II. Discuss Bodin's natural history theory of social and political revolutions. What essentially modern concepts are discovered?

12.

Trace the forces or currents which produced almost contemporaneously such different characters as Machiavelli, Luther, and Bodin.

THE

CHAPTER VIII

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORISTS

HE epoch-making work of Bodin suffered an eclipse for nearly two centuries through the domination of the philosophic concept of the Social Contract. Far from being new this doctrine had a wide diffusion among earlier writers, especially among churchmen who had long been familiar with the clash of legal systems. Furthermore, contractual organizations, as for example, business corporations, communistic societies, the Solemn League of the Covenant, The Mayflower Compact, were common during the period and impressed the minds of men with the value of utilitarian forms of voluntary association.

While, in the main, the theory in its earlier forms had reference to governmental compacts and did not involve a historic explanation. of social origins, nevertheless it pioneered the way, under the influence of historic developments of a later period, for a system that dominated social and political thinking during the 17th and 18th centuries.

From the list of writers who have discussed the subject, we have selected Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean Jacques Rousseau as typical for our study, first because the social contract constituted the basis of their social and political thinking and second because in their works, more than in those of all others, the theory was given its classical form and its wide currency.

HISTORIC BACKGROUND

The historic period in England of which the theory of the Social Contract furnished the philosophic interpretation, extended from the close of the reign of Elizabeth to the elevation of William and Mary to the throne.

Throughout the period of the early Stuarts, James I and Charles I, there was increasing conflict between absolutism in government and the rising spirit of popular independence.

The struggle between Puritanism and Anglicanism, persecution of the Catholics and the Gunpowder Plot, discord between the King and the people and between the King and Parliament, characterized the

reign of James I. Charles I was even more arbitrary than his father and soon plunged England into war with both France and Spain. Personal levies for funds, contrary to the rights established in the Magna Carta, precipitated a conflict with Parliament that resulted in the Petition of Right, 1628, which was in essence a series of concessions wrested from an unwilling ruler and served further to establish the contractual relations between sovereign and people. The strife was not ended, however, and in 1629 Charles dissolved Parliament and proceeded to rule without its assistance for eleven years, the period known as the personal government of Charles I.1

The Scotch Rebellion of 1637 involved the King in new difficulties and resulted in calling the "Long Parliament" in 1640, which proved hostile to the King and the conflict culminated in the civil war between the "Cavaliers" or Royalists and the "Roundheads," chiefly commoners and mostly Puritans. The defeat of the King's forces at Marston Moor and later at Naseby put the parliamentary party in undisputed control and Charles was convicted of treason and beheaded on January 30, 1649. By "The Agreement of the People" England was declared a Commonwealth and a Free State on May 19 of the same year. But Parliamentary government under military control proved unsuccessful, and after dissolving the "Long Parliament" and calling the "Nominal Parliament" to take its place, Oliver Cromwell established the Protectorate in 1653. The Protectorate was short-lived. The brilliant career of Cromwell was cut short by his death in 1658 and after a brief interval the army reassembled the surviving members of the "Long Parliament.” Cheyney says: "The period of the Commonwealth had been a time of great deeds, high ideals, and strong feelings, but they had led to no permanent and satisfactory settlement of the form of government. The nation was tired and sick of military rule and of political change. The people wanted to be ruled by civil authority and they wanted a settled government. They longed to return to old established ways and institutions that had existed before the feverish excitement and rapid changes of the civil war and the Commonwealth." 2

The recall of Charles II to the throne in 1660, upon the basis of the Declaration of Breda, reëstablished the monarchy with constitutional guarantees. But religious dissensions and political turmoil continued. The Habeas Corpus Act in 1679 added another document to the English Constitution. Charles II died in 1685 and was succeeded by his brother,

1Cf. Cheyney, A Short History of England, Ch. XIV.

James II. The tyranny of the new King and his avowed Catholicism aroused violent antagonism and upon the birth of a son in 1688 through whom a Catholic line of Kings would be maintained, revolt crystallized. William of Orange, and his wife Mary, eldest daughter of Charles II, were invited to come to England to preserve its liberties. James fled to France. A convention was called,-a parliament in everything except name,-which declared the throne vacant and elected William and Mary as sovereigns. This procedure, known as the Revolution of 1688, was the final victory of the people organized in Parliament over absolute monarchy. The theory of the Divine Right of Kings was repudiated and the Bill of Rights, the first declaration of the new Parliament, 1689, fixed the conditions under which sovereigns in England should in the future rule.3

Conditions in France differed greatly from those in England. The Estates General which had existed from the beginning of the 15th century and which for a time showed signs of paralleling the history of the English Parliament, held its last session in 1614 and thereafter for a century and three quarters, absolutism, which failed in England through Parliamentary control, was fastened securely upon the French nation.

The climax of despotic rule was attained under Louis XIV, 1643 to 1715. No Magna Carta or Bill of Rights existed and the Estates General had never held a check upon the collection and expenditure of public revenues. Consequently the King ruled by "Divine Right" and without responsibility to the people or to their representatives. In the exercise of this despotic freedom, though at first with the advice of a series of able ministers, Louis carried on wars of aggression, extended the French boundaries, controlled the public finance, persecuted the Protestants, oppressed the third estate, patronized literature and art, increased the splendor of his court, and elevated France to a position of prominence and power hitherto unattained in Western civilization.

Brilliant as was this personal achievement, however, as an experiment in government, it was based upon no secure moral foundations, and carried within itself the germs of its own destruction. Profligacy of manners spread downward through all ranks of the population and weakened the social morale. Religious persecution drove thousands of the most enlightened and industrious citizens from France and many

3

Cf. Cheyney, op. cit., Ch. XVI; also, Robinson, History of Western Europe, Ch. XXX.

prosperous industries collapsed. The whole burden of military exactions, of taxation and of productive labor fell upon the third estate, which was without representation or redress. Decadence followed ascendency and when Louis XV, 1715-1774, succeeded his greatgrandfather he inherited a legacy of overwhelming national debt, a dispirited and depleted army, a court at once the most magnificent, the most scandalous, and the most expensive in Western Europe, and an active social and political discontent which portended future disaster. His reign of forty-nine years was one of uninterrupted calamity and disaster to the nation and when, in turn, his grandson, Louis XVI, came to the throne in 1774 conditions were ripe for revolution, which finally overthrew the old régime and gave to France a written constitution. Although absolutism prevailed it was not without challenge. While the higher law courts or parliaments in the various provinces were in no sense legislative bodies, they had acquired the right to register and to publish the king's decrees and to enter protests which were often published and distributed widely. The King could not, therefore, alter what was regarded as "the fundamental law" without increasing popular discontent. Toward the end of the period the parliaments claimed that laws which they were required to register against their wills were invalid. Moreover, the writings of statesmen and philosophers were taking increasing hold of the French mind. As early as 1625 the great Dutch jurist Grotius had in his War and Peace laid the foundation of international law. During the reign of Louis XIV the body of social and political thought was given coherence through the work of Hobbes, The Leviathan, 1651, Pufendorf, On the Law of Nature and Nations, 1672, and Locke, Civil Government, 1689, and in the succeeding reign, Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 1746.

It was likewise an age of outspoken criticism against religious, social, and governmental abuses, the chief spokesman of which was the brilliant and cynical Voltaire.*

THOMAS HOBBES

Thomas Hobbes was born prematurely at the news of the wreck of the Spanish Armada, at Malmesbury, England, April 5, 1588. His father was a Wiltshire vicar and his mother of yeoman stock. He went to school at the age of four, and ten years later entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford, taking his degree in 1607. Next he became the tutor *Cf. Robinson, op. cit., Ch. XXXI and XXXIV.