This is a very spurious kind of political Liberty. The individual is an individuum vagum, and rights valid only in the social organism, cannot be predicated of him out of it. Nor has any man a right to do what he likes, a doctrine which means the sovereignty of the passions Liberty does not consist in thinking, or in saying, or in doing what we like, or in voting ever so often Even thought does not possess unbounded independence: it is governed by necessary laws Nor is the limitation by law of the external manifestations of our personality, in speech or deed, an infringement of our liberty, if the law be just. The true idea of law is the organic totality of the external conditions of a life according to reason: and only the will that is determined by reason is free The State is not a power external and hostile to the governed, restrictive of their liberty and tolerated by them merely for the protection of person and property: the true and worthy conception of the State is that it is the nation in its corporate capacity and the tutor of individual freedom: its sovereignty, rightly conceived, is the domination of the rational will over the animal passions PAGE 63 63 64 65 66 And its business is to maintain the conditions without which a free exercise of the human faculties is impossible 67 The popular conception of Liberty, as a man's freedom to do what he likes, witnesses, however, to the truth that the State should assure to each, all the independence he can possibly enjoy, provided he does not prejudice the like independence of others, or the Such Liberty, not in itself a positive good, is the condition of the highest good, which is moral Liberty This is the conception of freedom written legibly on every page of English constitutional history and realized by our forefathers, who, without troubling themselves with metaphysical discussions, wrought out "the liberty of the subject" The phrase is felicitous, as indicating that the true condition of individual freedom is subjection to law The laws of the political, as of the moral and physical order, are the expression of Divine Reason, which man's reason may, more or less perfectly, apprehend, and his will obey 67 68 60 70 70 And it is because they are divine that our obedience is due to them 70 The stupidest of superstitions is that political Liberty is the necessary product of any constitutional machinery, and in particular, that it is the inevitable result of government by numbers 70 It is to the ever-deepening apprehension of "the moral laws of nature and of nations" that we should look for the growth of true freedom 72 CHAPTER III. THE PEOPLE. The superstition that liberty is the inevitable result of government by numbers has embodied itself in the Shibboleth of The People The People's Gospel: "Every man to count for one and no man for more than one" It is an a priori doctrine postulating that each individual We have derived it mainly from the teachings of Jean- of the time Rousseau's doctrine of the natural goodness, rationality, equality, and sovereignty of the individual, and of the social contract were not original. His originality lay in his passionate enthusiasm In 1789 his new gospel reigned paramount in the general mind of France. "To make the constitution" meant, for the Revolutionary legislators, to translate his doctrines into institutions His doctrine as to the individual is wholly untenable, being opposed to the most manifest facts. 81 The same must be said of his doctrine as to the State, which is not a conventional institution, but the outcome of an order of necessary truths quite independent, in themselves, of human volition 84 Neither Rousseau nor Locke, in whose mechanical philosophy the political ideas of Rousseau are contained and justified, realized the organic nature of society, nor its ethical conditions, nor the real nature and limits of human authority PAGE 85 So much as to the theoretical position of The People's 87 In France, after a century of striving to realize its ideal of man and society, all the bonds of thought are loosened, all classes are in antagonism, all interests are jarring and antagonistic. In the United States of America it has ostracised men of light and leading, deeply degraded public life, and made republican government little better than a form Such are the fruits of The People's Gospel, found in every country precisely in proportion as it has been received And it has been received very widely the inspiration of the Liberalism of Continental Europe, and of the dominant school of Radicalism in this country is derived from it It is by no accident, but by a law issuing from the nature of things, that it produces these results But however false the theoretical positions of the People's Gospel, and however foul its fruits, it veils the truth that all men are equal as persons, and are entitled, in virtue of that equality, to the same share of political power. The proposition that every man should count for one is true PAGE Universal suffrage may be regarded as the expression of this truth in highly advanced states of civilization But in highly advanced states only: institutions need to be radically different according to the stage of advancement reached by a people Absurd consequences of the forgetfulness of that truth There is no immutably best form of polity: "the best government is that which teaches men to govern themselves" The true function of representative institutions is to assure to the community the permanence and inviolability of the rational will, and to educate the people at large in the consciousness of Right But if the proposition of The People's Gospel, that "every man should count for one," is true, its other proposition, that "no man should count for more than one," is false. It is a direct infringement of the most sacred rights of human personality: some men should count for many more than one: there is a fundamental democracy in human society: there is also a necessary hierarchy 99 100 101 102 103 103 In so far as men are, in truth, equal, they are entitled to the same share of political power: in so far as they are, in truth, unequal, they are entitled to unequal shares of political power: justice is in a mean: it lies in the combination of equal and unequal rights. 104 There are elements in the body politic far more important than mere numbers. Civilization is bound up with "the classes," and with their tenure of their proper place and special function in the social organism 107 |