writings was "The Social
Contract,"--the great textbook of the Revolution. In this famous
treatise he advanced some important ideas which undoubtedly are based on
ultimate truth, such as that the people are the source of power, that
might does not make right, that slavery is an aggression on human
rights; but with these ideal truths he combines the assertion that
government is a contract between the governor and the governed. In a
perfect state of society this may be the ideal; but society is not and
never has been perfect, and certainly in all the early ages of the world
governments were imposed upon people by the strong hand, irrespective of
their will and wishes,--and these were the only governments which were
fit and useful in that elder day. Governments, as a plain matter of
fact, have generally arisen from circumstances and relations with which
the people have had little to do. The Oriental monarchies were the
gradual outgrowth of patriarchal tradition and successful military
leadership, and in regard to them the people were never consulted at
all. The Roman Empire was ruled without the consent of the governed.
Feudal monarchies in Europe were based on the divine rights of kings.
There was no state in Europe where a compact or social contract had been
made or implied. Even later, when the French elected Napoleon, they
chose a monarch because they feared anarchy, without making any
stipulation. There were no contracting parties.

The error of Rousseau was in assuming a social contract as a fact, and
then reasoning upon the assumption. His premises are wrong, or at least
they are nothing more than statements of what abstractly might be made
to follow from the assumption that the people actually are the source of
power,--a condition most desirable and in the last analysis correct,
since even military despots use the power of the people in order to
oppress the people, but which is practically true only in certain
states. Yet, after all, when brought under the domain of law by the
sturdy sense and utilitarian sagacity of the Anglo-Saxon race,
Rousseau's doctrine of the sovereignty of the people is the great
political motor of this century, in republics and monarchies alike.

Again, Rousseau maintains that, whatever acquisitions an individual or
a society may make, the right to this property must be always
subordinate to the right which the community at large has over the
possessions of all. Here is the germ of much o