WHENEVER GREAT INTELLECTUAL cultivation has been combined with that suffering which is inseparable from extensive changes in the condition of the people, men of speculative or imaginative genius have sought in the contemplation of an ideal society a remedy, or at least a consolation, for evils which they were practically unable to remove.

AT THE TIME of the utmost degradation of the Athenian democracy, when the commanders at Arginusae were condemned by an unconstitutional decree, and Socrates alone upheld the sanctity of the law, the people, says Xenophon, cried out that it was monstrous to prevent them from doing whatever they pleased.1 A few years later the archonship of Euclides witnessed the restoration of the old constitution, by which the liberty, though not the power, of Athens was revived and prolonged for ages; and the palladium of the new settlement was the pr

THE REVENUE OF France was near twenty millions when Louis XVI, finding it inadequate, called upon the nation for supply. In a single lifetime it rose to far more than one hundred millions, while the national income grew still more rapidly; and this increase was wrought by a class to whom the ancient monarchy denied its best rewards, and whom it deprived of power in the country they enriched.

AMONG THE CAUSES which have brought dishonour on the Church in recent years, none have had a more fatal operation than those conflicts with science and literature which have led men to dispute the competence, or the justice, or the wisdom, of her authorities. Rare as such conflicts have been, they have awakened a special hostility which the defenders of Catholicism have not succeeded in allaying.

THE INTENTION OF Pius IX to convene a General Council became known in the autumn of 1864, shortly before the appearance of the Syllabus. They were the two principal measures which were designed to restore the spiritual and temporal power of the Holy See. When the idea of the Council was first put forward it met with no favour. The French bishops discouraged it; and the French bishops holding the talisman of the occupying army, spoke with authority.

Mandell Creighton, later a Bishop in the Church of England, was the author of the five-volume History of the Papacy during the Reformation. The first two volumes appeared in 1882, and Creighton suggested to the editor of the Academy that Acton review the book, “as I wanted to be told my shortcomings by the one Englishman whom I considered capable of doing so.” Acton’s review was not at all diffident; the main shortcoming of which he complained was the familiar one of excessive moral leniency.

Compiled by Bert F. Hoselitz

NOTE: This lecture was delivered at Cambridge, June 11, 1895 (London, 1895): reprinted in Lectures on Modern History (London: Macmillan Co., 1906), pp. 1-30 and 319-342.

Wer nicht von drei tausend Jahren sich weiss Rechenschaft zu geben, Bleib’ im Dunkeln unerfahren, mag von Tag zu Tage leben!

Goethe.

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER II — THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM IN ANTIQUITY

NOTE: This address was delivered to the members of the Bridgnorth Institution at the Agricultural Hall, February 26, 1877 (Bridgnorth, 1877): reprinted in The History of Freedom and Other Essays (London: Macmillan Co., 1907), pp. 1-29.

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