IV

The basis of revolutionary doctrine was already present in England when, in 1762, Rousseau published his Contrat Social.  With its fundamental doctrines Locke had already made his countrymen familiar; and what was needed for the appreciation of its teaching was less a renaissance than discontent.  So soon as men are dissatisfied with the traditional foundations of the State, a gospel of natural rights is certain to make its appearance.  And, once the design of George III had been made familiar by his treatment of Chatham and Wilkes, the discontent did not fail to show itself.  Indeed, in the year before the publication of Rousseau’s book, Robert Wallace, a Scottish chaplain royal, had written in his Various Prospects (1761) a series of essays which are at once an anticipation of the main thesis of Malthus and a plea for the integration of social forces by which alone the mass of men could be raised from misery.  In the light of later experience it is difficult not to be impressed by the modernist flavour of Wallace’s attack.  He insists upon the capacity of men and the disproportion between their potential achievement and that which is secured by actual society.  Men are in the mass condemned to ignorance and toil; and the lust of power sets man against his neighbor to the profit of the rich.  Wallace traces these evils to private property and the individualistic organization of work, and he sees no remedy save community of possessions and a renovated educational system.  Yet he does not conceal from himself that it is to the interest of the governing class to prevent a revolution which, beneficent to the masses, would be fatal to themselves; nor does he conceive it possible until the fertility of men has been reduced to the capacity of the soil.  He speculates upon the chances of a new spirit among men, of an all-wise legislator, and of the beneficent example of colonies upon the later Owenite model.  But his book is contemporaneous with our own ideas rather than with the thoughts of his generation.  Nor does it seem to have excited any general attention.

It is five years after Rousseau that we see the first clear signs of his influence.  Naturally enough the men amongst whom the new spirit spread abroad were the Nonconformists.  For more than seventy years they had been allowed existence without recognition.  None had more faithfully supported the new dynasty than they; none had been paid less for their allegiance.  Their utmost effort could secure only a sparing mitigation of the Test Act.  All of them were Whigs, and the doctrines of Locke suited exactly their temper and their wants.  There were amongst them able men in every walk of life, and they were apt to publication.  Joseph Priestley, in particular, gave up with willingness to mankind what was obviously meant for chemical science.  A few years previously Brown of the Estimate had submitted a scheme for national education, in which