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The chief factors in this evolution were Roman jurisprudence, the Stoic philosophy, the Christian religion, and the traditions of the Teutonic tribes

Of these Christianity is the chief, for it vindicated liberty of conscience

The conception of freedom, as spiritual and ethical, the source of the great growth of individuality in the Middle Ages

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

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Liberty is rooted and grounded in inequality

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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 pro-
gress 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"
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 Con-
tinental Europe

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? .

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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

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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.

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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

The Declaration of Rights made manifest the anti-Christian inspiration of the Revolution.

Within a year, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy applied the Revolutionary dogma to the ecclesiastical domain.

The subsequent history of the Revolution, until Napoleon crushed it for a while, justifies the words of Pius VI., that its aim was to abolish the Catholic religion in France.

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That has ever since been its most cherished aim

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By

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Clericalism," which it denounces as its enemy, is meant "all religions and all religiosity"

The reason for the hostility of the Revolution to all religions is that it claims to be a religion itself .

This truth will be elucidated by the help of Mr. John
Morley, the professed apologist of the Revolution, and

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a special authority on its inner meaning and spirit 60

Mr. Morley compares the Revolution, as a religious movement, with Christianity, pronouncing it a new gospel and a better one

This new gospel, as Mr. Morley abundantly shows, is anti

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theistic

It is a kind of Positivism

"Naturalism in art" and "Materialistic explanations in

the science of Man " are among its "notes'

Together with belief in God, and belief in the immortality

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of the soul, the new gospel rejects belief in man's
liberty of volition

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And seeks to get such ethics as it desires out of necessarianism

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Its moral philosphy examined

The determinism which appears to be a primary doctrine of the Revolutionary religion, is fatal to the idea of justice, and makes of legislation vanæ sine moribus leges

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If law, with penal sanctions, be the bond of civil society, the family is its foundation

The family, as it exists in Europe, is mainly the creation of Christianity

And rests upon the ascetic teaching of Christianity concerning the virtue of purity

The new gospel brands that teaching as a superstition

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Licence, teste Mr. Morley, is in the new gospel what

austerity is in the old .

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Paternity is of as little account as marriage in the new gospel.

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The traditions of the English home are irreconcilable with the new gospel

Mr. Morley insists that those who desire to see the Christian dogma and Churches replaced by the "higher form of faith" presented by the Revolution, are bound to labour for that end

The means specially recommended is the banishment of
Christianity from primary education.

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Mr. Morley inveighs against the Education Act of 1870 as being "of the nature of a small reform," and desires the entire destruction of the denominational system. 104

The reason is obvious: this "future great reform” would supply the most effective means of undermining the Christianity of England, and of making straight the paths of the new gospel

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