hree, but no man heeded the
enormity until it suggested to a young lawyer that it might be well to
question and examine with rigorous suspicion every part of a system in
which such things were done. The day on which that gleam lighted up the
clear hard mind of Jeremy Bentham is memorable in the political calendar
beyond the entire administration of many statesmen. It would be easy to
point out a paragraph in St. Augustine, or a sentence of Grotius that
outweighs in influence the Acts of fifty Parliaments, and our cause owes
more to Cicero and Seneca, to Vinet and Tocqueville, than to the laws of
Lycurgus or the Five Codes of France.

By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in
doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and
majorities, custom and opinion. The State is competent to assign duties
and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere.
Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only
give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the
influences which prevail against temptation,--religion, education, and
the distribution of wealth. In ancient times the State absorbed
authorities not its own, and intruded on the domain of personal freedom.
In the Middle Ages it possessed too little authority, and suffered
others to intrude. Modern States fall habitually into both excesses. The
most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is
the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. Liberty, by this
definition, is the essential condition and guardian of religion; and it
is in the history of the Chosen People, accordingly, that the first
illustrations of my subject are obtained. The government of the
Israelites was a Federation, held together by no political authority,
but by the unity of race and faith, and founded, not on physical force,
but on a voluntary covenant. The principle of self-government was
carried out not only in each tribe, but in every group of at least 120
families; and there was neither privilege of rank nor inequality before
the law. Monarchy was so alien to the primitive spirit of the community
that it was resisted by Samuel in that momentous protestation and
warning which all the kingdoms of Asia and many of the kingdoms of
Europe have unceasingly confirmed. The throne was erected on a compact;
and the king was deprived of the right of legislation among a people
that recognised no la