Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/784

764 would enable me to do something toward the counteraction of the fallacious guidance which is offered to them. Perhaps I may be permitted to add that the subject was by no means new to me. Very curious cases of communal organization and difficult questions involving the whole subject of the rights of property come before those whose duty it is to acquaint themselves with the condition of either sea or fresh-water fisheries, or with the administration of fishery laws. For a number of years it was my fate to discharge such duties to the best of my ability; and, in doing so, I was brought face to face with the problem of land-ownership and the difficulties which arise out of the conflicting claims of commoners and owners in severalty. And I had good reason to know that mistaken theories on these subjects are very liable to be translated into illegal actions. I can not say whether the letters which I wrote in any degree attained the object (of vastly greater importance, to my mind, than any personal question) which I had in view. But I was quite aware, whatever their other results, they would probably involve me in disagreeable consequences; and, among the rest, in the necessity of proving a variety of statements, which I could only adumbrate within the compass of the space that the "Times" could afford me, liberal as the editor showed himself to be in that respect. What I purpose to do in the course of the present article, then, is to make good these shortcomings; to show what Rousseau's doctrines were, and to inquire into their scientific value—with, I hope, that impartiality which it beseems us to exhibit in inquiries into ancient history. Having done this, I propose to leave the application of the conclusions at which I arrive to the intelligence of my readers, as I shall thus escape collision with several of my respected contemporaries.

I have indicated two sources from which our knowledge of Rousseau's system may be derived, and it is not worth while to go any further. But it is needful to observe that the dicta of the author of the "Contrat Social," published in 1762, are not unfrequently very hard—indeed, I might say impossible—to reconcile with those of the author of the "Discours," which appeared eight years earlier; and that, if any one should maintain that the older