The Rise of the Democracy

by Joseph Clayton

The "Social Contract" is full of inaccuracies in its references to history; it is often self-contradictory, and it has not even the merit of originality. From Hobbes Rousseau borrowed the notion of authority in the State; from Locke the seat of this authority; the nature of the original pact and of citizenship from Spinoza; from the Huguenot Languet the doctrine of fraternity; and from Althusius the doctrine of the inalienability of citizenship. Where Locke was content to maintain that the people collectively had the right to change the form of government, Rousseau would give the community continual exercise in sovereignty, while voting and representation are signs of democratic decadence in Rousseau's eyes. The sovereign people governing, not through elected representatives but by public meeting, has only been found possible in small slave-ridden states.

At the Revolution France had to elect its deputies. But the theory of the sovereignty of the people has over and over again, in France, upset the Government, and destroyed the authority of the deputies. In England we accept the rule of Parliament, and are satisfied that the election of representatives by an enfranchised people is the most satisfactory form of democracy, though we retain a healthy instinct of criticism of the Government in power. In France has happened what Locke's critics foretold: the sovereign people never wholeheartedly delegates its powers to its deputies, and indulges in revolution when impatient of government. During the Revolution the passionate clamour of the sovereign people overpowered the votes and voices of elected representatives, and revolution and reaction were the rule in France from 1793 to 1871.

We may be frankly against the Government all the time in England; we may resist it actively and passively, for the purpose of calling attention to some political grievance, some disability that needs removal. But we never forget that it is the Government, or believe that it can be overturned save by the votes of the electorate. At the time of the European revolutions of 1848, when crowns were falling, and ministers flying before the rage of the sovereign people, Chartism never seriously threatened the stability of the British Government, and its great demonstrations were no real menace to the existing order. Nothing seems able to shake the British confidence in its elected representatives, and in the Government that is supported by a majority of those representatives. We have never accepted the gospel of Jean Jacques Rousseau; Priestley and Price are almost the only names that can be mentioned as disciples of Rousseau before the advent of Mr. H. Belloc.

France, still following Rousseau, does not associate political sovereignty with representation as England does. It never invests the doings of its Cabinet with a sacred importance, and it readily transfers the reins of government from Ministry to Ministry. France has submitted to the sovereignty of an Emperor and to the rule of kings since the great Revolution, and though its Republic is now forty years old, and at present there are no signs of dictatorship on the horizon, the Government of the Republic is never safe from a revolutionary rising of the sovereign people, and only by the strength of its army has revolution been kept at bay. If Louis XVI. had possessed the army of modern France he too might have kept the revolution at bay. All this revolution and reaction, disbelief in the authority of representative government, and lively conviction that sovereignty is with the citizens, and must be asserted from time to time—to the confusion of deputies and delegates—is Rousseau's work, the reaping of the harvest sown by the "Social Contract." Let us sum up the character of Rousseau's work, and then leave him and his doctrines for ever behind us.

"Rousseau's scheme is that of a doctrinaire who is unconscious of the infinite variety and complexity of life, and its apparent simplicity is mainly due to his inability to realise and appreciate the difficulties of his task. He evinced no insight into the political complications of his time; and his total ignorance of affairs, together with his contempt for civilised life, prevented him from framing a theory of any practical utility. Indeed, the disastrous attempt of the Jacobins to apply his principles proved how valueless and impracticable most of his doctrines were. He never attempted to trace social and political evils to their causes, in order to suggest suitable modifications of existing conditions. He could not see how impossible it was to sweep away all institutions and impose a wholly new social order irrespective of the natures, faculties, and desires of those whom he wished to benefit; on the contrary, he exaggerates the passivity and plasticity of men and circumstances, and dreams that his model legislator, who apparently is to initiate the new society, will be able to repress all anti-social feelings. He aims at order and symmetry, oblivious that human nature does not easily and rapidly bend to such treatment. It is his inability to discover the true mode of investigation that accounts for much of Rousseau's sophistry. His truisms and verbal propositions, his dogmatic assertions and unreal demonstrations, savour more of theology than of political science, while his quasi-mathematical method of reasoning from abstract formulæ, assumed to be axiomatic, gives a deceptive air of exactness and cogency which is apt to be mistaken for sound logic. He supports glaring paradoxes with an array of ingenious arguments, and with fatal facility and apparent precision he deduces from his unfounded premises a series of inconsequent conclusions, which he regards as authoritative and universally applicable. At times he becomes less rigid, as when (under the influence of Montesquieu) he studies the relations between the physical constitution of a nation, its territory, its customs, its form of government, and its deep-rooted opinions, or avows that there has been too much dispute about the forms of government. But such considerations are not prominent. In certain cases his inconsistencies may be due to re-handling, but he is said to have observed that those who boasted of understanding the whole contract were more clever than he."[^[74]]

This may sound very severe, but it is entirely just. The "Social Contract" consists of four books: (1) The founding of the civilized state by a social pact. (2) The theory of the sovereignty of the people. (3) and (4). The different forms of government; the indestructible character of the general will of the community; and civil religion.

The whole work teems with generalisations, mostly ill-founded, and the details are not in agreement. The one thing of permanent value is the conception that the State represents the "general will" of the community. How that "general will" finds expression and gets its way is of great importance to democracy. Even more important is the nature of that "general will." Individualist as Rousseau was in his views about personal property (following Locke in an apparent ideal of peasant proprietorship), he insisted on the subjection of personal rights to the safety of the Commonwealth.

American Independence

The resistance of the American colonies to the British Government did not commence with any spirit of independence. The tea incident at Boston took place in 1773, and it was not till three years later that the Declaration of Independence was drawn up. The Whig principles of 1688 are at the foundation of American liberties, and Locke's influence is to be seen both in the Declaration of Independence and in the American constitution. The colonists from the first had in many states a Puritanism that was hostile to the prerogatives of governors, and appeals to the British Government against the misuse of the prerogative were generally successful. The colonists wanted no more, and no less, than the constitutional rights enjoyed by Englishmen in Great Britain, and while the Whigs were in power these rights were fairly secure. George III., attempting a reversion to monarchist rule, drove the colonists to war and to seek independence; with the aid of France this independence was won.

If the French officers who assisted the Americans brought the doctrines of Rousseau to the revolted colonists, which is possible, it is quite certain that the establishment of the American Republic, and the principles of La Fayette and Paine, who had fought in the American War, were not without effect in France.