sources
of power.

IV

The basis of revolutionary doctrine was already present in England when,
in 1762, Rousseau published his _Contrat Social_. With its fundamental
doctrines Locke had already made his countrymen familiar; and what was
needed for the appreciation of its teaching was less a renaissance than
discontent. So soon as men are dissatisfied with the traditional
foundations of the State, a gospel of natural rights is certain to make
its appearance. And, once the design of George III had been made
familiar by his treatment of Chatham and Wilkes, the discontent did not
fail to show itself. Indeed, in the year before the publication of
Rousseau's book, Robert Wallace, a Scottish chaplain royal, had written
in his _Various Prospects_ (1761) a series of essays which are at once
an anticipation of the main thesis of Malthus and a plea for the
integration of social forces by which alone the mass of men could be
raised from misery. In the light of later experience it is difficult not
to be impressed by the modernist flavour of Wallace's attack. He
insists upon the capacity of men and the disproportion between their
potential achievement and that which is secured by actual society. Men
are in the mass condemned to ignorance and toil; and the lust of power
sets man against his neighbor to the profit of the rich. Wallace traces
these evils to private property and the individualistic organization of
work, and he sees no remedy save community of possessions and a
renovated educational system. Yet he does not conceal from himself that
it is to the interest of the governing class to prevent a revolution
which, beneficent to the masses, would be fatal to themselves; nor does
he conceive it possible until the fertility of men has been reduced to
the capacity of the soil. He speculates upon the chances of a new spirit
among men, of an all-wise legislator, and of the beneficent example of
colonies upon the later Owenite model. But his book is contemporaneous
with our own ideas rather than with the thoughts of his generation. Nor
does it seem to have excited any general attention.

It is five years after Rousseau that we see the first clear signs of his
influence. Naturally enough the men amongst whom the new spirit spread
abroad were the Nonconformists. For more than seventy years they had
been allowed existence without recognition. None had more faithfully
supported the new dynasty than they; none had been paid less f