innovating citizen was permitted to make his proposal to the
assembled tribe, with a rope about his neck, to be drawn tight if he
failed to convince his audience. This might make men think twice before
advancing new views, but it was not an entire suppression of them.

The first introduction of the great religions of the world would in each
case afford an interesting study of the difficulties of change and of
the modes of surmounting these difficulties. There must always have
concurred at least two things,--general uneasiness or discontent from
some cause or other; and the moral or intellectual ascendency of some
one man, whose views, although original, were yet of a kind to be
finally accepted by the people. These conditions are equally shown in
political changes, and are historically illustrated in many notable
instances. It is enough to cite the Greek legislation of Lycurgus and of
Solon.

Such changes are the exceptions in human affairs; they occur only at
great intervals. In the ordinary course of societies, the governing
powers not merely adhere to what is established, but forbid under severe
penalties the very suggestion of change. The chronic misery of the race
is compatible with unreasoning acquiescence in a state of things once
established; incipient reformers are at once immolated _pour encourager
les autres_. It is the aim of governments to make themselves
superfluously strong; they take precautions against unfavourable ideas
no less than against open revolt. In this, they are seconded by the
general community, which would make things too hot even for a reforming
king.

[SEPARATION OF RELIGION FROM POLITICS.]

It is said by the evolution or historical school of politicians, that
this was all as it should be. The free permission to question the
existing institutions, political and religious, would have been
incompatible with stability. In early society more especially, religion
and morality were a part of civil government; a dissenter in religion
was the same thing as a rebel in politics; the distinction between the
civil and the religious could not yet be drawn.

Without saying whether this was the case or not--for I should not like
to commit myself to the position, "Whatever was, was right" at the
time--I trust we are now far on the way to being agreed that the civil
and the religious are no longer to be identified; that the State, as a
state, is not concerned to uphold any one form of religious belie