Thus, down to
1789, the middle classes and peasants bore nearly all the weight of
taxation, while the peasants were also encumbered by feudal dues and
tolls. These were the crying grievances which united in a solid
phalanx both thinkers and practical men, and thereby gave an immense
impetus to the levelling doctrines of Rousseau.

Two only of his political teachings concern us here, namely, social
equality and the unquestioned supremacy of the State; for to these
dogmas, when they seemed doomed to political bankruptcy, Napoleon
Buonaparte was to act as residuary legatee. According to Rousseau,
society and government originated in a social contract, whereby all
members of the community have equal rights. It matters not that the
spirit of the contract may have evaporated amidst the miasma of
luxury. That is a violation of civil society; and members are
justified in reverting at once to the primitive ideal. If the
existence of the body politic be endangered, force may be used:
"Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do
so by the whole body; which means nothing else than that he shall be
forced to be free." Equally plausible and dangerous was his teaching
as to the indivisibility of the general will. Deriving every public
power from his social contract, he finds it easy to prove that the
sovereign power, vested in all the citizens, must be incorruptible,
inalienable, unrepresentable, indivisible, and indestructible.
Englishmen may now find it difficult to understand the enthusiasm
called forth by this quintessence of negations; but to Frenchman
recently escaped from the age of privilege and warring against the
coalition of kings, the cry of the Republic one and indivisible was a
trumpet call to death or victory. Any shifts, even that of a
dictatorship, were to be borne, provided that social equality could be
saved. As republican Rome had saved her early liberties by intrusting
unlimited powers to a temporary dictator, so, claimed Rousseau, a
young commonwealth must by a similar device consult Nature's first law
of self-preservation. The dictator saves liberty by temporarily
abrogating it: by momentary gagging of the legislative power he
renders it truly vocal.

The events of the French Revolution form a tragic commentary on these
theories. In the first stage of that great movement we see the
followers of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau marching in an
undivided host against the ramparts of pr