338 XATl'RAL AXD POLITICAL RIGHTS vm 



In some respects, the work undoubtedly deserves 

 the success which it has won. Clearly and vigor- 

 ously written, though sometimes weakened by 

 superfluous rhetorical confectionery, " Progress and 

 Poverty " leaves the reader in no doubt as to Mr. 

 George's meaning, and thus fulfils the primary 

 condition of honest literature. Nor will any one 

 question the author's intense conviction that the 

 adoption of his panacea will cure the ills under 

 which the modern state groans. 



Mr. George's political philosophy is, in principle, 

 though by no means in all its details, identical 

 with "Rousseauism. It exhibits, in perfection, the 

 same a priori method, starting from highly question- 

 able axioms which are assumed to represent ab- 

 solute truth, and asking us to upset the existing 

 arrangements of society on the faith of deductions 

 from those axioms. The doctrine of " natural 

 rights " is the fulcrum upon which he, like a good 

 many other political philosophers, during the last 

 130 years, rests the lever wherewith the social 

 world is to be lifted away from its present founda- 

 tions and deposited upon others. In this respect, 

 he is at one, not only with Rousseau and his con- 

 scious or unconscious followers in France and in 

 England; but, I regret to say, may claim the 

 countenance of a far more scientifically minded and 

 practical school of political thinkers that of tin- 

 French Physiocratcs of the eighteenth century. 



Tin- founder of this school, Quesnay, tin 1 saj.';a- 



