David Hume made the argument
which Locke seemed to refute. Royal
subjects cannot be said to give their
tacit consent to any contract, claimed
Hume. The subjection of men to their
ruler (based upon the world in which
he lives) is the result of habit or neces-
sity, not tacit consent. Can the democ-
racy of Athens, he asked, be called a
government by contract wherein only
ten per cent of the people were voting
and ruling?
William Paley suggested an alterna-
tive to Hume's idea that men are not
born free.27 Paley saw the compact
theory as twofold:
1. An express compact by primitive
founders who are supposed to have
unanimously consented to be bound by
the resolutions of the majority . . . .28
2. A tacit or implied consent, by all
succeeding members of the state, who,
by accepting its protection, consent to
be bound by its laws.
In a lecture delivered before the
Franklin Lyceum in 1842, John Quincy
Adams saw no need to believe in tacit
consent in order to believe in an orig-
inal contract, but he strengthened the
case for asserting that tacit consent may
exist among the masses after an original
contract has been drawn up.29 By the
laws of nature, he stated, covenants are
made by a portion of the people for the
whole. That portion is capable of con-
tracting for the whole if it is in posses-
sion of the sovereign will delegated by
the people. Men must be qualified to
contract in such an agreement and are
27 6 W. paley, moral and political phi-
losophy, ch. 3 (1785).
28 (Emphasis supplied.) Note the departure
from theoretical contractarianism.
29 The Social Compact Exemplified in the
Massachusetts Constitution, Address by John
Quincy Adams, Franklin Lyceum, Nov. 25,
1842.
10
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often sponsors of families, not indi-
viduals, because it is by nature that the
family structure is the substructure
within society.30 While citing the fact
that only one citizen of Massachusetts in
thirty-five ratified by vote the constitu-
tion of Massachusetts, Adams main-
tained that that constitution consti-
tutes a compact.
Mutual consent of a select elite may
be the formal recognition of a compact's
acceptability to the masses, thought
Adams, but it is only by a mutual pledge
of faith among the people that any for-
mal compact may become permanent.
Similarly, Alfred Fouillee affirmed his
belief in a "quasi-contract" which is a
tacit but voluntary adhesion to a com-
munity which its members signify by
their continued presence in it, an ad-
hesion made solemn particularly in
republics with universal suffrage where
one renews his faith by the voting
process.31
If one declares the compact theory to
be of no current validity,' one is either
unable, wearing a deerstalker hat, trench
coat, and magnifying glass in hand, to
find the original compact, or one is
simultaneously rejecting the idea that a
people may give their tacit consent to an
institution of government. This is hasti-
ness, however, and a failure to recog-
nize the course of events since the days
\ t
of Locke or Rousseau. Hume might
have been quite surprised to have lived
and seen the effects which the natural
law theory and the compact theory had
on the actual beginnings of the Amer-
ican and French Revolutions. "The
30 See J. locke, Of Paternal Power, in
second treatise on civil government,
ch. VI, § LII— LXXVI, in social contract
(1962).
31 A. FOUILLEE, la science social con-
TEMPORAINE 2 (1880).
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