ached.
Whence did Rome become a landholder, and the governing people a
territorial people? Whence does any nation become a territorial nation
and lord of the domain? Certainly never by the cession of individuals,
and hence no civilized government ever did or could originate in the
so-called social compact.

CHAPTER V.

ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT--CONTINUED.

III. The tendency of the last century was to individualism; that of the
present is to socialism. The theory of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and
Jefferson, though not formally abandoned, and still held by many, has
latterly been much modified, if not wholly transformed. Sovereignty,
it is now maintained, is inherent in the people; not individually,
indeed, but collectively, or the people as society. The constitution
is held not to be simply a compact or agreement entered into by the
people as individuals creating civil society and government, but a law
ordained by the sovereign people, prescribing the constitution of the
state and defining its rights and powers.

This transformation, which is rather going on than completed, is, under
one aspect at least, a progress, or rather a return to the sounder
principles of antiquity. Under it government ceases to be a mere
agency, which must obtain the assassin's consent to be hung before it
can rightfully hang him, and becomes authority, which is one and
imperative. The people taken collectively are society, and society is
a living organism, not a mere aggregation of individuals. It does not,
of course, exist without individuals, but it is something more than
individuals, and has rights not derived from them, and which are
paramount to theirs. There is more truth, and truth of a higher order,
in this than in the theory of the social compact. Individuals, to a
certain extent, derive their life from God through society, and so far
they depend on her, and they are hers; she owns them, and has the right
to do as she will with them. On this theory the state emanates from
society, and is supreme. It coincides with the ancient Greek and Roman
theory, as expressed by Cicero, already cited. Man is born in society
and remains there, and it may be regarded as the source of ancient
Greek and Roman patriotism, which still commands the admiration of the
civilized world. The state with Greece and Rome was a living reality,
and loyalty a religion. The Romans held Rome to be a divinity, gave
her statues and altars, and offere