form of government, like that of England, which guaranteed the State against the dangers of autocracy, oligarchy, and mob-rule.  Only by a ricochet did he assail the French monarchy.  But he re-awakened critical inquiry; and any inquiry was certain to sap the base of the ancien regime in France.  Montesquieu’s teaching inspired the group of moderate reformers who in 1789 desired to re-fashion the institutions of France on the model of those of England.  But popular sentiment speedily swept past these Anglophils towards the more attractive aims set forth by Voltaire.

This keen thinker subjected the privileged classes, especially the titled clergy, to a searching fire of philosophic bombs and barbed witticisms.  Never was there a more dazzling succession of literary triumphs over a tottering system.  The satirized classes winced and laughed, and the intellect of France was conquered, for the Revolution.  Thenceforth it was impossible that peasants who were nominally free should toil to satisfy the exacting needs of the State, and to support the brilliant bevy of nobles who flitted gaily round the monarch at Versailles.  The young King Louis XVI., it is true, carried through several reforms, but he had not enough strength of will to abolish the absurd immunities from taxation which freed the nobles and titled clergy from the burdens of the State.  Thus, down to 1789, the middle classes and peasants bore nearly all the weight of taxation, while the peasants were also encumbered by feudal dues and tolls.  These were the crying grievances which united in a solid phalanx both thinkers and practical men, and thereby gave an immense impetus to the levelling doctrines of Rousseau.

Two only of his political teachings concern us here, namely, social equality and the unquestioned supremacy of the State; for to these dogmas, when they seemed doomed to political bankruptcy, Napoleon Buonaparte was to act as residuary legatee.  According to Rousseau, society and government originated in a social contract, whereby all members of the community have equal rights.  It matters not that the spirit of the contract may have evaporated amidst the miasma of luxury.  That is a violation of civil society; and members are justified in reverting at once to the primitive ideal.  If the existence of the body politic be endangered, force may be used:  “Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body; which means nothing else than that he shall be forced to be free.”  Equally plausible and dangerous was his teaching as to the indivisibility of the general will.  Deriving every public power from his social contract, he finds it easy to prove that the sovereign power, vested in all the citizens, must be incorruptible, inalienable, unrepresentable, indivisible, and indestructible.  Englishmen may now find it difficult to understand the enthusiasm called forth by this quintessence of negations; but to Frenchman recently escaped from