Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/401

 of the nineteenth century. The vast space that lies between their treatises represents a difference, not in the men, but in the times. Locke found opposed to the common weal an odious theory of arbitrary and absolute power. It is interesting to remember what were the giants necessary to be slain in those days. The titles of his first chapters on "Government" significantly attest the rudimentary condition of political philosophy in Locke's day. Adam was generally considered to have had a divine power of government, winch was transmitted to a favored few of his descendants. Accordingly, Locke disposes of Adam's title to sovereignty, to whatever origin it may have been ascribed—to "creation," "donation," "the subjection of Eve," or "fatherhood." There is something almost ludicrous in discussing fundamental questions of government with reference to such Scriptural topics; and it is a striking evidence of the change that has passed over England since the Revolution, that, whereas Locke's argument looks like a commentary on the Bible, even the bishops now do not in Parliament quote the Bible on the question of marriage with a deceased wife's sister. Nevertheless, Locke clearly propounded the great principle which, in spite of many errors and much selfishness, has been the fruitful heritage of the Whig party. "Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property and of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the commonwealth from foreign injury, and all this only for the public good." Locke also enounced the maxim that the state of Nature is one of equality. Mr. Mill's special views on the land-question are not without parallel in Locke, for that acute thinker distinctly laid down that "labor" was the true ground even of property in land. Still it must be confessed that Locke's political philosophy is much cruder than Mr. Mill's. His "Essay on Government" is as the rough work of a boy of genius, the "Representative Government" a finished work of art of the experienced master. And this difference corresponds with the rate of political progress. The English constitution, as we now understand it, was unknown at the Revolution; it had to be slowly created; now the great task of the future is to raise the mass of the people to a higher standard of political intelligence and material comfort. To that great end no man has contributed so much as Mr. Mill.

Perhaps, the one writing for which above all others Mr. Mill's disciples will love his memory, is his essay "On Liberty." In this undertaking Mr. Mill followed the noble precedent of Locke, with greater largeness of view, and perfection of work. Locke's four letters "Concerning Toleration" constitute a splendid manifesto of the Liberals of the seventeenth century. The principle that the ends of political society are life, health, liberty, and immunity from harm, and not the salvation of souls, has taken nearly two centuries to root itself in