rd as any in all expressions of loyalty." In such an aspect, even
those who believe their attitude to have been wrong, can hardly doubt
that they acted rightly in their expression of it. For, after all,
experience has shown that the State is built upon the consciences of
men. And the protest they made stands out in the next generation in
vivid contrast to a worldly-minded and politically-corrupt Church which
only internal revolution could awaken from its slumbers.

No one represents so admirably as Charles Leslie the political argument
of the case. At bottom it is an argument against anarchy that he
constructs, and much of what he said is medieval enough in tone to
suggest de Maistre's great defence of papalism as the secret of
world-order. He stands four square upon divine right and passive
obedience. "What man is he who can by his own natural authority bend the
conscience of another? That would be far more than the power of life,
liberty or prosperity. Therefore they saw the necessity of a divine
original." Such a foundation, he argued elsewhere, is necessary to
order, for "if the last resort be in the people, there is no end of
controversy at all, but endless and unremediable confusion." Nor had he
sympathy for the Whig attack on monarchy. "The reasons against Kings,"
he wrote, "are as strong against all powers, for men of any titles are
subject to err, and numbers more than fewer." And nothing can unloose
the chain. "Obedience," he said in the _Best of All_, "is due to
commonwealths by their subjects even for conscience' sake, where the
princes from whom they have revolted have given up their claim."

The argument has a wider history than its controversial statement might
seem to warrant. At bottom, clearly enough, it is an attack upon the new
tradition which Locke had brought into being. What seems to impress it
most is the impossibility of founding society upon other than a divine
origin. Anything less will not command the assent of men sufficiently to
be immune from their evil passions. Let their minds but once turn to
resistance, and the bonds of social order will be broken. Complete
submission is the only safeguard against anarchy. So, a century later,
de Maistre could argue that unless the whole world became the subject of
Rome, the complete dissolution of Christian society must follow. So,
too, fifty years before, Hobbes had argued for an absolute dominion lest
the ambitions and desires of men break through t