the support of an eccentric peer
like the Duke of Richmond; but the vast majority remained, if irritated,
unconvinced. It needed the realization that the new doctrines were part
of a vaster synthesis which swept within its purview the fortunes of
Europe and America before they would give serious heed; and even then
they met antagonism with nothing save oppression and hate. Yet the
doctrines remained; for thought, after all, is killed by reasoned answer
alone. And when the first gusts of war and revolution had passed, the
cause for which they stood was found to have permeated all classes save
that which had all to lose by learning.

We must not, however, commit the error of thinking of Price and
Priestley as representing more than an important segment of opinion. The
opposition to their theories was not less articulate than their own
defence of them. Some, like Burke, desired a purification of the
existing system; others, like Dr. Johnson, had no sort of sympathy with
new-fangled ideas. One thinker, at least, deserves some mention less for
the inherent value of what he had to say, than for the nature of the
opinions he expounded. Josiah Tucker, the Dean of Gloucester, has a
reputation alike in political and economic enquiry. He represents the
sturdy nationalism of Arbuthnot's _John Bull_, the unreasoned prejudice
against all foreigners, the hatred of all metaphysics as inconsistent
with common sense, the desire to let things be on the ground that the
effort after change is worse than the evil of which men complain. His
_Treatise on Civil Government_ (1781) is in many ways a delightful book,
bluff, hardy, full of common sense, with, at times, a quaint humor that
is all its own. He had really two objects in view; to deal, in the first
place, faithfully with the American problem, and, in the second, to
explode the new bubble of Rousseau's followers. The second point takes
the form of an examination of Locke, to whom, as Tucker shrewdly saw,
the theories of the school may trace their ancestry. He analyses the
theory of consent in such fashion as to show that if its adherents could
be persuaded to be logical, they would have to admit themselves
anarchists. He has no sympathy with the state of nature; the noble
savage, on investigation, turns out to be a barbaric creature with a
club and scalping knife. Government, he does not doubt, is a trust, or,
as he prefers, somewhat oddly, to call it, a quasi-contract; but that
does no