"I hold it to be an impious and an execrable maxim that, politically speaking, a people has a right to do whatever it pleases; and yet I have asserted that all authority originates in the will of the majority. Am I, then, in contradiction with myself? A general law which bears the name of Justice has been made and sanctioned, not only by a majority of this or that people, but by a majority of mankind. The rights of every people are consequently confined within the limits of what is just. A nation may be considered in the light of a jury which is empowered to represent society at large, and to apply the great general law of justice. Ought such a jury, which represents society, to have more power than the society in which the laws it applies originate."--_M. de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America_," ii. 151. Although M. de Tocqueville's view does not go to the full length of the argument, still, regarded in this light, the voice of the majority of mankind, or of any large masses of mankind, has a very different significance from what it bears in the writings of Bentham. Let us now consider the doctrines of Bentham in their more recent exposition. The _Pall Mall Gazette_, Oct. 6, 1870, says:-- "Laws have been described as definitions of pre-existing rights, relations between man and man, reflections of divine ordinances, anything but what they really are,--forms of organised constraint. It says little for the assumed clear-headedness of Englishmen, that they have very generally preferred the ornate jargon of Hooker, to the accurate and intelligible account of law and government which forms the basis of Bentham's juridical system." It says much, however, for their strong political sense and sagacity. If this is the true and only description of law, it is tantamount to saying that law is force and force is law; in other words, that the commands of a legitimate government need not be regarded when it is weak, but that the enactments of power must always be obeyed, however it is acquired, and whether its decrees are in accordance with right or contrary to justice. It is a ready justification for tyranny, equally sanctioning the "lettres de cachet" of the ancient regime, and the proscriptions of the Convention, equally at hand for the National Assembly at Versailles, or for the Commune at Paris. But however much it may be disguised, it is the only alternative definition of law, when once you say that law is not of divine ordinance and tradition. If no regard is to be had to the definition of right, but the term law is to be applied to any adequate act of repression, there is in truth nothing but force. Yet why should force adequate to its purpose seek to cloak itself in the forms of law? I suppose the question must have been put and answered before; but the answer can only be because law is felt to import a totally different set of ideas from force.