SUMMARY. PAGE To obtain the instruction which is the true end of his- These speculations postulate that men are absolutely b PAGE Substance of the Revolutionary dogma: that complete freedom, or rather lawlessness, is the natural condition of man; that all men are born and continue equal in rights; that civil society is an artificial state resting upon a contract between those sovereign units, whereby the native independence of each is surrendered, and an absolute power over each is vested in the body politic; that human nature is good, and that the evil in the world is the result of bad education and bad institutions; that man, uncorrupted by civilisation, is essentially reasonable; and that the will of the sovereign units, dwelling in any territory under the social contract, that is of the majority of them, expressed by their delegates, is the supreme law Object of the present treatise: to examine the Revolution, after a century's experience of it, in its relation with Liberty, Religion, Science, Art, Democracy, and in its bearing on the public life of England 15 16 CHAPTER II. THE REVOLUTION AND LIBERTY. The Revolutionary dogma holds liberty to reside in political equality 17 A worthier conception of liberty will be set forth. 18 Liberty, in the largest sense, is the unimpeded use of any faculty 18 Law-which is grounded in that faculty of reason, whence springs free agency-is the essential condition of the right use of liberty Moral liberty is, in a sense, unlimited, but, as soon as it manifests itself externally, it becomes conditioned . We must obey Law in order to be free This is the necessity which compels men into the social state wherein liberty is realised This truth was recognised by Aristotle and embodied in his Politics; he holds that man is a moral being and that only in a polity can justice be realised; that the state is an association of free persons, to be organised justly, and that its end is the higher life The statement of M. Fustel de Coulanges, that individual liberty was unknown in the ancient Hellenic republics, examined and dissented from . Those republics were the first missionaries of freedom in the Western world The political progress of Europe is the gradual vindication of the personal, social, and public prerogatives which PAGE 19 19 19 19 21 25 26 The chief factors in this evolution were Roman jurisprudence, the Stoic philosophy, the Christian religion, and the traditions of the Teutonic tribes 27 Of these Christianity is the chief, for it vindicated liberty of conscience 28 The conception of freedom, as spiritual and ethical, the source of the great growth of individuality in the 34 The constitutional history of England is the history of the development, by a process of organic growth, upon the one hand, of that individual freedom which means complexity, differentiation, inequality; and upon the other hand, of that closer unity resulting from the harmonious working of diverse forces, freely constituted, under the sway of great religious and ethical principles England retained the free institutions of the Middle Ages which, in most Continental countries, were sapped by Renaissance Absolutism and gradually disappeared Since the great event of 1688, finally vindicated for us "the undoubted rights and liberties of the subject," English freedom has "broadened down," until we now enjoy the plenitude of all the liberties which the exercise of personality implies Liberty is rooted and grounded in inequality The result of the argument is this: that liberty is, in its nature, freedom from constraint in the employment of our faculties; that, in its end, it is the exercise of personality; that its condition is a certain stage of intellectual and spiritual development, in which a man shall be capable of tending consciously towards the realisation of personality; and that the law of its tendency is ethical. "When we measure the progress of a society by its growth in freedom we measure it by the increasing liberation of the powers of all men, equally, for a common good" PAGE 36 37 38 39 41 How far has the Revolution vindicated such freedom? Its work has been almost entirely negative; it has destroyed restrictions upon the exercise of human powers in France and in various parts of Continental Europe 42 43 But where has it achieved liberty in the positive sense? . Consider France, where it has had its most perfect work. It has converted that country into a chaos of hostile individuals Can we predicate freedom of the French peasant, brutalised and utterly selfish, a mere human automaton, a voting animal, incapable of realising his powers for the common good? . PAGE 44 44 45 The French artisan, his whole being penetrated by the anarchic teaching of Rousseau, is the prey of political agitators, who dazzle him with visions of Socialistic Utopias; it is his passions, not his rational faculties, wherein liberty is rooted, that have been set free 48 Of such agitators the Chamber of Deputies is chiefly composed; the Revolution has destroyed public spirit in France The Revolution has shown itself in France hostile to liberty of person, liberty of property, liberty of education CHAPTER III. THE REVOLUTION AND RELIGION. 51 52 Hostility to religion is one of the chief characteristics of the Revolution. In the popular movement from which the Revolution issued, the French clergy, as a body, heartily joined 54 56 |