It is not Locke's theories that have guided politically the great masses of the people, for Locke's writings have had no very considerable popularity in England. But it has happened that these theories have influenced the conduct of statesmen, and with reason, since they offer an explanation of political progress, and constrain politicians to act, experimentally indeed, but with some reasonable anticipation of safety to the nation. British statesmen and politicians have made no parade of Locke's opinions; they have done nothing to incur the charge of "theorist," but the influence of Locke can be seen all the same—chiefly in the loyal acceptance of political change, in the refusal to be shocked or alarmed at a "leap in the dark," and by a willingness to adjust the machinery of government to the needs of the time. In England Locke's influence has been less dynamic than static; it has helped us to preserve a moderation in politics; to be content with piecemeal legislation, because to attempt too much might be to alienate the sympathies of the majority; to keep our political eye, so to speak, on the ebb and flow of public opinion—since it is public opinion that is the final court of appeal; to tolerate abuses until it is quite plain a great number of people are anxious to have the abuse removed; and above all to settle down in easy contentment under political defeat, and make the best of accomplished reforms, not because we like them, but because a Parliamentary majority has decreed them.
For England, in fact, the essence of Locke's teaching has helped to produce a deference almost servile to political majorities and to public opinion, a reluctance to make any reform until public opinion has pronounced loudly and often in favour of reform, and an emphatic assurance that every reform enacted by Parliament is the unmistakable expression of the will of the people. Locke has discouraged us from hasty legislation and from political panics.
Rousseau and the French Revolution
Locke's influence in France and in America has been altogether different. Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot were all students and admirers of Locke, and his political theories were at the base of Rousseau's "Social Contract." A return to nature, a harking back to an imaginary primitive happiness of mankind, the glorification of an ideal of simplicity and innocence,—supposed to have been the ideal of early politics—the restoration of a popular sovereignty built up on natural rights alleged to have been lost: these were the articles of faith Rousseau preached with passionate conviction in his "Discourses" and in the "Social Contract." Individual man was born naturally "free," and had become debased and enslaved by laws and civilisation. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains," is the opening sentence of the "Social Contract." This liberty and equality of primitive man was acclaimed as a law of nature by eighteenth century writers in France, and to some extent in England too. Pope could write, "The state of nature was the reign of God." Instead of a forward movement the business of man was to recover the lost happiness of the childhood of the world, to bring back a golden age of liberty and equality. Locke's "state of peace, goodwill, mutual assistance, and preservation" is to be the desire of nations, and with wistful yearning Rousseau's disciples gazed on the picture painted by their master.
It was all false, all a fiction, all mischievous and misleading, this doctrine of a return to an ideal happiness of the past, and it was the most worthless portion of Locke's work. To-day it is easy for us to say this, when we have learnt something of the struggle for existence in nature, something of the habits and customs of primitive man, and something of man's upward growth. But Locke and Rousseau were born before our limited knowledge of the history of man and his institutions had been learnt; before science, with patient research, had revealed a few incidents in the long story of man's ascent. Even the history of Greece and Rome, as Rousseau read it, was hopelessly inaccurate and incomplete. Therefore, while we can see the fallacy in all the eighteenth century teaching concerning the natural happiness of uncivilised man, we must at the same time remember it as a doctrine belonging to a pre-scientific era. The excuse in France, too, for its popularity was great. Civilisation weighed heavily on the nation. The whole country groaned under a misrule, and commerce and agriculture were crippled by the system of taxation. It seemed that France was impoverished to maintain a civilisation that only a few, and they not the most useful members of the community, could enjoy.
How mankind had 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.