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 of our present-day socialism.  Whatever element of truth there may be in the theory that would regard land and capital, the means of production, as the joint possession of all the members of the community,—­the basic doctrine of socialism,—­any forcible attempt to distribute present results of individual production and accumulation would be unjust and dangerous to the last degree.  In the case of the furious carrying out of this doctrine by the crazed French revolutionists, it led to outrageous confiscation, on the ground that all property belonged to the state, and therefore the representatives of the nation could do what they pleased with it.  This shallow sophistry was accepted by the French National Convention when it swept away estates of nobles and clergy, not on the tenable ground that the owners were public enemies, but on the baseless pretext that their property belonged to the nation.

From this sophistry about the rights of property, Rousseau advanced another of still worse tendency, which was that the general will is always in the right and constantly tends to the public good.  The theory is inconsistent with itself.  Light and truth do not come from the universal reason, but from the thoughts of great men stimulated into growth among the people.  The teachers of the world belong to a small class.  Society is in need of constant reforms, which are not suggested by the mass, but by a few philosophers or reformers,—­the wise men who save cities.