Reminiscences_, that Acton, had he lived on the Continent, would
have undoubtedly become an Old Catholic. He did very largely live on the
Continent. Nor did even Doellinger, of whom Dr. Meyrick also asserts it,
ever become an adherent of that movement.]

I

THE HISTORY OF FREEDOM IN ANTIQUITY[2]

Liberty, next to religion, has been the motive of good deeds and the
common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, two
thousand four hundred and sixty years ago, until the ripened harvest was
gathered by men of our race. It is the delicate fruit of a mature
civilisation; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew
the meaning of the term, resolved to be free. In every age its progress
has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by
lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for
power, and the poor man's craving for food. During long intervals it has
been utterly arrested, when nations were being rescued from barbarism
and from the grasp of strangers, and when the perpetual struggle for
existence, depriving men of all interest and understanding in politics,
has made them eager to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage, and
ignorant of the treasure they resigned. At all times sincere friends of
freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities,
that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose
objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is
always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents
just grounds of opposition, and by kindling dispute over the spoils in
the hour of success. No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult
to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true
liberty. If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have
wrought still more; and its advance is recorded in the increase of
knowledge, as much as in the improvement of laws. The history of
institutions is often a history of deception and illusions; for their
virtue depends on the ideas that produce and on the spirit that
preserves them, and the form may remain unaltered when the substance has
passed away.

A few familiar examples from modern politics will explain why it is that
the burden of my argument will lie outside the domain of legislation. It
is often said that our Constitution attained its formal perfection in
1679, when the Habeas Corp