theory of consent in such fashion as to show that if its adherents could
be persuaded to be logical, they would have to admit themselves
anarchists. He has no sympathy with the state of nature; the noble
savage, on investigation, turns out to be a barbaric creature with a
club and scalping knife. Government, he does not doubt, is a trust, or,
as he prefers, somewhat oddly, to call it, a quasi-contract; but that
does not mean that the actual governors can be dismissed when any
eccentric happens to take exception to their views. He has no sympathy
with parliamentary reform. Give the mob an increase of power, he says,
and nothing is to be expected but outrage and violence. He thinks the
constitution very well as it is, and those who preach the evils of
corruption ought to prove their charges instead of blasphemously
asserting that the voice of the people is the voice of God.

Upon America Tucker has doctrines all his own. He does not doubt that
the Americans deserve the worst epithets that can be showered upon them.
Their right to self-government he denied as stoutly as ever George III
himself could have desired. But not for one moment would he fight them
to compel their return to British allegiance. If the American colonies
want to go, let them by all means cut adrift. They are only a useless
source of expenditure. The trade they represent does not depend upon
allegiance but upon wants that England can supply if she keeps shop in
the proper way, if, that is, she makes it to their interest to buy in
her market. Indeed, colonies of all kinds seem to him quite useless.
They ever are, he says, and ever were, "a drain to and an incumbrance on
the Mother-country, requiring perpetual and expensive nursing in their
infancy, and becoming headstrong and ungovernable in proportion as they
grow up." All wise relations depend upon self-interest, and that needs
no compulsion. If Gibraltar and Port Mahon and the rest were given up,
the result would be "multitudes of places ... abolished, jobs and