from which the common-sense notions of the vulgar are in good part derived, is no longer in full accord with the natural-rights conceptions handed down from the eighteenth century. In other words, the conceptions of natural rights on which the common law rests embody a technically competent formulation of the deliverances of that body of common sense which was inculcated by the discipline of everyday life in the eighteenth century, before the advent of the current situar tion ; whereas the discipline of everyday life under the current technological and business situation inculcates a body of common-sense views somewhat at variance with the received natural-rights notions.
There is apparently something of a divergence between the received notions on this head and the deliverances of latter-day common sense. The divergence is neither well defined nor consistent. The latter-day attitude toward questions of the kind involved is vague, chiefly negative or critical, and apparently fluctuating; but after all there is a somewhat persistent divergence, which may even be said to have a systematic character, so far as it goes. It runs in the direction of a (partial and \ vacillating) disavowal or distrust of the metar I physics of free contract, and even of natural lib- | erty generally. This uncertainty of allegiance to the received foundations of law and order prevails
and dignity.' The modern mercantilism under couBtitutional rule, on the other hand, looks to the prince or to the government as a means to