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difficulty is to get men to do right, and that it is comparatively easy to know, or at all events to find out, what is right. Bentham writes as if he felt sure that you could depend upon morality to make its own way in the world, if it were once set upon a clear and systematic basis; and it might thus be argued, with some plausibility, that he tacitly recognises conscience as a judge, though he deprives it of all authority as a legislator.

The tendency of all Mr. Mill's speculations is still more strongly in the same direction. Probably this difference in their estimate of human nature explains the curious difference which may be observed in the estimates formed at different times of the orthodoxy of utilitarianism. Nothing for a long time could be regarded as more orthodox. Butler even, with all his strong tendencies in another direction, differs from Locke much more by addition than by positive dissent. Morality is, with him as much as with Locke, a system having for its object the attainment of happiness; but he adds to the sanction of supernatural rewards and punishments-which are, so to speak, the steam of Locke's engine-other more general considerations derived from an examination of the constitution of human nature.

Nothing, indeed, is better marked than the near approach to unanimity with which the divines, moralists, and lawyers of the eighteenth century lean to various forms of the utilitarian doctrine. Blackstone, perhaps, with his love of decorous common

places, affords as good an illustration as any one, and he sets out with the proposition that the law of God, or of nature, may be reduced to 'the one paternal precept,' 'that man should pursue his own true and substantial happiness.' In our own days, however, doctrines of this kind have got a character for heterodoxy. Bentham, Paley, and their living disciples are regarded as dangerous people, whose views, if they prevailed, would be inconsistent with the maintenance of established beliefs.

The reason appears to be twofold. On the one hand, the theological current has set away from that view of religion which regards it as a vast system of criminal law, justified sufficiently by the bare fact of its existence, and requiring no other justification. On the other hand, a system of morals founded on the specific and ascertainable utility of particular actions, and not on the utility of obeying a law which, whether reasonable or not, is backed by terrific sanctions, acts more or less as a rival to religion itself.

Constituted authorities in Church or State can obviously have no objection to a system which says, Polygamy being forbidden by the positive law of God, under pain of damnation, it is surely very foolish of you to marry two wives; but at the same time they may have the greatest possible objection to a system which says, Let us examine the consequences of polygamy, and determine whether it

is right or wrong by its tendency to promote human. happiness or misery. And they do not view with very different eyes a system (like that of Austin) which adds to such advice the further clause, When you have discovered by observation what is the effect of a given practice upon human happiness or misery, you may infer further that, if it promotes human happiness, it is enjoined, and that if it diminishes it, it is forbidden, by God.

Whatever may have been his place in the history of utilitarianism, Locke certainly does not appear to have given that doctrine the special edge and point which is communicated to it by working out its consequences systematically in the field of political speculation. We shall illustrate this more fully in speaking of his Essay on Civil Government, and on Toleration. But this is the place for the general observation that the principles upon which Locke discusses these matters tend straight to the application made of them by Hobbes before his time, and by Bentham and Austin long afterwards, to the general conception of justice and of rights.

A person who fully accepts Locke's metaphysics, and who carries out to their natural result his views as to the foundation of morality, is led of necessity to the conclusion that there are only two definite senses in which the words 'right' and 'justice' can be used. They may be used, that is, as synonymous with 'power secured by law,' and 'impartial adherence to any fixed rule whatever.' Or they may be used to

mean, by way of distinction, 'powers suitable to the production of general happiness and secured by law,' and adherence to fixed rules tending to produce general happiness.'

Neither Hobbes nor Locke fully worked out this, and the result is that Hobbes founds his system on a supposed contract, without showing satisfactorily why you should keep that or any other contract when you have made it; and that Locke, throughout the whole of his political works, writes (as we shall try to show hereafter) upon a set of tacit suppositions as to rights, their value, their transmission, and the like, which it is not easy to put into plain words, and which he probably did not realise distinctly himself. This, however, can hardly be imputed to him as a fault. He comes across morality and politics in his great speculative work only indirectly, and by the somewhat eccentric path which we have tried to trace; and in the Essay on Civil Government and the Letters on Toleration he was writing with a distinctly practical aim, and of course adopted that turn of language, and form of expression, which he thought would be most likely to produce the practical result which he had in view.

IX

LOCKE ON GOVERNMENT1

LOCKE'S Essay on Government, famous as it is, and wonderful as was its success, is essentially a popular performance, and is, to a considerable extent, to be regarded also as an occasional one. As Warburton's Essay on the Alliance between Church and State might more properly have been entitled an attempt to construct a theory of the Church of England, the Treatise on Government might have been called a defence of the Revolution of 1688 considered in the abstract; still it deserves attention on several accounts, both as being singularly characteristic of Locke and as marking a point in the history of English speculation.

The first part of the treatise, which is a refutation of Sir Robert Filmer, is in the present day a

1 Two Treatises of Government. In the former, the False Principles and Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer and his Followers are detected and overthrown. The latter is an Essay concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government. By John Locke.

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