act" is full of inaccuracies in its references to history;
it is often self-contradictory, and it has not even the merit of
originality. From Hobbes Rousseau borrowed the notion of authority in the
State; from Locke the seat of this authority; the nature of the original
pact and of citizenship from Spinoza; from the Huguenot Languet the
doctrine of fraternity; and from Althusius the doctrine of the
inalienability of citizenship. Where Locke was content to maintain that the
people collectively had the right to change the form of government,
Rousseau would give the community continual exercise in sovereignty, while
voting and representation are signs of democratic decadence in Rousseau's
eyes. The sovereign people governing, not through elected representatives
but by public meeting, has only been found possible in small slave-ridden
states.

At the Revolution France had to elect its deputies. But the theory of the
sovereignty of the people has over and over again, in France, upset the
Government, and destroyed the authority of the deputies. In England we
accept the rule of Parliament, and are satisfied that the election of
representatives by an enfranchised people is the most satisfactory form of
democracy, though we retain a healthy instinct of criticism of the
Government in power. In France has happened what Locke's critics foretold:
the sovereign people never wholeheartedly delegates its powers to its
deputies, and indulges in revolution when impatient of government. During
the Revolution the passionate clamour of the sovereign people overpowered
the votes and voices of elected representatives, and revolution and
reaction were the rule in France from 1793 to 1871.

We may be frankly against the Government all the time in England; we may
resist it actively and passively, for the purpose of calling attention to
some political grievance, some disability that needs removal. But we never
forget that it is the Government, or believe that it can be overturned save
by the votes of the electorate. At the time of the European revolutions of
1848, when crowns were falling, and ministers flying before the rage of the
sovereign people, Chartism never seriously threatened the stability of the
British Government, and its great demonstrations were no real menace to the
existing order. Nothing seems able to shake the British confidence in its
elected representatives, and in the Government that is supported by a
majority of those repres