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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
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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
make up individual freedom; the evolution of the
individual in the social organism
The chief factors in this evolution were Roman juris-
prudence, the Stoic philosophy, the Christian religion,
and the traditions of the Teutonic tribes
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Of these Christianity is the chief, for it vindicated liberty
of conscience
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The conception of freedom, as spiritual and ethical, the
source of the great growth of individuality in the
Middle Ages
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 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 automa-
ton, 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
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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 .
By "Clericalism," which it denounces as its enemy, is
meant "all religions and all religiosity"
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The reason for the hostility of the Revolution to all reli-
gions is that it claims to be a religion itself.
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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
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This new gospel, as Mr. Morley abundantly shows, is anti-
theistic
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It is a kind of Positivism
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"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
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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 vane sine moribus
leges
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If law, with penal sanctions, be the bond of civil society,
the family is its foundation
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The family, as it exists in Europe, is mainly the creation
of Christianity
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And rests upon the ascetic teaching of Christianity con-
cerning the virtue of purity
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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 .
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
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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 .
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