ABSTRACT
Logically, freedom and government might seem to be antitheses, since compulsion is of the essence of government. Anarchists, of whom Kropotkin is the intellectually most respectable, have, on this ground, advocated a complete absence of government. Belief in freedom, as a practical force in politics, arose out of two main sources, religion and trade. Religious minorities, wherever they had little chance of becoming majorities, turned against persecution; and traders objected to the curtailment of their profits by grants of monopolies to courtiers. Political liberty, however, is only one species of a genus, and there is no reason to regard it as more desirable than other species of liberty. Political action may promote or restrict other kinds of liberty as well as the political kind; people cannot therefore judge of political action solely with reference to political freedom, even if they consider freedom the sole proper end of politics.
