prince of Orange raised to the throne. He desired to present a theory of society that would justify this change. It were better, however, to rest it upon the simple right of revolution.

The genesis of the Social Compact theory is a point of much historical interest. To investigate the rise and progress of this doctrine does not fall, however, within our present purpose. Leo, in his Universal History, finds the germ of the theory, which was developed by subsequent writers, in the sentence of Grotius: "civilis juris mater est ipsa ex consensu obligatio." This ripened, in the hands of Hobbes, into the distinct conception of an Original Contract-of a state of nature as preceding civil society,-which, though acknowledged by him to be a fiction, as far as actual history is concerned, is, nevertheless, the basis of his reasoning. Locke differs from Hobbes

* Locke's Works, (London, 1704), Vol. IV., p. 395.

These remarkable statements are in the Ecclesiastical Polity, (I. x. 8). The "judicious" Hooker was the forerunner of Locke and the advocates of the Social Compact.

B. III., S. 717.