I may here notice a consequence of this view which throws some light on a once famous controversy. I mean the theory of the social contract. That society was based upon a contract few persons would now care to maintain. There is no evidence that any such contract was in fact made. It is in effect inconceivable that it should have been formed; it is scarcely less inconceivable that, having been formed, it should have been observed. But it is, I think, too much to say that no political society could have at least originated in contract. I suppose that, in the case of the United States, and in the case of the United Kingdom itself, we have examples of two great political societies of which contract is the foundation. Colonial governments, too, are formed, if not by contract, yet artificially by legislation. We shall see that the earliest political societies were in the nature of voluntary associations, the basis of which was community of worship. The controversy seems to have arisen from the failure to perceive that political society, although it is the highest, is not the only form of society; and that men have lived, and still live happily, without kings, and without parliaments, and without laws.
There are other matters, too, on which, under the penalty of serious error, we must not apply, to men under different conditions from ourselves, our ordinary standards of judgment. Much of the opposition to political economy has been due to the very natural, or at least very British, desire of some of its earlier teachers to generalize from British phenomena alone. This error has been corrected; but it is evident that there are some societies which the ordinary economic rules do not fit. I think that the reason is, that the conditions of political society alone furnish the postulates of political economy. I believe that political economy is a true science; that is, that its phenomena may be traced to
