We have already remarked the rhetorical veil under which Rousseau conceals the word ‹Imposture›. We shall now see how, by another dash of eloquence, he evades the conclusion of his whole work, which is ‹Slavery›. “Your ungenial climate entails upon you additional wants. For six months of the year you cannot frequent the market-place, your hoarse voices cannot make themselves audible in the open air, and you fear poverty more than slavery.” “You see clearly that you cannot be free.” [p060] “What! liberty maintain itself only by the aid of servitude? Very likely!” Had Rousseau stopt short at this dreadful word, the reader would have been shocked. It was necessary therefore to have recourse to imposing declamation, and Rousseau never fails in that. “All things that are unnatural (it is society he is speaking of) are inconvenient, and civil society more so than all the rest. There are unfortunate situations in which one man cannot maintain his liberty but at the expense of another, and where the citizen cannot be entirely free unless the rigours of slavery are extreme. As for you, modern people, you have no slavery, but you are yourselves slaves. You purchase other men’s liberty with your own. In vain you boast of this advantage. I see in it rather cowardice than humanity.” I ask, does not this mean: Modern people, you would do infinitely better not to be slaves, but to possess slaves? I trust the reader will have the goodness to pardon this long digression, which is by no means useless or inopportune. Rousseau and his disciples of the Convention have been held up to us of late as the apostles of human fraternity. Men for materials, a ruler for mechanician, a father of nations for inventor, a philosopher above them all—imposture for means, slavery for result,—is this the fraternity which is promised us? This work of Rousseau to which I have referred—the ‹Contrat Social›—appears to me well fitted to exhibit the characteristics of these artificial social organizations. The inventors of such systems set out with the idea that society is a state contrary to nature, and they seek to subject humanity to different combinations. They forget that its motive power, its spring of action, is in itself. They regard men as base materials, and aspire to impart to them movement and will, sentiment and life; placing themselves at an immeasurable height above the whole human race. These are features common to all the inventors of social organizations. The inventions are different—the inventors are alike. Among the new arrangements which feeble mortals are invited to make trial of, there is one which is presented to us in terms worthy of attention. Its formula is: ‹Association voluntary and progressive›.