The doctrine that the State originated in a contract was a favourite theme of political speculation during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But in the nineteenth century it was subjected to a searching criticism. Even before the publication of Rousseau's Social Contract, Hume, the English philosopher, declared that contract as the basis of relations between the governors and the governed was incompatible with the facts the facts of history Jeremy Bentham said,"I bid adieu to the original contract, and I leave it to those to amuse themselves with the rattle who could think they need it." Bluntschli characterised it "in the highest degree dangerous, since it makes the State and its institutions the product of individual caprice." Sir Henry Maine maintained that nothing could be "more worthless" than such an account of the origin of society and government as given by Hobbes