ntially Spartan; the
people were enjoined to think little about foreigners, to give
themselves little concern about commerce, to suppress stamped paper,
and to put a tithe upon the land.[194]

The chapter on the Legislator is in the same region. We are again
referred to Lycurgus; and to the circumstance that Greek towns usually
confided to a stranger the sacred task of drawing up their laws. His
experience in Venice and the history of his native town supplemented
the examples of Greece. Geneva summoned a stranger to legislate for
her, and "those who only look on Calvin as a theologian have a scanty
idea of the extent of his genius; the preparation of our wise edicts,
in which he had so large a part, do him as much honour as his
Institutes."[195] Rousseau's vision was too narrow to let him see the
growth of government and laws as a co-ordinate process, flowing from
the growth of all the other parts and organs of society, and advancing
in more or less equal step along with them. He could begin with
nothing short of an absolute legislator, who should impose a system
from without by a single act, a structure hit upon once for all by his
individual wisdom, not slowly wrought out by many minds, with popular
assent and co-operation, at the suggestion of changing social
circumstances and need.[196]

All this would be of very trifling importance in the history of
political literature, but for the extraordinary influence which
circumstances ultimately bestowed upon it. The Social Contract was the
gospel of the Jacobins, and much of the action of the supreme party in
France during the first months of the year 1794 is only fully
intelligible when we look upon it as the result and practical
application of Rousseau's teaching. The conception of the situation
entertained by Robespierre and Saint Just was entirely moulded on all
this talk about the legislators of Greece and Geneva. "The transition
of an oppressed nation to democracy is like the effort by which nature
rose from nothingness to existence. You must entirely refashion a
people whom you wish to make free--destroy its prejudices, alter its
habits, limit its necessities, root up its vices, purify its desires.
The state therefore must lay hold on every human being at his birth,
and direct his education with powerful hand. Solon's weak confidence
threw Athens into fresh slavery, while Lycurgus's severity founded the
republic of Sparta on an immovable basis."[197] These words,