ABSTRACT
A liberal was one who wanted more liberty, that is, more freedom from restraint; whether the restraint was exercised by police, or by law, or by social pressure, or by orthodoxy of opinion which men assailed at their peril. The liberal thought that men needed far more room to act and think than they were allowed by established laws and conventions in European society. The right of resistance was and is the anxious problem of liberal theory. Law and order are precious, are the making of society. The liberal faith thus owed something to religious division, something to fear of modern power in the state. But it acquired a third source, or was fostered by a new habit of mind. Like the liberal, the Christian maintained the faith that legal right can be moral wrong and that a legislator cannot reject appeals to an ethical standard not derived from his laws.
