Excerpt from Popular Government: Four Essays Origin and real history of these theories, I found them to rest upon a very slender philosophical foundation, but at the same time they might be shown to have been extremely powerful both for good and for evil. One Of the characteristics most definitely associated with Nature and her Law was simplicity, and thus the theories of which I am speaking brought about (though less in England than in other countries) many valuable reforms Of private law, by simplifying it and clearing it from barbarous technicalities; They had, further, a large share in the parentage of Inter national Law, and they th'us helped to mitigate in some small degree the sanguinary quarrelsomeness which has accompanied the human race through the whole course Of its history. But, on the other hand, they in, my judgment unnerved the human intellect, and thus made it capable Of the extravagances into which it fell at the close Of the eighteenth century. And they certainly gave a false bias to all historical inquiry into the growth of society and the develop. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.