and interpreted' by the law of nature, and if, as Locke also assures us, the law of nature is as intelligible and plain to every rational creature as the positive law of commonwealths-nay, possibly plainer,' what is to prevent every rational creature—that is, every individual citizen-from setting up for his own 'regulator and interpreter' and pronouncing, upon his soul and conscience, that the other law, the law of the State, fails to pass muster: fails, that is, to come up to the very standard which Locke himself has pronounced to be necessary and right? And if he goes a step further, if he draws the inevitable conclusion that the law of the State, being unjust and unnatural, is not entitled to his allegiance, that it is his duty to meet its commands at least with passive-and very possibly with active-resistance, who shall say that he is wrong? Certainly not Locke, who expressly reminds us that the law of nature ceases not in society, but stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others,' and that 'being a declaration of the will of God, no human sanction can be good or valid against it.'

This is the very principle of antinomianism, transferred to politics. It is to commit, without reason, the very mistake which, for strong (if not altogether sufficient) reasons, was committed by the Constituents of 1789, when they began their task by laying down sweeping principles in their Declaration of Rights and then found themselves compelled to violate the most fundamental of them in the working Constitution which followed: as Burke scornfully said, to limit logic by despotism.' And if Locke's revolutionary procedure bore no such inconvenient fruits a century earlier, that, as has been well pointed out, is because the spirit of the 'sectaries,' so strong in the days of the long Parliament and Protectorate, had been broken by a generation of reaction: because the men of 1690 lived in a world poles asunder from the men of 1650. It is quite true that men will always test the legislation of the moment by the standard of equity which has shaped itself in the purer minds of their generation. It would be a poor outlook for progress if they did not. But that is no reason why the Legislator himself should roundly challenge them to do so; and unless he wishes to increase his own difficulties a thousandfold, he will do well to refrain. Above all, he will refuse to assume that there is an eternal law' of right and wrong, known to all men, 'plain to every rational creature' from the beginning of the world: a law, by which every human law, with its necessary limitations of time, place and circumstance, must necessarily stand condemned. And this, for the best of all reasons, because such an assumption is absolutely false.

Thus, of the two chief consequences which flow from Locke's conception of the law of nature at this stage of his argument, the

first is bound, in the long run, to destroy the inward peace and harmony of the State; while the second, if carried to its logical issue, is such as to make the very existence of the State for ever impossible,

Is then the law of nature' an idea absolutely invalid? Were Locke and others under a total delusion when they pinned their faith to its reality? In the particular form which they gave to the idea, there can be no doubt as to the answer. To assume a law the same always, everywhere and for all,' a law which carries conviction to every rational creature'-saint or sinner, savage or civilised, worldling or moralist, foolish gentleman' or philosopher-is to fly in the face of all experience and history, to say nothing of all probability and reason. And when such a law is taken, as Locke takes it, to include not only moral relations, which are comparatively simple, but such social and political usages as the institution of Property or the rule of the majority, which are highly complicated and questionable, the absurdity becomes yet more glaring.

But if by the law of nature we mean that, from the beginning, there have been the germs of what we conveniently call the moral sense in man; that, with experience and reflection, these germs have constantly expanded, have become more and more consciously realised, have grown into fuller and ever fuller articulation, the root of the whole ethical life of the individual, the source of all his social energies-above all, of the State, which is at once the crown and mainstay of them all-then our answer must be very different. Then, so far from there being anything to say against the idea of natural law, there is everything to be said for it. Without it, all history, all experience, would be an unintelligible riddle. Only, let there be no misunderstanding. The natural law, so conceived, is a thing not only alien from the thought of Locke, but utterly repugnant to his whole teaching. The principle of growth, which is the life and soul of it, is not only not present in Locke's law of nature: it is directly and deliberately excluded. And this initial difference reflects, or rather intensifies, itself at all the main turning-points of the argument which follows: above all, in that which brings us face to face with the beginnings, the foundation, of the State. To Locke, however much he may disguise the fact, this was no less than an act of treachery to the law of nature. To his opponents, it is the first step towards the fulfilment of that law: the indispensable condition, without which no further development would have been either possible or conceivable.

What is the bearing of this upon our immediate argument? How does it affect the relation of the individual conscience to the Law of the land? To suppose that, either on this or on any other

theory, the possibility of conflict between the two is abolished, or even seriously reduced, would be a mischievous delusion. The Law of the land, even at the best, can never hope to do more than reflect the average conscience of the community. Too often, it is the conscience of yesterday rather than to-day, of our grandfathers rather than ourselves. The fact is plain; and nothing but harm can come of trying to disguise it. The inevitable consequence of this is that, even under the most favourable conditions, a man of sensitive conscience is apt to find himself face to face with a law which, rightly or wrongly, he honestly believes to be unjust. He may recognise that, all Law being relative, the particular law which offends him had its justification in the past, may even have it in the common opinion of the present. He may admit that the Law of the land is entitled to respect: that only in the most extreme cases is the individual justified in disregarding or defying it. Yet, none the less, the point will come when he knows that, however it may be with others, for him there is no choice but to disobey, and take the consequences: to face the storm of indignation with which his neighbours will visit him; to submit to the punishment which the State-and that too has its rights-may feel bound to inflict upon him. It is probable that these occasions will arise less often as public opinion becomes more enlightened and as Locke's law of nature, eternal and unbending, falls more and more into discredit. It is almost certain that, when they do arise, they will be met, on both sides, in a less bitter spirit. But the conflict is in the nature of things; and so long as men are what they are, it can never wholly be done away. It is not always a sign of growth; for individuals, like States, are liable to obstinacy and error. But without it, all growth would be impossible.

Apart from the law of nature, all that is vital in Locke's theory, whether for good or for evil, is summed up in one word: individualism. And as we have seen, the connection between the two things is, to Locke's mind, extremely close. Having disposed of the one, let us now turn to see him at work upon the other.

Everything in Locke's system revolves round the individual; everything is disposed so as to ensure the sovereignty of the individual. Entering the civil state with his moral sense already fully trained, his moral code perfectly articulated, the individual owes nothing to the State on that side of the account; as little, on the side of his intellectual development. The consequence is that both these fields-and they are the fields in which the spirit of man finds its highest expression-are definitely excluded from the ken of the State. For the State to meddle with either of them is an unwarrantable impertinence. Indeed, in moral matters at any rate, the individual is entitled to dictate his own will to the,

State: to refuse his assent-and we can only conclude, his obedience also to any law or executive act that does not square with the divinely ordained code which each man finds written in his heart and which he alone has the right to 'interpret.'

Property again, like the moral code, is brought by the individual ready made into the State. It is the inalienable right of the individual. The State has one duty, and one only, in regard to it: and that is jealously to watch over it, as a sacred trust committed to its care; inviolable, unalterable, the very ark of the covenant of the commonwealth. To regulate it—much more to redistribute it or to nationalise it would be the grossest of usurpations, the most flagrant of wrongs. In default of any moral or educational duties, the protection of private property-of the right of every man to do what he will with his own-is indeed the chief, and almost the only, function left to the State. Even the defence of the common territory from foreign invasion seems to be regarded rather as the discharge of a duty to the private proprietor than to the community as a whole.

The same supremacy of the individual which dominates the whole life of the State is no less conspicuous in the act by which it is created and in that-if such an act can be conceived as possible -by which it is dissolved. Consent, the express and formal consent, of every individual concerned is necessary to the foundation of the State: nothing can make a man member of any commonwealth but his actually entering into it by positive engagement and express promise and compact.' And the same consent, express and formal, is necessary to its dissolution. Such a dissolution, as we have already seen, can hardly be brought about except by the sword of a foreign conqueror. And that conqueror 'can never have a title till the people are both at liberty to consent, and have actually consented, to allow and confirm in him the power he hath till then usurped.' Until that moment the community, founded as it is upon the explicit consent of its members, can never be dissolved.

Such are the consequences of the individualist principle, as it shapes itself in Civil Government; and, with a few vacillations, they are clearly recognised and deliberately driven home by the author. There is hardly one of them which does not call for a searching examination.

And first, for the assertion that no political community can be rightfully established without the express promise and compact' of every individual concerned. It is obvious at a glance that this condition has not been fulfilled by more than a handful if indeed by a single one-of the commonwealths at present existing upon the face of the earth; nor, so far as can be learned from history and

probable inference, by any that preceded them. Even in those cases where consent may be charitably assumed-such, perhaps, are some of the Greek and New England Colonies, or again the barbarian tribes which overran large parts of the Roman Empirethat consent accounts only for the primitive nucleus of the commonwealth. It does not account for the gradual accretions which conquest, or some more veiled form of compulsion, has subsequently brought about.

Locke of course would reply, as Rousseau did in a like case: "I am in search of Right and reason; I am not concerned to wrangle over facts.'1 And there is some force in the answer. It must be observed, however, that a theory which disregards, or rather violently tramples on, all the facts can hardly be treated as a satisfactory theory: least of all, when the general tenor of the argument assumes, as Locke's argument clearly does, that we are dealing not with fiction, but with historical fact. A yet more fatal objection remains behind. Supposing that Locke's principle, the principle of express and unforced consent, had actually been applied from the dawn of history to the present day, then it is morally certain that mankind would never have passed beyond the stage of purely tribal organisation. Incessant feuds between tribe and tribe might have been safely trusted to bar the way to further progress. Would Locke have been willing to accept this consequence? Would he have consented, for instance, to see England stop short with the Heptarchy, with the endless and fruitless battle of the kites and the crows"? or, to speak the plain truth, with something far more primitive than that? with herds of naked savages wandering among primeval forests and held together by nothing better than a common faith in a tribal god, a common acceptance of certain tribal customs and a common hatred of all who did not embrace both the one and the other? If he would not-and no sane person will believe that he wouldthen he has no right to be counted the champion of consent. His faith in consent is, in fact, of a strictly limited order. It is consistent with availing himself-without any acknowledgement, and probably without any consciousness that he was doing so of every advantage which history had put into his hand from the rival and opposite principle of compulsion.

Given the abstract method which Locke shared with all the writers of his schooi-even Spinoza is only a partial exceptiongiven also the conception of natural law which he shared with most of them, this inconsistency was inevitable. Try as hard as he will, no man can altogether escape from his historical surroundings, nor from the assumptions which they insensibly breed even 1 Contrat Social, first draft, 1. v. (Political Writings, i. p. 462).