Nature and the primitive Communism (their doing so being partly voluntary); that so far as voluntary it was a fatal and nearly irreparable mistake. But he is far from urging any attempt to return to it (other than by endeavouring after a more natural and less conventional life), because, on his principles a civilized society can no more return on its old steps than an old man can become young again; civilized society being in his view a society in old age, and subject to all the pains and infirmities of old age. The most that can now be done is to make the best of the case, to mitigate the infirmities and defer decay by good laws and institutions well administered, and by good manners and morals in harmony with the laws. In the "Contrat Social," he tells us that in a properly constituted government the General Will should prevail. In the "Economie Politique," he further tells us that virtue and morality consist in conforming to the general will as expressed in good laws. If there were generally such conformity, if such laws, wisely framed as expressions of the general will, were obeyed by the people and administered by the magistrates and elected rulers; above all, if the people were early trained to respect the laws, and to love their country, life even in our modern effete societies would not be at all a bad thing-in fact, he adds, regardless of consistency, "there would be little wanting to make the people happy." This is undoubtedly a contradiction of the doctrine in his former work; but the essential thing to note is that we have here his later ideas; that they bore memorable fruit thirty years later when the attempt was made to realize them in France; and that the doctrine of the supremacy of the will of the people, underlies, nominally at least, all modern popular governments. But He repeats that a primary aim of such a government should be to prevent too great inequality of property; and the equalizing process should be effected, "not by taking riches from their possessors, but by giving to all the means of increasing wealth; not by building hospitals or almhouses for the poor, but by guaranteeing the citizens from becoming poor, by laws and institutions"; for, as he pointedly says, it is precisely because there is such a powerful tendency in things to inequality, that it must be met by the constant counteraction and pressure of laws and institutions. In various specified ways, some economically sound, some erroneous, governments can aid in the general diffusion of wealth. above all things it is necessary to first form good citizens, and to have good citizens it will be necessary to take them early in hand; "it will be necessary to educate the children." Education should be a function of the state, not of the parent. Then follow his later views on private property; in which we find the statement that seems at first remarkable as coming from Rousseau, "that the rights of property are the most sacred of all the rights of citizens, more so in some respects than liberty itself." Strange too that we find good arguments against curtailing inheritance, which have been reproduced by Mill ("Pol. Economy," Book II., chap. ii.): one being the sensible and well-known one that the children are frequently co-labourers with the parent; the other that there is nothing so unsettling in a state as great vicissitudes of fortune in its citizens which the abolition of inheritance would involve. It is chiefly by judicious taxation, on which he reasons ingeniously and acutely, that Rousseau, equally with Montesquieu, would prevent inequality. "It is by taxes like these," he says, "which ease the poor, and fall on the rich, that we must prevent the continual increase of inequality of fortune, the enslavement by the rich of a multitude of labourers and useless servants, the multiplication of idle men in the large cities, and the desertion of the country districts." In the first place, other things equal, the man who has ten times the wealth of another, should pay ten times his tax; secondly, one who has no more than necessaries, should not pay any tax. The man who has more, if the need should arise, might fairly be required to pay the whole surplus above necessaries. The rich draw more advantages from government and the social union; they get all the lucrative posts, sinecures, favours, exemptions. The law favours them, takes every pains to protect them, but hardly ever punishes them. "The rich man gets a hundred things, for which he pays not a sou." The poor man gets nothing, neither goods nor succour. With the greatest difficulty can he get even justice. Then the losses of the poor are less reparable, and the difficulty of acquisition is infinitely greater. Moreover, what the poor pay in taxes is for ever lost to them in the money form, while it is mostly into the hands of rich people-those who have a share in the govern ment, or those who have influence with these-that soon or late the product of the tax passes. On all these grounds taxation should have regard to the different conditions of the contributors, and especially as respects superfluities, and so should not fall, as it generally does, on the people, but on the rich. Sumptuary taxes,-taxes on costly articles, livery, carriages, the mass of objects of luxury, or amusement—are recommended as forming the least onerous and most certain means of raising a revenue for the State. Thus then, finally, we see that Rousseau was a Socialist. He is a preacher of equality, and the most powerful. The greatest evil is inequality. A good government should aim by good laws and wise. measures at preventing inequality from growing too great. Education should be a state function. But all this is Socialism, and State Socialism; not Socialism in the new sense of collective ownership and cooperative labour, because this particular form of the general thing would have been irrelevant to the economical circumstances of the time, and inconceivable before the industrial revolution, and the large system of production and concentration of capital in few hands which was the result of that revolution, itself scarcely then begun. Something, indeed, like the idea of land nationalization he had in his mind; to be effected by the relief of the peasants from accumulated feudal and fiscal burdens, so as to leave them owners, as was in fact largely done by the Re In the "Economie Politique," in particular, he gives expression to it. volution; but he had no idea of the nationalization of capital, the favourite idea of Collectivist Socialists. He aimed in general at the diffusion of property, which if it were done and could be maintained, the better part of the new Socialists' end would be secured without confiscation and the danger attending a general social transformation. VI. WITH respect to Rousseau's direct influence on Socialistic development, M. Janet thinks that he has "furnished to the Socialists formulas rather than arguments;" but allows that "he is incontestably the founder of modern communism." On the other hand, M. de Laveleye traces the Socialism of Fichte, which contains Collectivism in germ, as well as the Anarchism of Bakunin, to the ideas of Rousseau. The Abbé Mably, however, M. Janet admits, is a disciple of Rousseau. In his "Législation ou Principes des Lois" (1776) Mably attacks private property, and defends Communism as the natural system; so natural that the real difficulty is to explain how property ever arose. Men are equal; as they issue from the hands of Nature, they are all similar. It is the inequality of fortune that makes, through inequality of education, the great seeming inequality of talents and ability. Some natural differences of gift there are, but they are not great, and they bear 5 5 In maintaining this proposition, Mably is in agreement with Hobbes for the most part, but not with the St. Simonian |