ABSTRACT
It might seem a strange outrage to destroy the order that the past had evolved and had exquisitely refined and to allege that ancient institutions impeded the people’s liberty. Whence, then, had those institutions arisen if not from the union of inspiration and inclination with necessity in the life of the people themselves? And after this outrage, it might seem an even stranger tyranny, if ever the people were inclined to re-adopt or to re-create something of the traditional kind, to forbid them that pleasure. But the French Revolution and the whole movement, still not quite spent, which proceeded from it, was not liberal except verbally and by accident. 224The world was to be freed from Christianity and feudalism; it was not to be free to become Christian and feudal again. These were not regarded as normal episodes in human history, as forms of civilisation as legitimate as any others; they were regarded as fiendish inventions foisted by tyrants on human helplessness and ignorance. That incubus removed, all mankind was expected to found a heroic, fearless, unchallengeable republic, composed by Catos, Brutuses, and Cincinnatuses. This rigid form of liberty being established, no other form of liberty would be permitted.
