and setting forth the laws which God has graven so manifestly in the very organisation of men, when he called them into existence.  To wish to go any further would be a great misfortune and a most destructive undertaking.”  “Sir, I am very pleased to have heard what you have to say; I wish you good day.”  Quoted from Thiebault’s Souvenirs de Berlin, in M. Daire’s edition of the Physiocrates, ii. 432.

[228] Cont.  Soc., II. vii.

[229] Corr., v. 181.

[230] Cont.  Soc., I. v., vi., vii.

[231] Leviathan, II., ch. xviii. vol. iii. 159 (Molesworth’s edition).

[232] Cont.  Soc., III. xvi.

[233] Civil Government, ch. viii.  Sec. 99.

[234] I. vi.  Especially the footnote.

[235] Cont.  Soc., II. i.

[236] Syst. of Jurisprudence, i. 256.

[237] Cont.  Soc., III. xv. 137.  It was not long, however, before Rousseau found reason to alter his opinion in this respect.  The champions of the Council at Geneva compared the droit negatif, in the exercise of which the Council had refused to listen to the representations of Rousseau’s partisans (see above, vol. ii. p. 105) to the right of veto possessed by the crown in Great Britain.  Rousseau seized upon this egregious blunder, which confused the power of refusing assent to a proposed law, with the power of refusing justice under law already passed.  He at once found illustrations of the difference, first in the case of the printers of No. 45 of the North Briton, who brought actions for false imprisonment (1763), and next in the proceedings against Wilkes at the same time.  If Wilkes, said Rousseau, had written, printed, published, or said, one-fourth against the Lesser Council at Geneva of what he said, wrote, printed, and published openly in London against the court and the government, he would have been heavily punished, and most likely put to death.  And so forth, until he has proved very pungently how different degrees of freedom are enjoyed in Geneva and in England. Lettres ecrites de la Montague, ix. 491-500.  When he wrote this he was unaware that the Triennial Act had long been replaced by the Septennial Act of the 1 Geo. I. On finding out, as he did afterwards, that a parliament could sit for seven years, he thought as meanly of our liberty as ever. Considerations sur les gouvernement de Pologne, ch. vii. 253-260.  In his Projet de Constitution pour la Corse, p. 113, he says that “the English do not love liberty for itself, but because it is most favourable to money-making.”

[238] III., xi., xii., and xiii.

[239] Mr. Freeman’s Growth of the English Constitution, c. i.

[240] Cont.  Soc., III. xv. 140.  A small manuscript containing his ideas on confederation was given by Rousseau to the Count d’Antraigues (afterwards an emigre), who destroyed it in 1789, lest its arguments should be used to sap the royal authority.  See extract from his pamphlet, prefixed to M. Auguis’s edition of the Social Contract, pp. xxiii, xxiv.