paternal care in furnishing work to every man, has become one of the fundamental claims of that branch of socialism which was lately led by Louis Blanc. 1

As Madison says of him : "He appears to have viewed the Constitution of England as the standard, or, to use his own expression, as the mirror of politi cal liberty.""

While Jeremy Bentham, in his "Constitutional Code," fixes the sovereignty in the whole people and says "it is best to give the sovereign power to the largest possible portion of those whose greatest happiness is the proper and chosen object," 3 he assumes for this sovereignty something more than human power. Government, according to him, fulfils its function "by creating rights which it confers upon individuals," instead of confining itself to declaring and enforcing rights which grow out of custom and usage, in accordance with natural law. Thus, while he seats the power in the majority, and so far indicates democracy, his assumption is, that the power so conferred, unlike a power derived from agree1 "Spirit of the Laws," Book XXIII., ch. 29.

Nothing could be more grotesque than some of the reasons set forth by Montesquieu in support of slavery: such, for instance, as that " sugar would be too dear if the plants which produced it were cultivated by any other than slaves"; that "these creatures are all over black, and with such a flat nose that they can scarcely be pitied"; that "the negroes prefer a glass necklace to that gold which polite nations so highly value—can there be a greater proof of their wanting common-sense?"; and that “it is hardly to be believed that God, who is a wise Being, should place a soul, especially a good soul, in such a black, ugly body."—" Spirit of the Laws," vol. XV., ch. 5.

2 Federalist, No. 47.

3

Bentham's Works, Bowering's edition, vol. IX., P. 97.

4 Id., vol. I., p. 301.

ment, unlike any human power, is possessed of a supernatural quality. As Herbert Spencer says, commenting upon this process of reasoning:

"The sovereign people jointly appoint representatives and so create a government; the government thus created creates rights; and then, having created rights, it confers them on the separate members of the sovereign people by which it was itself created. Here is a marvellous piece of political legerdermain! . . . Surely, among metaphysical phantoms the most shadowy is this, which supposes a thing to be obtained by creating an agent, which creates the thing, and then confers the thing upon its creator!"

Bentham, often, in treating of liberty, combines the polemical with the philosophical, the practical with the theoretical, and not unfrequently confounds them. His doctrines, in the translation of M. Dumont, were propagated through Europe, and became more popular abroad than at home. This was partly due to the circumstance that, in the process of transla tion, many of the vagaries of terminology were eliminated; but more to the fact that there was so much in Bentham's writings that afforded support to the wildest theories of the wildest theorists. It was for this that they received their greatest favor in France. 2

The Man versus the State," New York, p. 38.

* Jeremy Bentham doubtless did a large service to the world in challenging a great number of words that had been masquerading in the language under false meanings. He did this especially in his "Book on Fallacies," in which he has a chapter on Impostor Terms." Unfortunately, however, he sometimes fell under his own ban; and Herbert Spencer furnishes several trenchant illustrations of this in Bentham's efforts at the treatment of ultimate human rights.

I have mentioned only a few of the more important of the political writers of the eighteenth century, but it may be fairly said of all of them, that they made definitions of liberty for which, by reason of their environment, they could not furnish clear illustrations; since behind all their illustrations lay their acceptance of the ideas and governments under which they lived. Under the laws of these governments there existed these essential postulates—a ruling class and a ruled class,—a ruling class by assumed hereditary right, and a ruled class by assumed hereditary necessity; and where these are postulates, any definition of human liberty must be inadequate. It is for this reason that whilst the English Constitution marks the early development of liberty, it does not exhibit its growth and stature. Where the existence of a king is assumed to be an essential of government, there cannot be any complete realization of that quality of liberty which is comprehended in the political equality of all men before the law-of that kind of government which is maintained only through the delegated servants of the people.

We have to acknowledge, indeed, that we owe a great debt to England. From her we received an inestimable boon in the body of the great Common Law, that firm foundation of occidental civilization. But in accepting the Common Law from England, we did not take all that belonged to it. Its primogeniture and entailments, its class distinctions and

class-government, were largely discarded. What we did bring with us to America was the sturdy Anglican spirit of the people, which gradually appropriated and established the fundamental law in support of fuller individual liberty. In the new country, unencumbered by traditionary restraints, this instinct had larger scope; and it is to it, therefore, that we owe all of the true qualities of this larger sense of liberty which we have. Indeed, it is by this instinct that liberty made whatever progress exists in any of the countries of Western civilization; for, although restrained and hindered in Europe, when we look for its genesis, we find that it has come from the demands of the people, and not from the freewill of the rulers-not from the graciousness of the rulers, but from their failings, and through the resistance of this popular instinct against tyranny. Thus it was King John's weakness, and not his good-will, that enabled the knights and barons to secure the Charter. It was the bigotry and obstinacy of Charles which called the Commonwealth into being. The English parliament enlarged its power by the flight of James II.; the Act of Settlement was born of his abdication, and nothing was more favorable to the continued growth of that parliament than the weakness of the first two Georges in absenting themselves in their beloved Hanover and neglecting their English subjects. But in America, largely by reason of the absence of clogging traditions and tenures which belonged to the Common Law, political

liberty received a more practical and a broader interpretation than it ever had before. Here, for the first time in the history of the world, it was set forth, not with instances merely, but as an almost universal principle'; and thus set forth, it was crystallized into the fundamental declaration and law of the people. Samuel Adams, the father of the Townmeeting, and Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, were of the leaders during the Revolution and for some time after. If we contrast the representative men of each period, we may readily realize the difference existing between those very limited conceptions of liberty which prevailed in the reign of King John, and the comprehensive idea of it which marked the American revolutionary period.

William Mareschal, Earl of Pembroke, and Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, were aristocrats and warriors of an essentially militant period. They fought for their class; they accorded to their de pendent husbandmen a minimum of the results of their triumph.

Samuel Adams, the son of a New England brewer, and Thomas Jefferson, the son of a Virginia farmer, were of the people and for the people. They advocated the principle of equality for all men before the law, a principle not restricted to any people,but for the world at large-political liberty for the human race.

1 The qualification which it is necessary here to make is, of course, African slavery.