§ 5.

The self-importance of a Malvolio is sufficiently ludicrous; but we must go far beyond it to parallel the presumption of legislatures. Some steward who, deluded by an intense craving after dominion, and an impudence equal to his craving, should construe his stewardship into proprietorship, would more fitly illustrate it. Were such an one to argue that the estate he was appointed to manage had been virtually resigned into his possession—that to secure the advantages of his administration its owner had given up all title to it—that he now lived on it only by his (the steward’s) sufferance—and that he was in future to receive no emoluments from it, except at his (the steward’s) good pleasure—then should we have an appropriate travesty upon the behaviour of governments to nations; then should we have a doctrine perfectly analogous to this fashionable one, which teaches how men on becoming members of a community, give up, for the sake of certain social advantages, their natural rights. Adherents of this fashionable doctrine will doubtless protest against such an interpretation of it. They have no reasonable cause for doing so, however, as will appear on submitting them to a cross-examination. Suppose we begin it thus:—

“Your hypothesis that men, when they entered into the Edition: current; Page: [203] social state, surrendered their original freedom, implies that they entered into such state voluntarily, does it not?”

“It does.”

“Then they must have considered the social state preferable to that under which they had previously lived?”

“Necessarily.”

“Why did it appear preferable?”

“Because it offered greater security.”

“Greater security for what?”

“Greater security for life, for property, for the things that minister to happiness.”

“Exactly. To get more happiness: that must have been the object. If they had expected to get more unhappiness, they would not have willingly made the change, would they?”

“No.”

“Does not happiness consist in the due satisfaction of all the desires? in the due exercise of all the faculties?”

“Yes.”

“And this exercise of the faculties is impossible without freedom of action. The desires cannot be satisfied without liberty to pursue and use the objects of them.”

“True.”

“Now it is this freedom to exercise the faculties within specific limits, which we signify by the term ‘rights,’ is it not?”(Page 77.)

“It is.”

“Well, then, summing up your answers, it seems that, by your hypothesis, man entered the social state voluntarily; which means that he entered it for the sake of obtaining greater happiness; which means that he entered it to obtain fuller exercise of his faculties; which means that he entered it to obtain security for such exercise; which means that he entered it for the guaranteeing of his ‘rights.’”

“Put your proposition in a more tangible form.”

“Very good. If this is too abstract a statement for you, let us attempt a simpler one. You say that a state of political combination Edition: current; Page: [204] was preferred mainly because it afforded greater security for life and property than the isolated state, do you not?”

“Certainly.”

“Are not a man’s claims to his life and his property amongst what we term his rights; and moreover, the most important of them?”

“They are.”

“Then to say that men formed themselves into communities to prevent the constant violation of their claims to life and property, is to say that they did it for the preservation of their rights?”

“It is.”

“Wherefore, either way we find that the preservation of rights was the object sought.”

“So it would seem.”

“But your hypothesis is that men give up their rights on entering the social state?”

“Yes.”

“See now how you contradict yourself. You assert that on becoming members of a society, men give up, what by your own showing they joined it the better to obtain!”

“Well, perhaps I ought not to have said that they ‘give up’ their rights, but that they place them in trust.”

“In whose trust?”

“In that of a government.”

“A government, then, is a kind of agent employed by the members of a community, to take care of, and administer for their benefit, something given into its charge?”

“Exactly.”

“And of course, like all other agents, exercises authority only at the will of those who appoint it—performs all that it is commissioned to do subject to their approval?”

“Just so.”

“And the things committed to its charge still belong to the original owners. The title of the people to the rights they Edition: current; Page: [205] have placed in trust continues valid: the people may demand from this agent the full benefit accruing from these rights; and may, if they please, resume possession of them?”

“Not so.”

“Not so! What, can they not reclaim their own?”

“No. Having once consigned their rights into the keeping of a legislature, they must be content with such use of them as that legislature permits.”

And thus we arrive at the curious doctrine above referred to, that the members of a community having entrusted an estate (their rights) to the care of a steward (their government), thereby lose all proprietorship in such estate, and can have no benefit from it, except what their steward pleases to vouchsafe!