liberty with a good deal of the substance taken out of it. The problem
is less complicated and the solution less radical and less profound.
Already, then, there were writers who held somewhat superficially the
conviction, which Tocqueville made a corner-stone, that nations that
have not the self-governing force of religion within them are
unprepared for freedom.

The early notions of reform moved on French lines, striving to utilise
the existing form of society, to employ the parliamentary aristocracy,
to revive the States-General and the provincial assemblies. But the
scheme of standing on the ancient ways, and raising a new France on
the substructure of the old, brought out the fact that whatever growth
of institutions there once had been had been stunted and stood still.
If the mediaeval polity had been fitted to prosper, its fruit must be
gathered from other countries, where the early notions had been
pursued far ahead. The first thing to do was to cultivate the foreign
example; and with that what we call the eighteenth century began. The
English superiority, proclaimed first by Voltaire, was further
demonstrated by Montesquieu. For England had recently created a
government which was stronger than the institutions that had stood on
antiquity. Founded upon fraud and treason, it had yet established the
security of law more firmly than it had ever existed under the system
of legitimacy, of prolonged inheritance, and of religious sanction. It
flourished on the unaccustomed belief that theological dissensions
need not detract from the power of the State, while political
dissensions are the very secret of its prosperity. The men of
questionable character who accomplished the change and had governed
for the better part of sixty years, had successfully maintained public
order, in spite of conspiracy and rebellion; they had built up an
enormous system of national credit, and had been victorious in
continental war. The Jacobite doctrine, which was the basis of
European monarchy, had been backed by the arms of France, and had
failed to shake the newly planted throne. A great experiment had been
crowned by a great discovery. A novelty that defied the wisdom of
centuries had made good its footing, and revolution had become a
principle of stability more sure than tradition.

Montesquieu undertook to make the disturbing fact avail in political
science. He valued it because it reconciled him with monarchy. He had
started with t