Here as in other places the historical jurist and the utilitarian were in agreement as to results although they differed widely as to the mode of reaching them. The former saw in contract a realization of the idea of liberty. The latter saw in it a means of promoting that maximum of individual free self-assertion which he took to be human happiness. Hence the former called for freedom of contract and should have called for wide general enforcement of promises. The latter held to a doctrine of unshackling men and allowing them to act as freely as possible, which involved the complementary position of extending the sphere and enforcing the obligation of contract. The difference between these ways of thinking and those of the end of the eighteenth century is brought out if we compare Blackstone (1765) with a dictum of Sir George Jessel a century later (1875). The former says that the public is "in nothing so essentially interested as in securing to every individual his private rights." The latter, discussing a question of what agreements are against public policy and therefore unenforceable, says: "If there is one thing more than another which public policy requires it is that men of full age and competent understanding shall have the utmost liberty of contracting and that such contracts shall be enforced by courts of justice." But the utilitarians put the emphasis upon the first, the negative, rather than upon the second, the affirmative, part of this twofold program. This is true also of the historical jurists and of the positivists. The English trader and entrepreneur was not seeking for legal instruments. He could work passably with those which the law furnished if the law would but let him. What he sought was to be free from legal shackles which had come down from a society of a different nature organized on a different basis and with other ends. Hence juristic thought addressed itself to this for a season rather than to the doctrine of consideration and the reason for non-enforcement of deliberate promises where not put in the form of bargains.