y that any set of people has a right to set up any
form of government it chooses, or any sect to establish any superstition
however detestable. All this would have delighted Burke, but Godwin
stands firmly in his path by asserting what he calls the one negative
right of man. It is in a word, the right to exercise virtue, the right
to a region of choice, a sphere of discretion, which his neighbours must
not infringe save by censure and remonstrance. When I am constrained, I
cease to be a person, and become a thing. "I ought to exercise my
talents for the benefit of others, but the exercise must be the fruit of
my own conviction; no man must attempt to press me into the service."

Government is an evil, and the business of human advancement is to
dispense with it as rapidly as may be. In the period of transition
Godwin had but a secondary interest, and his sketch of it is slight. He
dismisses in turn despotism, aristocracy, the "mixed monarchy" of the
Whigs, and the president with kingly powers of some American thinkers.
His pages on these subjects are vigorous, well-reasoned, and pointed in
their satire. It required much courage to write them, but they do not
contain his original contribution to political theory. What is most
characteristic in his line of argument is his insistence on the moral
corruption that monarchy and aristocracy involve. The whole standard of
moral values is subverted. To achieve ostentation becomes the first
object of desire. Disinterested virtue is first suspected and then
viewed with incredulity. Luxury meanwhile distorts our whole attitude to
our fellows, and in every effort to excel and shine we wrong the
labouring millions. Aristocracy involves general degradation, and can
survive only amid general ignorance. "To make men serfs and villeins it
is indispensably necessary to make them brutes.... A servant who has
been taught to write and read, ceases to be any longer a passive
machine."

From the abolition of monarchy and aristocracy Godwin, and indeed the
whole revolutionary school, expected the cessation of war. War and
conquest elevate the few at the expense of the rest, and cannot benefit
the whole community. Democracies have no business with war save to repel
an invasion of their territory. He thought of patriotism and love of
country much as did Dr. Price. They are (as Herve has argued in our own
day) specious illusions invented to render the multitude the blind
instruments of crooked de