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 immediate sphere.
Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only
give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the
influences which prevail 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 recognised 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 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
consciences 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 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 disastrously. In the year 622 a supreme
effort was made at Jerusalem to reform and preserve the State. The High
Priest produced from the temple of Jehovah 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 civilised 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 labour is incomplete there is little division of classes
and of power. Until societies are tried by the complex problems of
civilisation 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 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 moral 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 inviolable, 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 Egean Sea was manned by
the poorer Athenians. That class, whose valour had saved the State and
had preserved European civilisation, 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 that 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 public.
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 fate 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 had 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 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 right
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
million 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 ascendency 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 equalled 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 penalty 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 freedom, and never questioned the
fundamental laws which regulated the enormous power of the Assembly.
They tolerated considerable variety of opinion and great licence 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 demoralising 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--the lawgiver 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 or 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 marketplace. 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 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 a 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 times, 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 endeavours 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 286, they were admitted to political equality. Then
followed one hundred and fifty 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 two thousand
wealthy men, who divided among themselves the immense domain 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
twenty-two years, the people, three hundred and twenty thousand 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 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 ill-disguised
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 Napoleon 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 dependants, 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.