A Century of Revolution

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The chief factors in this evolution were Roman juris

prudence, 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

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 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 ? .

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

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.

That has ever since been its most cherished aim .

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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 reli

gions 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
a special authority on its inner meaning and spirit

Mr. Morley compares the Revolution, as a religious move

ment, with Christianity, pronouncing it a new gospel
and a better one

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

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

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

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

sarianism

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 vance sine moribus
leges

PAGE

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 con

cerning the virtue of purity

The new gospel brands that teaching as a superstition

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

austerity is in the old .

Paternity is of as little account as marriage in the new

gospel

The traditions of the English home are irreconcilable

with the new gospel

Mr. Morley insists that those who desire to see the Chris

tian 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.

101

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 “futnre great reform” would

supply the most effective means of undermining the
Christianity of England, and of making straight the
paths of the new gospel

105

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