the common good. In a mixed government, like that of England, the parts cover each other till responsibility is lost. Representation alone combines knowledge with

power.

The National Assembly in France began with the following declaration, which had its parallel in America:"The Representatives of the People of France, formed into a National Assembly, considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt of human rights are the sole causes of public misfortunes and corruptions of government, have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration these natural, imprescriptible, and inalienable rights that the declaration being constantly present to the minds of the members of the body social, they may be ever kept attentive to their rights and to their duties: that the acts of the legislative and the executive powers of government being capable of being every moment compared with the end of political institutions, may be the more respected and also that the future claims of the citizens, being directed by simple and incontestable principles, may always tend to the maintenance of the constitution and general happiness." These rights of men were declared to be liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. It follows that, men being equal in respect of these rights, civil distinctions are based solely on public utility. Sovereignty resides entirely in the people, and law must express the people's will. Only such restraints on individual liberty are justifiable as are necessary to secure equal liberty to all. Notice must be given beforehand of what are offences under the law, and of the penalties which attach to them. Penalties are to be

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inflicted only when they are absolutely necessary, and resistance to the law is culpable. Opinions are not to be punished except when they disturb social order. The force of the community is to be employed for the benefit of the community. Taxation is the business of the whole community. All the agents of the community are responsible to it. No man can be deprived of his property except in cases where the law has settled that public security demands it, and on condition of a previous just indemnity.

With regard to these rights, set forth by the Assembly, and recognized by Paine as "natural," we may at once concede that they are moderate enough, and that a government which failed to enforce them would deserve condemnation. Yet it is against these doctrines of natural rights, and the deductions made from them, that Burke hurls all his thunders. This requires explanation. The ideal of a state of nature,' in its crude form, is a dangerous one. It may easily be made to justify license instead of liberty, and an impulsive sentimentalism, or even pure animalism, in place of the self-restraint of a formed morality. Burke, again, would say that, even if the rights asked for are legitimate, yet they are asked for on the wrong ground. We cannot, he says, tell the origin of society. It is a miraculous gift of God, designed for man's good, and, therefore to be organized, in every case, in the form which will best further that good., Expediency, rather than nature, is the proper guide for

man.

When Italians, who were not Roman citizens, came to live in Rome, the Romans found it necessary, for the adjudication of suits to which they were parties,

to compile a body of law from the laws and customs of the various Italian tribes. This code was called the ius gentium, or law of the tribes, or nations. It was originally regarded as inferior to the civil law, to the. privileges of which Roman citizens alone were entitled. Afterwards, when the Greek conception of nature, as embodying simplicity, uniformity, or a higher law, became powerful in Rome, it was applied to codes of law, and "natural law was found in the ius gentium, which was thus raised to a position of superiority to the civil law, and came to be regarded as an ideal to which the civil law should approximate. It was called Equitas, or levelling, as involving the removal of inequalities, and the introduction of simplicity and symmetry. It was a very different matter when, instead of regarding the Law of Nature as an ideal implicitly involved in actual law, men came to look upon it as a law which actually did prevail in a supposed state of nature. The equality, which had been regarded as the goal of actual law, was then translated into a moral condemnation of existing inequalities. Such inequalities were regarded as lapses from the perfect equality of a state of nature.*

Burke says rightly that we cannot hear of going back to the natural man. Man, stript of all that society has made him, is at best a savage. To go back to the beginnings of government, in the literal sense of the words, is to show ourselves nnmindful of what history and circumstances have made men. There is no form of government which is good for all men. Nor is there any proposition in politics which is true men, of all times, and of all places.

*Maine's Ancient Law, ch.

absolutely of all The philosophy

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which Burke opposes to the current popular opinions in France is set forth at length in the pages of the Reflec tions. It is a philosophic conservatism, more intensely conservative than it otherwise would have been, owing to his horror of the acts of the Assembly, and his fear that they might be imitated elsewhere. Throughout the book Burke has England in his mind. The briefest summary of his views may serve here. We should look forward to the goal, rather than backwards to the beginnings of social life. Society is justified by its achievements. Its beginning is wrapt in mystery. As we owe it to God, we are bound to establish and to endow a church. As the state is part of the natural order, it must be continuous. The hereditary principle, therefore, is the truly natural principle in politics.___ Each generation owes a duty to the next. Continuous social order being the divinely ordained condition of human progress, each generation is bound to transmit to that which follows its inherited and acquired stock of science, morality, and art. Political changes are to be made with fear and trembling. Whatever is, is, in a sense, right. Order is too sacred a thing to be lightly tampered with. Obedience resting on prejudice is better than a critical and anarchic levity. For it is difficult to restore order when it has once been destroyed. Men are not layfigures to be arranged and rearranged at will. They are beings of pronounced intellectual and moral habits, with definite tendencies, which are the results of their history. To these habits and tendencies the political organization must be fitted. It shows entire ignorance of the limitations which the nature of things imposes upon statesmanship to suppose that symmetry and logical complete

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ness and consistency are the tests of a good constitution. It is folly to talk of going back to the state of nature, and making a fresh start. Even if it were possible to do so, there is no obligation to do it. (Society is not a mere trade-partnership which can be dissolved at will. When society was constituted, the state of nature was abandoned. All talk, therefore, of rights of nature is irrelevant. If men, for their own advantage, exchanged the state of nature for the state of society, they left the state of nature and all its rights behind them. The only rights which they could thenceforth possess were civil rights, that is, the advantages of social life. All talk about absolute freedom and equality became thenceforth nonsense. If, as is said, men have contracted to live in society, they have agreed to so much surrender of their freedom and equality as is necessary to make society possible. Equality of restraint is the only equality of which they can any longer reasonably talk. Hence we get a justification of different orders and ranks in society. For the only question, which can reasonably be asked is, what organization of society is the best? what form of society and government tends most to the growth of virtue, and to the increase of happiness?

It is not to be supposed that the critical and sceptical literature, which induced, and determined the character of the French Revolution, was a sudden growth or was confined to France. We must trace the democratic spirit in literature from the time of the Reformation. From the day when the rights of reason as against authority were asserted and allowed in the sphere of religious belief, it was certain that reason could not long be fettered in other spheres. Men would claim the right