THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION. 291 



defensive oi* offensive, and has originally no necessary, and often no 

 actual, relation to the preservation of order among the combined indi- 

 viduals. Once more, let us admit the indefensible assumption that to 

 escape the evils of chronic warfare, which must otherwise continue 

 among them, the members of a community enter into a " pact or cove- 

 nant," by which they all bind themselves to surrender their primitive 

 freedom of action, and subordinate themselves to the will of a ruling 

 power agreed upon ; * accepting, also, the implication that their de- 

 scendants forever are bound by that covenant which their great-great- 

 great, etc., grandfathers made for them. Let us, I say, not object to 

 these data, but pass to the conclusions Hobbes draws. He says : 



For, where no covenant bath preceded, there hath no right been transferred, 

 and every man has right to every thing ; and, consequently, no action can be 

 unjust. But when a covenant is made, then to break it is unjust, and the defi- 

 nition of INJUSTICE is no other than the not performance of covenant. . . . There- 

 fore, before the names of just and unjust can have place, there must be some 

 coercive power to compel men equally to the performance of their covenants by 

 the terror of some punishment greater than the benefit they expect by the 

 breach of their covenant.t 



Were people's characters in Hobbes's day really so bad as to war- 

 rant his assumption that none would perform their covenants in the 

 absence of a coercive power and threatened penalties ? In our day " the 

 names of just and unjust can have place" quite apart from recogni- 

 tion of any coercive power. Among my friends I could name half a 

 dozen whom I would implicitly trust to perform their covenants with- 

 out any "terror of some punishment"; and over whom the require- 

 ments of justice would be as imperative in the absence of a coercive 

 power as in its presence. Merely noting, however, that this unwar- 

 ranted assumption vitiates Hobbes's argument for State-authority, and 

 accepting both his premises and conclusion, we have to observe two 

 significant implications. One is that State-authority, as thus derived, 

 is a means to an end, and has no validity, save as subserving that end : 

 if the end is not subserved, the authority, by the hypothesis, does not 

 exist. The other is, that the end for which the authority exists, as 

 thus specified, is the enforcement of justice — the maintenance of equi- 

 table relations. The reasoning yields no warrant for other coercion 

 over citizens than that which is required for preventing direct aggres- 

 sions, and those indirect aggressions constituted by breaches of con- 

 tract ; to which, if we add protection against external enemies, the 

 entire function implied by Hobbes's derivation of sovereign authority 

 is comprehended. 



Hobbes argued in the interests of absolute monarchy. His modern 

 admirer, Austin, had for his aim to derive the authority of law from 

 the unlimited sovereignty of one man, or of a number of men, small 



* Hobbes's " Collected Works," vol. iii, p. 159. f Ibid., pp. 130, 131. 



