FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS OF POLITICS 289 



the first half of the century, the conflict between the two became 

 well defined and furious with the triumph of constitutionalism in 

 1848-1849. Both the opposing systems derived their lineage from 

 the earlier liberalism. The socialist claimed that, with the people 

 in control of the governmental organization, there could be no limit 

 set to the power which they could justly exercise; restrictions that 

 had been insisted upon before, when political authority was in the 

 hands of the one or the few, had no justification, he declared, when 

 authority was in the hands of all. The sovereignty of the people 

 and the welfare of the people he interpreted as involving necessarily 

 the supremacy and the primary interest of the classes which had 

 just obtained political recognition, and the powers of government, he 

 insisted, should be used as freely for the benefit of these classes as they 

 had heretofore been used for the benefit of the classes now deposed. 

 The individualist, on the other hand, steadfastly maintained that 

 the rights of man had not ceased to exist with the triumph of demo- 

 cracy. The end of government, whether controlled by classes or by 

 masses, was to protect these rights, not to override them. The 

 state, indeed, had no other cause for its existence than to assist the 

 individual in developing the powers that are in him, and any appli- 

 cation of the public resources to other ends than this was tyranny 

 and despotism. 



This modern doctrine of individualism, having its source in the 

 idealism of the German Fichte and Humboldt at the beginning of 

 the nineteenth century, received a very perfect development through 

 the works of the English Mill and Spencer in the fifties and sixties. 

 It is, indeed, not too much to say that the whole magnificent system 

 of Synthetic Philosophy was wrought out by Spencer to furnish a 

 scientific foundation for the individualist thesis which he laid down in 

 the first edition of his Social Statics. England at this date had just 

 abandoned her ancient system of agricultural protection, and her 

 philosophers, followed by many in other lands, were enthusiastically 

 in favor of extending over the whole field of commerce and industry 

 the laissez-faire which had been applied to English agriculture. 

 The paternalism, which, after all, lies always close behind the fra- 

 ternalism of the socialist, was, without doubt, distinctly overpowered 

 by that ardor for individualistic liberty which was so widespread in 

 the two decades following the middle of the century. If since then 

 socialism and paternalism have gained the upper hand, and govern- 

 ment is now conceived rather as an agency for the positive promo- 

 tion of the interests of those classes who control it, the result may 

 be traced to that passion for nationalism which supplanted the 

 passion for constitutionalism. With the cry that industrial inde- 

 pendence was essential to the complete national life, the United 

 States and Germany took the lead in reversing the tendency which 



