d passed from primitive freedom to civilised slavery neither
Locke nor Rousseau inquired. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in
chains," cries Rousseau, in sublime disregard of facts. For man was not
born free in the ancient republics of Greece and Rome that Rousseau
revered; children were not born free in his day any more than they are in
ours; and any assembly or community of people necessarily involves mutual
consideration and forbearance which are at once restrictive.

The truth is, of course, that man is not born free, but is born with free
will to work out political freedom or to consent to servitude. He is not
born with "natural" political rights, but born to acquire by law political
rights.

The fiction of primitive man's happiness and of the natural goodness and
freedom of man did little harm in England, for Locke was not a popular
author, and Wesley's religious revival in the eighteenth century laid awful
stress on man's imperfections. The sovereign people ruled in an unreformed
House of Commons, and the "contract" theory was exhibited by ministers
holding office on the strength of a majority in the Commons.

Rousseau's writings depicted, with a clearness that fascinated the reader,
the contrast between the ideal state that man had lost and the present
condition of society with its miseries and corruption; and by its
explanation of the doctrines of a contract and the sovereignty of the
people, suggested the way to end these miseries and corruptions. The
"Social Contract" became the text-book of the men who made the French
Revolution, and if the success of the Revolution is due to the teaching of
Rousseau more than to that of any other French philosopher, the crimes and
mistakes of the Revolution are directly to be traced to his influence, and
this in spite of Rousseau's deprecation of violence.[73]

As there is a certain tendency in England to-day to attempt the
resuscitation of Rousseau's theories of popular sovereignty and the natural
rights of man, and as so distinguished a writer as Mr. Hilaire Belloc is at
pains to invite the English working class to seek illumination from
Rousseau and to proceed to democracy guided by the speculative political
doctrines of the eighteenth century rather than on the tried experimental
lines of representative government and an extended franchise, it is
necessary to devote to Rousseau and his "Social Contract" more space than
the subject deserves.

The "Social Contr