of the Roman republic, among the moderns in the age of the Reformation, and again in our own day—­see Roscher’s Political Economy, notes to Section LXXIX., et seq.] —­Marsilio, a physician of Padua, in 1324, said that the laws ought to be made by all the citizens; and he based this sovereignty of the people upon the greater likelihood of laws being better obeyed, and also being good laws, when they were made by the whole body of the persons affected.

In 1750 and 1753, J. J. Rousseau published his two discourses on questions proposed by the Academy of Dijon:  “Has the Restoration of Sciences Contributed to Purify or to Corrupt Manners?” and “What is the Origin of Inequality among Men, and is it Authorized by Natural Law?” These questions show the direction and the advance of thinking on social topics in the middle of the eighteenth century.  Rousseau’s Contrat-Social and the novel Emile were published in 1761.

But almost three-quarters of a century before, in 1690, John Locke published his two treatises on government.  Rousseau was familiar with them.  Mr. John Morley, in his admirable study of Rousseau, [Rousseau.  By John Morley.  London:  Chapman & Hall. 1873—­I have used it freely in the glance at this period.]—­fully discusses the latter’s obligation to Locke; and the exposition leaves Rousseau little credit for originality, but considerable for illogical misconception.  He was, in fact, the most illogical of great men, and the most inconsistent even of geniuses.  The Contrat-Social is a reaction in many things from the discourses, and Emile is almost an entire reaction, especially in the theory of education, from both.

His central doctrine of popular sovereignty was taken from Locke.  The English philosopher said, in his second treatise, “To understand political power aright and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in; and that is a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their persons and possessions as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man—­a state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the advantages of nature and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection, unless the Lord and Master of them all should by any manifest declaration of His will set one above another, and confer on him by an evident and clear appointment an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.”  But a state of liberty is not a state of license.  We cannot exceed our own rights without assailing the rights of others.  There is no such subordination as authorizes us to destroy one another.  As every one is bound to preserve himself, so he is bound to preserve the rest