As a problem of political philosophy, Government presents three principal aspects. We may ask in whom is the sovereign authority vested? Or by what machinery should that authority be exercised? Or in respect of what matters is its exercise legitimate?

The first two of these questions have been discussed by philosophers and fought over by factions from the earliest times. Innumerable battles have been waged about the rival claims of kings, nobles and popular leaders to the "right divine to govern wrong ;" and for, or against, the excellence of this or that legislative and administrative apparatus. The third question, on the other hand, has come to the front only in comparatively recent times. But its importance has increased and is increasing rapidly; indeed, at present, it completely overshadows the others. The great problem of modern political philosophy is to determine the province of government. Is there, or is there not, any region of human action over which the individual himself alone has jurisdiction, and into which other men have no business to intrude?

In the ancient politics of Greece and Rome hardly any part of human life, except a man's family religious practices, was thus sacred from the intrusion of the State. Beyond the limits of this primary social group even religious liberty ceased. The ancient States permitted no acts which manifested want of respect, still less such as savored of active opposition, to the cults authorized by the community. Any "infidels" who ventured to give open expression to their lack of faith in the gods of the city were quickly taught that they had better keep their opinions to themselves; and no mercy was shown to those foreign religions the practices of which were judged to be inconsistent with the public welfare. But the old pagan religions had no propaganda; and as persecution is a correlate of proselytism, they were fairly tolerant in practice, until the progress of Christianity opened the eyes of the Roman authorities to the fact that civil existence, as they understood it, was incompatible with religious existence, as

the Christians understood it. Pagan Rome, therefore, systematically persecuted Christianity with the intention of averting a political catastrophe of the gravest character. The Christian Church was the "International" of the emperors of the second and third centuries.

It is commonly supposed that the result of the intermittent, if internecine, warfare thus waged was the victory of the Church, and that, in the words of Julian, the Galilean conquered. But those who compare the Christianity of Paul with that of Ĉonstantine's prelates may be permitted to doubt whether, as in so many other cases, the vanquished did not in effect subdue the victor; whether there is not much more of Greek philosophy and of Roman organization and ritual, than of primitive Christianity, in the triumphant Catholicism of the fourth and later centuries. Oue heritage of old Roman statecraft, at any rate, passed bodily over to Catholic churchcraft. As soon as the Church was strong enough, it began to persecute with a vigor and consistency which the Empire never attained. In the ages of faith, Christian ecclesiasticism raged against freedom of thought, as such, and compelled the State to punish religious dissidence as a criminal offence of the worst description. The ingenuity of pagan persecutors failed to reach the shameful level of that of the Christian inventors of the Holy Office: nor did the civil governors of pagan antiquity ever degrade themselves so far as to play the executioner for a camarilla of priests. The doctrine that the authority of the State extends to men's beliefs as well as to their actions, and, consequently, is conterminous with the whole of human life; and that the power of the State ought to be used for the promotion of orthodoxy and the extermination of heterodoxy is, in fact, a necessary corollary of Romanism, which, however disguised by prudence when the Papacy is weak, is sure to reappear when it is strong enough to dispense with hypocrisy. In the sixteenth century, the theory and practice of a thousand years had so thoroughly incorporated intolerance with Christianity, that even the great reformers held firmly by this pre

cious heirloom of the ages of faith, whatever other shards of ecclesiastical corruption they might cast aside. Happily, the pretensions to infallibility of sects, who differed only in the higher or lower positions of the points at which they held on to the slope between Romanism and Rationalism, were so absurd, that political Gallios have been able to establish a modus vivendi among them. In this country, at any rate, the State is approaching, if it has not quite reached, a position of nonintervention (inclining perhaps to malevolent neutrality) in theological quarrels.

The prolonged intellectual and physical struggles which have thus tended to the more and more complete exclusion of a great group of human interests and activities from the legitimate sphere of governmental interference, have exerted a powerful influence on the general theory of Government. Two centuries have elapsed since this influence, having for some time made itself felt among political philosophers, prompted that systematic inquiry into the proper limits of governmental action in general, which is contained in John Locke's two Treatises on Government,' published in 1689.

The Revolution of 1688 marks one of the acute stages of that contest between Liberalism and Absolutism in these islands which began to manifest itself in a remote period of our history. Liberalism, represented by Parliamentary politicians and Protestant theologians, had prevailed over Absolutism, represented by the Stuarts in the political sphere, and by Papistry, open or disguised, in that of religion. The two "Treatises' form an apology for the victors. A theoretical justification for the accomplished fact was much needed; and Locke would have been unworthy of his reputation as a speculative philosopher, if he had failed to discover, or to invent, a theory sufficiently plausible to satisfy those who desired nothing better than to be persuaded of the justice of acts, by which, in any case, they meant to stand. The first essay is ostensibly directed at poor dead and gone Sir Robert Filmer, with his Adamic mythology (which, by the way, Locke treats as if it were serious history); but the controversial shots are intended to pass through their ostensible object and to slay the defenders of divine right, who lay behind the Filmerian outpost. In the second essay, 66 On Civil

Government," which alone has any interest to us at the present day, the theory of State omnipotence propounded by Hobbes (and supposed, though wrongfully, to have been invented in the interests of monarchy) is vigorously assaulted.

Hobbes was a thinker and writer of marvellous power, and, take him altogether, is probably the greatest of English philosophers: but it was given to him, as little as to Locke, to escape from entanglement in the a priori speculations which had come down mainly from the Roman jurists.* Setting out from the assumption of the natural equality of men, and of a primary "state of nature' in which every man strove for the full exercise of his "natural rights," and which was, therefore, a state of war of each against all; Hobbes further assumed that, in order to obtain the blessings of peace, men entered into a contract with one another, by which each surrendered the whole of his natural rights to the person or persons appointed, by common consent, to exercise supreme dominion, or sovereignty, over each and all of the members of the commonwealth constituted by the contract. The authority of the sovereign (whether one man or many,

a

* Hobbes's conception of the State may be sufficiently gathered from the following passages extracted from the Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society (1651): "All men, therefore, among themselves are by nature equal; the inequality we now discern hath its spring from the civil law'' (chap. i. 3). "Nature hath given to every one a right to all"(ibid. 10). "The natural state of men before they entered into society was war of all men against all men" (ibid. 12). In whatever man or body of men dominion or governmental authority is vested," each citizen has conveyed all his strength and power to that man or council" (chap. v. 11). The supreme power is absolute (chap. vi. 13), and comparable to the soul of the city as its will (ibid. 19). "The will of every citizen is in city, and the city is not tied to the civil laws," all things comprehended in the will of the and the will of the depository of dominion is the will of the city (chap. vi. 14). Judging of good and evil does not belong to private citizens (chap. xii. 1), nor do they possess any

rights or liberties except such as the sovereign

grants. All power, temporal and spiritual, is united (under Christ) in the sovereign authority of a Christian city, and absolute obedience is due to it. When the sovereign is not Christian, and his commands are contrary to those of the Church, the subject must, disobeying but not resisting, go to Christ by martyrdom" (chap. xviii. 13).

omnipotence. "Socialism," which at first suggests itself, is unfortunately susceptible of being used in widely different senses. As a general rule, no doubt, socialistic political philosophy is eminently regimental. But there is no necessary connection between socialism and regimentation. Persons who, of their own free will, should think fit to imitate the primitive Christians depicted by the Acts, and to have all things in common, would be Socialists; and yet they might be noue the less Individualists, so long as they refused to compel any one to join them. The only true contradictory of Individual ism is that more common kind of Socialism, which proposes to use the power of the State in order, as the phrase goes, to organize" society, or some part of it. That is to say, this "regimental" Socialism proposes to interfere with the freedom of the individual to whatever extent the sovereign may dictate, for the purpose of more or less completely neutralizing the effects of the innate inequalities of men. It is militarism in a new shape, requiring the implicit obedience of the individual to a governmental commander-in-chief, whose business is to wage war against natural inequality, and to set artificial equality in its place.

I propose now to give an outline of the progress, first of Regimentation and then of Individualism since the seventeenth century.

In France Regimentation was strongly advocated by Morelly and by Mably before Rousseau's essay on the Social Contract made its appearance; and, to my mind, except in point of literary form, the works of the former two writers are much better worth reading. But, while the immense popularity of Rousseau made him the apparent leader of the movement in favor of social regimentation, the comparative vagueness of his demands for equality commended him to practical politicians. His works became the gospel of the politi cal-one might almost say the religioussect of which Robespierre and St. Just were the chiefs ;* and the famous con

*As Mr. Lecky justly says: "That which distinguishes the French Revolution from other political movements is, that it was directed by men who had adopted certain speculative a priori conceptions of political right, with the fanaticism and proselytizing fervor

spiracy of their would-be continuator, Babœuf, was an attempt to bring about the millennium of eighteenth century socialism by sanguinary violence.

According to Rousseau, the social contract is "the foundation of all rights" (chap. ix.); though the sovereign is not bound by it (chap. vii.), inasmuch as he can enter into no contract with himself. This sovereign is the totality of the citizens. Each, in assenting to the social contract, gives himself and all he possesses to the sovereign (vi.), "lui et toutes ses forces dont les biens qu'il possède font partie" (chap. ix.). He loses his natural liberty, and the State becomes master of him and of his goods (chap. ix.). As nature gives a man absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the polity an absolute power over its citizens. The State, however, does not really despoil him. He gets back civil liberty (that is, such amount of liberty as the State decrees) and a right of property in that which he possesses (chap. viii.). His previous possession, which was bare usurpation, is thus changed into right. In this way members of the community become mere depositaries of the public property, the private right of ownership being subordinate to the supreme right of the community (chap. ix.). The general will is the source of authority; whoever refuses to obey its behests is to be coerced into obedience by the whole body-" which means nothing more than that he shall be forced to be free" (chap. vii.). As will be seen on turning to the extracts from the Philosophical Rudiments given above (p. 845, note), most of this is Hobbism pure and simple. The fundamental principle of the Rousseauite, as of the Hobbist, polity is the omnipotence of the State; its boasted liberty is a grant from the sovereign despot, whose absolutism is sugared over by the suggestion that each man has an infinitesimal share in it. And, if any one of the sovereign people should be as

of a religious belief, and the Bible of their creed was the Contrat Social of Rousseau" (History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. v. p. 345). I have not undertaken a criticism of Rousseau's various and not unfrequently inconsistent political opinions, as a whole. It was not needful for my purpose to do so; and, if it had been, I could not have improved upon the comprehensive and impartial judgment of our historian of the eighteenth century.

blind to the benefits of this sort of free bondsmanship and coerced brotherly love as the "Needy knifegrinder" was, his "incivism" is to be cured by physical treat"" On le forcera d'être libre." ment : The despotism of the "general will" (volonté générale) being thus established, how is the sovereign to make his commands known? This is a point about which it is surely necessary to be very clear. Unfortunately, Rousseau leaves it not a little obscure. He commences the second chapter of his second book by declaring that the general will is that of the body of the poeple; that, as such, the declaration of it is an act of sovereignty, while the declaration of the will of a part of the people is merely an act of administration. Yet, in a note, we are told that for the "will" to be "general" it need not be unanimous, only all the votes must be taken. How the expression of wil!

which is not unanimous can be other than that of a part of the people, does not appear. But full light is thrown upon Rousseau's real meaning in the second chapter of the fourth book. Following Locke's dictum that nothing can make a man a member of a commonwealth" but his actually entering into it by positive engagement and express promise and compact" (Civil Government,§ 122) he tells us that

the only law which, by its nature, requires unanimous assent, is the social compact: for civil association is the most voluntary of all acts every man being born free and master of himself, no one, under any pretext whatever, can subject himself without avowal of

the act.

Those who do not assent when the social contract is made remain strangers among the citizens; but after the State is constituted, residence within its bounds is to be taken as assent to the contract.

Outside this primitive contract, the vote of the majority obliges the rest; that is a consequence of the contract itself.

In the Rousseauite State, then, sovereignty means neither more nor less than the omnipotence of a bare majority of voices of all the members of the State collected together in general meetings (chaps. xii.-xiv.).

During the sittings of this sovereign multitude, which are to take place at fixed intervals,

the jurisdiction of the government ceases, the executive power is suspended, and the person

of the lowliest citizen is as sacred and inviolable as that of the highest magistrate; for ative ceases to exist. where the represented is present the represent

So

In fact, in each of these periodical meetings, the polity potentially returns to the state of nature, and its members, if they please, may dissolve the social contract altogether: if they do not so please, they reappoint office-bearers to do the work assigned to them, whatever that may be (iii. chap. xvii.), until the next assembly. ciety is thus a sort of joint-stock company, whose officers vacate their posts at every general meeting, and whose shareholders can wind up the concern, or go on, as the assembly may resolve, with such articles of association as a bare majority of the shareholders may determine shall be binding until the next meeting. An industrial company organized in this way would probably soon resign sovereignty to a liqui

dator. But then the members of industrial associations certainly do not undergo that transfiguration which, according to Rousseau, is worked by entrance into the social

contract.

"The general will," says he, "is always upright and always tends toward the general good" (liv. ii. chap. iii.); "the people are never corrupted" (ibid.); "all constantly desire the happiness of each" (liv. ii. chap. iv.).

Unfortunately, the intellect and the information of the sovereign are not always quite up to the standard of his morality :

The general will is always just; but the judgment which guides it is not always enlightened (liv. ii. chap. vi.).

No

It would seem that flattery of the sovereign is not peculiar to monarchies. toriously, kings can do no wrong, and always spend their lives in sighing for the welfare of their subjects. If they seem to err, it is only because they are misled and misinformed. That has been the great make-believe of apologists for despotism from all time.

A properly enlightened sovereign people, with its incorruptible altruism, can never lose sight of the true end of legislation, the greatest good of all; and if we seek to know what that is, Rousseau tells us that it embraces two things, Liberty and Equality (liv. ii. chap. xi.). Liberty, he says, isobedience to the law which one has laid down for one's self" (liv. i. chap. viii.); a well-sounding definition. But to my mind it is somewhat hard to reconcile