standard. Let us grant that the individual brought with him into the civil state a full-fledged moral code, the law of nature'; that with this code the State, from first to last, has nothing to do but to respect it; and that, apart from the mere repression of fraud or violence, the only way to respect it is to leave both its maintenance and its interpretation to the sole discretion, and the sole conscience, of the individual. It is a large concession; but, large though it is, not large enough to cover the needs—not even the barest and most crying needs of Locke and the individualists. Even with this start, they will still be unable to keep pace with the calls which the very most stinted ideal of the State is bound to make on them. This can easily be made plain.

The first result of demoralising the State is to demoralise the individual also. When the individual sees the State deliberately renouncing all thought for the welfare of its members, when he sees the ministers of the Law content to observe the mere outward forms of justice, while they grossly violate its spirit, what wonder that he should insensibly accustom himself to apply the same standard to his own personal dealings? that, when the State persistently refuses to level up the Law of the land to the law of nature,' he for his part should begin to level down the law of nature, the law written in his own heart and conscience,' to the Law of the land? In theory, the standard set up by the State, the standard of the Law Courts, may be no more than the minimum of social justice; in practice, it inevitably tends to become the maximum. The rank and file of the community are content if they do not sink below it. It is only the few who strive to rise above it.

It may be allowed at once that these consequences do not follow in the purely private relations of life: nor in the family, nor in the dealings of friend with friend. The reason is that this is the region strictly of the individual and is therefore little, if at all, affected by the standards which prevail in the wider world of economic, or purely civic, relations. But, directly we pass from the narrower to the wider circle, who will deny that under a full-blown individualism, or as near an approach to it as the happy inconsistency of human nature has ever been able to tolerate, such consequences have always tended to result? Who will deny that, in the hey-day of the individualist triumph, the employed was habitually treated as a mere chattel by his employer? that the bond between them was on principle reduced to a pure cash nexus,' from which all moral, all human considerations were relentlessly ruled out?

There may be a touch of exaggeration in the indictment of Past and Present and Latter Day Pamphlets. But when due allowance, and more, has been made for this, it remains true that the condition of England at that time was a scandal of which, even at this day, it

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is impossible to think without shame and indignation. And let it not be forgotten that this scandal was the direct fruit of an individualist theory, brutally conceived and shamelessly defended: a theory which, in the teeth of its manifest consequences, was upheld through thick and thin by economists and politicians and which, in the hands of the employers responsible for its working—there were happily not a few exceptions-became a mere cloak for the grossest selfishness and cruelty. Once more, it is impossible to banish morality from the life of the State without banishing it— and that, in some of the most vital matters-from the life of the individual also.

There are two tests by which any political theory-or indeed, any moral theory either-must stand or fall. The first, and the less important, is its inherent consistency. The second is the general tendency of its practical consequences: the preponderant effect, for good or for evil, that it is likely to have upon the life of any community, upon any party or group of men, that may adopt it. Each of these tests is fatal to the theory of Locke. It is not consistent with itself: for it can only be made plausible by the tacit acceptance of certain corporate instincts, of certain immemorial practices, which are wholly incompatible with its initial assump

Its practical consequences are, in the main, disastrous. It reduces the State to a mere aggregate of individuals, without cohesion and without any warrant of endurance. It robs the State of all sovereignty; and, with this, of all power to provide for the moral and intellectual welfare of its members within, or even for its own protection against any enemy from without. Lastly, by lowering the moral standard of the State, it inevitably tendsat least in regard to all economic and civic relations-to lower the moral standard of the individual also.

As a theory, therefore, the scheme of Locke and the individualists must unhesitatingly be rejected. So far from embracing all the elements which go to make the life of the State—and that is the least we can demand of any adequate theory-it leaves out precisely those which are most distinctive and most vital. So far from widening the civic interests of the individual, it contracts them beyond measure.

Nevertheless, to see nothing but evil in the individualist system-above all, as expounded in Civil Government—would be both idle and unjust. Taken at the worst, the individualist theory does at least lay hold of what is and must always remain one of the two chief elements in the life of the State: the element of individual will, energy and initiative. And thanks to its very one-sidedness, it does so with incomparable force. What is more, at the time when Locke wrote, in the lassitude that followed the Reformation

and the Puritan Revolution, this was perhaps the element which was in most danger of going under: the element therefore which, for the welfare of Europe, there was most need to foster and sustain.

At the end of the seventeenth century, the two torch-bearers of Europe-politically speaking, the only two countries which counted beyond their own borders-were France and England. In the one, absolute monarchy was triumphant; in the other, it had twice bid for the mastery and twice—the first time after a desperate struggle― been defeated by armed force alone. The second attempt, as is well known, gave the occasion for Locke's treatise; and scorning mere palliatives, such as the 'recovery of the ancient liberties of England,' he boldly assails the evil at its root. The only alternative to despotic government, he urges in effect, is selfgovernment: the only antidote to the sovereignty of the monarch is the sovereignty of the people. And to him, as we have seen, the sovereignty of the people-a term which he never uses 1——— means the sovereignty of the individual. The rights of Society are, in fact, merely the rights of the individuals who compose it. And it is only by preserving those rights intact that Society can be made endurable: that it can be saved from hardening into the most intolerable tyranny. Stripped of all accretions, all concessions to established fact, that is the principle which lies at the root of Civil Government. And whatever the dangers which lurk behind it, we must at least admit that it is a principle perfectly clear-cut and universally intelligible: a principle, moreover, which by its bold appeal to individual freedom and individual enterprise did in fact give an impulse to political self-reliance, to industrial-indirectly, even to intellectual and imaginative-activity for which Europe would otherwise have looked in vain. Hence the astonishing influence which it wielded both upon thinkers and upon practical reformers, alike in France, England and America, for at least a century after its publication.

In England, for the greater part of that century, its influence was rather negative than positive. It went rather to restrain the community from interfering with what were regarded as individual rights and interests than to give the State a new form, or to pour new life into the old one. That was because the old forms, with all their faults, were not immoderately oppressive: because the nation at large still believed-more firmly, in fact, than it had any right to believe-in their efficacy and vitality. In France, however, for the converse reason, the effect was exactly the reverse. There, naturally enough, the theory of Locke became the gospel of the opposition; and the institutions which he had heedlessly associated

1 It was Jurieu who first brought the phrase, if not into use, at least into currency.

with it-the mixed monarchy, the elaborate checks and counterchecks, of England-became the ideal which many, though by no means all, of them desired to transplant bodily into their own country. It is enough to recall Montesquieu's enthusiasm for the constitution of England. It is enough to remember that even Rousseau, at the very moment when he was overthrowing the doctrine of Civil Government, conceived himself to be working 'exactly upon the principles of Locke': a belief which seems still to be shared by the majority of his English readers.

Thus the theory of Locke, in this country the bulwark of existing institutions, was a revolutionary force in France. For the institutions, which the one country was rapidly outgrowing, would have been a boon almost past praying for to the other. The individualism, which to the one nation was a cloak for the selfish tyranny of the rich, was the strongest lever against that tyranny in the other. But go on to the end of the century, and the positions are reversed. When the revolutionary spirit was at last let loose, when the old order, even the monarchy itself, was overthrown in France, then the insufficiency of individualism for constructive purposes, or even for the elementary duty of national defence, stood revealed to all who had eyes to see. And it was not

in the name of Locke, but in the name of Rousseau-not on the strength of individual rights, but by the energy of a 'general will' acting, and often acting ruthlessly enough, with a single eye to the 'public welfare'-that the Revolution was carried through. The reaction upon the civic life of this country was what might have been expected. The Government took fright, not altogether without reason, at the excesses committed across the Channel. Monstrously repressive measures were put in force against the friends of the Revolution on this side of the water. And the weapon with which these measures were resisted was a sterner appeal to individual rights, a more passionate rally to the individualist standard, than this country had ever seen. In the heat of the conflict, the true meaning of Locke's argument was at last flashed upon men's minds. After a full century of misinterpretation, the author at length came by his own. And it was in Civil Government, as expounded to them by their leaders, that the revolutionaries of Sheffield found the authentic gospel of their aspirations and the surest warrant for their claims.

The revolutionaries of 1792 were the direct ancestors of the radical Reformers and the Chartists. Until the rise of the Trades Unions, the principles for which they strove were the chief force that made for political progress in this country. But, powerful to destroy, they were of no might to build again. And when the need of doing so was at last recognised, then the theory of Locke, the

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creed of the individualist, was of necessity thrown aside. sounder conception of the State-a conception which found room not only for the rights, but also for the duties, of man-inevitably and justly took its place. And it was none too soon. In its application to the sphere of industry, to the rights of labour, to the relation between labour and capital, individualism had done more harm in a century than could be undone in generations. Locke and the economists were responsible for the mischief. It was reserved for teachers of a wider and more humane vision-for Rousseau and the Saint-Simonians, for Carlyle and Ruskin-to repair it.