An Address Delivered to the Members of the Bridgnorth
Institute
February 26, 1877
by Lord Acton
Liberty,
next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of
crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the
ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race. It is the delicate fruit of a
mature civilization; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew
the meaning of the term, resolved to be free. In every age its progress has
been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of
conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the
poor man's craving for food. During long intervals it has been utterly
arrested, when nations were being rescued from barbarism and from the grasp of
strangers, and when the perpetual struggle for existence, depriving men of all
interest and understanding in politics, has made them eager to sell their
birthright for a pottage, and ignorant of the treasure they resigned. At all
times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due
to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries
whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is
always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just
ground of opposition, and by kindling dispute over the spoils in the hour of
success. No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome as
uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty. If hostile
interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have wrought still more; and
its advance is recorded in the increase of knowledge as much as in the
improvement of laws. The history of institutions is often a history of
deception and illusions; for their virtue depends on the ideas that produce and
on the spirit that preserves them; and the form may remain unaltered when the
substance has passed away.
A few
familiar examples from modern politics will explain why it is that the burden
of my argument will lie outside the domain of legislation. It is often said
that our constitution attained its formal perfection in 1679, when the Habeas Corpus
Act was passed. Yet Charles II succeeded, only two years later, in making
himself independent of Parliament. In 1789, while the States General assembled
at Versailles, the Spanish Cortes, older than Magna Charta and more venerable
than our House of Commons, were summoned after an interval of generations; but
they immediately prayed the King to abstain from consulting them, and to make
his reforms of his own wisdom and authority. According to the common opinion,
indirect elections are a safeguard of conservatism. But all the assemblies of
the French Revolution issued from indirect election. A restricted suffrage is
another reputed security for monarchy. But the parliament of Charles X, which
was returned by 90,000 electors, resisted and overthrew the throne; whilst the
parliament of Louis Philippe, chosen by a constituency of 250,000, obsequiously
promoted the reactionary policy of his ministers, and, in the fatal division
which, by rejecting reform, laid the monarchy in the dust, Guizot's majority was
obtained by the votes of 129 public functionaries. An unpaid legislature is,
for obvious reasons, more independent than most of the continental legislatures
which receive pay. But it would be unreasonable in America to send a member as
far as from here to Constantinople to live for twelve months at his own expense
in the dearest of capital cities. Legally and to outward seeming the American
President is the successor of Washington, and still enjoys powers devised and
limited by the Convention of Philadelphia. In reality the new President differs
from the Magistrate imagined by the Fathers of the Republic as widely as
Monarchy from Democracy; for he is expected to make 70,000 changes in the
public service: fifty years ago John Quincy Adams dismissed only two men. The
purchase of judicial appointments is manifestly indefensible; yet in the old
French monarchy that monstrous practice created the only corporation able to
resist the King. Official corruption, which would ruin a commonwealth, serves
in Russia as a salutary relief from the pressure of absolutism. There are
conditions in which it is scarcely a hyperbole to say that slavery itself is a
stage on the road to freedom. Therefore we are not so much concerned this
evening with the dead letter of edicts and of statutes as with the living
thoughts of men. A century ago it was perfectly well known that whoever had one
audience of a Master in Chancery was made to pay for three, but no man heeded
the enormity until it suggested to a young lawyer the idea that it might be
well to question and examine with rigorous suspicion every part of a system in
which such things were done. The day on which that gleam lighted up the clear
hard intellect of Jeremy Bentham is memorable in the political calendar beyond
the entire administration of many statesmen. It would be easy to point out a
paragraph in St. Augustine, or a sentence of Grotius that outweighs in
influence the acts of fifty parliaments; and our cause owes more to Cicero and
Seneca, to Vinet and Tocqueville than to the laws of Lycurgus or the Five Codes
of France.
By
liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he
believes his duty, against the influence of authority and majorities, custom
and opinion. The state is competent to assign duties and draw the line between
good and evil only in its own immediate sphere. Beyond the limit of things
necessary for its wellbeing, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle
of life, by promoting the influences which avail against temptation,-Religion,
Education, and the distribution of Wealth. In ancient times the state absorbed
authorities not its own, and intruded on the domain of personal freedom. In the
middle ages it possessed too little authority, and suffered others to intrude.
Modern states fall habitually into both excesses. The most certain test by
which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security
enjoyed by minorities. Liberty, by this definition, is the essential condition
and guardian of Religion; and it is in the history of the chosen People,
accordingly, that the first illustrations of my subject are obtained. The
government of the Israelites was a Federation, held together by no political
authority, but by the unity of race and faith, and founded, not on physical
force, but on a voluntary covenant. The principle of self-government was
carried out not only in each tribe, but in every group of at least 120
families; and there was neither privilege of rank, nor inequality before the
law. Monarchy was so alien to the primitive spirit of the community that it was
resisted by Samuel in that momentous protestation and warning which all the
kingdoms of Asia and many of the kingdoms of Europe have unceasingly confirmed.
The throne was erected on a compact; and the King was deprived of the right of
legislation among a people that recognized no lawgiver but God, whose highest
aim in politics was to restore the original purity of the constitution, and to
make its government conform to the ideal type that was hallowed by the
sanctions of heaven. The inspired men who rose up in unfailing succession to
prophesy against the usurper and the tyrant, constantly proclaimed that the
laws, which were divine, were paramount over sinful rulers, and appealed from
the established authorities, from the king, the priests, and the princes of the
people, to the healing forces that slept in the uncorrupted conscience of the
masses. Thus the example of the Hebrew nation laid down the parallel lines on
which all freedom has been won-the doctrine of national tradition, and the
doctrine of the higher law; the principle that a constitution grows from a
root, by process of development and not of essential change; and the principle
that all political authorities must be tested and reformed according to a code
which was not made by man. The operation of these two principles, in unison or
in antagonism, occupies the whole of the space we are going over together.
The
conflict between Liberty under divine authority and the absolutism of human
authorities ended dis-astrously. In the year 622 a supreme effort was made at
Jerusalem to reform and to preserve the state. The High Priest produced from
the temple of Jehova the Book of the deserted and forgotten Law, and both king
and people bound themselves by solemn oaths to observe it. But that early
example of limited Monarchy and of the supremacy of law neither lasted nor
spread; and the forces by which Freedom has conquered must be sought elsewhere.
In the very year 586, in which the flood of Asiatic despotism closed over the
city which had been and was destined again to be the sanctuary of Freedom in
the East, a new home was prepared for it in the West, where, guarded by the
sea, and the mountains, and by valiant hearts, that stately plant was reared
under whose shade we dwell, and which is extending its invincible arms so
slowly and yet so surely over the civilized world.
According
to a famous saying of the most famous authoress of the continent, Liberty is
ancient; and it is Despotism that is new. It has been the pride of recent
historians to vindicate the truth of that maxim. The heroic age of Greece
confirms it, and it is still more conspicuously true of Teutonic Europe.
Wherever we can trace the earlier life of the Aryan nations we discover germs
which favouring circumstances and assiduous culture might have developed into
free societies. They exhibit some sense of common interest in common concerns,
little reverence for external authority, and an imperfect sense of the function
and supremacy of the state. Where the division of property and of labour is
incomplete, there is little division of classes and of power. Until societies
are tried by the complex problems of civilization they may escape despotism, as
societies that are undisturbed by religious diversity avoid persecution. In
general, the forms of the patriarchal age failed to resist the growth of
absolute states when the difficulties and temptations of advancing life began
to tell; and with one sovereign exception, which is not within my scope to-day,
it is scarcely possible to trace their survival in the institutions of later
times. Six hundred years before the Birth of Christ absolutism held unbounded
sway. Throughout the East it was propped by the unchanging influence of priests
and armies. In the West, where there were no sacred books requiring trained
interpreters, the priesthood acquired no preponderance, and when the kings were
overthrown their powers passed to aristocracies of birth. What followed, during
many generations, was the cruel domination of class over class, the oppression
of the poor by the rich, and of the ignorant by the wise. The spirit of that
domination found passionate utterance in the verses of the aristocratic poet
Theognis, a man of genius and refinement, who avows that he longed to drink the
blood of his political adversaries. From these oppressors the people of many
cities sought deliverance in the less intolerable tyranny of revolutionary
usurpers. The remedy gave new shape and new energy to the evil. The tyrants
were often men of surprising capacity and merit, like some of those who, in the
fourteenth century, made themselves lords of Italian cities; but rights secured
by equal laws and by sharing power existed nowhere.
From
this universal degradation the world was rescued by the most gifted of the
nations. Athens, which like other cities was distracted and oppressed by a
privileged class, avoided violence and appointed Solon to revise its laws. It
was the happiest choice that history records. Solon was not only the wisest man
to be found in Athens, but the most profound political genius of antiquity; and
the easy, bloodless, and pacific revolution by which he accomplished the
deliverance of his country was the first step in a career which our age glories
in pursuing, and instituted a power which has done more than anything, except
revealed religion, for the regeneration of society. The upper class had
possessed the right of making and administering the laws, and he left them in
possession, only transferring to wealth what had been the privilege of birth.
To the rich, who alone had the means of sustaining the burden of public service
in taxation and war, Solon gave a share of power proportioned to the demands
made on their resources. The poorest classes were exempt from direct taxes, but
were excluded from office. Solon gave them a voice in electing magistrates from
the classes above them, and the right of calling them to account. This
concession, apparently so slender, was the beginning of a mighty change. It
introduced the idea that a man ought to have a voice in selecting those to
whose rectitude and wisdom he is compelled to trust his fortune, his family,
and his life. And this idea completely inverted the notion of human authority,
for it inaugurated the reign of moral influence where all political power had
depended on physical force. Government by consent superseded government by
compulsion, and the pyramid which had stood on a point was made to stand upon
its base. By making every citizen the guardian of his own interest, Solon
admitted the element of Democracy into the State. The greatest glory of a
ruler, he said, is to create a popular government. Believing that no man can be
entirely trusted, he subjected all who exercised power to the vigilant control
of those for whom they acted.
The only
resource against political disorders that had been known till then was the
concentration of power. Solon undertook to effect the same object by the
distribution of power. He gave to the common people as much influence as he
thought them able to employ, that the State might be exempt from arbitrary
government. It is the essence of Democracy, he said, to obey no master but the
law. Solon recognised the principle that political forms are not final or
invariable, and must adapt themselves to facts; and he provided so well for the
revision of his constitution, without breach of continuity, or loss of
stability that, for centuries after his death the Attic orators attributed to
him, and quoted by his name the whole structure of Athenian law. The direction
of its growth was determined by the fundamental doctrine of Solon, that
political power ought to be commensurate with public service. In the Persian
war the services of the Democracy eclipsed those of the patrician orders, for
the fleet that swept the Asiatics from the Aegean Sea was manned by the poorer
Athenians. That class whose valour had saved the state, and had preserved
European civilization, had gained a title to increase of influence and
privilege. The offices of state, which had been a monopoly of the rich were
thrown open to the poor, and in order to make sure that they should obtain
their share, all but the highest commands were distributed by lot.
Whilst
the ancient authorities were decaying, there was no accepted standard of moral
and political right to make the framework of society fast in the midst of
change. The instability which had seized on the forms threatened the very
principles of government. The national beliefs were yielding to doubt, and
doubt was not yet making way for knowledge. There had been a time when the
obligations of public as well as private life were identified with the will of
the gods. But that time had passed. Pallas, the ethereal goddess of the
Athenians, and the Sun god whose oracles delivered from the temple between the
twin summits of Parnassus did so much for the Greek nationality, aided in
keeping up a lofty ideal of religion; but when the enlightened men of Greece
learnt to apply their keen faculty of reasoning to the system of their
inherited belief they became quickly conscious that the conceptions of the gods
corrupted the life and degraded the minds of the people. Popular morality could
not be sustained by the popular religion. The moral instruction which was no
longer supplied by the gods could not yet be found in books. There was no
venerable code expounded by experts, no doctrine proclaimed by men of reputed
sanctity like those teachers of the far East whose words still rule the faith
of nearly half mankind. The effort to account for things by close observation
and exact reasoning began by destroying. There came a time when the
philosophers of the Porch and the Academy wrought the dictates of wisdom and
virtue into a system so consistent and profound that it has vastly shortened
the task of the Christian divines. But that time has not yet come.
The
epoch of doubt and transition during which the Greeks passed from the dim
fancies of mythology to the fierce light of science was the age of Pericles,
and the endeavour to substitute certain truth for the prescriptions of impaired
authorities which was then beginning to absorb the energies of the Greek
intellect is the grandest movement in the profane annals of mankind, for to it
we owe, even after the immeasurable progress accomplished by Christianity, much
of our philosophy, and far the better part of all the political knowledge we
possess. Pericles, who was at the head of the Athenian government, was the
first statesman who encountered the problem which the rapid weakening of
traditions forced on the political world. No authority in morals or in politics
remained unshaken by the motion that was in the air. No guide could be
confidently trusted; there was no available criterion to appeal to, for the
means of controlling or denying convictions that prevailed among the people.
The popular sentiment as to what was right might be mistaken, but it was
subject to no test. The people were, for practical purposes, the seat of the
knowledge of good and evil. The people, therefore, were the seat of power.
The
political philosophy of Pericles consisted of this conclusion. He resolutely
struck away all the props that still sustained the artificial preponderance of
wealth. For the ancient doctrine that power goes with land, he introduced the
idea that power ought to be so equitably diffused as to afford equal security
to all. That one part of the community should govern the whole, or that one
class should make laws for another, he declared to be tyrannical. The abolition
of privilege would have served only to transfer the supremacy from the rich to
the poor, if Pericles had not redressed the balance by restricting the rights
of citizenship to Athenians of pure descent. By this measure the class which
formed what we should call the third estate was brought down to 14,000 citizens,
and became about equal in numbers with the higher ranks. Pericles held that
every Athenian who neglected to take his part in the public business inflicted
an injury on the commonwealth. That none might be excluded by poverty he caused
the poor to be paid for their attendance out of the funds of the state; for his
administration of the federal tribute had brought together a treasure of more
than two millions sterling. The instrument of his sway was the art of speaking.
He governed by persuasion. Everything was decided by argument in open
deliberation; and every influence bowed before the ascendancy of mind. The idea
that the object of constitutions is not to confirm the predominance of any
interest, but to prevent it, to preserve with equal care the independence of
labour and the security of property, to make the rich safe against envy, and
the poor against oppression, marks the highest level attained by the
statesmanship of Greece. It hardly survived the great patriot who conceived it;
and all history has been occupied with the endeavour to upset the balance of
power by giving the advantage to money, land, or numbers. A generation followed
that has never been equaled in talent, a generation of men whose works, in
poetry and eloquence are still the envy of the world, and in history,
philosophy, and politics, remain unsurpassed. But it produced no successor to
Pericles; and no man was able to wield the sceptre that fell from his hand.
It was a
momentous step in the progress of nations when the principle that every
interest should have the right and the means of asserting itself was adopted by
the Athenian constitution. But for those who were beaten in the vote there was
no redress. The law did not check the triumph of majorities, or rescue the
minority from the dire penalties of having been outnumbered. When the
overwhelming influence of Pericles was removed, the conflict between classes
raged without restraint; and the slaughter that befell the higher ranks in the
Peloponnesian war gave an irresistible preponderance to the lower. The restless
and inquiring spirit of the Athenians was prompt to unfold the reason of every
institution and the consequences of every principle, and their constitution ran
its course from infancy to decrepitude, with unexampled speed.
Two
men's lives span the interval from the first admission of popular influence
under Solon, to the downfall of the state. Their history furnishes the classic
example of the peril of Democracy under conditions singularly favourable. For
the Athenians were not only brave and patriotic and capable of generous
sacrifice, but they were the most religious of the Greeks. They venerated the
constitution which had given them prosperity and equality and the pride of
freedom, and never questioned the fundamental laws which regulated the enormous
power of the Assembly. They tolerated considerable variety of opinion, and
great license of speech; and their humanity towards their slaves roused the
indignation even of the most intelligent partisan of aristocracy. Thus they
became the only people of antiquity that grew great by democratic institutions.
But the possession of unlimited power, which corrodes the conscience, hardens
the heart, and confounds the understanding of monarchs exercised its
demoralizing influence on the illustrious Democracy of Athens. It is bad to be
oppressed by a minority; but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For
there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into
play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire
people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason. The humblest
and most numerous class of the Athenians united the legislative, the judicial,
and in part, the executive power. The philosophy that was then in the ascendant
taught them that there is no law superior to that of the state, and that, in
the state, the law-giver is above the law.
It
followed that the sovereign people had a right to do whatever was within its
power, and was bound by no rule of right and wrong but its own judgment of
expediency. On a memorable occasion the assembled Athenians declared it
monstrous that they should be prevented from doing whatever they chose. No
force that existed could restrain them; and they resolved that no duty should restrain
them, and that they would be bound by no laws that were not of their own
making. In this way the emancipated people of Athens became a tyrant; and their
government, the pioneer of European Freedom, stands condemned with a terrible
unanimity by all the wisest of the ancients. They ruined their city by
attempting to conduct war by debate in the market-place. Like the French
Republic they put their unsuccessful commanders to death. They treated their
dependencies with such injustice that they lost their maritime empire. They
plundered the rich, until the rich conspired with the public enemy; and they
crowned their guilt by the martyrdom of Socrates.
When the
absolute sway of numbers had endured for near a quarter of a century, nothing
but bare existence was left for the state to lose; and the Athenians, wearied
and despondent, confessed the true cause of their ruin. They understood that
for liberty, justice, and equal laws, it is as necessary that the Democracy
should restrain itself as it had been that it should restrain the Oligarchy.
They resolved to take their stand once more upon the ancient ways, and to
restore the order of things which had subsisted when the monopoly of power had
been taken from the rich and had not been acquired by the poor. After a first
restoration had failed, which is only memorable because Thucydides, whose
judgment in politics is never at fault, pronounced it the best government
Athens had enjoyed, the attempt was renewed with more experience and greater
singleness of purpose. The hostile parties were reconciled, and proclaimed an
amnesty, the first in history. They resolved to govern by concurrence. The laws
which had the sanction of tradition, were reduced to a code; and no act of the
sovereign assembly was valid with which they might be found to disagree.
Between the sacred lines of the constitution which were to remain inviolate,
and the decrees which met from time to time the needs and notions of the day, a
broad distinction was drawn; and the fabric of law which had been the work of
generations was made independent of momentary variations in the popular will.
The repentance of the Athenians came too late to save the Republic. But the
lesson of their experience endures for all time, for it teaches that government
by the whole people, being the government of the most numerous and most
powerful class, is an evil of the same nature as unmixed monarchy, and
requires, for nearly the same reasons, institutions that shall protect it
against itself, and shall uphold the permanent reign of law against arbitrary
revolutions of opinion.
Parallel
with the rise and fall of Athenian freedom, Rome was employed in working out
the same problems, with greater constructive sense, and greater temporary
success, but ending at last in a far more terrible catastrophe. That which
among the ingenious Athenians had been a development carried forward by the
spell of plausible argument, was in Rome a conflict between rival forces.
Speculative politics had no attraction for the grim and practical genius of the
Romans. They did not consider what would be the cleverest way of getting over a
difficulty, but what way was indicated by analogous cases; and they assigned
less influence to the impulse and spirit of the moment, than to precedent and
example. Their peculiar character prompted them to ascribe the origin of their
laws to early times, and in their desire to justify the continuity of their
institutions and to get rid of the reproach of innovation, they imagined the
legendary history of the Kings of Rome. The energy of their adherence to
traditions made their progress slow, they advanced only under compulsion of
almost unavoidable necessity, and the same questions recurred often before they
were settled. The constitutional history of the Republic turns on the endeavors
of the aristocracy, who claimed to be the only true Romans, to retain in their
hands the power they had wrested from the Kings, and of the plebeians to get an
equal share in it. And this controversy, which the eager and restless Athenians
went through in one generation, lasted for more than two centuries, from a time
when the plebs were excluded from the government of the city, and were taxed,
and made to serve without pay, until, in the year 285, they were admitted to
political equality. Then followed 150 years of unexampled prosperity and glory;
and then, out of the original conflict which had been compromised, if not
theoretically settled, a new struggle arose which was without an issue.
The mass
of poorer families, impoverished by incessant service in war, were reduced to
dependence on an aristocracy of about 2000 wealthy men, who divided among
themselves the immense domains of the state. When the need became intense the
Gracchi tried to relieve it by inducing the richer classes to allot some share
in the public lands to the common people. The old and famous aristocracy of
birth and rank had made a stubborn resistance, but it knew the art of yielding.
The later and more selfish aristocracy was unable to learn it. The character of
the people was changed by the sterner motives of dispute. The fight for
political power had been carried on with the moderation which is so honourable
a quality of party contests in England. But the struggle for the objects of
material existence grew to be as ferocious as civil controversies in France.
Repulsed by the rich after a struggle of 22 years, the people, 320,000 of whom
depended on public rations for food, were ready to follow any man who promised
to obtain for them by revolution what they could not obtain by law.
For a
time the Senate, representing the ancient and threatened order of things, was
strong enough to overcome every popular leader that arose, until Julius Caesar
supported by an army which he had led in an unparalleled career of conquest,
and by the famished masses which he won by his lavish liberality, and skilled
beyond all other men in the imperial art of governing, converted the Republic
into a Monarchy by a series of measures that were neither violent nor
injurious.
The
Empire preserved the republican forms until the reign of Diocletian; but the
will of the Emperors was as uncontrolled as that of the people had been after
the victory of the Tribunes. Their power was arbitrary, even when it was most
wisely employed; and yet the Roman Empire rendered greater services to the
cause of Liberty than the Roman Republic. I do not mean by reason of the
temporary accident that there were emperors who made good use of their immense
opportunities, such as Nerva, of whom Tacitus says that he combined Monarchy and
Liberty, things otherwise incompatible; or that the empire was what its
panegyrists declared it, the perfection of Democracy. In truth it was at best,
an illdisguised and odious despotism. But Frederic the Great was a despot; yet
he was a friend to toleration and free discussion. The Bonapartes were
despotic; yet no liberal ruler was ever more acceptable to the masses of the
people than the First Napoleon, after he had destroyed the Republic, in 1805,
and the Third Napolean, at the height of his power in 1859. In the same way,
the Roman empire possessed merits which, at a distance, and especially at a
great distance of time, concern men more deeply than the tragic tyranny which
was felt in the neighbourhood of the palace. The poor had what they had demanded
in vain of the Republic. The rich fared better than during the Triumvirate. The
rights of Roman citizens were extended to the people of the Provinces. To the
imperial epoch belong the better part of Roman literature and nearly the entire
Civil Law; and it was the Empire that mitigated slavery, instituted religious
toleration, made a beginning of the law of nations, and created a perfect
system of the law of property. The Republic which Caesar overthrew had been
anything but a free state. It provided admirable securities for the rights of
citizens; it treated with savage disregard the rights of men; and allowed the
free Roman to inflict atrocious wrongs on his children, on debtors and
dependents, on prisoners and slaves. Those deeper ideas of right and duty which
are not found on the tables of municipal law, but with which the generous minds
of Greece were conversant, were held of little account, and the philosophy
which dealt with such speculations was repeatedly proscribed, as a teacher of
sedition and impiety.
At
length, in the year 155, the Athenian philosopher Carneades appeared at Rome,
on a political mission. During an interval of official business, he delivered
two public orations, to give the unlettered conquerors of his country a taste
of the disputations that flourished in the Attic schools. On the first day he
discoursed of natural justice. On the next he denied its existence, arguing
that all our notions of good and evil are derived from positive enactment. From
the time of that memorable display, the genius of the vanquished people held
its conquerors in thrall. The most eminent of the public men of Rome, such as
Scipio and Cicero, formed their minds on Grecian models, and her jurists
underwent the rigorous discipline of Zeno and Chrysippus.
If,
drawing the limit in the second century, when the influence of Christianity
becomes perceptible, we should form our judgment of the politics of antiquity
by its actual legislation, our estimate would be low. The prevailing notions of
freedom were imperfect, and the endeavours to realize them were wide of the
mark. The ancients understood the regulation of power better than the
regulation of liberty. They concentrated so many prerogatives on the state as
to leave no footing from which a man could deny its jurisdiction or assign
bounds to its activity. If I may employ an expressive anachronism, the vice of
the classic state was that it was both Church and State in one. Morality was
undistinguished from religion, and politics from morals; and in religion, morality
and politics there was only one legislator and one authority. The state, while
it did deplorably little for education, for practical science, for the indigent
and helpless, or for the spiritual needs of man, nevertheless claimed the use
of all his faculties and the determination of all his duties. Individuals and
families, associations and dependencies were so much material that the
sovereign power consumed for its own purposes. What the slave was in the hands
of his master the citizen was in the hands of the community. The most sacred
obligations vanished before the public advantage. The passengers existed for
the sake of the ship. By their disregard for private interests, and for the
moral welfare and improvement of the people, both Greece and Rome destroyed the
vital elements on which the prosperity of nations rests, and perished by the
decay of families and the depopulation of the country. They survive not in
their institutions, but in their ideas, and by their ideas, especially on the
art of government, they are
"The dead, but
sceptred sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns."
To them, indeed, may be
tracked nearly all the errors that are undermining political society-Communism,
Utilitarianism, the confusion between tyranny and authority, and between
lawlessness and freedom.
The
notion that men lived originally in a state of nature, by violence and without
laws, is due to Critias. Communism in its grossest form was recommended by
Diogenes of Sinope. According to the Sophists, there is no duty above
expediency, and no virtue apart from pleasure. Laws are an invention of weak
men to rob their betters of the reasonable enjoyment of their superiority. It
is better to inflict than to suffer wrong; and as there is no greater good than
to do evil without fear of retribution, so there is no worse evil than to
suffer without the consolation of revenge. Justice is the mask of a craven
spirit; injustice is worldly wisdom; and duty, obedience, self-denial are the
impostures of hypocrisy. Government is absolute, and may ordain what it
pleases; and no subject can complain that it does him wrong; but as long as he
can escape compulsion and punishment, he is always free to disobey. Happiness
consists in obtaining power, and in eluding the necessity of obedience; and he
that gains a throne, by perfidy and murder, deserves to be truly envied.
Epicurus
differed but little from these propounders of the code of revolutionary
despotism. All societies, he said, are founded on contract for mutual
protection. Good and evil are conventional terms, for the thunderbolts of
heaven fall alike on the just and on the unjust. The objection to wrongdoing is
not in the act but in its consequences to the wrongdoer. Wise men contrive
laws, not to bind, but to protect themselves; and when they prove to be
unprofitable they cease to be valid. The illiberal sentiments of even the most
illustrious metaphysicians are disclosed in the saying of Aristotle, that the
mark of the worst governments is that they leave men free to live as they
please.
If you
will bear in mind that Socrates, the best of the pagans, knew of no higher
criterion for men, of no better guide of conduct than the laws of each country;
that Plato, whose sublime doctrine was so near an anticipation of Christianity
that celebrated theologians wished his works to be forbidden, lest men should
be content with them, and indifferent to any higher dogma,-to whom was granted
that prophetic vision of the Just Man, accused, condemned, and scourged, and
dying on a Cross,-nevertheless employed the most splendid intellect ever
bestowed on man, to advocate the abolition of the family and the exposure of
infants; that Aristotle, the ablest moralist of antiquity, saw no harm in
making raids upon neighbouring people for the sake of reducing them to
slavery,-still more, if you will consider that, among the moderns, men of
genius equal to these have held political doctrines not less criminal or
absurd-it will be apparent to you how stubborn a phalanx of error blocks the
paths of Truth; that pure Reason is as powerless as Custom to solve the problem
of free government; that it can only be the fruit of long, manifold, and
painful experience; and that the tracing of the methods by which divine wisdom
has educated the nations to appreciate and to assume the duties of Freedom, is
not the least part of that true philosophy that studies to
"Assert
eternal Providence,
And
justify the ways of God to men."
But,
having sounded the depth of their errors, I should give you a very inadequate
idea of the wisdom of the ancients, if I allowed it to appear that their
precepts were no better than their practice. While statesmen and senates and
popular assemblies supplied examples of every description of blunder, a noble
literature arose, in which a priceless treasure of political knowledge was
stored and in which the defects of the existing institutions were exposed with
unsparing sagacity. The point on which the ancients were most nearly unanimous
is the right of the people to govern, and their inability to govern alone. To
meet this difficulty, to give to the popular element a full share, without a
monopoly, of power, they adopted very generally the theory of a mixed
constitution. They differed from our notion of the same thing, because modern
constitutions have been a device for limiting monarchy; with them they were
invented to curb Democracy. The idea arose in the time of Plato-though he
repelled it-when the early monarchies and oligarchies had vanished; and it
continued to be cherished long after all democracies had been absorbed in the
Roman Empire. But whereas a sovereign prince who surrenders part of his
authority yields to the argument of superior force; a sovereign people,
relinquishing its own prerogative, succumbs to the influence of Reason. And it
has in all times proved more easy to create limitations by the use of force
than by persuasion.
The
ancient writers saw very clearly that each principle of government standing
alone, is carried to excess and provokes a reaction. Monarchy hardens into
despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the
supremacy of numbers. They therefore imagined that to restrain each element by
combining it with the others, would avert the natural process of
self-destruction, and endow the state with perpetual youth. But this harmony of
Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy blended together, which was the ideal of
many writers, and which they supposed to be exhibited by Sparta, by Carthage,
and by Rome, was a chimera of philosophers never realized by antiquity. At
last, Tacitus, wiser than the rest, confessed that the mixed constitution,
however admirable in theory, was difficult to establish and impossible to
maintain. His disheartening avowal is not disowned by later experience.
The
experiment has been tried more often than I can tell, with a combination of
resources that were unknown to the ancients-with Christianity, parliamentary
government, and a free press. Yet there is no example of such a balanced
constitution having lasted a century. If it has succeeded anywhere it has been
in our favoured country and in our time: and we know not yet how long the
wisdom of the nation will preserve the equipoise. The Federal check was as
familiar to the ancients as the Constitutional. For the type of all their Republics
was the government of a city by its own inhabitants meeting in the public
place. An administration embracing many cities was known to them only in the
form of the oppression which Sparta exercised over the Messenians, Athens over
her Confederates, and Rome over Italy. The resources which in modern times
enabled a great people to govern itself through a single centre did not exist.
Equality could be preserved only by Federalism; and it occurs more often
amongst them than in the modern world. If the distribution of power among the
several parts of the state is the most efficient restraint on monarchy, the
distribution of power among several states is the best check on Democracy. By
multiplying centres of government and discussion, it promotes the diffusion of
political Knowledge and the maintenance of healthy and independent opinion. It
is the protectorate of minorities, and the consecration of self-government. But
although it must be enumerated among the better achievements of practical
genius in antiquity, it arose from necessity, and its properties were
imperfectly investigated in theory.
When the
Greeks began to reflect on the problems of society, they first of all accepted
things as they were, and did their best to explain and to defend them. Enquiry
which with us is stimulated by doubt, began with them in wonder. The most
illustrious of the early philosophers, Pythagoras, promulgated a theory for the
preservation of political power in the educated class, and ennobled a form of
government which was generally founded on popular ignorance, and on strong
class interests. He preached authority and subordination, and dwelt more on
duties than on rights, on Religion than on policy; and his system perished in
the revolution by which Oligarchies were swept away. The Revolution afterwards
developed its own philosophy, whose excesses I have described.
But
between the two eras, between the rigid didactics of the early Pythagoreans and
the dissolving theories of Protagoras, a philosopher arose who stood aloof from
both extremes, and whose difficult sayings were never really understood or
valued until our time. Heraclitus, of Ephesus, deposited his book in the temple
of Diana. The book has perished, like the temple and the worship; but its
fragments have been collected and interpreted with incredible ardour, by the
scholars, the divines, the philosophers and politicians who have been engaged
the most intensely in the toil and stress of this century. The most renowned
logician of the last generation adopted every one of his propositions; and the
most brilliant agitator among continental Socialists, composed a work of 840
pages to celebrate his memory.
Heraclitus
complained that the masses were deaf to truth, and knew not that one good man
counts for more than thousands; but he held the existing order in no
superstitious reverence. Strife, he says, is the source and the master of all
things. Life is perpetual motion, and repose is death. No man can plunge twice
into the same current, for it is always flowing and passing, and is never the
same. The only thing fixed and certain in the midst of change is the universal
and sovereign Reason which all men may not perceive, but which is common to
all. Laws are sustained by no human authority, but by virtue of their
derivation from the one law that is divine. These sayings, which recal[l] the
grand outlines of political truth which we have found in the Sacred Books, and
carry us forward to the latest teaching of our most enlightened contemporaries,
would bear a good deal of elucidation and comment. Heraclitus is,
unfortunately, so obscure that Socrates could not understand him and I won't
pretend to have succeeded better.
If the
topic of my address was the history of political science, the highest and the
largest place would belong to Plato and Aristotle. The Laws of the one,
the Politics of the other, are, if I may trust my own experience the books from
which we may learn the most about the principles of politics. The penetration
with which those great masters of thought analyzed the institutions of Greece,
and exposed their vices, is not surpassed by anything in later literature; by
Burke or Hamilton, the best political writers of the last century; by
Tocqueville or Roscher, the most eminent of our own. But Plato and Aristotle
were philosophers, studious not of unguided freedom, but of intelligent
government. They saw the disastrous effects of ill-directed striving for
Liberty; and they resolved that it was better not to strive for it, but to be
content with a strong administration, prudently adapted to make men prosperous
and happy.
Now
Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent
reasons why they should go together; but they do not necessarily go together.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest
political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it
is required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil
society, and of private life. Increase of freedom in the state may sometimes
promote mediocrity, and give vitality to prejudice; it may even retard useful
legislation, diminish the capacity for war, and restrict the boundaries of
Empire. It might be plausibly argued that, if many things would be worse in
England or Ireland under an intelligent despotism, some things would be managed
better; that the Roman government was more enlightened under Augustus and
Antoninus than under the Senate, in the days of Marius or of Pompey. A generous
spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account,
but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved. It is better to be
the citizen of a humble commonwealth in the Alps, without a prospect of
influence beyond the narrow frontier, than a subject of the superb autocracy
that overshadows half of Asia and of Europe. But it may be urged on the other
side that liberty is not the sum or the substitute of all the things men ought
to live for; that to be real it must be circumscribed, and that the limits of
circumscription vary; that advancing civilization invests the state with
increased rights and duties and imposes increased burdens and constraint on the
subject; that a highly instructed and intelligent community may perceive the
benefit of compulsory obligations which, at a lower stage would be thought
unbearable; that liberal progress is not vague or indefinite, but aims at a
point where the public is subject to no restrictions but those of which it
feels the advantage; that a free country may be less capable of doing much for
the advancement of religion, the prevention of vice, or the relief of
suffering, than one that does not shrink from confronting great emergencies by
some sacrifice of individual rights, and some concentration of power; and that
the supreme political object ought to be sometimes postponed to still higher
moral objects. My argument involves no collision with these qualifying
reflections. We are dealing not with the effects of freedom, but with its
causes. We are seeking out the influences which brought arbitrary government
under control, either by the diffusion of power, or by the appeal to an
authority that transcends all government; and among those influences the
greatest philosophers of Greece have no claim to be reckoned.
It is
the Stoics who emancipated mankind from its subjugation to despotic rule, and
whose enlightened and elevated views bridged the chasm that separates the
ancient from the Christian state, and led the way to Freedom. Seeing how little
security there is that the laws of any land shall be wise or just, and that the
unanimous will of a people and the assent of nations are liable to err, the
Stoics looked beyond those narrow barriers, and above those inferior sanctions
for the principles that ought to regulate the lives of men and the existence of
society. They made it known that there is a will superior to the collective
will of man, and a law that overrules those of Solon and Lycurgus. Their test
of good government is its conformity to principles that can be traced to a
higher legislator. That which we must obey, that to which we are bound to
reduce all civil authorities, and to sacrifice every earthly interest, is that
immutable law which is perfect and eternal as God Himself, which proceeds from
His nature, and reigns over heaven and earth and over all the nations.
The
great question is, to discover not what governments prescribe, but what they
ought to prescribe; for no prescription is valid against the conscience of
mankind. Before God, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, neither rich nor
poor; and the slave is as good as his master, for by birth all men are free;
they are citizens of that universal commonwealth which embraces all the world,
brethren of one family, and children of God. The true guide of our conduct is
no outward authority, but the voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our
souls, who knows all our thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know and
all the good we do; for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of
the heavenly spirit within.
What the
teaching of that divine voice is, the philosophers who had imbibed the sublime
ethics of the Porch went on to expound:-It is not enough to act up to the
written law, or to give all men their due; we ought to give them more than
their due, to be generous and beneficent, to devote ourselves for the good of
others, seeking our reward in self-denial and sacrifice, acting from the motive
of sympathy, and not of personal advantage. Therefore we must treat others as
we wish to be treated by them, and must persist until death in doing good to
our enemies, regardless of unworthiness and ingratitude. For we must be at war
with evil, but at peace with men, and it is better to suffer than to commit
injustice. True Freedom, says the most eloquent of the Stoics, consists in
obeying God. A state governed by such principles as these would have been free
far beyond the measure of Greek or Roman freedom; for they open a door to
religious toleration, and close it against slavery. Neither conquest nor
purchase, said Zeno, can make one man the property of another.
These
doctrines were adopted and applied by the great jurists of the empire. The law
of Nature, they said, is superior to the written law, and slavery contradicts
the law of Nature. Men have no right to do what they please with their own, or
to make profit out of another's loss. Such is the political wisdom of the
ancients, touching the foundations of Liberty, as we find it in its highest
development, in Cicero, and Seneca, and Philo, a Jew of Alexandria. Their
writings impress upon us the greatness of the work of preparation for the
Gospel which had been accomplished among men on the eve of the mission of the
Apostles. St. Augustine, after quoting Seneca exclaims: "What more could a
Christian say than this pagan has said?" The enlightened pagans had
reached nearly the last point attainable without a new dispensation, when the
fullness of time was come. We have seen the breadth and the splendour of the
domain of Hellenic thought, and it has brought us to the threshold of a greater
Kingdom. The best of the later classics speak almost the language of
Christianity, and they border on its spirit.
But in
all that I have been able to cite from classical literature, three things are
wanting: Representative Government, the emancipation of the slaves, and liberty
of conscience. There were, it is true, deliberative assemblies, chosen by the
people; and confederate cities, of which, both in Asia and in Europe there were
so many Leagues, sent their delegates, to sit in federal councils. But
government by an elected parliament was, even in theory, a thing unknown. It is
congruous with the nature of Polytheism to admit some measure of toleration.
And Socrates, when he avowed that he must obey God rather than the Athenians,
and the Stoics, when they set the wise man above the law, were very near giving
utterance to the principle. But it was first proclaimed, and established by
enactment, not in polytheistic and philosophical Greece, but in India, by
Asoka, the earliest of the Buddhist kings, 250 years before the Birth of
Christ.
Slavery
has been, far more than intolerance, the perpetual curse and reproach of
ancient civilization; and although its rightfulness was disputed as early as
the days of Aristotle, and was implicitly if not definitely denied by several
Stoics, the moral philosophy of the Greeks and Romans, as well as their
practise, pronounced decidedly in its favour. But there was one extraordinary
people who, in this as in other things anticipated the purer precept that was
to come. Philo of Alexandria is one of the writers whose views on society were
most advanced. He applauds not only liberty but equality in the enjoyment of
wealth. He believes that a limited democracy, purged of its grosser elements,
is the most perfect government, and will extend itself gradually over all the
world. By freedom he understood the following of God. Philo, though he required
that the condition of the slave should be made compatible with the wants and
the claims of his higher nature, did not absolutely condemn slavery. But he has
put on record the customs of the Essenes of Palestine, a people who, uniting
the wisdom of the Gentiles with the faith of the Jews led lives which were
uncontaminated by the surrounding civilization and were the first to reject slavery
both in principle and practice. They formed a religious community rather than a
state, and their numbers did not exceed 4,000. But their example testifies to
how great a height religious men were able to raise their conception of society
even without the succour of the New Testament, and affords the strongest
condemnation of their contemporaries.
This
then is the conclusion to which our survey brings us:-There is hardly a truth
in politics or in the system of the rights of man, that was not grasped by the
wisest of the Gentiles and the Jews, or that they did not declare with a
refinement of thought and a nobleness of expression that later writers could
never surpass. I might go on for hours, reciting to you passages on the law of
Nature and the duties of man, so solemn and religious, that though they come
from the profane theatre on the Acropolis, and from the Roman Forum, you would
deem that you were listening to the hymns of Christian Churches, and the
discourse of ordained divines. But although the maxims of the great classic
teachers, of Sophocles and Plato and Seneca, and the glorious examples of
public virtue were in the mouths of all men, there was no power in them to
avert the doom of that civilization for which the blood of so many patriots and
the genius of such incomparable writers had been wasted in vain. The liberties
of the ancient nations were crushed beneath a hopeless and inevitable
despotism, and their vitality was spent, when the new power came forth from
Galilee, giving what was wanting to the efficacy of human knowledge, to redeem
societies as well as men.
It would
be presumptuous if I attempted to indicate the numberless channels by which
Christian influence gradually penetrated the state. The first striking
phenomenon is the slowness with which an action destined to be so prodigious
became manifest. Going forth to all nations, in many stages of civilization and
under almost every form of government, Christianity had none of the character
of a political apostolate, and in its absorbing mission to individuals, did not
challenge public authority. The early Christians avoided contact with the
state, abstained from the responsibilities of office, and were even reluctant
to serve in the army. Cherishing their citizenship of a Kingdom not of this
world, they despaired of an empire which seemed too powerful to be resisted and
too corrupt to be converted, whose institutions, the work and the pride of
untold centuries of paganism, drew their sanctions from the gods whom the
Christians accounted devils, which plunged its hands from age to age in the
blood of martyrs, and was beyond the hope of regeneration and foredoomed to
perish. They were so much overawed as to imagine that the fall of the state
would be the end of the Church and of the world; and no man dreamed of the
boundless future of spiritual and social influence that awaited their Religion
among the race of destroyers that were bringing the empire of Augustus and of
Constantine to humiliation and ruin. The duties of government were less in
their thoughts than the private virtues and duties of subjects; and it was long
before they became aware of the burden of power in their faith. Down almost to
the time of Chrysostom, they shrank from contemplating the obligation to
emancipate the slaves.
Although
the doctrine of selfreliance and selfdenial which is the foundation of
political economy, was written as legibly in the New Testament as in the Wealth
of Nations, it was not recognized until our age. Tertullian boasts of the
passive obedience of the Christians. Melito writes to a pagan emperor as if he
were incapable of giving an unjust command; and in Christian times, Optatus
thought that whoever presumed to find fault with his sovereign, exalted himself
almost to the level of a god. But this political quietism was not universal.
Origen, the ablest writer of early times, spoke with approval of conspiring for
the destruction of tyranny.
After
the fourth century the declarations against slavery are earnest and continual.
And in a theological but yet pregnant sense divines of the second century
insist on Liberty, and divines of the fourth century on equality. There was one
essential and inevitable transformation in politics. Popular governments had
existed, and also mixed, and federal governments, but there had been no limited
government, no state the circumference of whose authority had been defined by a
force external to its own. That was the great problem which philosophy had
raised, and which no statesmanship had been able to solve. Those who proclaimed
the existence of a higher authority had indeed drawn a metaphysical barrier
before the governments, but they had not known how to make it real. All that
Socrates could effect by way of protest against the tyranny of the reformed
Democracy was to die for his convictions. The Stoics could only advise the wise
man to hold aloof from politics, keeping the unwritten law in his heart. But
when Christ said: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and
unto God the things that are God's," those words, spoken on His last visit
to the Temple, three days before His death, gave to the civil power, under the
protection of conscience, a sacredness it had never enjoyed, and bounds it had
never acknowledged; and they were the repudiation of absolutism and the
inauguration of Freedom. For our Lord not only delivered the precept, but
created the force to execute it. To maintain the necessary immunity in one
supreme sphere, to reduce all political authority within defined limits, ceased
to be an aspiration of patient reasoners, and was made the perpetual charge and
care of the most energetic institution and the most universal association in
the world. The new law, the new spirit, the new authority, gave to Liberty a
meaning and a value it had not possessed in the philosophy or in the
constitution of Greece or Rome, before the knowledge of the Truth that makes us
free.