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11.]

A PLEA FOR HANDCUFFS.

73

furnished with handcuffs as part of his outfit in the world, and put under guidance of those who do. Yes; to him, I should say, a private pair of handcuffs were much usefuller than a ballot-box, were the times once settled again, which they are far from being!" The intelligent reader, who will give his intelligence fair play, will find deeper meaning in these grim words of Mr. Carlyle than in all the tomes of Parliamentary eloquence ever printed.

CHAPTER III.

THE PEOPLE.

THE superstition of which I spoke in the last chapter, that political liberty is the inevitable result of government by numbers, has embodied itself in the Shibboleth of The People. I remember that the late M. Scherer once called this phrase "the great enigma of history." Among the many meanings assigned to it, two only, perhaps, need be mentioned for our present purpose. It may mean a nation, as it does when we speak of the English, the French, or the Spanish people. It may mean a particular section of a nation, the most numerous, the least wealthy, and the least cultivated. Used in this latter sense it very commonly becomes a Shibboleth, and an extremely effective one too. Thus was it applied when Mr. Gladstone, after delivering himself of his celebrated rodomontade about "the classes and the masses,' was enthusiastically saluted as " The People's William." Thus, when one of his humbler adherents, distinguished, if my memory is not at fault, as an apologist for mob violence, was dubbed, by a

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pleasing alliteration, "The People's Pickersgill." In the same spirit, an old woman, on seeing Robespierre carried to execution, exclaimed: "Il aimait bien le Peuple, celui-là." And so a certain American demagogue, whose name escapes me, when nearly choked by the fetid atmosphere of a crowded meeting, just managed to gasp out "How I love the smell of the dear People!" A hundred years ago Grattan insisted that "the populace differs much, and should be clearly distinguished, from the people." The tendency of political progress, from his time to ours, has been to ignore the difference and to rub out the distinction. Throughout the civilized world the populace is now, to a very great extent, identified with The People. And no wonder, for political power has everywhere gravitated to the populace. The Abbé Siéyès, in that famous pamphlet of his which so largely influenced the course of the French Revolution, wrote: "What has the third estate been, till now, in the political order? Nothing. What does it want to be? Something. What is it really? Everything." Oracular words, indeed, and truly presageful of the course of events. What is called democracy, or government by numbers, is an accomplished. fact, and equal universal suffrage is its accepted form. "Every man to count for one, and no man for more than one," was presented to us, a short time ago, by a popular politician as "The People's Gospel." And the claim made for this kind of

polity thus succinctly formulated is, not that this is a kind specially suitable for the age, but that it is the sole legitimate kind, the essential and only right constitution of society, the unique and infallible specific for the healing of the nations.

It

The People's Gospel must, on all hands, be allowed to possess one merit it is extremely simple. It is not a doctrine laboriously derived from experience and carefully verified by observation. It is in the strictest sense a priori. postulates that each individual "citizen" is entitled to an equal share of the national sovereignty; and to the majority of "citizens"-that is, to the representatives of the majority-it attributes supreme authority. The popular will, thus expressed by delegation, that is, the will of the most numerous portion of the adult males-I put aside, for the present, the question of Woman's Rights-is, in this new evangel, the source and fount of all power. And political science is held to consist in securing for it free expression and unimpeded effect.

Such are the essential tenets of The People's Gospel. The first thing we naturally ask concerning it is, Where did it come from? There can be no doubt about the answer. We have unquestionably derived it, mainly, from the teachings of JeanJacques Rousseau--though modified, of course, by the conditions of the time-however little many of

111.]

ROUSSEAU'S DOCTRINES.

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its most fervent preachers may be aware of its origin. And it has been made current coin by the great French Revolution. The first Napoleon went so far as to say, that without Jean-Jacques there would have been no Revolution. That I take leave to doubt. "The Revolution," M. Littré has well observed, "was inevitable, although it might have been different." But unquestionably the legislators of the Revolution derived their inspiration almost exclusively from Rousseau: and there is no exaggeration in Quinet's remark that, as the movement advances, it seems like an incarnation of him. The Jacobins were, to a man, his enthusiastic disciples. Robespierre gratefully acknowledges himself to have been formed by the continual study of his works. Rousseau's doctrines, indeed, of the natural goodness, rationality, equality, sovereignty of the individual, and of the social contract which is the basis of his omnipotent State, though new for the vast majority of his readers, were not original. His originality lies in the passionate enthusiasm which spoke straight to the heart. On the ears of a generation, jaded by sensuousness and tired of persiflage, his words fell as the voice of Nature herself. The very simplicity of his social theory seemed to vouch for its truth. Men felt that a prophet had at last arisen to give light to them that sat in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide their feet into the way of peace. As a matter of fact, his doctrine of the social contract

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