ON THE NATURAL INEQUALITY OF MEN. 763 



by a good many people to be the Magna Charta of the human 

 race. " Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity/' is still the war-cry of 

 those, and they are many, who think, with Rousseau, that human 

 sufferings must needs be the consequence of the artificial arrange- 

 ments of society, and can all be alleviated or removed by political 

 changes. 



The intellectual impulse which may thus be fairly enough con- 

 nected with the name of the Genevese dreamer has by no means 

 spent itself in the century and a half which has elapsed since it 

 was given. On the contrary, after a period of comparative obscu- 

 rity (at least outside France), Rousseauism has gradually come to 

 the front again, and at present promises to exert once more a very 

 grave influence on practical life. The two essays to which I have 

 referred are, to all appearance, very little known to the present 

 generation of those who have followed in Rousseau's track. None 

 the less is it true that his teachings, filtered through innumerable 

 channels and passing under other names, are still regarded as the 

 foundations of political science by the existing representatives of 

 the classes who were so much attracted by them when they were 

 put forth. My friend Mr. John Morley, who probably knows 

 more about Rousseau and his school than anybody else,* must 

 have been entertained (so far as amusement is possible to the 

 subject of the process of " heckling ") when Rousseau's plats, the 

 indigestibility of which he exposed so many years ago, were set 

 before him as a wholesome British dish ; the situation had a cer- 

 tain piquancy, which no one would appreciate more keenly. 



I happened to be very much occupied upon subjects of a totally 

 different character, and had no mind to leave them, when the nar- 

 rative of this occurrence and some letters to which it gave rise, 

 appeared in the " Times." But I have very long entertained the 

 conviction that the revived Rousseauism of our day is working 

 sad mischief, leading astray those who have not the time, even 

 when they possess the ability, to go to the root of the superficially 

 plausible doctrines which are disseminated among them. And I 

 thought it was my duty to see whether some thirty years' training 

 in the art of making difficult questions intelligible to audiences 

 without much learning, but with that abundance of keen practical 

 sense which characterizes English workmen of the better class, 



of the United States, returned to France endowed with vastly greater energy and dignity, 

 and that "of all 'the principles of 1789' it is the one which has been least strenuously 

 assailed, which has most thoroughly leavened modern opinion, and which promises to modify 

 most deeply the constitution of societies, and the politics of states" ("Ancient Law," p. 96). 

 * If I had not reason to think that Mr. Morley's " Rousseau," and Sir Henry Maine's 

 " Ancient Law," especially the admirable Chapters III and IV, must be unknown to 

 many political writers and speakers, and a fortiori to the general public, there would be no 

 excuse for the present essay, which simply restates the case which they have so exhaust- 

 ively treated. 



