rouse themselves, and endeavor to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was first erected."

Elsewhere, in the writings of Jefferson, we find him advocating the theory of a social contract in its most radical form and pushing it to conclusions almost anarchical in their tendency. In the midst of the earlier stages of the French Revolution, he wrote a letter from Paris, on September 6, 1789, addressed to Madison. In this letter he propounds an extreme opinion on the necessity of popular consent to the existence of the organic law of the state. The following are extracts from this remarkable epistle :

"The question whether one generation of men has a right to bind another seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequence as not only to merit decision, but place among the fundamental principles of every government. The course of reflection in which we are immersed here, on the elementary principles of society, has presented this question to my mind; and that no such obligation can be transmitted I think very capable of proof. I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living." He proceeds to show to his own satisfaction that the sole basis of a right of inheritance is "the law of the society." Then he infers that "what is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals." He argues that the earth belongs to each generation "during its course, fully and in its own right. The second receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on." When a whole generation, that is, the whole society dies * * * * * and another generation or society succeeds, this forms a whole, and there is no superior who can give their territory to a third society, who may have lent money to their predecessors beyond their faculty of paying." In this way the attempt is made to demonstrate that a debt contracted by one generation, or by a government at a particular time, is not binding on any

generation after. He limits the duration of the contracting party to thirty-four years. "Every constitution, then, and every law naturally expires at the end of thirty-four years." This is not a merely tentative speculation. "Examination," we are told, will prove it to be solid and salutary." In a subsequent letter, Mr. Jefferson revises his numerical calculation. He has come to see that the half of a contracting society disappears in nineteen years. "Then the contracts, constitutions, and laws of every such society become void in nineteen years from their date." The period here allowed for the rightful existence of the constitution and laws of a political community is, as one has said, shorter than the life-time of a horse. That these were not temporary, fleeting opinions is proved by the fact that twenty-four years later, in 1813, and again, only two years before his death, under date of June 5, 1824, Jefferson advances these same propositions in almost identical language. This shows that he had not been convinced by Madison's pretty obvious objections to this superficial theorizing. If the earth belongs to the living, what shall be said of the improvements made by those before us, and the services rendercd, and the debts incurred, for our sake? Unless temporary laws were kept in force by additional acts prior to their expiration, "all the rights depending on positive laws, that is, most of the rights of property, would become defunct." Madison falls back on the idea of a tacit consent given to existing laws through the very fact of their non-revocation. He goes farther, and raises the question, on what principle is it that the voice of the majority binds the minority. This, he answers, is not a law of nature, but is the result of a compact, and a compact in the making of which there was unanimity. "Rigid theory" must pre-suppose such a unanimity. Unless there. be this tacit agreement, no person on attaining to mature age is bound by the acts of the majority. The good sense of Madison enables him to riddle the doctrine of his correspondent, but Madison struggles in the meshes of the social compact theory, and can think of no escape from its practi

cal absurdities except through assumptions not less arbitrary and artificial than the hypotheses which they are invented to bolster up.

The social compact theory, considered as an historical explanation of the origin of states, is, of course, true only to a very limited extent. Political communities, as a rule, have had other origins. It is at best a legal fiction, convenient, as other legal fictions may be, as a mode of stating the reciprocal character of the rights and obligations of rulers and the ruled respectively. When taken for a political dogma, as a test of the validity of existing systems of polity, it is a mischievous error. When we interpret it, with Burke, as a mode of saying that every rational will is presupposed to coincide with the right order of things; or, with Blackstone, as a way of asserting that reciprocal duties are laid upon rulers and the governed, it conveys a truth. When we take another step, and affirm that no government which was not established by general or unanimous consent, can claim allegiance, and further maintain that the assent of every generation, nay, of every individual, is the condition of his obligation to obdience, we introduce a political heresy, the influence of which is very likely to be disastrous. The true view to take is, that the existing form of state, regarded as a fact, may, or may not, be due to an express agreement at some former epoch. But the obligation of the individual to obedience does not depend on his having had a share in forming the state, or on his having a share at present in the management of it. This, be it observed, is not to approve of the denial of political power to those who are capable of exercising it. It is easy to suppose cases where the withholding of all share in the government from those who can be safely trusted with political power is both arbitrary and inexpedient. What form of government is best, can only be decided by reference to the character and history of the particular nation. We are speaking now only of what the individual may demand, as a condition of his obeying "the powers that be." For one born under a particular system, it is only necessary to know that the established system secures the great ends of government, and lays upon him no com

mand inconsistent with his duty to God. Yet in supposable cases, even the withholding of political power may be so flagrant an evil as to warrant resistance. We require some guaranty that natural rights shall not be violated. Such a guaranty may be afforded by the actual possession of a share of political power, especially when the individual is one of a class the wealthy class for example-who are thus enabled, by uniting their political strength, peacefully to counteract threatened injustice. But when political rights are demanded as a guaranty for the secure possession of natural rights, the claim is equivalent simply to a demand for a government that shall defend the latter. Political rights are thus claimed only as a means to an end. The two categories of rights are properly distinguished.

Yale University.

GEORGE P. FISHER.

ENGLISH LABOR IN AND OUT OF PARLIAMENT

THE

IN 1893.

HE quickening effect of the Parliamentary Reform Act of 1884 is now apparent in almost every department of English national life, perhaps in none more so than in all matters affecting labor. And it is natural that this should be so. Until 1885 the working classes in England could not be said to be adequately represented in the House of Commons. Those living in the boroughs had been voting for Members of Parliament since 1868, from the first general election which followed the Reform Act of 1867; but those living outside the boroughs were altogether unrepresented, and it was not until 1885 that the working classes as a whole possessed and exercised the parliamentary franchise. When once they possessed the franchise, and their votes became the objects of the solicitude of politicians, it is not to be wondered at that the working classes sought to turn their power to their own advantage as soon as possible.

The new democracy in Ireland, however, stole in ahead of the new democracy in England. Before the new working class electors in England had realized the value of their political possession, and could organize and make themselves felt in Parliament, Ireland, where the leaders at any rate of the new electorate were already well organized, stepped in with her demand for Home Rule. This demand had taken a parliamentary form nearly ten years prior to the Reform. Act of 1884, but the Reform Act and the Redistribution of Seats Act by which it was accompanied, vastly increased the direct power of the Irish Nationalists, gave a new potency to the demand for Home Rule, and, until 1888, Ireland and her claims monopolized the attention of Parliament. When it was not Home Rule, as in the session of 1886, there was a Land Act or a Coercion Act; and for three or four years the new democracy in England got absolutely nothing from the enlarged and reformed House of Commons. But if Ireland thus for a time prevented the English working classes from