useful, seemed to relegate the whole political theory to the region of pure empiricism; and the compact, however useless in reality, could never be frankly cast aside. A curious complexity is thus introduced into his arguments, characteristic of the strange incapacity of so vigorous a mind to free itself from this relic of a metaphysical method. 2 9. Locke, like his predecessors, regards the compact as marking the transition from a 'state of nature,' but his state of nature differs materially from that of Hobbes. So far from being a state of anarchy, it has a 'law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone;'1 and that law is reason. According to Hobbes, promises are not binding in a state of nature; according to Locke, they are binding, 'for truth and keeping of faith belongs to men as men, and not as members of society.' Indeed, Locke's state of nature is almost the ideal state; he speaks of the 'golden age' in an apparently historical sense, and regards government as introduced by the 'ambition and luxury of future ages.' 3 The difference is characteristic. With Hobbes or Spinoza, though in very different senses, God becomes an expression for the absolute; he is the equal source of all phenomena, and right is necessarily identified with might. The God of Locke, less severely abstract, is capable of taking a side in human affairs; desiring the happiness of men, he gives them a definite rule; the God-given reason teaches us that we should not harm the 'life, health, liberty, or possessions' of each other, for men are the creatures of an infinitely wise Maker, and the servants of a sovereign Master. Thus God is retained to supply the necessary sanction to the social compact. The terms of the compact are that we should do good to each other; the reason for obeying it that God orders us to cultivate happiness as much as possible. The divine sanction does not apply to any particular form of government; and the will of God is to be inferred, as in the doctrine of the utilitarian theologians, by observing what causes produce the greatest amount of happiness. The imagination is thus satisfied by a supposed absolute basis, though the decision in any given case is left to experience. 10. This doctrine may, of course, lapse into simple utilitarianism. Paternal authority, for example, is justified simply on the ground that the care of parents is necessary for helpless children.' The obligations of marriage are defined by purely utilitarian considerations. It ought to be permanent in the human species because the infant does not, as in other species, become independent before another infant is born; and the bond regarded exclusively as a means of protecting the family is prolonged, at least, during the period of childbearing and the infancy of the children. The willingness to take the lower animals into account, and the strict limitation of the validity of marriage by considerations of immediate expediency, indicate the thoroughgoing utilitarian of the empirical school. In the sphere of pure politics, Locke naturally applies the same doctrine to the defence of the principles involved in the revolution. He insists in the strongest terms on the responsibility of all officials to the community;2 he justifies the sacred right of insurrection in language which would be fully applicable to the American War of Independence or the French Revolution; and enunciates with vigour the duty of a people whose rulers desert their trust, to make an appeal to heaven.' 3 II. But vigorously as Locke can put the utilitarian argument, we become sensible that it somehow fails to give him complete satisfaction. He wants some binding element to supplement the mere shifting considerations of expediency. We constantly meet with rights of an indefeasible nature, which have somehow obtained an authority independent of the source from which they are derived. He is forced to alternate between simple utilitarianism and an odd system of legal fictions. A general, he says, may hang a soldier for deserting his post, but may not take from him a farthing of his estate ; * and he gives the simple and satisfactory reason that one power is necessary to, whilst the other has no connection with, the good of the community. But he cannot answer the question: What right has a state to punish an alien for crimes committed in its jurisdiction? without this unlucky compact. Treatise ii. sec. 58. 2 Ib. sec. 152. Ib. sec. 168, and ch. xix. of the 'Dissolution of Government,' Punishment is not right because useful, but because, by transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity.'1 Why may I kill a thief who wants only to take my money? Because he has put himself into a state of war with me.'2 In such cases the legal fiction leads us by a roundabout path to the same conclusion as the argument from expediency; but elsewhere the perplexity becomes more intricate. Locke's teaching about slavery, for example, is curiously uncertain for so determined an advocate of human rights. In the Constitutions of Carolina, drawn by him in 1669, though they, perhaps, do not represent his opinions in all respects, the freemen are invested with absolute authority over their negro slaves. In his theoretical discussions he adopts the doctrine that a man cannot make himself a slave, because he cannot give away that which he does not possess namely, the power over his own life; but adds that slavery may be justified as the continuance of a state of war between a lawful conqueror and a captive. Here, it is evident that Locke, unable to see through the old metaphysical argument, has entirely abandoned the utilitarian test, and forgets the noblest part of his own theory. The justification of slavery jars strangely with a confutation of claims to arbitrary power. A more elaborate specimen of the same perplexity occurs in the chapter devoted to the origin of government by conquest. A rightful conqueror, he thinks, has power over the lives of the conquered, but not over their possessions-a doctrine which he expects to startle his readers, not as allowing too much to the conqueror, but as putting him under some restrictions. The conqueror, indeed, has a right to be paid for damages; but he argues ingeniously to show that they can seldom or never amount to the fee simple of the land.5 And he concludes that, at any rate, the descendants of the conquered must be freed from all liability, as every man is born free, and with a right to inherit his father's goods. The social contract is indispensable as a ground for the commonest rights. When it is broken by a state of war, any violence is justifiable; though elsewhere war becomes 1 Treatise ii. sec. 8. 2 Ib. sec. 18. Works, ix. 196. • Ib. sec. 184. A Treatise ii. sec. 180. 6 Ib. sec. 190. merely a quasi-legal process for the recovery of damages. He can only try, however, to limit it as much as possible, when it leads to results shocking to his sense of justice. 12. It is strange to see a man of such vast intellectual vigour, and, above all, with so firm a grasp of facts, allowing himself to be trammelled with this vexatious figment. It worries him and perplexes all his reasoning. It has to be alternately stretched and narrowed, and involves the most inconvenient hypotheses. And yet it evidently presented itself to him as the only alternative to a theory of arbitrary power. He is troubled for a time by the obvious suggestion that no such compact was ever made in an historical sense. Locke tries to support himself, as Sidney does with a much greater show of historical knowledge, by referring to special cases, such as Rome and Venice,' and to certain persons mentioned by Justin, who 'went away from Sparta with Palantus;' but he admits that, historically speaking, government probably arose from the paternal power, though, in all cases, it implied a trust for the good of the governed. But not only was the contract never made, but it would not, by Locke's own showing, have been binding if it had been made. The obligation could not be inherited. He maintains that every man has an indefeasible right to choose his own sovereign. By the practice of governments themselves, he argues, 'as well as by the law of right reason, a child is born a subject of no country or government.' Here we seem to be led straight to anarchy. If no man can be lawfully governed, except by his own individual consent, all government is a mere rope of sand. The bond, therefore, has to be patched up again by the familiar expedient of a tacit consent. A man who has expressly consented to the rule of any commonwealth 'is perpetually and indefeasibly obliged to be and remain unalterably a subject of it.' But a tacit consent is given by every owner of property; for so long as a man enjoys the protection of the laws which defend his property, he tacitly consents to be a subject of the commonwealth which imposes the laws. He may, indeed, at any time sell his property, and join any other commonwealth, or set up a commonwealth in the desert. The allegiance 5 1 Treatise ii. sec. 102. 2 Ib. sec. 103. Ib. sec. 110. 5 Ib. sec. 121. which in the first case is unalterable becomes in the second analogous to membership of a joint-stock company. 13. The doctrine is worked out in an elaborate form in one of his most ingenious chapters. In discussing the origin of property we come to the ultimate form of this Protean compact, which seems so strangely to alternate between reality and fiction. Property, according to Locke, exists antecedently to the formation of civil society, which was devised chiefly with a view to its protection. It has a character independent of any human conventions, and, therefore, supplies a base from which they may be inferred. Man has a right to monopolise part of the earth, which has been bestowed upon the race by God, because man has a right to his own labour, and, therefore, to anything he hath mixed his labour with.' The savage acquires a right to an acorn by the simple act of picking it up. In cultivated countries the chief value of land is that which has been added to it by labour; and a man has a right to so much as he can cultivate. He has annexed to it something' which was exclusively his own property; 2 and in this way right and conveniency went together, for as a man had a right to all he could employ his labour upon, so he had no temptation to labour for more than he could make use of.' 3 As before absolute rights seemed to involve anarchy, so here they seem to involve communism; and here again we escape by means of a tacit compact. Money is in this case the outward sign of the agreement. The use of money enables people to hold more land than they can cultivate by enabling them to exchange the surplus products; and as money is not perishable, a man may keep as much as he pleases without injuring society by useless waste. The expedient is in some sense arbitrary, as money has but a 'fantastical imaginary value; and as it has been adopted by 'a tacit and voluntary consent,' that right implies a right to the necessary consequences of the expedient-namely, the inequality of possession. Thus the use of money enables us to escape from universal equality which would seem to be the teaching of the law of nature. The tacit consent to the division of property becomes the main element, if not the whole substance, of the original con 1 Treatise ii. sec. 27. 2 Ib. sec. 32. Ib. sec. 51. 4 |