consultation, and composition between men, judging it convenient and behoveful." Hobbes made the social contract a justification for Royal absolutism, and Locke, with a Whig ideal of constitutional government, enlarged on the right of a people to change its form of government, and justified the Revolution of 1688. The writings of Hobbes and Locke have had a lasting influence, and Locke is really the source of the democratic stream of the eighteenth century. It rises in Locke to become the torrent of the French Revolution. But Huguenots and Jesuits, Hooker and Milton--what influence had their writings on the mass of English people? None whatever, as far as we can see. Milton could write of "the power" of "the people" as a "natural birthright," but the power was plainly in Cromwell's army, and "the people" had no means of expression concerning its will, and no opportunity for the assertion of sovereignty. Lilburne and the Levellers held that democracy could be set up on the ruins of Charles I.'s Government, and the sovereignty of the people become a fact; and with a ready political instinct Lilburne proposed the election of popular representatives on a democratic franchise. Cromwell rejected all Lilburne's proposals; for him affairs of State were too serious for experiments in democracy; and Lilburne himself was cast into prison by the Commonwealth Government. Lilburne's pamphlets were exceedingly numerous, and his popularity, in London particularly, enormous. He was the voice of the unrepresented, powerless citizens in whom the republican theorists saw the centre of authority. The one effort to persuade the Commonwealth Republic to give power to the people was made by John Lilburne, and it was defeated. The Whig theory that an aristocratic House of Commons, elected by a handful of people, and mainly at the dictation of the landowners, was "the People," triumphed. The bulk of the English people were left out of all account in the political struggles of Whigs and Tories, and democracy was not dreamed of till America was free and France a republic. The industrial revolution compelled the reform of the British House of Commons, and democracy has slowly superseded aristocracy, not from any enthusiasm for the "sovereign people," but from the traditional belief that representative government means the rule of the people. Precedent, not theory, has been the argument for democracy in England. THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679)