1799,
toned down still further by a growing caution. These revisions
undoubtedly made the book less interesting, less vivid, less readable.
No modern edition has ever appeared, and its direct influence had become
negligible even before Godwin's death. It is harder to account for the
oblivion into which the book has fallen, than to explain its early
popularity. It is not a difficult book to read. "The young and the
fair," Godwin tells us, "did not feel deterred from consulting my
pages." His style is always clear and often eloquent. His vocabulary
seems to a modern taste overloaded with Latin words, but the
architecture of his sentences is skilful in the classical manner. He can
vary his elaborate periods with a terse, strong statement which comes
with the force of an unexpected blow. He has a knack of happy
illustration, and a way of enforcing his points by putting problems in
casuistry which have an alluring human interest. The book moved his own
generation profoundly, and even to-day his more enthusiastic passages
convey an irresistible impression of sincerity and conviction.

CHAPTER IV

"POLITICAL JUSTICE"

The controversy which produced _Political Justice_ was a dialogue
between the future and the past. The task of speculation in England had
been, through a stagnant century, to define the conditions of political
stability, and to admire the elaborate checks and balances of the
British Constitution as though change were the only evil that threatened
mankind. For Burke, change itself was but an incident in the triumph of
continuity and conservation. For Godwin the whole life of mankind is a
race through innovation to perfection, and his main concern is to exhort
the athlete to fling aside the garments of prejudice, tradition, and
constraint, until one asks at the end how much of flesh and blood has
been torn away with the garments. If one were to attempt in a phrase to
sum up his work, the best title which one could invent for it would be
Prolegomena to all Future Progress. What in a word are the conditions of
progress?

His attitude to mankind is by turns a pedagogue's disapprobation and a
patron's encouragement. The worst enemy of progress was the systematic
optimism of Leibnitz and Pope, which Voltaire had overthrown. There is
indeed enough of progress in the past to fire our courage and our hopes.
In moments of depression, he would admire the beautiful invention of
writing and the power of mind displ