Now it is not too much to say that never in the history of political theory has a political theory been put forward so lucidly, so convincingly, so tersely or so accurately as in this short and wonderful book. The modern publisher in this country would be ashamed to print it: not for its views (which would now seem commonplace), nor for its excellence, which would ensure it a failure, but for its brevity. It is as short as a gospel, and would cover but a hundred pages of one of our serious reviews. A modern publisher in this city would not know what price to set upon such a work, and the modern reader in this country would be puzzled to understand how a great thing could be got within so narrow a compass. A debate in Parliament or the libretto of a long pantomime is of greater volume. Nevertheless, if it be closely read the _Contrat Social_ will be discovered to say all that can be said of the moral basis of democracy. Our ignorance of the historical basis of the State is presumed in the very opening lines of it. The logical priority of the family to the State is the next statement. The ridiculous and shameful argument that strength is the basis of authority--which has never had standing save among the uninstructed or the superficial--is contemptuously dismissed in a very simple proof which forms the third chapter, and that chapter is not a page of a book in length. It is with the fifth chapter that the powerful argument begins, and the logical precedence of _human association_ to any particular form of government is the foundation stone of that analysis. It is this indeed which gives its title to the book: the moral authority of men in community arises from _conscious association_; or, as an exact phraseology would have it, a “social contract.” All the business of democracy as based upon the only moral authority in a State follows from this first principle, and is developed in Rousseau’s extraordinary achievement which, much more than any other writing not religious, has affected the destiny of mankind.