is a Fact, so far as is requisite for the purpose of its being a true Moral Doctrine.

910. But it is further objected by Paley, that the Doctrine of a Contract is false and useless, because men in general have not actually given their consent to the fundamental Rules of the Government under which they live, and have had no opportunity of giving or refusing such consent.

911. In order to determine how far this objection is valid, we must consider what the analogy of Contracts in general teaches us, with regard to consent which may be supposed or implied, though not actually given. Now on this subject, we have not the smallest need to follow any other teaching than that of Paley himself, in order to assert an Original Contract. In speaking of the Administration of Justice, he says, "The law of nature, founded in the very constitution of human society, which is formed to endure through a series of perishing generations, requires that the just engagements a man enters into should continue in force beyond his own life; it follows that the private Rights of persons frequently depend upon what has been transacted in times remote from the present, by their ancestors or predecessors, or by those under whom they claim, or to whose obligations they have succeeded." But this, which he here asserts of private Rights, may, with exactly the same reason, be asserted of public Rights. Public Rights and Obligations, no less than private, may depend upon what was done by our predecessors, and upon their Rights and Obligations. And the examples which he offers, further show this. They are such as these: the questions which arise between Lords of the Manor and their Tenants; between the King and those who claim Royal Franchises; questions of Tithes; and the like; which, as he says, depend upon ancient Grants and Agreements. "The appeal," he adds, "to those grants

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and agreements is dictated by natural equity, as well as by the municipal law." This is asserting, in the most decided and extensive manner, that the present generation are bound by Contracts to which they have given no actual consent. But further: he asserts this, even of mere hypothetical Contracts. Concerning the existence," he says, 66 or the conditions of such Old Covenants, doubts will perpetually occur, which give employment to the Courts of Law.** But having taken the case in which the present generation are required to allow themselves bound by ancient Contracts, of which the existence or the meaning are doubtful, does he declare the supposition of such Contracts to be absurd or useless? By no means. On the contrary, he assigns this as a reason (among others), why the general precepts of Morality are not sufficient guides for the business of life, without our having Courts of Justice besides. And for the like reasons, and in the same manner, we maintain that the general Principles of Political Morality, whether we state them as Order, Liberty, and Justice, and the like, or with Paley, as Expediency, are insufficient to point out the boundaries and the force of Political Rights and Obligations, without referring to a Court of Natural Jurisprudence, which deals with these as the Conditions of an Ancient Covenant, to be made out by a calm estimate of the evidence which Law and History offer us.

912. We have stated it, as among the advantages of the Doctrine of a Social Contract, of which the terms are the Articles of the Constitution, that this Doctrine harmonizes well with the love and reverence for the Constitution which are among our Duties. And accordingly Paley, while he is rejecting the Doctrine, rejects also these Duties. He says,

* Paley is, in this part of his work, speaking of the necessity of Courts of Law. Book vi., chap. 8.

truly, that the original conditions of the Social Compact are understood to be the fundamental laws of the Constitution. He rejects the notion of such fundamental laws, as having any peculiar force; and speaks with slight of those who "ascribe a kind of transcendental authority or mysterious sanctity to the Constitution, as if it were founded on some higher original than that which gives force and obligation to the ordinary Statutes of the realm, or were inviolable on any other account than its intrinsic utility." Now the persons who have ascribed an exalted authority to the English Constitution, have spoken of it with reverence, and have defended it as inviolable, are all the greatest statesmen, lawyers, and patriots, who have adorned this country; and in proportion to their ability, their legal knowledge, and their patriotism, they have been copious, earnest, and pointed, in appealing to the principles of the Constitution as something of paramount authority and value. They have ascribed to the Constitution, not so properly a "mysterious sanctity" which Paley speaks of, as a moral sacredness: and we have seen the Americans, in the midst of their most emphatic assertions of their liberty, have done the same thing. When a writer is thus led by his doctrines to speak contemptuously of the emotions of moral reverence and affection which have thus prevailed for generations, in the nation and the race, he cannot be, to them, a moral teacher; and as far as he gains their attention, he can only perplex them. If we are to accept a doctrine which tells us that no special reverence and authority belong to the Constitution, we must suppose all our public Jurists, from Fortescue and Coke to Blackstone and Burke, to have had confused and superstitious notions of the English Government. And if the study of English Law and History leaves so wide a space for practical error in its most diligent students, we can have little trust in

the permanence of any new doctrine on such subjects.

913. There are two other objections urged by Paley against the Doctrine of an Original Compact; -That if such be the ground of Government, despotic Governments can never be changed or mitigated, because Despotism is in the Compact, and the Subject is bound by it; and thus in this Theory, recourse to arms for the sake of a better constitution cannot be justified :—and again, That since every violation of the Compact destroys it, this Theory offers ready arguments for reposing obedience to Government, and "has in fact always supplied the factious with a topic of seditious declamation."

914. To the first of these objections, we reply, that the laws of no State allow the citizens to have recourse to arms for the sake of bettering the Constitution; that our Morality does not give Precepts for such armed attempts at improvements; and that a system of Morality which lays down, for the citizens of States in general, rules contradicting the Laws, cannot be fit for the general guidance of mankind. If an English Moralist might go into any State which he deems Despotic, and preach to the citizens the duty of bettering the Constitution by an armed insurrection, English morality would be rejected by the Moralists of all other countries, as inconsistent with Order and Humanity. Not that we allow that despotic Governments are never to be improved; but they are not, as a general Rule, to be improved by armed insurrections, but by improving the condition of the people; by promoting the moral and intellectual culture of the Governed and of the Governors; by strengthening all the elements of the Constitution which contains a germ of Liberty; (for almost all Governments, however despotic, have such elements). By such courses, despotic Governments, and all Governments, may be improved, without any contradic

tion of the Social Compact. For the Social Compact, according to all moderate interpretations of it, is not an unchangeable Rule; but is capable of modification from age to age, by constitutional proceedings; changes so produced being understood as changes in the terms of the Compact, made with the consent of the parties. In the progress of improvement, violence and resistance may occur; yet violence and resistance can never be justified as results of general Moral Rules, but only as the resource in a case of necessity which forms an exception to general Rules.

915. As to the objection that the Doctrine of a Social Contract offers, and has supplied, ready arguments for Sedition, this is no more than inevitably belongs to every doctrine which recognizes Civil Liberty as an important object. If every obnoxious proceeding of the Governors of a State may be represented as a violation of the Social Contract, it may also be represented as a violation of Natural Justice; and in whatever manner the consequences of Natural Justice are described, the description may be used as a means of inflaming seditious dispositions.

916. It is by no means true, that the Doctrine of the Social Contract has been especially used for purposes of sedition or rebellion. When it was brought into prominence at the Revolution in 1688, it was used to justify resistance to the Sovereign in a case of necessity, and not as a general Rule. Those who, in modern times, have most freely urged the Right of Resistance to the Government, though they may have occasionally spoken of a Social Contract, have not really applied the Doctrine. They have not usually dwelt upon any special transgression of the Governor, as a violation of the Compact dissolving its tie; but have commonly denied and