Rousseau Part 28

[197] Decree of the Committee, April 20, 1794, reported by Billaud-Varennes. Compare ch. iv. of Rousseau's _Considerations sur le Gouvernement de Pologne_.

[198] Here are some of Saint Just's regulations:--No servants, nor gold or silver vessels; no child under 16 to eat meat, nor any adult to eat meat on three days of the decade; boys at the age of 7 to be handed over to the school of the nation, where they were to be brought up to speak little, to endure hardships, and to train for war; divorce to be free to all; friendship ordained a public inst.i.tution, every citizen on coming to majority being bound to proclaim his friends, and if he had none, then to be banished; if one committed a crime, his friends were to be banished. Quoted in Von Sybel's _Hist. French Rev._, iv. 49. When Morelly dreamed his dream of a model community in 1754 (see above, vol. i. p. 158) he little supposed, one would think, that within forty years a man would be so near trying the experiment in France as Saint Just was. Baboeuf is p.r.o.nounced by La Harpe to have been inspired by the Code de la Nature, which La Harpe impudently set down to Diderot, on whom every great destructive piece was systematically fathered.

[199] I forget where I have read the story of some member of the Convention being very angry because the library contained no copy of the laws which Minos gave to the Cretans.

[200] III. xiii.

[201] III. xv. He actually recommended the Poles to pay all public functionaries in kind, and to have the public works executed on the system of corvee. _Gouvernement de Pologne_, ch. xi.

[202] _Cont. Soc._, III. ii.

[203] II. i.

[204] II. ii.

[205] III. i.

[206] II. vi.

[207] II. iv.

[208] IV. vi.

[209] _Economie Politique_, p. 30.

[210] _Melanges_, p. 310.

[211] See for instance Green's _History of the English People_, i.

266.

[212] _Summa_, xc.-cviii. (1265-1273). See Maurice's _Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy_, i. 627, 628. Also Franck's _Reformateurs et Publicistes de l'Europe_, p. 48, etc.

[213] _Defensor Pacis_, Pt. I., ch. xii. This, again, is an example of Marsilio's position:--"Convenerunt enim homines ad civilem communicationem propter commodum et vitae sufficientiam consequendam, et opposita declinandum. Quae igitur omnium tangere possunt commodum et incommodum, ab omnibus sciri debent et audiri, ut commodum a.s.sequi et oppositum repellere possint." The whole chapter is a most interesting antic.i.p.ation, partly due to the influence of Aristotle, of the notions of later centuries.

[214] See Bayle's Dict., s.v. _Althusius_.

[215] _Lettres de la Montagne_, I. vi. 388.

[216] _Eccles. Polity_, Bk. i.; bks. i.-iv., 1594; bk. v., 1597; bks.

vi.-viii., 1647,--being forty-seven years after the author's death.

[217] Goguet (_Origine des Lois_, i. 22) dwells on tacit conventions as a kind of engagement to which men commit themselves with extreme facility. He was thus rather near the true idea of the spontaneous origin and unconscious acceptance of early inst.i.tutions.

[218] Of Civil Government, ch. xiii. See also ch. xi. "This legislative is not only the supreme power of the commonwealth, but sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once placed it; nor can any edict of anybody else, in what form soever conceived, or by what power soever backed, have the force and obligation of a law, which has not its sanction from that legislative which the public has chosen and appointed; for without this the law could not have that which is absolutely necessary to its being a law--the consent of the society; over whom n.o.body can have a power to make laws, but by their own consent, and by authority received from them." If Rousseau had found no neater expression for his doctrine than this, the Social Contract would a.s.suredly have been no explosive.

[219] See especially ch. viii.

[220] Hence the antipathy of the clergy, catholic, episcopalian, and presbyterian, to which, as Austin has pointed out (_Syst. of Jurisprudence_, i. 288, _n._), Hobbes mainly owes his bad repute.

[221] See Diderot's article on _Hobbisme_ in the Encyclopaedia, _Oeuv._, xv. 122.

[222] _Esprit des Lois_, I. i.

[223] _Cont. Soc._, II. vi. 50.

[224] Goguet has the merit of seeing distinctly that command is the essence of law.

[225] _Cont. Soc._, II. vi. 51-53. See Austin's _Jurisprudence_, i.

95, etc.; also _Lettres ecrites de la Montagne_, I. vi. 380, 381.

[226] See, for instance, letter to Mirabeau (_l'ami des hommes_), July 26, 1767. _Corr._, v. 179. The same letter contains his criticism on the good despot of the Economists.

[227] _L'Ordre Naturel et Essentiel des Societes Politiques_ (1767).

By Mercier de la Riviere. One episode in the life of Mercier de la Riviere is worth recounting, as closely connected with the subject we are discussing. Just as Corsicans and Poles applied to Rousseau, Catherine of Russia, in consequence of her admiration for Riviere's book, summoned him to Russia to a.s.sist her in making laws. "Sir," said the Czarina, "could you point out to me the best means for the good government of a state?" "Madame, there is only one way, and that is being just; in other words, in keeping order and exacting obedience to the laws." "But on what base is it best to make the laws of an empire repose?" "There is only one base, Madame: the nature of things and of men." "Just so; but when you wish to give laws to a people, what are the rules which indicate most surely such laws as are most suitable?"

"To give or make laws, Madame, is a task that G.o.d has left to none.

Ah, who is the man that should think himself capable of dictating laws for beings that he does not know, or knows so ill? And by what right can he impose laws on beings whom G.o.d has never placed in his hands?"

"To what, then, do you reduce the science of government?" "To studying carefully; recognising and setting forth the laws which G.o.d has graven so manifestly in the very organisation of men, when he called them into existence. To wish to go any further would be a great misfortune and a most destructive undertaking." "Sir, I am very pleased to have heard what you have to say; I wish you good day." Quoted from Thiebault's _Souvenirs de Berlin_, in M. Daire's edition of the _Physiocrates_, ii. 432.

[228] _Cont. Soc._, II. vii.

[229] _Corr._, v. 181.

[230] _Cont. Soc._, I. v., vi., vii.

[231] _Leviathan_, II., ch. xviii. vol. iii. 159 (Molesworth's edition).

[232] _Cont. Soc._, III. xvi.

[233] _Civil Government_, ch. viii. -- 99.

[234] I. vi. Especially the footnote.

[235] _Cont. Soc._, II. i.

[236] _Syst. of Jurisprudence_, i. 256.

[237] _Cont. Soc._, III. xv. 137. It was not long, however, before Rousseau found reason to alter his opinion in this respect. The champions of the Council at Geneva compared the _droit negatif_, in the exercise of which the Council had refused to listen to the representations of Rousseau's partisans (see above, vol. ii. p. 105) to the right of veto possessed by the crown in Great Britain. Rousseau seized upon this egregious blunder, which confused the power of refusing a.s.sent to a proposed law, with the power of refusing justice under law already pa.s.sed. He at once found ill.u.s.trations of the difference, first in the case of the printers of No. 45 of the _North Briton_, who brought actions for false imprisonment (1763), and next in the proceedings against Wilkes at the same time. If Wilkes, said Rousseau, had written, printed, published, or said, one-fourth against the Lesser Council at Geneva of what he said, wrote, printed, and published openly in London against the court and the government, he would have been heavily punished, and most likely put to death. And so forth, until he has proved very pungently how different degrees of freedom are enjoyed in Geneva and in England. _Lettres ecrites de la Montague_, ix. 491-500. When he wrote this he was unaware that the Triennial Act had long been replaced by the Septennial Act of the 1 Geo. I. On finding out, as he did afterwards, that a parliament could sit for seven years, he thought as meanly of our liberty as ever.

_Considerations sur les gouvernement de Pologne_, ch. vii. 253-260. In his _Projet de Const.i.tution pour la Corse_, p. 113, he says that "the English do not love liberty for itself, but because it is most favourable to money-making."

[238] III., xi., xii., and xiii.

[239] Mr. Freeman's _Growth of the English Const.i.tution_, c. i.

[240] _Cont. Soc._, III. xv. 140. A small ma.n.u.script containing his ideas on confederation was given by Rousseau to the Count d'Antraigues (afterwards an _emigre_), who destroyed it in 1789, lest its arguments should be used to sap the royal authority. See extract from his pamphlet, prefixed to M. Auguis's edition of the Social Contract, pp.

xxiii, xxiv.

[241] _Gouvernement de Pologne_, v. 246.